Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – Mahjong in Maida Vale -the Chinese intellectual community in UK in 1930s and 1940s

Posted: July 20th, 2020 | No Comments »

WHAT: Mahjong in Maida Vale -the Chinese intellectual community in UK in 1930s and 1940s, by Frances Wood,  an RASBJ Zoom talk followed by Q&A
WHEN: July 22, 19:00-20:00 Beijing Standard Time.
NOTE: THIS EVENT BEGINS AT 7 PM BEIJING TIME

MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: “Mahjong in Maida Vale” was inspired by a study day in Oxford celebrating the writer and artist Chiang Yee, recalls Frances Wood who considers it a work in progress.  She started to think about the Chinese intellectuals who came to the UK in the 1930s and 1940s, many of whom stayed on. A friend remembered sitting in a north London drawing room, eating sunflower seeds to the sound of clacking tiles as her mother played mahjong with three older ladies- the painters Fang Zhaoling and Zhang Qianying and the writer and artist Ling Shuhua. Why were they in UK? How did they live? What did they eat? What happened to them?

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: After studying Chinese at the universities of Cambridge and Peking, Frances Wood worked as Curator of the Chinese collections in the British Library for nearly 30 years. She has written  , amongst others, Blue Guide to China, Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking, Did Marco Polo Go To China?, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843-1943, The Silk Road, and The Diamond Sutra: the Story of the World’s Earliest Dated Printed Book.
 
HOW MUCH: This event is free and exclusively for members of the RASBJ and of other RAS branches. If you know someone who wants to join RASBJ, please ask them to contact MembershipRASBJ on Wechat or email membership.ras.bj@gmail.com
 
HOW TO JOIN RASBJ: to become a member (or, for PRC passport-holders, to become an Associate)  email membership.ras.bj@gmail.com or on Wechat add MembershipRASBJ, giving your full name, nationality, mobile number and email address plus the annual subscription amount (or, for Associates, the suggested donation) of RMB 300 for those resident in China, RMB 200 for those living overseas and RMB 100 for students. To learn more about the RASBJ, please go to www.rasbj.org 
 
HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT:  If you wish to become an RASBJ member in order to attend this talk, please join RASBJ at least two days before the talk so that you can be sure to receive the event notice with the advance registration link.

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