All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Hey, I’ll be up in Edinburgh this August at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2025 and in the fantastic Spiegeltent…. Wallis Simpson’s Lost Years in China – Wed 20 Aug 15:30…. click here…
There’s an interesting number of children’s adventure books published throughout World War two featuring China – invariably designed to reinforce the alliance between the allies and China against the Japanese. Major Charles Gilson heard the call!! Gilson served in China after the Boxer Rebellion and featured China in some of his stories. Gilson even featured a Chinese detective in one of his stories.
Charles Gilson had never stopped being a bestseller since his first books back in the early years of the century. A former army officer (sometimes billed a “Captain” and sometimes as a “Major” on his book covers) Gilson’s tales ranged from Africa to India to South America. However, China was a favourite location and one he knew, having served with the British army in Beijing after the Boxer Uprising. Gilson’s tales are far from politically correct by 2023 standards but were still popular by the time war broke out. His YA stories from China included kidnapping escapades, pirate adventures and a story featuring a Chinese detective (The Mystery of Ah-Jim). When war broke out between Britain and Japan Gilson was in his sixties and contemplating retirement. But he wanted to make sure the youngsters who still read his books appreciated China’s wartime plight. Sons of the Sword: A Tale of the Sino-Japanese War (1941) was a plodding tale but sold well. It was also to be Gilson’s last book. He died in 1943.
But is that true as this copy of The Yellow Mask (which I picked up for £2 at Much Ado Books in Alfriston the other week) is dated 1942, a year later – a bibliographical mystery I must find time to get to the bottom off.
My latest for the South China Morning Post weekend magazine on Hong Kong’s beloved cartoon strip Old Master Q, his enduring appeal to generations & artist Alfonso Wong Kar-hei…. click here to read…
A great evening at the Battersea Bookshop talking about Tie Ning’s My Sister’s Red Shirt (Sinoist Books), contemporary Chinese fiction and translation with Annelise Finegan, Academic Director & Clinical Associate Professor of Translation at NYU School of Professional Studies….
Writing a few posts on the Vanessa Bell exhibition in Lewes and some Chinese related items I did stumble across The Life and Letters of (Vanessa’s father) Leslie Stephen by Frederic William Maitland (1906). We tend to think of Stephen as the rather stern looking father of Vanessa and Virginia (and their brothers) though he was a pioneering academic, atheist and mountaineer. He died in 1904. Maitland’s short biography of Stephen includes the following:
‘His father settled at Wimbledon, and in February 1847 Leslie began to attend as a day-boy a school kept by Mr. Edelmann, where he had some seven or eight companions. He acquired some German, and was soon reading with enjoyment. He played cricket and rode his pony, being also much addicted to pets, including some Chinese mice. He could still look ‘very pretty* when dressed in the robes of a Chinese bride, unpacked from the curiosity box of a missionary.’
Sadly no early photograph or sketch!
The anniversary of Bloody Saturday – August 14 1937 – and the bombing of the International Settlement and French Concession. A dreadful day of death and destruction I attempted to recreate in my Penguin China Special Bloody Saturday. I missed this story though, apocryphal perhaps (?), from John Stericker’s memoir A Tear for the Dragon…
Seems as soldiers mobilised to deal with the carnage of the bombing along the Bubbling Well Road, they came face-to-face with an….ostrich….Not something that happens everyday on Nanjing West Road!
Sadly no photo, but it was reported….
The Exhibition Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is on at Charleston in Lewes, East Sussex until September 21. A final Chinese-related note….
A later painting here of the studio at Charleston where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant worked for so many years (and Julian and Quentin in the previous post lived too). This portrait Interior with Duncan Grant, 1934 clearly shows a statue of Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy (etc) on the mantelpiece, where it remains on display today (see below). The statue was originally the property of Roger Fry.
The Exhibition Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is on at Charleston in Lewes, East Sussex until September 21. A few Chinese-related notes….
Among the whole exhibition there is only one picture featuring Bell’s son Julian – though there is a large portrait of Bell as a young man painted by Vanessa placed prominently above her bed at Charleston. Nursery Tea (1912) shows Vanessa’s two young children, Julian (b. 1908) and, on the left, Quentin (b. 1910) with two nursemaids, almost certainly at the Bell family home, 46 Gordon Square. Julian is of course interesting to China Rhyming because in 1935 he went to China to teach English at Wuhan University where he had an affair with Ling Shuhua, the wife of Professor Chen Yuan (better known by his pen-name, Chen Xiying). It all blew up into a massive scandal, Bell returned home, went to Spain and was killed in the Civil War. Ling Shuhua (who incidentally grew up and became involved in the May 4th/New Culture Movement) on Shijia Hutong in Peking at the same time Wallis Simpson lived there briefly) later lived in England for many years. She communicated by letter with Vanessa’s sister Virginia Woolf, though they never met, but did become friends with Vita Sackville West – and hence a firm line of contact between China’s New Culture Movement and the Bloomsbury Group.
