Charles Halcombe served for much of the 1880s and 1890s with China’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service. His career included sojourns in both Canton and Hong Kong. Halcombe long harboured dreams of becoming a journalist. Unusually he married a Chinese woman, Liang Ah Ghan, the daughter of a Chefoo merchant during his stay. His seven-year career in China, his writing ambitions and his marriage all strongly inform his impressions and the retelling of his experiences.
In these excerpts from The Mystic Flowery Land we join Halcombe arriving by sampan at Hong Kong’s old Pedder’s Wharf before accompanying him on an extended literary stroll along Queen’s Road. With him we enter the “rum-mills” and Chinese theatres, meet the Sing-Song girls, indigent Europeans, and inveterate gamblers of the colony. On Hollywood Road Halcombe explores the fascinating Man-Mo Temple. In Canton Halcombe investigates the riverine life of the city – the infamous “flower boats”, the working river and coastal steamers, the numerous temples to the sea Gods.
But it is perhaps Halcombe’s description of the terrible bubonic plague that hit Hong Kong in 1894 that stands out to the reader today as both shocking in its tragedy and pertinent to our own times.
Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle- crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo during the 1930s and gathered intelligence credited with changing the course of the Second World War. It is an intriguing tale; but Sorge’s spy ring was just one chapter in a much longer history of Russian and Soviet espionage in and against Japan.
Cracking the Crab tells the extraordinary full story of Russian intrigue targeting Japan, from first encounters in the eighteenth century to the Soviet declaration of war in August 1945. Colourful episodes include Gojong, King of Korea, being smuggled into the Russian legation dressed as a woman in 1896; the 1927 ‘Tanaka Memorial’, an infamous forgery purporting to be Japan’s hidden plan for world domination; and the secret intelligence of ‘Nero’, a Soviet agent supplying invaluable insight into Japanese strategy during the Second World War.
From Russians murdered in broad daylight in Meiji Tokyo to Soviet honey traps and ‘white magic’ at the Battle of Nomonhan, this is a landmark history of the covert struggle between two great powers of the modern age.
In Beijing?? This Sunday July 27th WildChina Travel is running the Midnight in Peking Walking Tour through the major sites of my book about the 1937 murder of Pamela Werner – the Fox Tower, Armour Factory Alley, the hutongs of the old Peking Badlands and the Legation Quarter, all finishing at the former Grand Hotel de Pekin.
The old Lakeview Hotel in Hangchow (Hangzhou) is somewhat mysterious. There is a Lakeview Hotel in Hangzhou today, perhaps built (in 1986 and refurbished in 2005) on the site of the old one. Below you’ll see a postcard of the view from the Lakeview and a newspaper advert for the hotel. I have also posted before about a marvellous brochure the hotel produced in 1937 (here). But I’ve never seen an actual photo of the hotel, if anyone happens to have one? All the usual things Hangzhou still offers – though I’m not sure what happened to the artesian well!! Manager Ginarn Lao remains a total mystery too!
Thanks to China Books Review for the chance to write about (the sadly recently passed) Jane Gardam and her excellent Old Filth trilogy about colonial Hong Kong which, if you haven’t read you really should….click here to read
The currently being filmed 2023 Leongatha mushroom murders in Australia involved the murder of three people by mushroom poisoning. Eerily reminiscent of when, in 1932, Shanghai mob boss Du Yuesheng killed half a dozen people at his Frenchtown mansion with mushrooms & the only survivors were the corrupt chief of the French police who fled to the Riviera and retirement and, of course, Big Eared Du himself….. BTW the whole tale is on my Audible Original Murders of Old China (along with another 11 old China cold cases)….
WHAT: “Once We Were Allies: The US Effort in the China-Burma-India Theater in WWII” by Dr. David Finkelstein (online)
WHEN: Wednesday, July 23, 2025 from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM Beijing Time
MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII, and commemorations are being held around the world. However, the US military effort in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater is receiving scant attention, relegating it to the status of a “twice forgotten theater.” In this photo-rich presentation, retired US Army Officer and historian David Finkelstein focuses on the US military in the CBI theater, at the operational and tactical levels of the war: in arid Assam, in the sub-zero temperatures flying over the “Hump”, in the steaming jungles of Burma, and in lush southwestern and central China. It is the narrative of American and Chinese ground forces working together to regroup, retrain and re-equip to take back Burma (today’s Myanmar) from the Imperial Japanese Army. It is the story of the US Army Air Corps executing the world’s first sustained strategic airlift, creating bomber bases in Sichuan Province to attack Japan, and executing precision supply drops to American commandos deep in Burma’s jungles. It recalls the over 3,000 combat advisers embedded in Chinese operational units; US Army doctors and nurses who provided medical support; and tens of thousands of Chinese forces trained and equipped in India before returning home to defend their homeland. Most of all, it is a narrative of Americans and Chinese—military and civilian—working together to keep China in the fight.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: David M. Finkelstein is a life-long student of defense and security developments in Asia. Currently he is the director for Asian security affairs at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia. Formerly a career US Army officer holding various command and staff positions in field units, he has more than four decades of experience in the military, academia, and the international think tank scene. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, received a PhD in Chinese and Japanese history from Princeton University, and studied Mandarin at Nankai University in Tianjin, China. He has served as Director for Asian Analyses on the Joint Staff and on the faculty at West Point teaching Chinese history, Japanese history, and the history of warfare in Asia. The Secretary of the Navy recently honored him with the Distinguished Public Service Award. Dr. Finkelstein is a member of the National Committee for US-China Relations.
HOW MUCH: This event is free for RASBJ members, RMB 50 for members of RAS branches in London, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and RMB 100 for non-members. Interested in becoming a member? Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/membership/
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