All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
An interview on Her Lotus Year, Wallis’s time in China & my upcoming events in Hong Kong, Macao & China this March with Le Petit Journal – here…
Lauren Walden’s Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai focusing on China’s interwar surrealists now in English from Hong Kong University Press & still in French as Le surréalisme de Paris à Shanghai from Institut Giacometti….
Pamela Werner, 1917–8/1/1937, Peking, China…
The first days of the new year of 1925 were to be when Wallis finally checked out of the Grand Hotel de Pekin & went to stay with her old friend Kitty Rogers in her sumptuous courtyard on Shih-Chia Hutong. At the Grand Hotel everything you could desire was on the upper floors after the lobby reception – Helen Burton’s Camel’s Bell boutique, the suites, the rooftop dance floor overlooking the Forbidden City, and the top floor dining room (here photographed in the 1920s by the American photographer John D Zumbrun who had a thriving studio in the Legation Quarter).
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now….
Jack Brown in China: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War by Herbert Strang (also published as Brown of Moukden), 1933 is a Young Adult book if its time – so fairly jingoistic and usually about fairly recent events – ‘imperial fiction’ as it’s known – and with a plucky Brit at the centre. It’s on Gutenberg here if you fancy it. And the story is somewhat intriguing – set against the backdrop of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Ivan Ivanovitch to his Russian acquaintances) Brown is an Englishman living in Moukden (Mukden aka Shenyang). Jack becomes entangled in the unfair fate of his Chinese friend, Wang Shih, wrongfully punished by a corrupt judge. Some of the descriptions of the war-torn landscape are fairly good and the opening chapters contain some descriptive detail of early 1900s Shenyang (though how accurate this is remains debatable as neither author ever visited to my knowledge).
This book was a return to the Russo-Japanese War for Strang who had previously written, just the year before, Kobo: A story of the Russo-Japanese War (1905). Herbert Strang was a pseudonym used by George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and Charles James L’Estrange (1867–1947), co-editors in the Juveniles Department of Oxford University Press from 1907 until 1939, and the authors of several dozen adventure stories for boys and the Little Stories of Great Lives series (about a dozen titles – Nelson, Drake, Napoleon etc)…
William Hopkyn Rees – Chinaeg A Chineaid (1907) is a particularly interesting missionary account of China as it is published in Welsh. Now obviously this presents some problems to non-Welsh speakers but is a curiosity for sure.
Accrdoign to the Welsh Dictionary of Biography – “Hopkyn Rees (1859-1924) was born at Cwmavon, Glamorganshire. He entered Bala Independent College, 1877, and was minister of Llechryd and Ffynnon-bedr from 1881 to 1883, when he sailed for the North China, L.M.S., mission field. He married Margaret Charlotte Harrison of Coed-poeth, and settled at Chi Chou in 1888, where he had founded a station. He weathered the difficulties of the 1900 rebellion, and was decorated with the ‘ Blue Ribbon ‘ and given rank of Mandarin for services of pacification. He was transferred to the Peking United Theological College and the Language School for Missionaries, appointed to the Board of Revisers of the Old Testament Scriptures in Mandarin, and to the Shanghai staff of the Christian Literature for China Society. In 1915 he was elected associate secretary, with Timothy Richard, and in 1916 general secretary, of the Christian Literature Society for China, and a member of the editorial board of the Chinese Recorder in 1919. He resigned in 1921 owing to ill health, and was given the chair of Chinese in the University of London. He published China a’r Chineaid, 1906, Griffith John o China, 1901, in Welsh, and Jonathan Lees of Tientsin and How to Study Chinese, 1918, both in English. He died in London 4 August 1924.”
But there is more to Hopkyns Rees – Re-reading Anne Witchard’s Lao She in London (HKUP) Witchard notes:
“It was in the summer of 1924 that Lao She received the offer of a five-year teaching appointment in London. One of the English teachers at Yenching was the Reverend Robert Kenneth Evans (1880–1925). Evans’ father-in-law was a Welsh missionary and linguist, W. Hopkyn Rees (1859–1924), who had weathered the Boxer rebellion and was now retired from the LMS to a chair of Chinese at the University of London (1921–24). Evans had been informally supervising the Gangwashi church but was home from China in December 1922 after suffering ‘a serious nervous breakdown’.
Lao She had not begun classes at Yenching until September 1923, so he could not have been taught by Evans but their paths certainly would have crossed at the church during 1922. Back in London, Evans was teaching at London University’s School of Oriental Studies. When Hopkyn Rees was looking for a candidate for an assistant lectureship in Mandarin he sought out Lao She on Evans’ recommendation. Kitted out in his Western suit and with a second-class boat ticket, paid for with a loan from the LMS, Lao She embarked from Shanghai on the SS Devanha to Harwich. He was met by Reverend Evans at London’s Cannon Street station on 14 September 1924.”
In his novel of 1920s London, Mr Ma and Son, he writes:
“The Reverend Ely was an old missionary who’d spread the Word for twenty years in China. He knew everything there was to know about China …”
Lao She’s characterisation of the Rev Ely depicts the attitudes of missionaries like Hopkyn Rees…
To be fair Kowloon’s Nathan Road (formerly Robinson Road) has changed a bit since 1904!
Steven Luk Sir Hercules Robinson, 1st Baron Rosmead & former (5th) Governor did well getting 2 roads names after him – but confusing, hence Robinson Road the first remained in Mid-Levels and Robinson Road became Nathan Road after Sir Matthew Nathan, the 13th Governor and who approved most of the road layout of modern Kowloon.
Some proof Wallis was still living at 4 Shih Chia (Shijia) Hutong, Peking in July 1925 (with Herman & Kitty Rogers). She needed a 1yr extension on her passport from the US Legation. Of course forms had to be filled out, signed & stamped…
