1891 Hong Kong Jubilee Stamp

A stamp issued to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the colony at Hong Kong…

British Admiralty Map – Macau to Pedro Blanco

Produced in 1899 by the Hydropgraphic Office in London for the Admiralty, a map of the SE China Coast including Macao and running to Pedro Blanco.

Pedro Blanco by the way is an isolated rock pinnacle 85km east of Hong Kong…

A Final Coda to Anna May Wong in Elstree Calling (1930)

I blogged recently on Anna May Wong’s fleeting but memorable appearance in Elstree Calling a filmed review show from 1930 where she appeared in a strange skit on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Those posts are here and here…

My thanks to Dr Anne Witchard of the University of Westminster (whose book Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie: Limehouse Nights and the Queer Spell of Chinatown discusses Anna May Wong’s London sojourn in depth) who points out that Wong is wearing her costume (sans headpiece) from Piccadilly, the film she made in London the year before, 1929. Piccadilly was made by British International Pictures which was in a consortium with British National Studios and Elstree Studios, so perhaps her costume as Shosho, London pub scullery maid who becomes a West End performer, was just waiting for her when she turned up to film Elstree Calling?

Book #17 The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf – Liu Shaoqi’s How to be a Good Communist (1939)

“The question I shall discuss is how members of the Communist Party should cultivate and temper themselves,” Liu Shaoqi wrote in the early days of the Chinese Communist Party. Is anyone still interested in the answer? click here to read book #17 on The China Project’s Ultimate China Bookshelf…

Barbie introduces a new Anna May Wong Barbie

It may not look that much like her (while her image on the US Quarter was very good), but the new Anna May Wong Barbie doll does at least exist…

Here’s the info from NBC…

Author Q&A with Philip Snow, author of China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord

My monthly author Q&A this April for the China-Britain Business Council’s Focus magazine is with Philip Snow, author of the authoritive China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale University Press)…click here

My Latest SCMP Long Read – The beautiful art, but ultimately tragic life, of Tan Teng-pho

My latest long read for the South China Morning Post weekend magazine – What would interwar Shanghai or Tokyo look like almost empty? How a Taiwanese artist found fame by stripping cities of people & traffic, leaving only calm. The beautiful art but ultimately tragic life of Tan Teng-pho – click here

A Fette-Li Rug from the 1920s

A Fette-Li Chinese rug, c.1920s. I wrote about the Fette-Li Rug Co for the South China Morning Post last year (click here). Their rugs in good condition are pretty rare now (moths, wear & tear, not valued much in China for a long time) so good to see new ones not seen before.