Guy Burgess and the Chinese Fireplace

Recently read the excellent history of Kim Philby by Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. There was one China-related anecdote I hadn’t heard before…

Fellow Cambridge spy Guy Burgess (below) had already been forced to flee to Moscow. By the time Philby arrived as a defector in 1963 Burgess had descended into an alcoholic stupour, fallen out with his fellow Moscow-residing spy Donald Maclean and was generally an embarrassment to the KGB. Maclean and Burgess had understandably both been close when they first arrived in Moscow eleven years before in 1951. But they ahd fallen out when Burgess had apparently got so drunk at a reception at the Chinese embassy in Moscow and decided, in full view of everyone, to urinate in the embassy’s fireplace. This went down about as well then as it would now and Burgess was shunned by most diplomats. Philby never got to see Burgess in Moscow – he claimed his Soviet handlers prevented them from meeting due to Burgess’s severe disappointment with the reality of the communist state. Burgess died of liver failure in Moscow in 1963 leaving Philby his collection of 4,000 books meaning Kim at least had some reading for the long drab Soviet nights of exile.

I’m afraid I don’t know if the Chinese embassy Burgess embarassed himself in was the same building as it had been in the 1940s, but I’m going to assume that it was…here then is a picture from 1946 of Jang Jing-guo (to the right), Chiang Kai-shek’s son (and future leader of Taiwan) in the Chinese embassy (then still the ROC embassy obviously) in Moscow. Behind them is a mantelpiece and fireplace with framed pictures of Cordell Hull (The US Secretary of State) and the Generalissimo. However, whether or not this is the fireplace into which Guy Burgess was later to deposit the contents of his full bladder I cannot confirm….(more on the picture and its history here by the way)

Cocaine (1922) on the BFI Player

A classic of the post WW1 London drugs underworld, opium an Yellow Peril, Cocaine from 1922, is now available on the BFI Player for a good honest quid a show….

The Battle of Penang : World War One in the Far East

Having part of the Penguin China World War One series of shorter e-books I’m glad to see others are writing on the war as it affected a wider Asian sphere….JR Robertson’s The Battle of Penang is out now and covers events around 1914-1918 in South East Asia and Hong Kong as well as China…

From civil war-torn China to the Singapore Mutiny, Robertson traces the dramatic events at the beginning of WW1, as the imperial forces of the UK, France, Russia and Japan expelled the German navy from their colonial possessions in the Far East and Pacific. It follows the desperate rear-guard action fought by the German cruiser Emden, sinking a score of Allied merchant ships over several weeks around the Bay of Bengal and culminating in the Battle of Penang. Robertson throws new light on the debacle amongst the allied warships in Penang.

Robert E. McGinnis and the art of the sexy Oriental Cover (or Asian stereotypes, if you prefer)

The Art of Robert E. McGinnis is a lovely new coffee table book detailing the prolific outpouring of one of America’s most recogniseable commercial artists. McGinnis began his career in 1947 as a cartoonist, and produced his first cover illustrations for 1956 issues of the magazines True Detective and Master Detective. Then in 1958, he painted his first paperback book cover, and from that day forward his work was in demand including to do several iconic Bond posters. He specialised in pulp and crime fiction covers and I’ve chosen just a few China/Oriental related ones to give a flavour of his work….

This is McGinnis’s cover for Stephen Becker’s 1955 novel Shanghai Incident, which is extremely hard to find a copy of these days. This is the 1960 reprint cover. Incidentally, for the collectors, Shanghai Incident was first published in 1955 by Becker using an alias – Steve Dodge (a bit more pulply I guess). The story is set in 1948 and concerns a ex-OSS now CIA man running round China on the eve of the Communist takeover.

A 1958 novel I don’t much about – oil, Eurasian beauties, SAigon – Lisette, the concubine is half-Tonkinese and half-French. Michael East was a pseudonym for Morris Langlo West (a great name but a little less good for writers of Oriental pulp novels perhaps). Anyway, the McGinnis cover is a fine example of his sexy women….

The Silver Concubine was a 1962 novel by Hal G. Everts and is slightly different in being set in the Wild West in 1883, though not sure how 1883 those shoes are!! McGinnis didn’t really care about such details and tended to just go for the pretty girl and not worry too much about the fine details.

And finally, The Dragon’s Eye by Scott CS Stone actually won the 1969 Edgar Award (your blogger got one in 2013!, so there’s a history of old China scooping Edgars it would seem). It’s about a British journalist in commie China, his beautiful Chinese mistress and it’s all done in a very hard boiled style. Personally I like the guy’s suit and the girl is vintage McGinnis….

Advertising and Marketing in China: Chinese-Western Cultural Encounters (19th c. – Present) – Center for Asia Pacific Studies at the University of San Francisco – 13/11/14

An interesting couple of days for anyone in the San Francisco area at the The Center for Asia Pacific Studies at the University of San Francisco fall symposium, “Advertising and Marketing in China: Chinese-Western Cultural Encounters (19th c. – Present).” The panel on Creating Ads for Chinese Markets: From Treaty Ports to Mao may be of especial interest to China Rhymers…more details on the event here. Shame old Carl Crow’s not around anymore to tell them how it was!

The symposium will provide a forum for an interdisciplinary conversation and the sharing of research among scholars and contemporary professionals on the topic of advertising and marketing in China from the 19th c. to the present. Presenters will examine advertising and marketing in China during this period as a lens for understanding cultural encounters between China and the West. Scholars as well as advertising and marketing professionals are invited to share their insight on how culture has influenced the advertising and marketing of Western products in China and Chinese products in the West. Proposed themes include but are not limited to: issues of modernity, visual culture, medical exchange, relations of power, issues of gender, cultural identity, e-business and the influence of smartphones and the internet, etc.

A Quick Plug for the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai’s Book Club

A change, and an expansion, to the RAS Shanghai book club: more details on their website

Frontline Club Event – Andrew MacGregor Marshall on Thailand: A Kingdom in Crisis – 12/11/14

Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s controversial Thailand: A Kingdom in Crisis is the latest book in the Asian Arguments series that I commission and edit for Zed Books. Struggling to emerge from a despotic past, and convulsed by an intractable conflict that will determine its future, Thailand stands at a defining moment in its history. Scores have been killed on the streets of Bangkok. Freedom of speech is routinely denied. Democracy appears increasingly distant. Long dreaded by Thais, the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej is expected to unleash even greater instability. Yet in spite of the impact of the crisis, and the extraordinary importance of the royal succession, they have never been comprehensively analyzed, because Thailand’s draconian lèse majesté law has silenced most discussion.

Andrew will be speaking at the Frontline Club in London on November 12th…more details here

In May 2014, Thailand underwent its 12th successful military coup in 82 years. This time, there has been no promise of a quick return to civilian rule; a spokesperson for the National Council of Peace and Order has stated that in Thailand’s current situation, normal democratic principles cannot be applied. In August, King Bhumibol officially endorsed General Prayuth Chan-ocha as the country’s Prime Minister.

As the country’s plans for political reform begin to take shape, we will be discussing the normalisation of coups in Thailand, the problematic issue of the country’s ageing king and the perennial conflict between the Thai elite and the rural majority.

We will be joined by a panel of experts to examine the root causes of Thailand’s ongoing political crisis and what actions, if any, can be taken to resolve it.

The panel:

Andrew MacGregor Marshall is a journalist, political risk consultant and corporate investigator, focusing mainly on Southeast Asia. He spent 17 years as a correspondent for Reuters, covering amongst others conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and political upheaval in Thailand. He is author of A Kingdom in Crisis.

Additional speaker to be announced.

Rememberance Day – Betrayal at Versailles – To understand Beijing now, go back to Paris then

November 11th, remembering the 11th day of the of the eleventh month of 1918 and the armistice of World War One. Time to link to a recent piece I penned for the China Economic Review on how the immediate fall out from World War One has affected China’s development from that moment till the present day….

Allied troops crowd round a window by Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors to witness the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty in 1919 – China chose not to sign…