Frank Dorn and Anna May Wong

I thought I’d post this picture that was sent to me of the actress Anna May Wong and the artist Frank ‘Pinkie’ Dorn. This picture was taken, I believe, during Anna May’s extended visit to China in 1936 which attracted some controversy from the Nationalist government and many on the Chinese film community (though she was met by crowds of admirers too as she moved around the country). Colonel Frank Dorn (1901-1981), later brigadier general, was an artist, writer and aide to General Joe Stilwell. Dorn wrote a wide variety of books on everything from cooking to the Forbidden City, his wartime memoirs to an illustrated map of Peking. I believe that when visiting Peking Anna May stayed a while with Dorn. By the way, Dorn’s papers, including originals of this picture, reside in the archives at Stanford.

Union Church Stained Glass

I am told that the stained glass has arrived for the windows of the restored Union Church on the Bund (restored but, rather importantly, not actually open for worship though popular with newly married couples having their photos taken!) – the earliest surviving church in Shanghai. Apparently the stained glass had to come from Germany.

Shame that the restorers couldn’t have sorted out some sort of training scheme or apprenticeships so that a new generation of Chinese craftsmen could have learnt how to make stained glass. There are a lot of new churches popping up around China, though many are built in traditional style – high ceilings, steeples and, stained glass. There are any number of existing ones in desperate need of repair and new stained glass (a lot was lost during the Cultural Revolution and, more recently, rampant redevelopment). Those craftsman could then also make some stained glass to replace that destroyed by vandalism such as the beautiful stained glass that once adorned the former Jesuit Recoleta Mission (Misioneras Agustinas Recoletas) on Rue Moliere (Xiangshan Road). That original stained glass was smashed out with hammers last year so that workmen at an adjacent site could get in and out of their temporary accommodation easier – a complete tragedy for which nobody was ever held responsible.

The Voyagers, Shanghai and a Love Story

I met the great Australian writer Mardi McConnochie a few years back when she visited Shanghai, spoke at the Shanghai International Literary Festival and then hung around in the city a while. She was rather impressive. Seems she’s put her Shanghai time to a bit of use with her new novel that several people down under have raved to me about. Shanghai along with Singapore and Blitzed London feature in her new novel The Voyagers. As usual no review here but the publisher’s blurb – great to see Shanghai popping up in a novel.

All he had to do was look carefully enough , ask the right questions, find the right people, keep sailing on, and he would find her. In 1943, Stead arrives in Sydney Harbour hoping to spend his shore leave with Marina, a woman with whom he shared three magical days before the war. But Marina is gone, and has been missing for almost five years. And so begins an extraordinarily powerful and compelling journey – across the seas and the great stages of the war – as Stead retraces the steps of the one woman he has truly loved. Taking you from London after the Blitz to the booming Shanghai and fallen Singapore, The Voyagers is a book you won’t be able to put down. An unforgettable and breathtaking novel of heartbreak, courage and unwavering love. ‘A deeply moving story of heartbreak, courage and unwavering love.’ Hobart Mercury Praise for Coldwater:’Mardi McConnochie’s electrifying first novel is beautifully sustained’ The Age

Party Like It’s Opium Supression Day…June 3rd

which it is today (June 3) in Taiwan commemorating the burning of opium in the first opium war of 1839. I don’t know what happens on Opium Supression Day exactly. Perhaps it’s a little like Guy Fawkes night in Britain and there will be bonfires and fireworks or perhaps nothing very much happens at all.

Anyway, wherever you are today, China Rhyming wishes you a very happy Opium Supression Day.

Through the Looking Glass…on Kindle

I’m often moaning about the high price of academic books – great titles that set you back 50 or a 100 quid are a pain, especially for those of us not anywhere close to an academic library that we can slip into. Maybe Kindle is the answer? It might be for some of my books. My Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium War to Mao is now on Amazon in Kindle edition for under 7 quid!! How good is that…and you get all the photos. So hopefully a bunch of students or more casual readers may decide to buy the book at this price. Additionally, if you’re in China or somewhere where the book is hard to find (though you can always rely on the excellent Bookworms in Beijing, Suzhou and Chengdu to stock it I might add) then now it’s a click away at Kindle. Excellent.

I might also add that my Carl Crow biography, A Tough Old China Hand is also available in a reduced price Kindle edition too – double excellent!! And well done Hong Kong University Press.

American Radio in China: International Encounters with Technology and Communications, 1919-41

A new book on China that sounds interesting – American Radio in China from Michael Krysko at Kansas State University. As usual the publishers blurb and cover below. I had a tiny, tiny hand in this work through being a fan of the great South Dakotan broadcaster and journalist Carrol Alcott who was a legend on Shanghai radio opposing the Japanese (see my book Through the Looking Glass) and Irene Kuhn who was the first foreign female broadcaster in China. I’m glad to say they both get a mention and a rather cool picture of Mr Alcott is also included. Judging from the contents and images list the book covers a lot of the great days of radio in Shanghai and China between the wars. The publishers web site has more details and an excerpt here.

Between 1919 and 1941, an array of American businessmen, diplomats, missionaries, and private citizens hoped to bring American radio to China. Initiatives included efforts to establish Sino-American radio-telegraphy links across the Pacific, start shortwave broadcasts of American programming to China, support America broadcasting in China itself, increase sales of American radio equipment, and carve out a niche on China’s airwaves for American missionary broadcasters. However, excessive faith in radio’s influential powers to promote presumably mutually beneficial American economic and cultural expansion blinded many Americans to the complexities they faced. American radio ultimately magnified rather than mitigated the tensions that pit Americans against Chinese nationalists and Japanese imperialists in the years before the Pacific War. By drawing on scholarship in the history of technology, communications and media studies, and US foreign relations, this book’s exploration into the relationship between technology, communications, and international relations is relevant to understanding today’s globalizing world.

Coming Down Alert – Yuezhou Road in the Borderlands

Yuezhou Road (formerly Yoochow Road) along the two blocks between Baoding Road and Zhoushan Road (Paoting and Chusan Roads) is one of those great northern border roads that was close to the northern edge of the International Settlement, just north of the former Jewish ghetto and almost on the border between Hongkou (Hongkew) and Yangpu (Yangtszepoo) districts. It is now almost done for – the northern side of the street was entirely cleared in the 1990s to be replaced with a series of jerry built tower blocks that will last another decade if they’re lucky and the winters aren’t too harsh.Everything on the southern side blocks that isn’t already gone is now chai-ed and will be going in the next few weeks or months.

Some of the few remaining older low level buildings along Yoochow Road

with a few nice modernist entrance arches

There are also a few nice commercial structures (this one a merchant’s warehouse I believe) also remain…

But, as you can see, the western end of this building has been adorned with the dreaded chai sign indicating imminent demolition

some clearance has already revealed some interesting architectural details – though these structure (in quite good condition) are already truncated by a somewhat less attractive structure that is being thrown up behind

The Urban Design of Concession: Tradition and Transformation in the Chinese Treaty Ports

A book – The Urban Design of Concession – that looks worth a read – a review, from the Asian Review of Books, suggests the book is a little academic but others who have read it tell me this is a bit strong and it’s an eminently readable book. As usual the publishers (rather boring in this case) blurb below and a link to the ARB review here.

Established as beachheads of foreign influence along coastal China during the mid-nineteenth century, the twelve Treaty Ports – Shanghai, Dalian (Dalyn), Fuzhou (Foochow), Guangzhou (Canton), Hankou (Hankow), Harbin, Nanjing (Nanking), Ningbo (Ningpo), Shantou (Swatow), Tianjin, Tsingtao, and Xiamen (Amoy) – can be considered from a number of perspectives – initially as differentiated societies with dual administrative structures; as socio-cultural phenomena; as new political power structures; as robust centres of international trade and commercial growth; and as new regimes of city building and institutional development. These ‘gateways’ both into and out of China, transformed not only attitudes to modernization, but almost inadvertently fuelled changing political attitudes.

This book examines the evolving contextual changes in the Treaty Ports over the past 150 years. It illustrates, through writing and line sketches, the imprints on the modernizing cities of older places and spaces from these early times, which have left a residue of physical traces in terms of plan forms, streets and building groups.