All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
A picture I came across recently of British soldiers on parade in Tientsin (Tianjin) sometime in the late 1920s I believe. Clearly it’s winter is about all I know I’m afraid. Anyone who can shed any light then please do.
I praised Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies a couple of years back when it came out – the first in a planned trilogy, called the Ibis Trilogy, that would cover India, China and the world on the eve of the Opium Wars. Though some were critical of Ghosh’s pidgen English I enjoyed it (and blogged on it too) – even he exaggerated or invented a bit then so what – the trilogies are novels, fiction, inventions. You’re allowed to make stuff up.
And now the second in the trilogy is available – River of Smoke – and the action moves from India and the Indian Ocean to China, Canton (Guangzhou for you modern types) and the South China Seas. Typical Ghosh saga like tale telling and more of that luxurious and fun pidgen English. Ghosh has done his research on the old Canton factories too – this is the best novel around the Canton Factories at this time since Timothy Mo’s An Insular Possession.
As usual publishers blurb below – can’t spoil those occasional reviewing gigs!
In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared – two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cornwall? Was it the storm that altered their course or were the destinies of these passengers at the mercy of even more powerful forces?
On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes of tea, silk, porcelain and silver. Among them are Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium merchant out of Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the orphaned Paulette and a motley collection of others whose pursuit of romance, riches and a legendary rare flower have thrown together. All struggle to cope with their losses – and for some, unimaginable freedoms – in the alleys and crowded waterways of 19th century Canton. As transporting and mesmerizing as an opiate induced dream, River of Smoke will soon be heralded as a masterpiece of twenty-first century literature.
| Date: | 4 July 2011 5.00pm – 4 July 2011 6.30pm |
| Location: | The Boardroom University of Westminster 309 Regent Street London W1B 2UW |
| RSVP to: | evansh@westminster.ac.uk |
The Contemporary China Centre presents
Through Time and Space with Chairman Mao:
The Afterlife and Global Impact of the Great Helmsman
a panel discussion with
Pankaj Mishra and Jeffrey Wasserstrom
moderated by
Harriet Evans
How is Mao thought about in contemporary China and in other parts of Asia? In what ways have debates about his legacy and posthumous uses of his image paralleled or diverged from those of other larger-than-life figures associated with independence movements from Nehru to Nasser and from Ho to Che? What should we make of the “red song” movement sweeping through the PRC, which can be treated as fueled by nostalgic yearning or attributed to political maneuvering? These are the kinds of issues that will be taken up in a session moderated by the University of Westminster’s Harriet Evans, the curator of the exhibition ‘Poster Power: Images of Mao’s China, Then and Now’, and featuring the writer Pankaj Mishra and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom.
Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics: A Novel, which won the LA Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, and Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond. He contributes essays and reviews to the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times. His new book The Rise of Asia and the Remaking of the Modern World, will be published next year.
JeffreyWasserstrom is Professor of History and Chair of the Department at UC Irvine, where he also serves as the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. His books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford, 1991), China’s Brave New World (Indiana, 2007), Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (Routledge, 2009), and China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (OUP, 2011). He often writes for newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Taipei Times, and magazines such as the Nation, Outlook India, Time and Newsweek. He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, andis a co-founder of the “China Beat†blog/electronic magazine.
Harriet Evans is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, and Director of the Contemporary China Centre, University of Westminster. Her books include Women and Sexuality in China: Dominant Discourses of Female Sexuality and Gender since 1949 (Polity, 1997), and The Subject of Gender: Daughters and Mothers in Urban China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). She co-edited (with Stephanie Donald) Picturing Power in the People’s Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) and is curator of the exhibition ‘Poster Power: Images from Mao’s China, Then and Now.’
All welcome
Contemporary China Centre Department of Modern and Applied Languages University of Westminster 309 Regent Street. London, W1B 2UWwww.westminster.ac.uk/asian-studies
For enquiries about the Contemporary China Centre, please contact
Professor Harriet Evans
T: 020 7911 5000 ext 7603
E: evansh@westminster.ac.uk
After giving a plug to the Visualising China project at the University of Bristol the folk behind the site and the growing collection of photographs were kind enough to send me a copy of a small , but rather lovely, book they’ve produced called Picturing China 1870-1950. The book is mostly photographs but contains some good introductory essays on the history of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Chinese photographers, issues around examining old photos of China and Robert Bickers on the Shanghai Municipal Police.
Two books of mine that were published by the Hong Kong University Press included a logo design for the Press done by the Chinese artist Xu Bing (left), one of China’s foremost contemporary artists (though he lived in america for many years). His calligraphic work (which includes the HKUP logo) is excelletn with English words presented as apparent Chinese pictograms.
His current installation at the British Museum is based around silk screen and scrolls held in the Museum’s collection. However, it is a collage of various elements – rubbish, detritus etc etc from China and England. You can see a video on the installation featuring Xu Bing here. The installation is challenging in presenting two very different views of one work. Great to see an artist who I was thrilled to have do a logo that featured in a couple of my books exhibiting in one of my favourite museums in the heart of London.
Following on from my post last February about the destruction of just about the last older properties along the eastern end of Kunming Road (formerly Kwenming Road) those, once well appointed, houses are now gone so you’ve missed them. Two new parking places though so yippee!! The developer there is Baoland building new high rises and a shopping centre (apparently yes, we do need more of both!). As I noted in my previous post on Kewnming Road it was on the edge of the old Jewish ghetto and once home to any number of Chinese and Jewish refugee families and businesses.
I’m back…and Lisa See is back too, so I’ll gently ease back into things by noting her follow up to Shanghai Girls – Dreams of Joy – that continues the story of the two sisters moving from Shanghai to Los Angeles. It’s selling like hot pies at the football in America. As usual publishers blurb below…
In her beloved New York Times bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, and, most recently, Shanghai Girls, Lisa See has brilliantly illuminated the potent bonds of mother love, romantic love, and love of country. Now, in DREAMS OF JOY, she returns to these timeless themes, continuing the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy.
Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime and the Great Leap Forward.
Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives.
Acclaimed for her richly drawn characters and vivid storytelling, Lisa See once again renders a family challenged by tragedy and time, yet ultimately united by the resilience of love.
I’m off to London for a couple of weeks so I’m going to be strolling galleries, eating excellent food, sipping fine wines and guzzling good ales around the British Isles for a bit…and doing a bit of work unfortunately. Naturally no time to post much of anything so I’ll take a break – but fear not, back soon with both lots of old pictures, maps and China ephemera that’s sitting in the UK waiting to be collected and also, finally, all the details of my new book, Midnight in Peking, the launch and where I’ll be turning up to sell you a copy in the second half of the year.
I’ll leave you with a picture reflecting a time worn rite of passage in Shanghai for this time of year, the pruning of the London planes (these over by East China Normal University), cutting back the foliage to allow for another year’s growth.