iThis, iThat, iBollix – I’m sticking with my trusty Zenith 5-S-313 – brand new in 1940, the highest tech in Shanghai and the smoothest lines ever seen in a wireless. Truly beautiful in a way an iPod Nano could only envy surely. And available at the Scientific Service Company (presumably the Apple Experience Store of its day) on Museum Road (now Huqiu Road). Reject the i tyranny – go Zenith today and tune in for real!
A little mystery here that maybe someone knows the answer to. I’ve been plugging the excellent Penguin Modern Classics (such as The Orwell Diaries,The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and the Mitford/Waugh Letters) and just recently read Sherwood King’s If I Die Before I Wake, an American noir classic written in 1938. If I Die Before I Wake formed the basis for the Orson Welles-Rita Hayworth film The Lady From Shanghai(filmed in 1947 and released in 1948 – see the trailer here). Indeed the book features a great shot of Hayworth (uncharacteristically blond rather than redheaded for the movie) smouldering on the cover. Now this is one of those cases where I’ve seen the film (several times over the years) before reading the book it was based on. The book makes no reference whatsoever to Shanghai. So I’m wondering how If I Die Before I Wake became The Lady from Shanghai?
Welles moved the action from New York estates and courtrooms to a yacht to heighten the tension a bit and some other changes were made on locations and some rather large plot details. But where did the Shanghai bit come from? At one point in the film verison Michael O’Hara(Orson Welles) a sailor vagabond type has a conversation with Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth). Speaking partly in the third-person, she tells him about her seedy past – she is a White Russian that she was born in Chefoo (now Yantai), on the China coast, where she was a prostitute (one of those legendary white flowers of the China coast a la Shanghai Lil and Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express):
Elsa: Her parents were Russian, white Russian. You never heard of the place where she comes from…Gamble? She’s done it for a living.
Michael: I’ll bet you a dollar I’ve been to the place where you were born.
Elsa: Chefoo.
Michael: It’s on the China coast. Chefoo. It’s the second wickedest city in the world.
Elsa: What’s the first?
Michael: Macao. Wouldn’t you say so?
Elsa: I would. I worked there…How do you rate Shanghai? I worked there too…You need more than luck in Shanghai.
Indeed you do!
But None of this is in the book. So who cooked that bit up and raised it to the level that it became the title of the movie? Welles is credited with the screenplay (and King with the original book) though, as far as I know, Welles had no particular bent for Shanghai or China. So where on earth did it creep in, especially when If I Die Before I Wake is a great title anyway? Answers anyone? theories? Did Shanghai simply signify wickedness and sin and so therefore take the audience’s minds straight to where Welles wanted them?
Until any answers are forthcoming this post is at least an excuse to stick up a Rita Hayworth picture (as if an excuse were really necessary)!
The intense urbanisation and total lack of green in Shanghai can sometimes get on the nerves of even the most hardened city boy. Thanks to Gary Jones for these marvelous and relaxing pictures of the grasslands along the Russian-Chinese border.
If you’re in Hong Kong and want to know more about how China is getting fatter and what it all means then the FCC is for you on Wednesday September 22nd.
Wednesday September 22, Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club Lunch
A disastrous side effect of China’s booming economy – along with pollution and a growing income gap – is the effect of obesity on the fragile healthcare system. Rates of obesity are escalating in China’s cities, with 200 million people out of a total of 1.3 billion overweight – over 15%.
The issue of China’s rising obesity is one of potentially global economic significance. Mr. Crabbe has co-authored with Paul French, the book “Fat China, How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation”, which reviews the growing problem of obesity in China and its relationship to the nation’s changing diet, lifestyle, foreign fast food and already overburdened healthcare system.
As co-founder of Access Asia, Matthew Crabbe has been analysing the consumer economy of China for two decades, focusing on China’s consumer lifestyles, and the effects on China’s people. As well as co-authoring “One Billion Shoppers: Accessing Asia’s Consuming Passions” with Paul French, Mr. Crabbe has written Women in China: Women Consumers and Lifestyle Trends (2007, Access Asia) and Kids in China: Children Consumers and Lifestyle Trends (2007, Access Asia).
Ojinam in its heyday was one of Seoul’s top restaurants and a stunning piece of traditional architecture. It has also seen some of the most dramatic moments in South Korea’s political history – secret meetings with the North Koreans etc etc. More details on the restaurant and building here and here. And now it is coming down and being demolished to allow construction of a chain hotel of the usually particularly bland Accor style – ‘a page of our history is disappearing’ Yun Sang-koo of the National Trust of Korea told AP.
So the ongoing destruction of China’s heritage and the rule of property developers over preservationists seems to have annoyed someone higher up the Chinese food chain than normal. An article in the China Daily entitled ‘Developers Plow Ahead Despite Sites’ Historic Status‘. Not exactly breaking news to any resident of Peking, Shanghai or any other Chinese city but also rarely acknowledged.
The third National Cultural Relics Census revealed that 30,000 heritage sites had disappeared by end of 2009 – and that’s just the ones they’ve deemed heritage sites – most old housing in Shanghai has no such status to provide even this veneer of protection. Examples include a temple destroyed to make way for new developments in an area of Anhui declared ‘the land of Chinese folk culture and art’. One could also point back to the destruction of the old Shanghai Rowing Club building (despite a preservation order) that was cleared to make way for a Bund historical project!! Sometimes irony is funny, but often heartbreaking too.
As usual though when these types of stories appear this one does no more than note that property developers (they do not mention the connivance of local Party officials obviously) do not respect history and destroy it quickly before any protests. Answers as to how to stop this – crackdown and punish developers, local officials in hoc with them etc etc are studiously absent. It happens, it will continue to happen, it’s a bit of a shame but c’est la vie is always the line with these stories – I suppose that any more digging would uncover some truths those in power are not so keen to come out. Personally I’ve yet to see a developer destroy a building in Shanghai that wasn’t a Party-sanctioned act.
The picture accompanying the article shows the smashing down of a temple to allow the property developers to get in there and make some money – the usual story.
Sat down in Peking the other week with Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei and we chatted about my new book Fat China. Goldkorn is a long term and serious China Hand so sensible questions were in full flow. And despite being outside (on the new and lovely roof terrace of the Beijing Bookworm) the sound quality is excellent and I actually sound reasonably intelligent for once.
BTW: Fat China is touring Asia in the next couple of weeks with my co-author Matthew Crabbe speaking in Hong Kong, Beijing, Suzhou and Shanghai (twice – here if you’re an early riser and here if you’re a night owl)
I’ve plugged Linda Jaivin’s book – A Most Immoral Woman – about nasty old George Morrison and his dirty lusts after that old slapper Mae Ruth Perkins before – and a fun read it is too – and based on fact. Admittedly Linda has a bit more time for Morrison than me – I think him a fraud and a spiteful imperialist who stabbed many people in the back, hogged the glory, overrated everything about himself but his ambition and has generally been overpraised by ill-informed commentators and sycophantic biographers in the past. But enough of my prejudices – Linda will be in Shanghai to share hers with the Royal Asiatic Society on the 18th if you can get along – details below:
In Bed with ‘Chinese’ Morrison and A Most Immoral Woman
LINDA JAIVIN
Saturday 18th September, 2010 at 4.00pm
Venue: The (dreadfully up itself and architectural monstrosity that is the…) PuLi Hotel and Spa, 1 ChangDe Road, JingAn District
In early 1904, the famous Australian China Correspondent for The Times of London, George ‘Chinese’ Morrison was obsessed with two things: the Russo-Japanese War, with which he was so closely identified that it was nicknamed ‘Morrison’s War’, and the charming and wealthy young American nymphomaniac, Mae Ruth Perkins. Chasing Maysie and chasing the war, Morrison travelled up and down the Chinese coast and over to Japan numerous times over the first half of 1904, trying to control two equally uncontrollable forces. Researching this story for her novel A Most Immoral Woman, Linda Jaivin uncovered some fascinating and either unexplored or mostly forgotten bits of history, including fellow correspondent Lionel James’s visionary quest to introduce wireless telegraphy to the field of war correspondence. Jaivin was also the first to track down the files on the irrepressibly naughty but scrupulously honest young woman at the heart of the story.
Linda Jaivin is the internationally published author of eight books, including the comic-erotic bestsellerEat Me and five other novels, as well as a collection of essays and the China memoir The Monkey and the Dragon. She is also the author of numerous published short stories, essays, translations from Chinese including the subtitles for major films such as Hero and Farewell My Concubine. She has also written for theatre, and is a cultural critic and popular public speaker. Her latest book is A Most Immoral Woman(Fourth Estate, HarperCollins Australia 2009). Jaivin was China correspondent for Asiaweek Magazine for the first half of the 1980s. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
DONATION: Entrance: RMB 30 (RAS members) and RMB 80 (non-members)Â those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption. Drinks and snacks will available for order and individual purchase at the venue. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.
