All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Though long a fan of his previous books I was distinctly unimpressed with his latest novel Shanghai – and quite where he got some of his notions of the place from? Ha! what can you do, the old town will always be a City of Devils. See my review, and thoughts on writing about Old Shanghai in fiction and creative/literary non-fiction in the China Books Review here…
Is old Shanghai’s history at risk of being overtaken by fiction? (& worse, subpar fiction!) – click here to read in the China Books Review…
Every couple of months I write a column for Macau Closer magazine on representations of Macao in popular culture. This time the story of a man stuck forever sailing between Hong Kong and Macao.
Published in 1957 Simon Kent’s Ferry to Hong Kong is a novel almost unique in its simplicity, though it could perhaps be better named Ferry to Macau. Let me explain…. Clarry Mercer is a troubled and washed up American in Hong Kong who, after a bar fight, is expelled from the British colony. The cops escort aboard the Fa Tsan, better known as the “Fat Annie”, a Victorian-era paddle steamer that provides a cheap, but slow, ferry between Kowloon and Macau. Arriving at the ‘drugged, stucco sprawl of Macau’, the Portuguese authorities deem his papers invalid and refuse him permission to enter. He then becomes a virtual captive aboard the Fat Annie, seemingly doomed to repeatedly make the crossing between Macau and Kowloon forever.
The book was a bestseller – did everyone feel somewhat adrift, unable to settle in the post-war 1950s? Britain’s Rank film studios made a movie version in 1959. Mercer became an Austrian called Hart (played by Curt Jürgens), Herzl was played by a suitably corpulent Orson Welles, and the dark Latin beauty Anna became a prim, blonde English governess played by Sylvia Syms.
Click here to read in full…
Wellington Street, Hong Kong, c.1850 by Count Manó Andrássy (1821-1891) & featured in Reise des Graf en Emanuel Andrasy in Ostindien Ceylon, Java, China und Bengalen (Budapest, 1859) which includes a depiction of Hong Kong.
Qing Chang and Shan Huang’s The Great Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Royal Collins)….
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the dispersal of Chinese cultural relics from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Following the Opium Wars, there was a surge of Western interest in uncovering treasures in China, leading to the removal of countless artifacts by foreign explorers and antique dealers. These national treasures were lost overseas, making their return to China nearly impossible. Beginning with the exploits of China’s Western explorers, such as Sven Hedin, the book unfolds in eleven chapters, detailing the adventures of figures like Stein, von Le Coq, Otani Kozui, and others in locations such as Lop Nur, Dunhuang, and the Blackwater City. It chronicles their plundering of precious cultural relics, including the Berzic Caves wall paintings, Han Dynasty documents, Dunhuang documents, and numerous other valuable artifacts. Filled with meticulously researched historical details, this book serves as both a lament and a commemoration of a century of Chinese cultural relics dispersed worldwide.
There’s a book giveaway over on instagram courtesy of Bookazine Hong Kong and the Hong Kong International Literary Festival…
Wallis’s 1924 Hong Kong sojourn – for AmCham HK…. click here to read..
A little heads up for March 8 – bringing Wallis in China to Soho House in conversation with the fabulous Michelle Garnaut as part of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival – it’ll be a fun night – gossip, scandal, 1920s China, books & wine!
