Movado Watches on the Nanking Road

I’ve noticed a lot of watch dealers in Shanghai selling Movado watches lately and, of course, they’re nothing new. Here’s an ad for Movado and their distributor Boyes, Bassett & Co on the Nanking Road (Nanjing Road) featuring a lovely little travel clock, the “Pullman”….

RAS Shanghai – The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England – David Porter – 18/6/13

Advance notice of what should be an excellent RAS Shanghai event…

The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England – David Porter

Eighteenth-century consumers in Britain, living in an increasingly globalized world, were infatuated with exotic Chinese and Chinese-styled goods, art and decorative objects. However, they were also often troubled by the alien aesthetic sensibility these goods embodied. This ambivalence figures centrally in the period’s experience of China and of contact with foreign countries and cultures more generally. In the recent book from which this talk is adapted, David Porter analyzes the processes by which Chinese aesthetic ideas were assimilated within English culture. Through case studies of individual figures, including William Hogarth and Horace Walpole and broader reflections on cross-cultural interaction, he develops new interpretations of eighteenth-century ideas of luxury, consumption, gender, taste and aesthetic nationalism.

David Porter teaches at the University of Michigan, where he is Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as Faculty Associate at the Center for Chinese Studies. A graduate of Cornell, Cambridge, and Stanford Universities, he is the author of two books exploring English and European responses to Chinese culture in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first, Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe, was published by Stanford in 2001. The second, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth Century England, came out with Cambridge in 2010. He is currently working on a new book comparing the literary cultures of China and England during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Best Book on Foreigners in China?

Got asked that question the other day in an interview so thought I’d share….it is, of course, Harold Acton’s Peonies and Ponies, which is long overdue a new reprint in case anyone with publishing power is reading this….

When in Doubt – Say UB

Friday night and time for a beer…Jardine’s house brew UB was the choice of many a Shanghailander….

Photography in China – a new book

A new book from Claire Roberts and from the excellent publishers Reaktion….

Photography and China is the first overview of the subject to be published in English, providing a comprehensive account of this previously neglected relationship. Spanning the period from the inception of photography until the present, the book foregrounds Chinese photographers and subjects, and draws on works in museum, archival and private collections across China, the USA, Europe and Australia. Taking a thematic approach to her historical survey, Claire Roberts brings together commercial, art and documentary photography, locating the images within the broader context of Chinese history. With a constant focus on the images, and the studios or individuals that created them, Roberts describes the long tradition of Chinese artistic culture into which photography was at first absorbed, and which it subsequently expanded. She recounts the stories of practitioners who were agents in that process of change, both from China and overseas, and examines the different purposes for which they used photography, be they commercial, political or artistic. Featuring a strong narrative and numerous striking images, many unfamiliar to a Western audience, Photography and China will appeal to all those with an interest in China, photography, Chinese art and visual culture, or twentieth-century history and society. The book will also be relevant to a general audience, as well as students, scholars, photographers, curators and collectors.

The Immobile Empire – More on Macartney

A new study of the Macrtney Mission to China from Alain Peyrefitte…

In 1793, Lord George Macartney and an enormous delegation—including diplomats, doctors, scholars, painters, musicians, soldiers, and aristocrats—entered Beijing on a mission to open China to British trade. But Macartney’s famous refusal to perform the traditional kowtow before the Chinese Emperor was just one sign that the two empires would not see eye to eye, and the trade talks failed. The inability to develop a trade relation would have enormous consequences for future relations between China and the West. Peyrefitte’s vivid narrative of this fascinating encounter is based on extraordinary source materials from each side—including the charming and candid diary of Thomas Staunton, the son of one of Macartney’s aides. An example of history at its finest, The Immobile Empire recaptures the extraordinary experience of two great empires in collision, sizing each other up for the first time.

When you Could Still Drink the Milk in Shanghai

Milk and dairy are risky options these days in Shanghai but, in the 1930s, half a century before the infant formula obsessions kicked in, Shanghai Dairy Farms seem to have done a good job. Their offices were in Hamilton House down on Kiangse Road (Jiangxi Road) but God knows where they kept the cows?

Representations of China in British Children’s Fiction, 1851-1911

A little obscure perhaps but Chen Shih-Wen’s Representation of China in British Children’s Fiction intrigued me….

Shih-Wen Chen is a post-doctoral fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World, The Australian National University. Her research interests include children’s literature, print culture, and histories of reading.

‘Shih-Wen Chen’s extraordinary research challenges the assertions made by previous scholars to construct an important and convincing new analysis of Chinese characters in British children’s fiction.’Sally Mitchell, Temple University, USA’Combining detailed historical context with close rhetorical analysis, Shih-Wen Chen brings out the subtle distinction and occluded histories that reveal the diverse and subtle ways images of China in the nineteenth century vary from the conventional reading of stereotype. Extensively researched, well argued, topical and expansive in its scope, her book provides a detailed and compelling case for the variegated lens British children’s fiction offers for viewing the complexities and nuances of Sino-British relations’.Helen Groth, University of New South Wales, Australia