Out Now in Hungarian – A cserben hagyott hazafi – Zsidómentés a háborús Sanghajban by Mátyás Mervay

The story of Paul Komor, the “A cserben hagyott hazafi,” currently rendered in English as “Patriot Left Behind. Rescuing Jews in Wartime Shanghai,” by Mátyás Mervay will hopefully be published soon in English, too.

Sanghaj 1938. A gyarmatosítástól legyengített Kína levegőért kapkod a támadó Japánnal kirobbant totális háborúban. A kormány a hegyekben, a külföldi elit evakuáló hajókon. A front elől futó nincstelen parasztok és Hitler Európájából érkező zsidó emigránsok özönlik el a kelet-ázsiai metropoliszt.

Komor Pál, a Budapesten született, de gyerekkorától Kínában élő üzletember, az első világháborús szibériai hadifoglyok egykori segítője, a zsidótörvények nyomán elveszíteni látszik féltve őrzött állampolgárságát. Magyarsága kétségbevonása után a jótékonykodó családi hagyományra építve, megszervezi a közel húszezer zsidó menekültet ellátó segélybizottságot.

A látszólag „egzotikus és távoli keleten” játszódó valós eseményeket bemutató kötet olyan általánosan érzékeny kérdéseket feszeget, mint Trianon, a zsidó asszimiláció, a Horthy-kori diplomácia mozgástere és a kivándoroltak viszonya a hazájukkal. A huszadik század első felében, a gyarmati világ alkonyán játszódó történetet izgalmas epizódok – alvilági bűnügyek, szerelmi kalandok és politikai intrika – színesítik.

Opium References in Popular Culture, the 2023 List

I’ve been spotting opium references in popular culture with interest for quite a few years now (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 & 2012) about just how opium keeps on fascinating us.

So first off, some novels. Tom Bradby’s Yesterday’s Spy finds a link to opium smuggling in contemporary Tehran. There’s a lot of morphine and opium floating around 1930s Birmingham in Natalie Marlow’s great read, Needless Alley.

And some non-fiction…Gabrielle Paluch’s The Opium Queen, the true story of the widely mythologized genderqueer Burmese opium-pioneer of noble Chinese descent, Olive Yang, who secretly ran an anti-communist rebel army supported by the CIA in the 1950s heyday of the Golden Triangle. Following his Ibis trilogy on the Canton opium trade Amitav Ghosh published Smoke and Ashes (out in February 2024 in the UK) subtitled A Writers Jounrey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories.

On the bg screen Florence Pugh was on the laundanum to ease the pain of child loss, husband loss and nursing in the Crimean War in The Wonder, based on Emma Donahughe’s book. And, on the small screen, I’ve been catching up with the period crime series Miss Scarlet and the Duke where (in series 2, episode 2) young copper Oliver Fitzroy is dragged out of an East End opium den in Victorian London by his boss.

BBC Radio 4’s Han Suyin A Many Spendoured Thing Adaptation

Ming Ho’s new dramatisation of Han Suyin’s landmark semi-autobiographical novel for BBC Radio 4.

The story follows Suyin, a doctor and writer, living and working in late 1940s Hong Kong. When Suyin meets British war reporter Mark, she embarks on a secret love affair that tests her relationship to her own Eurasian identity and divided loyalties. With a fierce sense of duty to China, and a difficult past, Suyin is forced to ask if their relationship could really survive outside of Hong Kong. And at what cost?

Originally published in 1952, this is a story of two societies on the cusp of change – colonial Hong Kong and feudal, revolutionary China – in a fresh adaptation for BBC Radio 4.

Click here to listen…

Constance Gordon-Cumming – Hong Kong’s Catastrophic 1878 Christmas Day Fire – an RTHK3 Audio

As broadcast on RTHK3 on Christmas Day 2023, Paul French reads an eyewitness account of the biggest fire Hong Kong has ever seen, which destroyed Mid-Levels 145 years ago to that day. This is an excerpt from his edition of Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879 by Constance Gordon-Cumming, published by Blacksmith Books.

Click here to listen…

Timur and his Comrades, 1943

An interesting book being sold by the charming Endlings store in Hastings Old Town – see endlings.hastings on Instagram.

Timur and his Comrades by A Gaider and cover design by Donia Nachsen, translated by Maria Renbourn. Set in 1929 when the warlord Chang Hsueh-liang (Zhang Xueliang) starfted a skirmish with the Soviet Far Eastern Red Army on the Manchurian border. From a Russian book series published by Pilot Press in 1943, a Soviet front publishing house in London.

A new Old China Christmas Mystery from Paul French in the South China Morning Post

DCI John Creighton of the Shanghai Municipal Police is back for a Christmas mystery in the South China Morning Post – It’s Christmas Eve in Shanghai in 1930 & a mysterious guest has accepted an invitation to the Carmichaels’ annual drinks party in their beautiful art-deco apartment. Soon a gunshot rings out…

Click here to read

An Old China Christmas Murder Mystery with DCI John Creighton – Murder on the Shanghai Express (1929)

Last year (2022) the South China Morning Post weekend magazine published my short story – Murder on the Shanghai Express (click here) – in their Christmas issue. Shanghai Municipal Police Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) John Creighton is eager to get home from Peking having delivered a prisoner. He takes the Christmas Eve Shanghai Express home only to find himself trapped in a snowdrift and with a murdered man in the First Class Observation Car….

And this year (on December 17th to be precise) DCI Creighton is back in the pages of the Post magazine Christmas edition. It’s a year later, 1930, and all John Creighton wants is to get home in the Christmas Eve snow to his log fire and family dinner. But a chance encounter with an old colleague on the way sees him involved in another Christmas mystery…

The Chinoiserie Grandfather Clocks of Porto

Located in downtown Porto, the Carmo and Carmelitas churches have a trio of nice 18th century Portuguese made Chinoiserie grandfather clocks in cut and turned wood and with laquered fronts…