I plugged James Palmer’s excellent biography, The Bloody White Baron, several times in the past when it came out – see here, here and here. Book blurb and details below.
Roman Ungern von Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat, a violent, headstrong youth posted to the wilds of Siberia and Mongolia before the First World War. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Baron – now in command of a lethally effective rabble of cavalrymen – conquered Mongolia, the last time in history a country was seized by an army mounted on horses. He was a Kurtz-like figure, slaughtering everyone he suspected of irreligion or of being a Jew. And his is a story that rehearses later horrors in Russia and elsewhere. James Palmer’s book is an epic recreation of a forgotten episode and will establish him as a brilliant popular historian.
James had to cancel his event last weekend in Shanghai but it’s happening this Saturday which means he’ll be bring the curtain down on the Shanghai International Literary Festival 2010 – a week late, and on his own – almost – I’ll be moderating and ask a few questions.
The moral of this story (or at least one of several) – don’t let anyone tell you preservation orders in Shanghai on old buildings mean shit – they don’t. They didn’t at the White Horse Inn last year when it came down, nor the old Shanghai Rowing Club building on Suzhou Creek and they have once again proved worthless at the former home of JG Ballard on the corner of Panyu Road and Xinhua Road (formerly Colombia Road and Amherst Avenue). It’s worth noting that even if Ballard’s later work as a writer means nothing in Shanghai the house and grounds were a good example of the sort of grand structures erected in the Western Roads Area in the 1920s/1930s.
I have nothing to add to Malcolm Moore’s piece in the Daily Telegraph, accompanied by a short video (here). Another tragedy to add to an ever lengthening list in Shanghai of wanton destruction.
There’s been a bit of buzz around the blogs about the parlous state of Hongkou and the widespread destruction there of late as Shanghai ‘prepares’ for the pointless EXPO next year. I’ve noted the coming down of several former sites in the old Jewish ghetto while Adam Minter on his Shanghai Scrap blog has also noted the levelling of Hongkou and elicited plenty of responses predictably taking both sides.
One road to get hammered is the old Chusan Road (now Zhoushan Road) ,which was also part of the ghetto. The road was home to the Hongkou’s Chusan Road Market where many Jewish refugees shopped in the 1940s – to them it was known as the Die Markthalle. The road became lined with cafés and meeting places for refugees as the official Jewish Zone of Security expanded during the Japanese occupation but only those with certain passports could get out of the ghetto to the strip of European-style cafés.
The refugees transformed Chusan Road from a fairly ordinary Chinese road to something approximating a slice of Vienna with groceries, pharmacies, bakeries, plumbers, locksmiths, barbers, tailors, milliners, cobblers – and, of course, there were the inevitable Viennese coffee-houses, such as the Vienna Café Restaurant, the Delikat at 23, the Barcelona at 21 (home to the Jewish Barcelona Football Club), the International at 81 and Hesky and Gerstl’s tearooms at 252. For those a little short of money but still hungry there was a popular wurstelstand parked in the kerb selling hot dogs. Several small-scale factories were also established producing soap, candles, knitwear, leatherwear and especially European-type food products such as sausages and confectionary.
I posted some time ago that the site of the old White Horse Inn was among a number of buildings inside Shanghai’s former Jewish district in Hongkou likely to be knocked down to make way for (wait for it!) a widened road. Well it happened while I was away on holiday (not that the two events are probably linked) and the White Horse is gone in the name of progress and the nonsense EXPO slogan ‘Better City, Better Life’. A friend, Dvir Bar-gal, who has done a lot to raise awareness of Shanghai’s Jewish heritage and ghetto, chronicled the end and photographed it as below:
“While China and Shanghai celebrating the 60 years “Party of the Party” the much-talked-about historical
building of the White Horse Cafe at the former Little Vienna of Shanghai AKA Shanghai’s [Jewish] ghetto was taken from
us.
To those of you whom may not have read or heard the story: The White Horse was located in one of the nicer historical buildings along the former Ward Road. The White Horse Cafe was owned by the Mosberg/Klinger family (now residing in Sydney) and was one of the famous and lively cafes of Shanghai’s “little Vienna” in the early 1940s.
In early 2009 the Hongkou District government decided to widen the street that was home to this building along with many other historical buildings that were marked to be destroyed. With the hope to preserve these historical sites I contacted few members of the foreign press in Shanghai/China. NPR’s Louisa Lim brought to the area Prof. Ruan Yi Shan from TongJi Univ. that offered in the past the plans for preservation of that area.While the story about the Historical cafe facing demolition made news in the US Radio, Prof. Ruan pitched the story to some of his friends at the local newspapers whom as well ran the story and made public to the issue.
In the past 6 months it seemed that the local authorities would stop the demolition. Rumors said that the Hongkou government officials had positively considered Prof. Ruan’s various offers to preserve / relocate the building. However, sad to inform you that while most of us took the time off for the National Vacation the Bulldozers went on the building. In Oct. 2nd the head (roof) of the building was hammered down, next the covering bamboo scaffolds were removed and the final kill came yesterday Oct. 6th. Last picture attached was taken today Oct. 7th.”
So RIP to another part of Shanghai’s heritage and a great building! The destruction continues unabated and in remorseless fashion – left is a picture of the White Horse Cafe in its heyday.
Louisa Lim at NPR reports that the site of the old White Horse Inn is among a number of buildings inside Shanghai’s former Jewish district in Hongkou likely to be knocked down to make way for (wait for it!) a widened road. As the demolition begins much has actually been revealed (and then trashed) such as old shop signs including one for Wuerstel Tenor, a sandwich shop, which had been covered for decades. The demolition will also see the end of other fading shop fronts at the heart of what was known as ‘Little Vienna’ including those of the Cafe Atlantic and Horn’s Imbiss-stube (Horn’s Snack Bar).
According to Lim, in 2005, the Chinese government declared 70 acres of the Jewish ghetto a conservation zone. The White Horse Inn (above) and buildings slated for demolition are inside that zone, but aren’t designated protected buildings. Sadly professors at Shanghai’s Tongji University who fought for preservation were not told about the demolition until too late.
The full sad story of another triumph of roads over heritage here
A couple more posts prompted by my recent trip to Australia.
Everytime I visit Oz a quick trip round the bookshops of Melbourne and Sydney is required. Australia seems to have a thriving publishing industry and I often come across interesting books down under that I’ve never heard of before. This time was no exception.
For a number of reasons – not least their horrendous losses in total population terms – the Australians have retained a stronger fascination and collective memory of the First World War than Europeans I think. This year has seen a lot of new WW1 books what with it being the 90th anniversary of the Armistice in 1918. Among them is one I had not heard of and haven’t seen reviewed anywhere but is well worth a read – John Hamilton’s Gallipoli Sniper: The Life of Billy Sing (Macmillan Australia).
The book interested me for a number of reasons – I read a lot on the Gallipoli/Dardanelles campaign as a cousin on my mother’s side died fighting with the British infantry there while my Great Grandfather was in the Royal Navy during the evacuation of British and ANZAC troops away from the disaster and nearly lost a foot to a Turkish shell (which I have somewhere – it was his most treasured souveneir and certainly dragged out more often at family parties than his medals!).
But the book is also of interest as Billy Sing, Australia’s most notorious sniper at Gallipoli (200 credited kills), was half-Chinese. His father was originally from Shanghai and emigrated to Australia as part of the nineteenth century gold rush ending up a drover in remote Clermont, 800 or so miles north of Brisbane in Queensland, and marrying an English woman in what appears to have a been a socially disliked but internally very happy marriage. Hamilton’s book has some interesting asides on the problematic relationship of the Chinese in Australia, racism, the contempt many ‘whites’ held for inter-racial marriages, the sometimes violent and tragic anti-Chinese reaction of some, the adverse effects on the Chinese of the introduction of the White Australia Policy etc. Technically Billy should not have ended up a Light Horseman or in Gallipoli (he later also fought in the trenches of France) at all – the rules stated that recruits should be of ‘majority European heritage’ and many other Chinese-Australians who tried to enlist were rejected purely because of their heritage.
Billy became notorious turning his bushman skills to sniping. He returned to Australia sick and wounded but notorious – his horrific expriences at Gallipoli and in France as well as his notoriety did not help his post-war adjustment and the book ends on a rather sorry but poignant note.
Hamilton had to work from scant sources – Billy didn’t exactly leave copious notes on his experiences – but manages to pull his life together into a coherent narrative. Billy Sing’s was hardly the typical Chinese-Australian experience – his mixed ancestry allowed him more fluidity in turn of the century Queensland and beyond than most, he never evinced much interest in the Chinese part of his background and was, if anything, the archetype of the Ozzie cobber valuing mateship higher than anything else in the outback while at the time he achieved a level of fame across Australia few if any other Chinese in the country did. But his extraordinary story is as much a part of the experience of those Chinese that went to Australia in the nineteenth century and their offspring as any other.
About
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
I 
“While China and Shanghai celebrating the 60 years “Party of the Party” the much-talked-about historical
To those of you whom may not have read or heard the story: The White Horse was located in one of the nicer historical buildings along the former Ward Road. The White Horse Cafe was owned by the Mosberg/Klinger family (now residing in Sydney) and was one of the famous and lively cafes of Shanghai’s “little Vienna” in the early 1940s.
In early 2009 the Hongkou District government decided to widen the street that was home to this building along with many other historical buildings that were marked to be destroyed. With the hope to preserve these historical sites I contacted few members of the foreign press in Shanghai/China. NPR’s Louisa Lim brought to the area Prof. Ruan Yi Shan from TongJi Univ. that offered in the past the plans for preservation of that area.While the story about the Historical cafe facing demolition made news in the US Radio, Prof. Ruan pitched the story to some of his friends at the local newspapers whom as well ran the story and made public to the issue.
In the past 6 months it seemed that the local authorities would stop the demolition. Rumors said that the Hongkou government officials had positively considered Prof. Ruan’s various offers to preserve / relocate the building. However, sad to inform you that while most of us took the time off for the National Vacation the Bulldozers went on the building. In Oct. 2nd the head (roof) of the building was hammered down, next the covering bamboo scaffolds were removed and the final kill came yesterday Oct. 6th. Last picture attached was taken today Oct. 7th.”
So RIP to another part of Shanghai’s heritage and a great building! The destruction continues unabated and in remorseless fashion – left is a picture of the White Horse Cafe in its heyday.
Louisa Lim at NPR reports that the site of the old White Horse Inn is among a number of buildings inside Shanghai’s former Jewish district in Hongkou likely to be knocked down to make way for (wait for it!) a widened road. As the demolition begins much has actually been revealed (and then trashed) such as old shop signs including one for Wuerstel Tenor, a sandwich shop, which had been covered for decades. The demolition will also see the end of other fading shop fronts at the heart of what was known as ‘Little Vienna’ including th
A couple more posts prompted by my recent trip to Australia.
