Shanghai Scottish Volunteers Cigarette Box

A silver cigarette box, by Zeewo, the lid inset with a Shanghai Scottish divuison of the Shanghai Volunteer Crops’ Glengarry badge…..

RIP Ismael Kadare (1936-2024)

RIP Ismael Kadare (1936-2024) – for those with a China bent who may not have read him before I recommend The Concert (1988)…

It’s the 1970s and cracks are starting to appear in the alliance between China and its Communist cohort Albania. When an Albanian steps on the foot of a Chinese diplomat the tension cranks up – couriers between Tirana and Beijing carry annotated x-rays of the foot back and forth. The Chinese intend to punish their interfering little ally discreetly. But is the Sino-Albanian axis about to come adrift? This is Kadare’s surreal black comedy about the inner sanctums of political power and the mysterious causal chains that transform ordinary lives.

Dwight Condo Baker’s 1925 Map of the Pilgrim Road to Tai Shan, Outside Peking

Dwight Condo Baker was from Des Moines, graduated from the University of California in 1914 and worked there as a professor of History till 1931 when he became President of Modesto Junior College. He served in both World War One and Two (with the OSS between 1943-1945). He died in 1971.

ChinaRhyming Substack July 1 2024

July 1 2024 – ChinaRhyming Substack – Edinburgh Book Festival Special click here

The Alcock Album: Scenes of China Consular Life, 1843-1853

Andrew Hillier’s The Alcock Album: Scenes of China Consular Life, 1843-1853 (City University of Hong Kong Press) contains many paintings and sketches by Henrietta Alcock. Of great interest to me given my own writings on interwar female professional artists and “amateur lady artists” (as they were often called) in China – here on Anna Hotchkis and Mary Mullikin, Katharine Karl, and Katharine Jowett. Very interesting to see how many of Alock’s works show parts of China in the 1840s (especially the newly forced open treaty ports) nearly a century before many of these later women artists were working.

The Alcock Album is a collection of watercolours and sketches by Henrietta Alcock and her husband, the British Consul, Rutherford Alcock. This book presents artwork from the album and the stories behind them, providing a unique window into the first phases of consular life in treaty port China. Through these images, readers can get a glimpse of traditional. Chinese architecture, picturesque landscapes, and consular buildings, along with a picture of a happy, loving marriage and the significant role of consular wives during this period.

A Busy Day on the Whangpoo

An arriving freighter is moored to buoys by sampans on the Whangpoo (Huangpu) downriver of the Bund as passengers on a coastal steamer watch. Behind the freighter is the USS Augusta, flagship of the US Asiatic Squadron. Mid-1930s by Alfred T Palmer.

Shanghai of Today (1927) – The AS Watson Edition

Slightly confusing – the rather rare Shanghai of Today, published in 1927 was a souvenir album of thirty-eight Vandyke prints of the ‘Model Settlement’ published by the Shanghai/Hong Kong/Singapore house of Kelly & Walsh in 1924. I posted before on the K&W edition with a full padded morocco binding. The book came with an introductuion by the long time editor of the North-China Daily News, OM Green (See here for that post).

However, there appears to be another edition – published in 1927 by AS Watson (better known as a pharmacy company in Shanghai and Hong Kong), same cover as the Kelly & Walsh edition and published in Shanghai. Not sure why there are two editions or why Watsons was involved at all?

A Little China and Asia at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2024

Every August book writers and readers gather in Edinburgh for several weekends of author talks, workshops, panel discussions and other events. It’s a busy time of year – the start coincides with the Edinburgh Fringe and the end with the Film and TV Festival. But it’s a great time to head to the Scottish capital… and, for those with a particular China/Asia interest, here’s some events that may be of especial interest….

12/8/24 – 11:00-12:00 – Yan Ge writes in English, Mandarin and Sichuanese. She’ll be in discussion with Andrzej Tichý, a Swedish-Czech-Polish writer, about the art of the short story. Her 2023 short story collection Elsewhere: Stories was praised in The Guardian: ‘Yan Ge’s English debut is preoccupied with language, its failures, and its relationship to human emotions and the raw reality – the ‘food’ – of life. … These stories map out the distance between the head and the gut – the way language can fail to convey the deepest, most visceral facts of life.’

12/8/24 – 12:30-13:30 – FT journalist and Beijing Bureau Chief Yuang Yang’s revelatory book Private Revolutions has been getting a lot of positive press this summer. The story of four ordinary women in China’s new social order caught between capitalist ambition and authoritarian reality. Yuan Yang will present her book at the Courtyard Theatre.

13/8/24 – 19:45-20:45 – Those with a thing for translation and language will want to see RF Kuang, in conversation with editor and translator Daniel Hahn, talking about the complexities of translation, the Korean language and her speculative novel Babel.

13/8/24 – 18:45-19:45 – Yuan Yang is back, this time in conversation with Robin Niblett of Chatham House, talking about the geopolitical rivalry between China and the US and her new book Private Revolutions.

14/8/24 – 20:30-21:30 – RF Kuang is back talking about fantasy writing and its future with fellow fantasy writer Samantha Shannon.

15/8/24 – 19:30-20:30 – And one more go round with RF Kuang, this time talking about her bestselling book (serialised in BBC Radio 4 too) Yellowface about cultural appropriation, race and the misdeeds of the publishing industry.

18/8/24 – 19:15-20:15 – UK based Chinese writer Xiaolu Guo has a new book, My Battle of Hastings, out this summer talking about what happens when a Chinese writer looking to escape the pressures of writing in London pitches up on England’s south coast and contemplates Englus history.

19/8/2024 – 10:00-11:00 – Former Beijing correspondent Ed Wong talks about how to maintain quality journalism and avoid fake news over morning coffee and croissants in the famed Edinburgh Spiegeltent.

19/8/2024 – 19:30-20:30 – Democracy on the Brink with Ed Wong, Olesya Khromeychuk from Ukraine and the BBC’s Nick Bryant – Ukraine, America’s internal dissent and China with 3 veteran journalists

21/8/24 – Ed Wong, NYT journalist and former Beijing correspondent has a new book about his own heritage, China and the last century of change in the country, The Edge of Empire. In this talk – China Under the Lens – he’ll dissect China’s authoritarian turn of late.

24/8/2024 – 18:45-19:45 – William Dalrymple’s new book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World reveals the nation’s position as the preeminent Eurasia intellectual and philosophical superpower for a millennium and a half until 1200 AD. India, but you can expect some questions on India-China relations and India influence on China’s religions and belief systems as the moderator is Focus’s own Paul French.

Of course there’s lots, lots more on at EBIF this year…. See the above events, ticketing, and everything else at www.edbookfest.co.uk