A First Day Cover from 1948

Among the last First Day Covers issued by the Chinese Post Office while still under Nationalist control…

More on Bertram Sheldrake, The South London King of East Turkestan…

Some time ago I did a story for the South China Morning Post weekend magazine on Bertram Sheldrake, a UK Muslim convert offered the job of King of the short-lived Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (known as ETR – & now in what is Xinjiang) in 1933. Nobody in the region was best pleased! You can read that here.

Then rather wonderfully Sharon O’Connor, a local historiain in East Dulwich, looked into Sheldrake’s backgroud in East Dulwich, London SE19 & was a winner in the UK National Archives 20sStreets local history writing competition. So a little more on Khalid Sheldrake and his South East London life here…

Lianchang Silversmiths of Shanghai

I’ve posted about half a dozen other silversmiths in Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before (just put ‘silversmith’ in the search box to see). Here’s a smaller and less well known silversmith that moved from Canton to Shanghai sometime around the late nineteenth century as the trade moved up the coast…Lianchang (or sometimes spelt Lainchang). They were in business roughly c.1890-1925

Silver fruit knives and forks

Hong Kong Traffic Cop Cabins of the 1950s and 1960s

For no particular reason a Hong Kong Traffic Police cabin in the 1950s and then in the 1960s..

Book #18 on the Ultimate China Bookshelf – Stefan Landsberger’s Chinese Propaganda Posters

Book #18 on my Ultimate China Bookshelf for The China Project is Stefan Landsberger’s Chinese Propaganda Posters…click here to read…

“A lavishly illustrated study traces the development of the style and content of the Chinese propaganda poster in the decade of reform, from its traditional origins to its use as a tool for political and economic purposes.”
—Routledge

Creators of Modern China (British Museum): 100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796-1912

Timed to appear to coincide with the new China’s Hidden Century exhibition at the British Museum that starts in May (here), Creators of Modern China, edited by Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell have compiled 100 biographies of key figures of the late Qing Dynasty.

This book sprang from a simple but original ambition: to provide an understanding – told through the lives of 100 significant individuals – of how China transformed from dynastic empire to a modern, republican nation during the period 1796 to 1912.

Both famous and surprisingly little-known women and men are brought together in eight thematic sections that illuminate the birth of modern China. Featured figures include the Dowager Empress Cixi, the power behind the throne of the Qing dynasty for fifty years; Yu Rongling, who is regarded as the founder of modern dance in China and who trained in Paris with Isadora Duncan; Duanfang, China’s first serious collector of international art before being murdered by his own troops in the 1911 Revolution that destroyed the Qing dynasty; Shi Yang, the greatest woman pirate in the world who is now celebrated in popular culture as a powerful feminine icon; Luo Zhenyu, the ‘father’ of Chinese archaeology whose discoveries confirmed the antiquity of Chinese civilization; and many others.

Written by a large team of specialists, this book breathes life into China’s history and international relations, providing multiple insights into the history of this vast country and its role on the world stage.

Harry A Franck on Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen, 1925

I happened to be reading Harry A Franck’s Roving Through Southern China (1925). Franck was known as “The Prince of Vagabonds” and spent a lot of time travelling all over China, Hong Kong and Macao. Visiting Canton (Guangzhou) in 1923 he spent some time with Sun Yat-sen and noted the ominous and looming prescence of Morris Cohen, Two-Gun Cohen, SYS’s famus bodyguard. The legends about Cohen started young – already in the 1920s Franck is talking about Cohen’s boxing exploits and time in the Wild West (neither of these was quite true – admittedly he did brawl a bit and he spent time in Canada).

O Que Foi Nao Volta Ser… Macao Past and Present with Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro

An interesting new book of photographs from Macao-based photo-journalist Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro. O Que Foi Nao Volta Ser… (or What Was Doesn’t Come Back to Be), a project carried out between November 2021 and November 2022 that involves placing old photographs of Macau, taken in black and white between the 1930s and 1990s, in the same places today. The original images, many captured by unknown authors, are part of Gonçalo’s personal collection of old photographs, acquired in auctions and antique houses.

Copies are available his website (here) as well as Livraria Portuguesa bookstore in Macao…