Hong Kong Volunteer Corps Interwar Shoulder Flashes

A selection of shoulder flashes as worn by the Hong Kong Volunteer Corps’ various divisons….

Shanghai Volunteer Corps April 4 1854 Cap Badge

An SVC cap badges from April 4 1854 – a little special as it commemorates The Battle of Muddy Flat on that date. Units of the SVC joined British and American military units (I think the first time US and GB troops fought together after the American War of Independence) repelling Qing imperial troops besieging the rebel-held city ignored foreign demands to move further away from the foreign concessions.

Ten Pfennig Kiautschou Bay stamp, 1901

A 10 Pfennig stamp from the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory, 1901. Covering 213 sqm of Shandong inc Kiautschou (Jiaozhou) Bay & Tsingtao (Qingdao), it was operated by the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy between 1898-1914….

Air India Hong Kong Poster, 1960s

I’d seen this Air India Hong Kong poster form the 1960s before but a few details explaining this one…

The Air-India Maharajah mascot was created in 1946 by Bobby Kooka and Umesh Rao – Kooka was Commercial Director with Air India and Rao, an artist at J Walter Thompson in Bombay. Kooka once said: ‘“We can call him the Maharajah for want of a better description. But his blood isn’t blue. He may look like royalty, but he isn’t royal. He is capable of entertaining the Queen of England and splitting a beer with her butler. He is a man of many parts: lover boy, sumo wrestler, pavement artist, vendor of naughty post cards, Capuchin monk, Arab merchant…”

The posters were printed in India by Prasad Process Private of Madras on Japanese paper.

Her Lotus Year – Shanghai Armed Robberies, 1924

When Wallis sojourned in Shanghai in 1924 it wasn’t quite yet the “City of Sin” it would be a decade later, nor the “Chicago on the Huangpu” it would descend into during the Gudao – Solitary Island – period, but it wasn’t exactly crime and excitement free either…..

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Lying Flat in Dali – A Q&A with Alec Ash, author of The Mountains are High

My author Q&A for the China-Britain Business Council Focus magazine with Alec Ash on The Mountains are High (Scribe) – we talk about Dali life, the relaxed pandemic drill there, whether burnt-out urbanites are heading to the mountains, dropping out in China & who’s lying flat – click here to read…

Her Lotus Year: Wallis and her Shanghai Hotels, 1924

In the autumn of 1924 Wallis arrived in Shanghai seeming a divorce in the International Settlement from her abusive first husband, Win Spencer. She stayed at the Palace Hotel on the Bund (now the Swatch Art Peace Hotel) and dined several times at the Grill Room over at the Astor House Hotel (now sadly the little visited China Securities Museum & no longer a hotel). Both properties of Shanghai Hotels Ltd. Turned out she couldn’t get a divorce in Shanghai, but she hung around to see the town and have some fun anyway….

Her Lotus Year – available everywhere November 14 2024…

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Women and Their Warlords: Domesticating Militarism in Modern China

Kate Merkel-Hess’ Women and Their Warlords: Domesticating Militarism in Modern China (University of Chicago Press)….

In Women and Their Warlords, historian Kate Merkel-Hess examines the lives and personalities of the female relatives of the military rulers who governed regions of China from 1916 to 1949. Posing for candid photographs and sitting for interviews, these women did not merely advance male rulers’ agendas. They advocated for social and political changes, gave voice to feminist ideas, and shaped how the public perceived them. As the first publicly political partners in modern China, the wives and concubines of Republican-era warlords changed how people viewed elite women’s engagement in politics. Drawing on popular media sources, including magazine profiles and gossip column items, Merkel-Hess draws unexpected connections between militarism, domestic life, and state power in this insightful new account of gender and authority in twentieth-century China.