All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
The Chengdu Bookworm’s Literary Festival has announced its programme – lots of goodies – Carol Birch, Justin Hill, Derek Sandhaus, Jonathan Fenby, Tim Flannery, eerrr ME and plenty of others – here’s the full programme.
Hey, it’s not me that said it!! The Getting Away with Murder newsletter in the UK got an advance copy of Midnight in Peking (out in the UK end of May) and that’s what they said – and I’m not going to argue. Of course I enjoyed Kate Summerscale’s true crime The Suspicions of Mr Whicher as much as anyone so it’s a good compliment. I’m also very happy that the Penguin press release for the UK says, “Imagine the period detail of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher combined with the tension of The Killing, and you’re getting close.” Having just stayed up very late on several nights to get to the end The Killing (the Danish version of course) I’ll take that as a compliment too. Maybe I’ll treat myself to one of those Sarah Lund Danish jumpers!!
I’m pleased they liked the special Midnight in Peking newspaper wrapping paper too – it is pretty cool!
Not exactly Sure where this bridge was – some where around where the Sichuan Road Bridge is today I think. I think this because of the water tower in the background which was on what is now Jiangxi Road (formerly Kiangse Road) where you can still see many older buildings originally erected by the Shanghai Water Department. Kiangse Road was also, of curse, Shanghai’s “Line”, a street of upper end bordellos and the madams of those bordellos (mostly American women) were known as the “Water Tower Women”. This picture is circa 1880 so you can see that the bridges are still largely wooden and the buildings lining the banks of Soochow Creek still comprador in style. Nice to see there’s a rickshaw waiting on the other side, around where now of course you can see the marvelous old General Post Office building.
OK – so it’s a dragon throw down – the Economist magazine (home to barmy right wing nuts for hundreds of years) has decided to launch a China blog apparently. And they’ve seemingly chosen a dragon as their logo – more scarily I think they’re going to call it ‘Enter the Dragon’!!
But I don’t care – my Midnight in Peking dragon was first, is cooler, espouses liberal values, supports the NHS and the Welfare State, hates David Cameron and could beat the living shit out of any Economist dragon should one ever venture onto my dragon’s manor!! The only other dragon I’m willing to accept is His Majesty’s superb fighting Chinese Dragon Temeraire from the great fun novels of battling dragons by Naomi Novik – in fact I think I might contact her to see if a) we can get our dragons together to go over and beat up the Economist‘s mutt and b) mate our dragons to create a truly super fighting dragon (I’m not quite sure how to do this though as dragon mating is new to me and neither my dragon nor Temeraire appear to have willys!! Of course, it goes without saying that the Economist right wing dragon has no balls!)
The Economist’s dragon – kind of skinny and weedy looking – it’s face displays a touch of dragon constipation I feel
Temeraire – His Majesty’s Fighting Dragon and a serious piece of dragon you wouldn’t mess with
And behold – the mighty Midnight in Peking dragon – mess with this boy at your peril!
Tickets go on sale today at the Beijing Bookworm for the Beijing International Literary Festival – click here for the programme. Tickets are only available here at The Bookworm and they are unable to take reservations.
I’d recommend the following:
This year The Opposite House will be hosting three very special events as part of BLF. Tickets available at The Bookworm.
Two pictures today, to get your week started right, of the infamous Canton Flowerboats of what is now referred to as Guangzhou. The flower boats, floating brothels basically, lasted on the Pearl River right up until the 1930s – of course they came in various levels – straight shagging boats, boats where you got a bit of dinner and a sing-song etc etc. Originally they rather nicely took you for a little voyage up and down the river so you could get a shag while enjoying a breeze in Canton’s humid summers.
I cannot bring myself to write too much about the destruction at Chinese New Year of Liang Sicheng’s house. Liang (below) was an incredible architect famously offered a plan that would have held intact the ancient city of Peking. But no, Mao rejected it and we got the architectural destruction and horror of the Mao years and then the rampant philistine culture of the last 30 years. The destruction of the property also revealed, once again, that buildings supposedly under preservation orders still get regularly bulldozed (in Shanghai too) – if a government-linked property developer is involved then none of it means anything – if another apologistic foreigner in China tells me that the government is serious about heritage and preservation and points to these preservation orders I swear I will stab them! I obviously expect no more from rapacious, philistine and corrupt communist officials – that one said not to worry as they’ll build a replica just shows how ridiculous things are. “Soul removers” one Chinese preservationist called these vandal government-developers – absolutely correct.
So obviously I’m fuming – so here are some links from more balanced and clear headed people:
Guardian
The Shanghai Mixed Court got underway in 1863 to mediate cases between the British and Chinese in Shanghai, initially criminal cases but quickly also hearing civil cases too. It’s remit grew to include any cases brought by Chinese within the International Settlement, as an alternative court to those of the Qing. I think the Mixed Court started life in the British Consulate on the Bund but then moved to these premises on Nanking Road.
