Matthew Niederhauser on Counterfeit Paradises: Youth Culture and Urban Development in China – October 18th, Shanghai

I first met Matthew Niederhauser a couple of years ago ostensibly because he is a relative of the old China Hand Anna Louise Strong and we swapped stories about the old gal for an afternoon. I personally think it’s very cool to have a pro-China Wobbly in the family! Anyway, Matthew himself is a massively talented photographer who was based in Beijing for quite some time and specialised in looking (and snapping) the underground music scene; images which he gathered together in an excellent book called Sound Kapital. And  now he’s coming to the RAS Shanghai to talk about it.

A Right Couple of Old Shanghai Tarts

I’m busy chasing around today in Europe so no time to write anything…by way of an apology, here’s a couple of old Shanghai tarts for you soliciting a bit of business down Foochow Road:

Xinhai 100 – Sun Yat Sen – The Opera

I haven’t posted on the various Xinhai events going around Chinese Asia (but not noticeably much of anything in the PRC). I was hoping that as October and the anniversary of the Double Ten got closer the PRC history protectors might find a way to acknowledge their lineage from 1911. But the problem is that in today’s (like it or not) ‘harmonised’ China the very idea that positive change can come through upheaval is an anathema and therefore not to be countenanced.

Still, such nonsense doesn’t concern (or shouldn’t) the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan. But now there is an opera on the life of SYS – that will, apparently, premiere in Beijing and then move on to Hong Kong. Slight problem here for China Rhyming – very busy at moment and know nothing about opera…so here’s a link to a long piece from CNN Go Hong Kong.

The Fat Years

If you read one Chinese book in translation this year it should probably be Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years in my humble opinion.

TRUTH IS NOT AN OPTION….

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn – not only about their leaders, but also about their own people – stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world…

Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party’s stranglehold on China today.

Chan Koon-Chung Chan Koonchung was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong.

He was a reporter at an English newspaper in Hong Kong before he founded the influential magazine “City” in 1976, where he was the chief editor and then publisher for 23 years.

He is also a screenwriter and film producer of both Chinese and English-language films.

Chan is a co-founder of the Hong Kong environmental group Green Power and was a board member of Greenpeace International from 2008 to 2011.

He recently founded the NGO, Minjian International, that connects Chinese public intellectuals with their counterparts in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa.

His google account is often blocked. He is fluent in English. Chan now lives in Beijing.

The Mapping of Asia – Wattis Fine Art – Hong Kong

Asian map aficionado Jonathan Wattis has a selection of excellent Asian maps on display at his Hong Kong gallery at the moment until October 1. They range from the 16th to the 20th century and many are of Hong Kong and places dear to my heart such as Shanghai. Do pop along if you can./

The 23rd Annual Mapping of Asia Exhibition

A collection of fine antique maps

including City Plans of East Asia

Tel. +852 25245302   Email info@wattis.com.hk

More on the Order of the Striped Tiger

Following up on my post about Mark O’Neill’s esteemed ancestor and his missionary activities and work with the Chinese Labour Corps in WW1 – here’s Mark with the famous medal.

The observant will note the likeness between young Mark here and the good Reverend his grandfather….naturally he can get to play his own grandfather in the inevitable Hollywood film version!

Missionaries, the Chinese Labour Corps in WW1 and Recovered Medals

I bumped into a dear old friend, the great journalist Mark O’Neill, in Hong Kong this week when he turned up at a book signing I was doing (he also wrote a kind review of my book in The South China Morning Post). I had known that Mark’s grandfather had been a Presbyterian missionary from Northern Ireland in China before the First World War, had spent much time there and loved the country and the Chinese. I knew Mark was digging around the story with a view to a book (which is apparently now written and should be appearing in Chinese and English from a Hong Kong publisher soon – more details as soon as I hear anything). Several years ago while mooching around a second hand bookshop in London I came across a short volume of Mark’s grandfather’s memoirs which included a wonderful questionnaire at the back that was used to test young missionaries for China – question included ‘Explain the concept of purgatory in Chinese’ and ‘Describe the form and function of the Holy Trinity in Chinese’ – not easy to do that!!

Anyway, catching up with Mark he told me the fantastic tale of how he discovered that his grandfather’s medal (the Order of the Striped Tiger for services to the Chinese Labour Corps in WW1 in France) was up for auction and how he bought it and rescued it from disappearing into a private collection.

The whole story is here from the Irish Times – great reading. I await the book with interest – I’ll try and get Mark to send a photo of the medal too.

The Reverend Frederick O’Neill and his good lady wife in Faku, Liaoning Province (then Manchuria of course)

Evan Osnos on Hutong Renovation or Lack of

Evan Osnos, a very nice chap who writes for The New Yorker from China and is the poster boy of foreign correspondents in the PRC, has done a nice piece that shows a little of how renovation, maintenance and, well, not doing much of either, affect Peking’s few surviving hutongs.

Click here

Kuijiachang Hutong – not Osnos’s hutong but a rather nice one that has not succummbed to either bulldozer or endless overpriced, underheated coffee sellers or tat merchants.