China Rhyming

Unseasonal Flurries in Peking

Paul French — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:50:37 +0000

Spent the weekend at the Beijing International Literary Festival – which gets better and better each year. I can report that Guy Delisle was one of the nicest guys I ever met, Barbara Demick was fascinating, Jonathan Fenby had some great old China anecdotes as ever, Mike Meyer laid bare the hutongs of Peking, Louise Welsh was a dream and I got introduced to the work of Zoe Strachan and Alberto Ruy Sanchez and became an instant fan of both. Meanwhile I rediscovered a taste for live poetry after going rather cold on it thanks to storming sets from UK dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah and the manic slam poetry of Steve Connell.

And then a wonderful thing happened – it snowed in mid-March (OK, not so wonderful from a climate change point of view perhaps). Now some cities suit snow and some don’t (London, for instance). Peking always looks great when the snow falls – somehow it just takes on a special charm. Here’s Wu Dao Ying Hutong near the Yonghegong Temple on Sunday at about midday.

Inner Mongolian Steam Trains

Paul French — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:28:59 +0000

Just a quick note to point to an interesting piece in the Financial Times, with some nice pics, of the last steam engines in Inner Mongolia.

Patriotic Warlords, Big Eared Gangsters & Dancing All Night: China Between the Wars

Paul French — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:16:10 +0000

A roadblock of events this coming week. I’m on the road round the China festivals with Jonathan Fenby talking about China between the wars and current reassessments of the Republican period – if you’re in Peking or Suzhou pop along why don’t you.

Beijing International Literary Festival 2010

Patriotic Warlords, Big Eared Gangsters & Dancing All Night: China Between the Wars

Paul French (Carl Crow – A Tough Old China Hand and Through the Looking Glass) and Jonathan Fenby (The Penguin History of Modern China) hark back to pre-PRC times to look at and reassess the heady days of China in the 1930’s.

Date: Saturday 13th March

Time: 12.30pm

Venue: The Beijing Bookworm – Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Price: RMB50

More Details and Tickets: http://www.beijingbookworm.com/literaryfestival.php

And then again at the:

Suzhou International Literary Festival 2010

Date: Tuesday 16th March

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: The Suzhou Bookworm – Gunxiufang 77, Shiquan Road, Suzhou

Price: RMB30

More Details and Tickets: http://www.suzhoubookworm.com/literaryfestival.php

Sex in the Palace – Backhouse, The Empress and Randy Old Morrison

Paul French — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:00:04 +0000

Last weekend at the Beijing International Literary Festival a bunch of presumably horny little devils got together to talk about the sexual antics of the court and assorted foreigners in the dying days of the Qing Dynasty in Peking. Derek Sandhaus (who’s just edited and put out a new edition of Backhouse and Bland’s China Under the Empress Dowager), Linda Jaivin (who’s spicy novelisation of that dirty old sod Morrison of Peking’s lust life came out last year) and Lijia Zhang (who just likes talking about sex I think) all got together and discussed the shenanigans in the Forbidden City, Morrison’s untameable libido and Backhouse’s racy tome.

Missed it? so did I sadly, but someone recorded it and stuck it up on the web so you can listen to it here.

Portraying North Korea – Beijing International Literary Festival 2010

Paul French — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:51:46 +0000

Another plug for an event I’m moderating in Peking soon:

Beijing International Literary Festival 2010

North Korea

One country – several very different ways to portray it. Join graphic narrative artist Guy Delisle, reporter Barbara Demick with Paul French moderating as they discuss their work on the hermit kingdom in very different books including Delisle’s graphic novel Pyongyang and Demick’s recently published Nothing to Envy.

Date: Friday 12th March

Time: 6pm

Venue: The Beijing Bookworm, Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Price: RMB50

Tickets and more details: http://www.beijingbookworm.com/schedule2010.php

JG Ballard’s Childhood Home Gutted

Paul French — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:12:38 +0000

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.

A Few Posts from Paris 5 – The Grand Rex

Paul French — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:06:33 +0000

A final post from Paris and I can’t take my leave without noting one stunning and favourite piece of art-deco architecture in the city that looks to be in good shape – the Grand Rex cinema. The Grand Rex at No.1 Boulevard Poissoniere is simply stunning. Opening in 1932 it once had a seating capacity of 2,750,an art deco exterior and a baroque interior. Parisians flocked to see films and concerts until the Germans took it over during the war to show their Nazi bastards propaganda films.If you’ve got time you can do a quick tour – personally I saw the Sherlock Holmes movie.

A Few Posts from Paris 4 – Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales

Paul French — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:19:25 +0000

Another post from Paris – a quick note as I happened to pass the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. This, I assume is the successor to the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, founded in in Paris in 1795, that trained a stunning future generation of French Sinologists including the great (but infamously arrogant) inter-war Sinologist and survivor of the Boxer’s siege of Peking in 1900 Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) who, among other things, catalogued the wonders of the cave-temples of Dunhuang and Henri Maspero (1882-1945) who revealed much of the history of Daoism in China. By the 1850s just about every major continental European university had an Asian or oriental studies department and this movement was to gain pace in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the interests of empire largely overrode mere academic curiosity. However, as far as I know Paris was among the first, if not the first, to have a full department and institute.

A Few Posts from Paris 3 – Paris’s Original Chinatown

Paul French — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:48:03 +0000

As I’ve posted a lot about London’s original Chinatown, Limehouse, in the past (just put Limehouse in the search box to see these) it seems only fair to note Paris’s original Chinatown too. Paris now has two Chinatowns – one in the 13^th arrondisement near the Place d’Italie and a later one that has emerged around Belleville in the northeast of the city.

But the original Chinatown was l’Ilot Chalon. It became home to various Chinese settling in the French capital – sailors, travellers, students as well as having its numbers boosted by the Chinese men who came to work for the French as labourers during the First World War. It apparently became quite thriving but was completely demolished for various extensions tothe Gare de Lyon railway station. I have read that in 1988 a plaque was erected by city officials commemorating the former Chinatown but I couldn’t find it if it’s still there. However, one Chinese restaurant, the Village de Lyon, bravely soldiers on on what is left of the Rue de Chalon by the side of the station.

A Few Posts from Paris 2 – The CT Loo Gallery

Paul French — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:29:42 +0000

I know Paris quite well and having been visiting fairly regularly since a lad. However, the area around the Parc Monceau is not a district I know much at all (see yesterday’s post). One, rather splendid but rather un-Parisian building I’d never strolled past before understandably caught my eye so I’ve dug around on it a bit – the CT Loo Gallery at 48 Rue de Courcelles. It’s a quite amazing pagoda-inspired structure (though designed by a French architect) as you can see. Inside are Chinois style ceilings, a moon gate and a gallery carved with eighteenth and nineteenth century Indian wood. It was apparently founded in 1926 by Ching-Tsai Loo, a collector of Chinese origin and was Paris’s first major private collection of Asian art supplying museums of Asian art in Europe and America. The public can pop in and see parts of the house and collections of furniture and works of Chinese art as well as sculptures and art objects from Japan, Thailand, Burma and Tibet as well as China.