Lin Xinwu’s The Wedding Party (translated by Jeremy Tiang) is a lovely evocation of early 1980s Beijing hutong life…
On a December morning in 1982, the courtyard of a Beijing siheyuan―a lively quadrangle of homes―begins to stir. Auntie Xue’s son Jiyue is getting married today, and she is determined to make the day a triumph. Despite Jiyue’s woeful ignorance in matters of the heart―and the body. Despite a chef in training tasked with the onerous responsibility of preparing the banquet. With a cross-generational multitude of guests, from anxious family members to a fretful bridal party―not to mention exasperating friends, interfering neighbors, and wedding crashers―what will the day ahead bring?
Set at a pivotal point after the turmoil of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Liu Xinwu’s tale weaves together a rich tapestry of characters, intertwined lives, and stories within stories. The Wedding Party is a touching, hilarious portrait of life in this singular city, all packed into a Beijing courtyard on a single day that manages to be both perfectly normal and utterly extraordinary at the same time.
Now, i’m not a gun expert so i might have got a lot wrong here, but here goes and i’m sure any gun experts out there will add/correct me. As readers of my book City of Devils will know the Mauser C-96 (The “Red Nine” in English in Shanghai and the the “Box Cannon”, presumably due to its look, in Chinese) was the preferred weapon on many late 1930s/1940s Shanghai gangsters. It crops up all the time in newspaper and police reports. The Mauser C96 was a semi-automatic pistol originally produced by the German arms manufacturer, Mauser, between 1896 to 1937. However, crucially many unlicensed copies of the gun were also manufactured in China. In China it often came fitted with a detachable wooden shoulder stock – a “broom-handle grip”.
I knew from my research that they were often warn under the arm in a holster, but had never seen an example of this. I was looking at some pictures the other day and was able to zoom in on this guy – who excellently displays a shoulder holster and a Mauser. This picture is from about 1939. I’m not sure if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, but I wouldn’t get on the wrong side of him to make him draw that thing!…
In Touring China, Yajun Mo explores how early twentieth century Chinese sightseers described the destinations that they visited, and how their travel accounts gave Chinese readers a means to imagine their vast country.
The roots of China’s tourism market stretch back over a hundred years, when railroad and steamship networks expanded into the coastal regions. Tourism-related businesses and publications flourished in urban centers while scientific exploration, investigative journalism, and wartime travel propelled many Chinese from the eastern seaboard to its peripheries. Mo considers not only accounts of overseas travel and voyages across borderlands, but also trips within China. On the one hand, via travel and travel writing, the unity of China’s coastal regions, inland provinces, and western frontiers was experienced and reinforced. On the other, travel literature revealed a persistent tension between the aspiration for national unity and the anxiety that China might fall apart. Touring China tells a fascinating story about the physical and intellectual routes people took on various journeys, against the backdrop of the transition from Chinese empire to nation-state.
This book offers an intimate portrait of early twentieth-century Harbin, a city in Manchuria where Russian colonialists, and later refugees from the Revolution, met with Chinese migrants. The deep social and intellectual fissures between the Russian and Chinese worlds were matched by a multitude of small efforts to cross the divide as the city underwent a wide range of social and political changes.
Using surviving letters, archival photographs, and rare publications, this book also tells the personal story of a forgotten city resident, Baron Roger Budberg, a physician who, being neither Russian nor Chinese, nevertheless stood at the very centre of the cross-cultural divide in Harbin. The biography of an important city, fleshing out its place in the global history of East-West contacts and twentieth-century diasporas, this book is also the history of an individual life and an original experiment in historical writing.
Just saw this photo the other day, which is on display at Shijia Hutong Museum in Beijing. It’s George Bernard (GB) Shaw on the step of his somewhat unique writing hut at his home Shaw’s Corner in Hertfordshire, just outside London. With him is the Chinese novelist Gu Yuxiu (left) and Professor and author Chen Xiying (Yuan Chen, husband of Ling Shuhua). They had arrived in England in 1945 and a visit to Shaw was de rigueur for visiting Chinese intellectuals. I’m sure they admired Shaw’s hut, which you can still see as Shaw’s Corner, and the writing hut, are now maintained by the National Trust. What made the hut sort of unique was that it was mounted on a revolving mechanism so that as he worked, Shaw could follow the sun throughout the day. Tucked away behind trees, this is the place where many of his plays were written.
The China-Britain Business Council magazine Focus gathered together some of the author Q&As I’ve written up this year for a useful end of year reading list…..click here
I’ve posted previously on Shanghai furniture maker (and after 1949 Hong Kong based) JL George (click here and here). One thing that interests me and, perhaps, makes us think slightly differently of inter-war Shanghai is the early 1920s, early 1930s JL George official stamp. It hopefully makes us think a little bit more about the longer term influences of European modernism on Shanghai and helps challenge the cult of the art-deco in Shanghai.
What I refer to as Shanghai’s ‘cult of art-deco’ is the tendancy by commentators to refer to everything – architecture as well as furniture and interiors – as art-deco. This accentuates the idea of Shanghai as an art-deco city but minimises the broader, and longer trends of colonial-comprador, classical, neo-classicial, modernist, streamline-moderne as well as Mock Tudor, Queene Anne, Moorish, Mediterranean etc alongside unique Shanghai forms of the shikumen and lilong.
The JL George stamp below, to be found on all their pieces of Shanghai-made furniture specifically mentions ‘Chinese Beaux-Arts Carving’. You won’t come across this a lot on the plethora of blog posts, magazine articles and books on Shanghai, due largely to the Cult of Art-Deco that has latterly pervaded the city. What the JL George stamp shows is that earlier and longer running modernist trends were also important in Shanghai and show a longer and deeper trend of modernism in the treaty port.
A good chance to have a tour round the building, just behind the Bund, that was completed in 1933 as the home of the Royal Asiatic Society North China branch – a lecture hall, extensive library and fascinating Natural History Museum. It is now, after a long time of falling into disrepair, the home of the Rockbund Museum.
RAS Art Focus – Places & Spaces: Art in Shanghai – Rockbund Art Museum
The city of Shanghai currently offers a wide array of art museums with exhibitions featuring works by globally renowned artists and collections from some of the most prestigious art institutions in the world. Using our own city as a case study, the RAS Art Focus 2021-22 curated series Places & Spaces: Art in Shanghai aims to explore the phenomenon of museum culture in Shanghai. Each month, Art Historian and Critic Julie Chun will take us to museums, both big and small, to understand the pluralist facets of art institutions with unique opportunities to hear from museum directors, curators and artists.
The Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) holds a special place in Shanghai history as the former Royal Asiatic Society building that housed a lecture hall, a library and a natural history museum. Julie Chun who has been researching the evolving changes pertaining to the RAS China and the building that the Society once occupied on 20 Huqiu Lu, will provide the context of how the Society was established and the circumstances that led to the completion in 1933 of the Society’s architecture that eventually became the RAM in 2010.
Oranda Hou, the Senior Development Manager of RAM, will discuss the building’s most recent renovations and highlight how historical preservation was respected while the necessary modifications required to meet contemporary needs of the museum were achieved. This will be followed by a tour of the Swiss conceptual artist John Armleder’s solo exhibition guided by Billy Tang, the Senior Curator of RAM.
About the Exhibition:“Again, Just Again” is a celebration of John Armleder’s five decades of work inspired by his inter-disciplinary practice. The exhibition features display of new and existing paintings, ready-mades, works on paper, site-specific works and archival material. With each floor of the museum, the spaces inside and outside of the exhibition halls have been transformed through a unique scenography assembled to guide the audience through a choreography of unexpected encounters and visual experiences.
*To respect COVID restrictions, this event will be limited to 20 on a first come, first sign up basis with prepayment made to the RAS Treasurer. Those confirmed and attending are required to bring a face mask and green health code. Thank you for your understanding.
Sunday, 21st November 20212:45 pm registration3:00 pm to 5:00 pmSpeakers: Julie Chun, Oranda Hou and Billy Tang
