All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
I do know Dave Schooler was a Jewish bandmaster who had a long career and carried on through World War Two – as to what his show “Shanghai” was all about…I have no idea….
There aren’t many novels that deal with the fall out from the end of the Dutch East Indies, the collapse of Holland’s empire in the Far East and the creation of Indonesia. However, Janwillem van de Wetering’s Outsider in Amsterdam does, to an extent. A central figure in the novel, set in Amsterdam, is a former Papuan fighter living in Amsterdam. Van de Wetering was Dutch, but lived for a time in Japan and was a student of Zen Buddhism. Published in 1975 it was the first in Van de Wetering’s Grijpstra and de Gier detective series.
On a quiet street in downtown Amsterdam, the founder of a new religious society/commune-a group that calls itself ‘Hindist’ and mixes elements of various ‘Eastern’ traditions-is found hanging from a ceiling beam. Detective-Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier of the Amsterdam police are sent to investigate what looks like a simple suicide, but they are immediately suspicious of the circumstances.
Earlier covers highlighted the East Indies theme a bit more in various ways (not always strictly accurately)….
There’s now a Japanese translation of Midnight in Peking out there…..
American newspapers gossip about Chiang Kai-shek and whether or not he’s up to the job in 1944….
An interesting new Penguin Special on Beethoven in China….
At the turn of the twentieth century, students returning from abroad brought Beethoven to China. The composer’s perseverance in the face of adversity and his musical genius resonated in a nation searching for a way forward. Beethoven remained a durable part of Chinese life in the decades that followed, becoming an icon to intellectuals, music fans and party cadres alike, and playing a role in major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalisation of US-China relations. Jindong Cai, whose love for the musician began during the Cultural Revolution, and culture journalist Sheila Melvin tell the compelling story of Beethoven and the Chinese people.
Alan Geoffrey Yates (aka Carter Brown) was an English-born, Australian pulp writer who wrote in numerous genres under numerous non-de-plumes. He was translated into multiple languages and had multiple covers. Here are just a series of various covers for his 1962 pulp Hong Kong Caper…
An interesting new book on life pre-Canton from Ng Chin-keong…..and a full review of the book on the Asian Review of Books site here….
Today, a tragic tale of a woman scorned and abandoned to her fate. I don’t know it all but I do know some of it. The story concerns Eroeda Sinitskaya, a 25-year-old stateless White Russian who lived in Shanghai and survived the war there. As far as can be gleaned from this article from March 1947 she must have, at some point, begun a relationship with an American soldier stationed in Shanghai following the city’s liberation in 1945. Eroeda acted as his interpreter. It would seem that he proposed and arranged for her to come to America to marry him – a classic GI Bride tale. Except that when Eroeda arrived at San Francisco ready to start her new life she found a letter waiting for her, from 27-year-old Former Army Sergeant Harry Le Roy Donaldson, telling her that instead of marrying her he was re-marrying his divorced wife. His letter to her read:
“I am truly very, very sorry. The world is full of good men who will be very lucky to have you for a wife.”
And so, instead of travelling on to Cameron, Missouri to start a new life Eroeda was kept at San Francisco and then returned to Shanghai. She graciously told the papers that she didn’t blame Donaldson, they had been separated for a year since he had left Shanghai. Eroeda did apply for a 6-month visitors permit to remain in America, though it was highly unlikely she would be granted one…..
However, after she appeared in the papers the American Civil Liberties Union took up her case and she was eventually granted leave to remain. It was a hard fought case that went all the way to a House Judiciary Sub-Committee with the US Attorney General eventually agreeing to a stay of deportation. Her case was taken up by Rep. Havenner (D-California) who submitted a bill calling for her to be allowed to apply for naturalisation. He argued that she was able to produce both letters from Donaldson urging her to come to America, stating that when she did they would be married and copies of his army discharge papers and so therefore should be allowed to stay.
And then the happy ending…
Donaldson
Eroeda had arrived in America in March 1947…the campaign to keep her in America had run through the summer and autumn. And then she met Dr. J Murray Luck, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford. They were married in November 1947 in a Russian Orthodox ceremony presided over the Most Rev Basil Shaposhnikoff….
PS: I have to admit I rather like J. Murray Luck – he pops up again in 1950 in trouble for purchasing Henry Miller’s then scandalous Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn on a trip to Paris and getting busted at US customs bringing the banned-in-the-USA books back with him. In the late 1950s he became an early and committed proponent of a woman’s right to abortion too, argued for greater teaching of contraception in schools and additional funds to research a contraceptive pill.