All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
I believe this is the old Commissioner’s House in Foochow (Fuzhou) taken some time towards the end of the nineteenth century or early years of the twentieth. That is to say the Commissioner of the Chinese, but foreign-run, Maritime Customs Service. I don’t know for sure as I do not know Fuzhou at all but I assume this building is long gone.
Back in 2010 I blogged about (then) Shanghai-based artist Christina Shmigel’s wonderful Cabinet of Chinese Curiosities project. I particularly liked it as it combined both an examination of China now and ideas around Chinese history, interpretation and Chinoiserie – all things that get a bit of an airing on China Rhyming. Now the catalogue for that exhibition (which includes some great photos of the cabinet itself and its contents) is available online to look at for free here (or to buy here). I always loved Christina’s idea for a cabinet of curiosities after having seen drawings of Herr Wunsch’s Cabinetto Cinese at the City Museum of Oriental Arts in Trieste. Wunsch’s Cabinetto tapped into a love of chinoiserie in the late nineteenth century Austro-Hungarian Empire (just check out Castle Miramar nearby for Chinois overload!). The Cabinetto was a converted shop full of Chinese curiosities and entry was gained for a few pennies. It was apparently massively popular with local Tiestinos.
Events in Burma in the last couple of years have been brilliant – and now there’s literary festivals and I’m plugging the Irrawaddy Literary Festival as one of the best events you could probably get along to in 2013. The first ever literary festival in Burma, and it will include some of the best local authors (writing in English) as well as a rich mixture of writers and artists from elsewhere. Here’s their web site with a tentative list of authors and all at the Inya Lake Hotel in Rangoon (below). If you’re planning a trip to Burma next year this might make a nice compliment to your visit.
Now available in my China Monographs series along with Lao She in London – two more planned for 2013 and now underway…..
Lindsay Shen is an associate professor at Sino-British College, Shanghai, and Honorary Editor for the Royal Asiatic Society China in Shanghai. She has published in the fields of design and museum studies in Europe and the United States.
I hear that Blacksmith Books are updating Sketches of Sai Kung for a second edition. A marvellous book by Lorette E Roberts. Most fascianting to me are the abandoned villages, such as below (you can see more pictures on the Blacksmith Books Facebook page. They’re agricultural or fishing community villages now left as people moved to the city or overseas. Some Hakka style homes have been renovated as holiday homes, a pretty good idea I think and (I’ve seen a couple) quite tastefully done but many remain vacant and yo can wander in and out – obviously as time and weather pass they are falling into serious disrepair.
So here I am on a flying visit to Scotland and Perth thinking what a nice break from all things Chinese and Chinois. However, a visit to the city’s Fergusson Gallery brings me face to face with Le Manteau Chinois, (1909) by J.D. Fergusson. John Duncan Fergusson (1874-1961) was a major Scottish colourist originally from Leith. I know he travelled as far North Africa but don’t think he ever got to China. He did spend a lot of time in London and Paris where Chinoiserie was a major trend. More on Fergusson here.
Following on from yesterday remembering the anniversary of Lao She’s persecution that led to his suicide during the Cultural Revolution by the Communists here are some photos of the hutongs surrounding Lao She’s courtyard in Beijing…
Like thousands of other intellectuals in China the great modernist writer Lao She experienced mistreatment in the Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s. Red Guards attacked him as a counterrevolutionary, paraded him through the streets and beat him in public. Greatly humiliated both mentally and physically Lao She committed suicide by drowning himself in Beijing’s Taiping Lake on 24th August 1966. His courtyard house in Beijing though stays as a monument to his life and work – the diary on his desk left open at 24/8/66 – however, the young students who work there on weekends steadfastly refuse to discuss the circumstances of his death, his persecution or his suicide. Apparently celebrating his work now is OK – remembering it was the zealots of the Chinese Communist Party who drove him to kill himself is, it seems, still verboten!
Lao She’s hutong – Fengfu Hutong
The entrance to Lao She’s courtyard
Lao She’s courtyard
his desk…
his living room…
and his writing desk with the 24/8/66 open at his desk diary…poignant but no discussion of the circumstances sadly…