London’s Chinois Fans

Talking of the Museum of London the other day (Chinoiserie elevators would you believe) I was rather hoping to show you an image of a fan they have from the Imperial Restaurant in London that dates back to about 1900-05 – a lovely object, a good bit of advertising and one of London’s most famous old Chinese eateries. However, I don’t have that image but I did find this…

A gorgeous fan from about 1727 and made in London by William Werndly who’s shop, The Golden Fan, was in Leicester Square. Its ivory sticks and chinois motif would have made it expensive, much more expensive than the cheaper Chinese fans then being imported into England from China by entrepreneurial merchants. How great would it have looked waved around by a beautiful woman at the theatre or the pleasure gardens??

More details here…

Latest update on The Poseidon Project

Regular readers will know I mentioned the Poseidon Project previously as they were trying to raise money to finish this excellent looking documentary on a sunken British sub in China – more below. Just to let you know you can still donate to the project and there are several videos about HMS Poseidon online too at Vimeo to look at.

THE POSEIDON PROJECT
On June the 9th 1931, one of Britain’s most advanced submarines collided with a cargo ship off the coast of China. Half of the crew escaped in the first few seconds, but the rest of the men sank 40 metres down to the bottom of the sea, entombed in their boat. Three hours later, six sailors surfaced, barely conscious and bitterly cold, as their comrades watched on in amazement. They were the first men ever to escape alive from a sunken submarine using a proto-scuba device.
Beijing-based journalist and part-time scuba instructor Steven Schwankert was looking for interesting wrecks to dive in northern China when he found HMS Poseidon on a list of unexplored dive sites. His private obsession with bringing wreck diving to China became a public and personally high-risk mission to uncover a secret history of political intrigue that took him half way across the world in search of evidence.
Their story hit newspaper headlines worldwide and went on to inspire a feature film, released later that year. Their miraculous escape changed marine safety forever, leading to a revolution in submarine design and a big leap forward in our understanding of decompression sickness. But their names, and their submarine, gradually sank into obscurity.
Steven Schwankert’s six-year search for the submarine revealed a story that was far more complicated than he had first expected, challenging official accounts of the escape, and uncovering the truth behind the forgotten wreck.
www.poseidonprojectfilm.com

Out Now in My Asian Arguments Series – Thailand’s Hidden Workforce

The latest book in the series, Asian Arguments, that I edit for Zed Books is now available in paperback. It’s an interesting study of a little known group of migratory women workers moving from Burma to Northern Thailand’s manufacturing areas…

Thailand’s Hidden Workforce: Burmese Migrant Women Factory Workers – Asian Arguments

Ruth Pearson and Kyoko Kusakabe

Millions of Burmese women migrate into Thailand each year to form the basis of the Thai agricultural and manufacturing workforce. Un-documented and unregulated, this army of migrant workers constitutes the ultimate “disposable” labour force, enduring grueling working conditions and much aggression from the Thai police and immigration authorities. This insightful book ventures into a part of the global economy rarely witnessed by Western observers. Based on unique empirical research, it provides the reader with a gendered account of the role of women migrant workers in Thailand’s factories and interrogates the ways in which they strategize about their families and their futures.

‘The authors give a voice to a part of Thailand’s workforce invisible to many Thais, and to consumers across Asia and around the world who buy the cheap goods they produce. That voice is authentic, and paired with sound analysis of the issues raised.’
Chris Hogg, correspondent BBC Asia, Shanghai

‘The labels on your clothes do not say ‘Made by Burmese migrant women in Thailand’, but once you have read this book you will carry that information with you. Many thanks to the authors for exposing these conditions.’
Jackie Pollock, director, MAP Foundation, Thailand

‘This book reveals the hidden face of Thailand’s industrial and migration policies by giving visibility and voice to Burmese female migrants employed in the country’s ready-made garment and knitwear factories. The authors shine the spotlight, not only on the women’s work experiences on the factory floor, but also on the way they juggle care responsibilities for their children. It is a compelling story about ordinary women making hard decisions under precarious conditions as they live transborder lives.’
Professor Brenda Yeoh, National University of Singapore

About the Authors:

Ruth Pearson is Professor of International Development at the University of Leeds, UK. She has undertaken research on women’s work in the global economy, focusing recently on migrant workers and gendered globalisation, and has carried out empirical work in Latin America, including Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Cuba, as well as in Thailand and Europe. She has a particular interest in the intersections of women’s productive and reproductive roles and their implications for understanding globalisation and crisis in the contemporary economy.

Kyoko Kusakabe is Associate Professor of Gender and Development Studies in the School of Environment, Resources and Development at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Her research interests are centred on gendered mobility and migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion and the effect of regional economic integration on women’s work and employment. She has undertaken empirical work in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and has a special interest in women and transborder trade.

Danwei’s Model Workers 2012

Every year Danwei lists the best blogs, commentaries and podcasts about China in all its aspects – this year’s list of Model Workers is quite extensive and I post here both to show off that China Rhyming was included and  because if you’re looking at this blog then you probably want more China sources….click here

An Audio Stroll Round Old Peking with PRI’s The World

Back no a very cold and blustery March day earlier this year I went for a stroll around the scenes of Midnight in Peking in various parts of old Peking with Mary Kay Magistad of PRI’s The World…here’s the show she put together now online…

Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

Funny how things come along. No sooner had I posted the shots yesterday of an opium raid in Shanghai in 1925 than I read in The New Yorker (June 25th 2012 edition) about Steve Martin who both has a massive collection of opium paraphernalia that sounds fascinating but was also a serious opium addict in Thailand hooked on 30 to 40 pipes a day. And now he’s apparently written a book on the subject, Opium Fiend – haven’t read it as it’s not out till the end of June – but thought it interesting enough to post.

A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world’s oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery.

A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu. But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction—from quitting cold turkey to taking “the cure” at a Buddhist monastery in the Thai countryside.

At once a powerful personal story and a fascinating historical survey, Opium Fiend brims with anecdotes and lore surrounding the drug that some have called the methamphetamine of the nineteenth-century. It recalls the heyday of opium smoking in the United States and Europe and takes us inside the befogged opium dens of China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. The drug’s beguiling effects are described in vivid detail—as are the excruciating pains of withdrawal—and there are intoxicating tales of pipes shared with an eclectic collection of opium aficionados, from Dutch dilettantes to hard-core addicts to world-weary foreign correspondents.

A compelling tale of one man’s transformation from respected scholar to hapless drug slave, Opium Fiend puts us under opium’s spell alongside its protagonist, allowing contemporary readers to experience anew the insidious allure of a diabolical vice that the world has all but forgotten.

A 1925 Opium Raid in Shanghai

Came across this silent newsreel from Kinograms: The Visual News of all the World. It’s from 1925 and includes footage of the Shanghai Municipal Police and the Shanghai Chinese police busting some opium den and then displaying the seized opium before burning it in special kilns.

Shanghai Police march out of the barracks to go bust an opium den…

Seized bundles of dope…

And into the kiln it goes to be burnt and destroyed…

Talking of Escaping from Hong Kong…

…as well as the title of Tim Luard’s new book, Escape From Hong Kong, on the exploits of Admiral Can Chek in WW2 (see previous plugs for his recent China events on this site), it was also the title of a pretty atrocious 1942 C-movie (or whatever is lower than a B-movie?) starring the mostly forgotten Leo Carillo, Andy Devine, Marjorie Lord, Frank Puglia and Chester Gan. OK, so it was all for the war effort with American vaudeville entertainers in Hong Kong for Pearl Habor. “JAPS TAKE COVER… when 3 American sharpshooters play rat-a-tat-tat on their skulls! “ wasn’t much of a tagline for the movie either but given that Pearl Harbor was December 1941 and the movie came out in May 1942 that’s not bad going!!

Excuse to stick the old poster up anyway…not an overly great attempt to artistically recreate the Hong Kong waterfront I have to say

And I’m going to stick my aviation ignorant neck out here too – those Jap planes bombing Hong Kong don’t look like the “light bombers” the Japanese used to bomb Hong Kong (I think) but rather British Lancaster’s (judging by the tails – but which anyway had four and not two engines). and it can’t be a Lancaster bombing a Jap ship because they didn’t have Lancaster’s in Hong Kong – right? But what do I know? Plane spotters feel free to ridicule me and my amateurish guesses!! (pics below anyway).

According to IMDB Tim Luard’s Escape from Hong Kong is in development – and would make a good film for a bit of Anglo-HK collaboration. I hope they use the same title.

Japanese light bombers with reconnaissance aircraft over Hong Kong…

A British Lancaster with its distinctive tail