RAS BJ – Women in Chinese Silent Cinema”, by Prof. Paul Pickowizc – Oct 6 2023

WHAT: “Women in Chinese Silent Cinema: Gender roles and modernity” by Prof. Paul Pickowicz

WHEN: Oct. 6, 2023, Friday, from 7:00-8:00 PM Beijing Time

WHERE: The Courtyard Institute, 28 Zhonglao Hutong, Dongcheng district, Beijing

MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: This presentation uses clips from rare silent films produced in China in the 1920s and early 1930s to explore the complicated and diverse roles played by women in the Shanghai global metropolis and other urban settings. You will learn more about how gender roles were shifting at a time when modernity was having a significant impact on Chinese cities. Paul G. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and associate producer of the documentary films China in Revolution, 1911-1949 (1989) and The Mao Years, 1949-1976 (1994).

NOTE: After the talk concludes, a few RASBJ Council members plan to have dinner with Prof. Pickowicz at Black Sesame Kitchen (BSK), adjacent to Courtyard Institute, starting after 8:15 PM. BSK is a private dining establishment with communal dining. If anyone independently wishes to book a seat at BSK’s communal dining table that evening, please contact BSK separately at 136 9147 4408 and pay directly to BSK.

More details – click here

Book #38 on The Chin a Project Ultimate China Bookshelf – Xiao Qian’s Traveller Without a Map (1990)

From war in London, and being the only active Chinese foreign correspondent in Europe in World War Two, to persecution in Communist China, Xiao Qian (Hsiao Ch’ien) experienced it all — and wrote about it in his classic memoir, Traveller Without a Map. Click here….

The story of Chinese food with Fuchsia Dunlop, British Museum Zoom, October 4

Join award-winning food writer and cook Fuchsia Dunlop in this exploration of Chinese culinary culture, from its mythical and historical origins, through the 19th century and up to today.

Following the publication of her book, Invitation to a Banquet: the Story of Chinese Food this year, Dunlop explores why, though China has one of the world’s most popular cuisines, it is also one of the most poorly understood and appreciated. Through a mouthwatering ‘menu’ of 30 dishes she explores the origins, ingredients, techniques and concepts of Chinese food, from field to table. What makes Chinese food Chinese and how can we appreciate it more deeply?

More details here….

Hong Kong Evacuation Order, 1940

An official Hong Komg evacuation order from 1940. From The Commodore, Hong Kong, aboard Indrapoera, built 1926 for Rotterdam Lloyd hired to the British Government. The ship sailed in July 1940 to transport refugees from Hong Kong to Australia. Here is the original ticket No. 564 to allow a Mrs. Medewells to board the vessel…

Book #37 on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf – White & Jacoby’s Thunder Out of China (1946)

This week on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf one of the best selling books about China to come out of World War Two – Teddy White and Annalee Jacoby’s Thunder Out of China... supportive of China’s war effort; critical of Chiang Kai-shek, it kept on selling well into the 1950s and the two Life writers (not best appreciated by KMT/Chiang supporting own Henry Luce) heavily influenced America’s ‘Who Lost China?’ debate after WW2…click here

The Falcons of Old Peking

An interesting photograph of Mongolian falcon sellers in Peking around 1930 (I am afraid the photgrapher is unidentified). Apparently these sellers would come to Peking anually with falcons caught on the Mongolian plains and transported as you see below. The American linguist, missionary and Sinologist Samuel Wells Williams recalled in his 1848 book, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, Etc. of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants that though used initially to discourage rodents and pests (something falcons do in many major cities still tosah globally) they would eventually come to infest the gates, towers and trees of the city, impudently forgae food in markets and food streets, snatching food from stalls and out of people’s hands in a rather startling fashion (they’re pretty big birds)…..

A History of Water: Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Visions of Global History – Edward Wilson-Lee

Edward Wilson-Lee’s A History of Water is a fascinating tale of 1500s Portugal that does eventually reach Macao and has a sub-plot concernig the life and Asian adventures of the poet Camoes….

A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up as the national poet of Portugal.

The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life.

Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers

Eugenie Buchan’s A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers (University Press of New England) is a new addition to the Flying Tigers shelf…

On December 7, 1941, a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the first three months of the war the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across the Pacific: the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies. Nonetheless, in those dark days, the U.S. press began to pick up reports about a group of American mercenaries who were bringing down enemy planes over Burma and western China. The pilots quickly became known as the Flying Tigers and a legend was born.

But who were these flyers for hire and how did they wind up in the British colony of Burma? In the standard version of events, an American named Claire Chennault had convinced the Roosevelt administration to establish, fund, and equip covert air squadrons that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo—even before a declaration of war existed between the United States and Japan. That was hardly the case: although present at the creation, Chennault was not the sole originator of the American Volunteer Group.

In A Few Planes for China, Eugenie Buchan draws on wide-ranging new sources to overturn seventy years of received wisdom about the genesis of the Flying Tigers. This strange experiment in airpower was accidental rather than intentional; haphazard decisions and changing threat perceptions both shaped its organization and deprived it of resources. In the end it was the British—more than any American in or out of government—who got the Tigers off the ground. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the most important man behind the Flying Tigers was not Claire Chennault but Winston Churchill.