Regular readers of this blog and of my history of foreign correspondents in ChinaThrough the Looking Glass will know that I am no fan of George Earnest Morrison – Morrison of Peking – the most overrated of the legendary foreign correspondents in China. By and large most people seem to have the impression that Morrison was a genius and he was…at covering up who did all his research and often wrote his articles, his bellicose advocacy of the British Empire and ruining people’s reputations through malicious gossip (see Morrison’s diaries in Australia or his published letters which are prime examples of male bitchiness).
Still, my personal dislike of Morrison didn’t stop me rather enjoying Linda Jaivin’s A Most Immoral Woman about Morrison’s infatuation affair with a rich American nympho slapper (who you can’t help liking for her appetites if nothing else) in 1904. Jaivin combines being a Sinologist with writing erotic fiction – not a combination you often come across. I’ve noted Linda’s book before but the other day I came across a video online of Linda talking about and reading from her book at the Australian National University in Canberra. Linda’s always entertaining and worth watching. Click here.
BTW: Earnshaw Books in Shanghai recently republished Morrison’s An Australian in China about his trek from Shanghai to Burma which is worth a read.
Noting James Palmer’s The Bloody White Baron biography in a post the other day the book reignited my interest in those border towns around Mongolia and Russia where there were also Chinese communities – virtually pure trading towns and very mingled up so very interesting. A few years back I travelled up around some of these towns and along the old Russian railway to places like Chita, Hailer and down to Harbin. However, I never got to Kyakhta (left) on the Russian-Mongolian border which was a major trading post between Russians, Chinese and Mongolians during the Qing period. It’s not part of the Russian Federation’s Buryat Republic with the capital at Ulan-Ude. Kyakhta originally was one of the eastern terminuses (termini??) of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Palmer has a great description too of Maimaichen (literally buy-sell town) which was adjacent to Kyakhta and where the Chinese were largely based. Palmer’s subject Baron Ungern-Sternberg ran riot in the town on a trail of slaughter and killing and a pogrom of the few hundred Jewish traders in the town. Not sure exactly what goes on nowadays in Kyakhta or Maiaichen – still points of cross border trade I think – so must arrange a trip soon.
As far as other descriptions of Kyakhta and Maimaichen go I don’t know too many – but the non-fiction author Stephanie Williams has written a book about her grandmother Olga (Olga’s Story)who grew up in Troitskosavsk (pictured above – then a slightly windswept town near Kyakhta and now part of the town I think). I haven’t read the book though intend to but Williams has a few exerpts and pictures on her website.
By the way – a couple of people told me they didn’t where Kyakhta was:
If you needed a taxi in Shanghai in 1941 you could just call Ford Taxis – just dial (and you would of course be dialling as you should on all good phones and not button punching) 30189.
Regular readers will know I like those little footnotes in history that make today seem not quite so weird. I took James Palmer’s The Bloody White Baron on holiday with me knowing that relaxing with the story of a mad anti-semitic White Russian bastard who obsessed on weird religions, had a mate who was a living Buddha and slaughtered and tortured his way across Mongolia after the Bolshevik Revolution was for totally for me!!
And so it is – but I haven’t finished it yet – will post again on the book when I get through it (which is no chore believe me, it’s very readable – thank God a dreary academic didn’t get hold of this idea before and render it impotent as they seem to most good stories with their theory and over analysis).
Still – one little note in the book I liked very much. At the time – just before the First World War the Bogd Khan (Living Buddha) was revered in Mongolia. However, he was obese and had failing eyesight. A giant statue of him was ordered from Inner Mongolia but the people wanted representations of him too. So the Mongolians got in touch with a factory in Poland and ordered 10,000 statues of the Living Buddha.
Just think about that and the world as was then – Mongolia, neighbouring China, calls up Poland to get a job lot of Buddha statues!! If anyone knows where I can get one or can work that eBay thing and find one I’d be forever in their debt. With 10,000 made (though not sure they were ever delivered or paid for) there must be a few knocking around still surely!!
No one with an interest in modern history can fail to be moved by the passing of Harry Patch at 111 – Britain’s last fighting Tommy, as he described himself in his autobiography. Patch was officially the last man left alive (from any country) to have actually fought in the trenches during World War One.
A working class Somerset lad training to be a plumber he was called up in October 1916 and, by June 1917, was a lance corporal in France with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and went over the top at Passchendaele. Later he was badly wounded in the chest. After the war he built a plumbing business, married and had a family. During World War Two he volunteered as a fireman during the Luftwaffe’s 1942 attacks on Bath. He outlived his wife and children.
Patch did not speak of the war and his experiences for 80 years until after his 90th birthday and then when he did was adamant that war was awful and conditions for the Tommies in the trenches abominable – dirt, filth, fear and lice. In2005 he met a German veteran, Charles Kuentz. He also told Tony Blair that nobody during the first world war should have been shot for cowardice (as an alarming number of Tommies were with only superficial court martials), “War is organised murder,” he insisted, “and nothing else.”
Patch, when he appeared on the BBC occasionally, was never anything less than the ordinary man who has seen and experiences extraordinary things. He never shied away from saying what he really thought of the war and never glossed over the horrors realising than when forgotten they can too easily happen again. With his passing goes our living memory of the most awful of wars.
Henry John Patch, born 17 June 1898; died 25 July 2009
The excellent and rapidly expanding China reprints series Earnshaw Books is hosting yet another evening celebrating this month’s release of two new titles – The Peace Correspondent by Garry Marchant and China Rhymes by Shamus A’Rabbitt, featuring a new foreword by Andrew Chubb. I honestly never thought I’d ever see A’Rabbitt back in print!! In fact I think it’s my old battered original copy that got scanned to produce this reprint – a poet laureate of the Bund if ever there was one!
In honor of Mr. A’Rabbitt’s supurb Old China (often pidgin English) poetry, a poetry contest will be held with the first and second place winners receiving five great titles from Earnshaw Books. Original poetry and renditions of Mr. Rabbitt’s work, available at the door, are both welcome. All are invited to participate and pre-registration is not required.
Later, Graham “Shanghai” Earnshaw and Derek “Peking” Sandhaus will hold the second round in their no-holds-barred, in-your-face debate to determine the greatest city in Old China.
Complimentary drinks for the first 100 guests, and copies of both new titles available for a special 100RMB promotional price (normally 140RMB).
20% off food and drinks all evening.
Wednesday, July 29
7:30 pm
House of Blues and Jazz, No. 60, Fuzhou Lu (Near Sichuan Lu)
I spent today flicking through a new book on photographs of the old Chinese community in California – Hannah Clayborn’s Historic Photographs of the Chinese in California. The book contains about 200 historic photographs gathered from various collections and includes images of the gold fields, the high Sierra railroad camps, lettuce fields and olive groves. More familiar are the images of San Francisco’s old Chinatown. A very well produced book.
By the way you can see a lot of images of California’s Chinese on the Online Archive of California’s Chinese in California virtual collection (click here).
Came across this image of Hong Kong’s Lyndhurst Terrace in 1909 the other day. These days Lyndhurst Terrace is a fairly ordinary Hong Kong street running from the market at the steps down to Queens Road in Central and running up to Hollywood Road. Over the years it’s changed a bit – many of the more interesting little shops along the street have been forced out thanks to Hong Kong’s notoriously rapacious and greedy landlords.
However, back around 1909 Lyndhurst Terrace was a great deal more interesting and had distinctly more arresting charms and attractions than a Pizza Express and a Dymocks. Lyndhurst Terrace was home to the offices of many foreign companies, flower sellers and was also a concentration of western prostitutes in foreign-run bordellos such as the well-patronised Vera’s which appears to be the closest bordello in Hong Kong to the standards of Gracie’s in Shanghai. Vera was apparently an American madam who was very well spoken woman, took extremely good care of her health, didn’t smoke and was teetotal and, if possible, didn’t hire diseased girls.
In general the better class of white prostitute in the colony (which included mostly British, French, Australian andAmerican girls) operated out of houses on Lan Kwai Fong street as well as Wellington, Gage and Peel Streets (what is now known as the Mid-Levels district) along with Hollywood Road and Lyndhurst Terrace while the lower class of white prostitutes – which the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1888 identified as ‘Austrian, Russian, Rumanian, Polish, Italian and Levantine’ (the latter being women from anywhere along the eastern Mediterranean coast from Turkey to Egypt though sometimes a way of referring to Jewish women too) mostly worked out of (what the Telegraph described as) the ‘disreputable rookery’ of Graham Street. One outraged English woman visiting the Colony in about 1906 noted that:
‘Gage Street, and other streets running off Gage Street, are full of bad houses. In Lyndhurst Terrace too are houses occupied by American “missuses.” Hundreds of American girls pass through Gage Street and Lyndhurst Terrace during the year, and, if they live, eventually find themselves, when their bloom is gone, and they become addicted to drink and drugs, in the Chinese quarter, where nearly three hundred brothels exist, each house containing from a dozen to twenty unfortunates of all colours, creeds, and castes.’
As someone who divides his time pretty evenly writing about China now and China back then this seemed like a place to throw all the interesting bits that fall through the cracks somehow and never get used anywhere else. It's basically the stuff that doesn't get used in my writing about modern China or in the books I do about old China — i.e. probably of little interest to anyone but me and therefore ideally suited to an obscure blog up a dark cul-de-sac of the Internet. I'm also adding the odd 'Deviation Posting' about non-China stuff that interests me — Paul French
Regular readers of this blog and of my history of foreign correspondents in China Through the Looking Glass will know that I am no fan of George Earnest Morrison – Morrison of Peking – the most overrated of the legendary foreign correspondents in China. By and large most people seem to have the impression that Morrison was a genius and he was…at covering up who did all his research and often wrote his articles, his bellicose advocacy of the British Empire and ruining people’s reputations through malicious gossip (see Morrison’s diaries in Australia or his published letters which are prime examples of male bitchiness).
Still, my personal dislike of Morrison didn’t stop me rather enjoying Linda Jaivin’s A Most Immoral Woman about Morrison’s infatuation affair with a rich American nympho slapper (who you can’t help liking for her appetites if nothing else) in 1904. Jaivin combines being a Sinologist with writing erotic fiction – not a combination you often come across. I’ve noted Linda’s book before but the other day I came across a video online of Linda talking about and reading from her book at the Australian National University in Canberra. Linda’s always entertaining and worth watching. Click here.
BTW: Earnshaw Books in Shanghai recently republished Morrison’s An Australian in China about his trek from Shanghai to Burma which is worth a read.
Noting James Palmer’s 
Palmer has a great description too of Maimaichen (literally buy-sell town) which was adjacent to Kyakhta and where the Chinese were largely based. Palmer’s subject Baron Ungern-Sternberg ran riot in the town on a trail of slaughter and killing and a pogrom of the few hundred Jewish traders in the town. Not sure exactly what goes on nowadays in Kyakhta or Maiaichen – still points of cross border trade I think – so must arrange a trip soon.
As far as other descriptions of Kyakhta and Maimaichen go I don’t know too many – but the non-fiction author Stephanie Williams has written a book about her grandmother Olga (
Regular readers will know I like those little footnotes in history that make today seem not quite so weird. I took James Palmer’s 
No one with an interest in modern history can fail to be moved by the passing of Harry Patch at 111 – Britain’s last fighting Tommy, as he described himself in his autobiography. Patch was officially the last man left alive (from any country) to have actually fought in the trenches during World War One.
The excellent and rapidly expanding China reprints series Earnshaw Books is hosting yet another evening celebrating this month’s release of two new titles – The Peace Correspondent by Garry Marchant and China Rhymes by Shamus A’Rabbitt, featuring a new foreword by Andrew Chubb. I honestly never thought I’d ever see A’Rabbitt back in print!! In fact I think it’s my old battered original copy that got scanned to produce this reprint – a poet laureate of the Bund if ever there was one!
I spent today flicking through a new book on photographs of the old Chinese community in California – Hannah Clayborn’s 
Came across this image of Hong Kong’s Lyndhurst Terrace in 1909 the other day. These days Lyndhurst Terrace is a fairly ordinary Hong Kong street running from the market at the steps down to Queens Road in Central and running up to Hollywood Road. Over the years it’s changed a bit – many of the more interesting little shops along the street have been forced out thanks to Hong Kong’s notoriously rapacious and greedy landlords.