All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
If you’re in, or passing thru, Macao then do visit the Tap Seac Gallery to see Wang Zhengping’s exhibition of b&w photos from Inner Mongolia (part of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival 2025)…until 10/4
So WildChina Travel are arranging an amazing tour this September to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanhaiguan, Shanghai and Guangzhou in the footsteps of Wallis Simpson. We’re staying at heritage hotels all the way, some great dinners are planned, side trips to the Western Hills etc, and guided walks/talks by me & others revealing Wallis’s China as well as my other work (Midnight in Peking, Bloody Saturday, City of Devils). WildChina guides and myself will also offer tours of other sights – Forbidden City, Shamian Island, the Bund, Old Dragon Head Fort, the former concession of Tientsin etc. It’ll be a quite amazing tour I’m sure – more details here…
The other week I got to wander the hutongs around Shijia Hutong (where Wallis lived in 1925) with the amazingly knowledgeable Matthew Hu Xinyi, director of the Shijia Hutong Museum and a dedicated architectural preservationist in Beijing. He pointed out one particular facet of hutong life I was not aware of and that perhaps links to Wallis – horse mounting stones.
Wallis loved to ride, and would regularly take a pony, with her host on Shijia Hutong Herman Rogers, to the Tartar Wall beside the Legation Quarter for a morning ride. Herman had a small stables with several Mongolian ponies at his courtyard home. And there, as Matthew pointed out to me, by the front entrance to several hutongs on Shijia are the horse mounting stones, literally large stones that allow you a little extra height to mount the pony. Most have disappeared over the years, probably becoming an inconvenience to parked cars, but a few remain, such as the one below…
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
Normal service is resumed on the ChinaRhyming Substack after some travel time –
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulfrench/p/april-1-2025-chinarhyming-walking?r=4ire&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Any Portuguese readers – here I am talking Wallis Simpson from Macao!
Hidden Heritage and Marginal Voices in Chinese Diasporas: Opera, Food and Water
Thu 3 Apr 2025 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM BST
Join us for an exciting event jointly organised by Hub on Migration, Exile, Languages and Space (HOMELandS) Research Centre and the Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster. The panel brings together expert researchers from different countries and universities who will share with us their most recent research into diasporic Chinese heritage. Based on case studies of Chinese diasporas in Canada, Britain and Macao and through the lens of opera, food and water respectively, their fascinating work unveil the hidden heritage and marginal voices of underrepresented individuals, families and communities, asking new questions on memory, identity and belonging in Chinese diasporas and beyond.
Speakers: Prof. Wing Chung Ng (University of Texas at San Antonio), Dr. Rui Su (Middlesex University) and Dr. Mariana Pinto Leitão Pereira (University of York)
Discussant: Prof. Cangbai Wang (University of Westminster)
The event is chaired by Professor Gerda Wielander
More info and book a slot click here
This type of Chinese silk embroidered souvenir from Peking appear regularly for sale at auction. They were locally embroidered and sold to soldiers who then usually slipped in a portrait photograph and sent them home as rememberances of their time in China. This one is slightly different in that a photo of Yuan Shi-kai, then head of the Beiyang Army (& about to be deposed upon Cixi’s death) was added.
This example is from the 2nd Cameron Highlanders with their cap badges and 10 embroidered flags of foreign nations represented in the Legation Quarter as well as the Qing. Peking N. (north) China is scrolled across the bottom. It is from 1908, the only year the Cameron Highlanders were in China. Hundreds, if not thousands, of these were sold to foreign troops in Peking from the late 19th century to the 1920s.
Spending time at the Biblioteca Sir Robert Ho Tung in St Augustine’s Square, Macao. Built 1894, purchased by Ho Tung 1918 as a home & bequeathed to Macao as a library in 1956. The frontage & much of the original interior are well preserved & a sizeable modern addition added at the rear cleverly doesn’t affect perspective…
