All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Enjoying Guy Ritchie’s Young Sherlock (on Amazon). Brilliant to see Taiwanese actress Zine Tseng as the Princess Gulun Shou’an running around, and doing a fair bit of cool fighting, in Victorian Oxford.
An 1858 watercolour by the naval artist Frederick Le Breton Bedwell of the “Presentation of the Victoria Cross by Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, Commander in Chief of HM Ships and Vessels on the East India and China Station” to:
Present at the ceremony were:
Now what is interesting is that this ceremony is taking place in “the Palace of the Tartar General in the City of Canton”, the official residence and administrative seat (yamen).
Yet Pretty John was awarded the VC in 1854 at the Battle of Inkerman against the Russians as part of the Crimean War. Gorman also earned his VC at Inkerman while Sheppard was got his for attempting to blow up the Russian Flagship at Sebastopol.
What happened was that all three men were on ships that left the Crimea at the end of the war in 1856 for China. In early 1858, British and French forces occupied Canton (Guangzhou) and the Palace of the Tartar General. So the medals finally caught up with the recipients who had then gone on to fight in the Second Opium War and received their Crimean War medals in occupied Canton.
Before it gets perhaps a little too hot in Hong Kong you might like to take my VoiceMap GPS walking tour that takes you through Hong Kong’s little visited art-deco gems in Kowloon. Download here or use the app in the Apple store (here)… The blurb for the tour is below…
Kowloon Peninsula is a window onto Hong Kong’s architectural evolution.
On this walking tour, you’ll discover some of the most impressive yet overlooked Art Deco and Modernist structures near Hong Kong’s vibrant local markets. From villas commissioned by wealthy merchants to modernist apartment buildings, schools, and churches, you’ll see how avant-garde architectural trends reached this corner of the British Empire during a crucial period of its development in the 1900s.
The tour starts at Mary Knoll Convent School on Waterloo Road, with its fascinating blend of Art Deco and Gothic Revival styles. You’ll weave past the startlingly modern St. Teresa’s and see what is perhaps Hong Kong’s finest Art Deco treasure on Prince Edward Road West.
You’ll ascend Kadoorie Hill and the Braga Circuit to find an often overlooked enclave of Art Deco villas. Each property features distinctive architectural elements like wraparound balconies, curved edges, and nautical motifs.
The tour ends at Mong Kok East MTR Station, where working-class hustle-and-bustle contrasts with the exclusive residences of Kadoorie Hill.
On this 90-minute tour, you’ll also have a chance to:
Explore the once-significant Boundary Street, which formerly marked the border between British-controlled Kowloon and Qing Dynasty territory
Appreciate the detailed Art Deco wave patterns and cantilevered balconies of Prince Edward Road West’s meticulously restored apartments
Walk through Yuen Po Bird Market, where songbird enthusiasts still gather to socialise and compare their prized avian companions
Find out how the evolution of the Garden Cities Movement and the international style of Art Deco in Kowloon Tong influenced Kowloon’s architecture
This tour is a rare opportunity to explore an overlooked architectural enclave that survived Hong Kong’s development frenzy. By the end, you’ll have a sense of how European design sensibilities were adapted to the tropical climate of this dynamic colonial port city.
Sci-Fi writers Christopher Priest and Nina Allan’s new biography of JG Ballard…The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J. G. Ballard (Bloomsbury)….
Unsurprisingly for a bio by two sci-fi writers The Illuminated man focuses largely on Ballard’s novels and his hyper-surrealism that really redefined British sci-fi in the decades after WW2. The authors cover Ballard’s Shanghai origins and time in Lunghwa Internment Camp.
FYI: here’s my take on the influences of Shanghai on Ballard’s later writing from the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2021 – Ballardian Dystopias in Wartime Shanghai
This portrait of the artist and writer Chiang Yee (Jiang Yi) by Xu Beihong was up for sale last year at Bonham’s in New York. It obviously didn’t sell as now it’s being offered by Bonham’s in Hong Kong (for an asking price of US$41K-57K on April 28th here). Sadly Chiang Yee doesn’t fetch serious prices these days, but Xu Beihong does. He’s much appreciated in the PRC and has his own Xu Beihong Memorial Museum in Beijing (which was closed for “refurbishment” when I tried to visit in late 2025). Xu travelled in Europe extensively in the 1930s and visited London in 1933, where Chiang Yee was living in Belsize Park (you can listen to my BBC Radio 3 doc on Chiang, his friends and London here or read the collection of essays on the subject edited by Da Zhang, Paul Bevan and Anne Witchard, Chiang Yee and his Circle).
Do you remember the days of the Shanghai International Literary Festival at M on the Bund? Literary events at Capital M in Beijing and M on the Fringe in Hong Kong? Heady days!!
Well, this year M is back with the M Festival in the grounds of the historic Abbaye Notre-Dame de Nanteuil in Nanteuil-en-Vallée, southwestern France…. It’ll all be happening on a packed weekend across July 25 and 26 with books, as well as music and (of course) food. Festival passes are priced at just €50 per person for the entire weekend. And here’s the speaker list:
Alan Hollinghurst, Amy Tan, Fuchsia Dunlop, Marie NDaiye, Victor Mallet, Paul French, Anne Sebba, Audrey Sedano, Pauline Dreyfus, Simone Gelin, Tash Aw, Laurent Morin, Pankaj Mishra, Aube Rey Lescure, Yin Myo Su – Misuu, Jean Marc Souvira, Helen Scales…
For more details, tickets, travel details and accommodation click here…
Book event: Worrying about the Television Audience in Postsocialist China – University of Westminster – 22/5/26 – 4PM
Speakers: Dr How Wee Ng and Dr Heather Inwood
Date: 22 May 2026
Venue: UG 04, University of Westminster
Reserve a seat before 21 May 2026.
More details here
I posted last month (here and here) on the mothballing of a number of longtang in Shanghai – emptied out, boarded up and awaiting…. well, what? the wrecking ball or refurbishment? Across the city this is the case – presumably a halt called as so many property companies in Shanghai have gone bust. Sometimes economic woes are a preservationist’s best friend.
And here another example – a traditional shikumen stone gateway – 里康餘: Li Kang Yu; 29弄: Lane 29 on Shouning Lu (Rue Buissonnet) just east of Xizang Nan Lu (Boulevard de Montigny). Constructed 1935. Cleared and boarded up some years ago and now just seemingly forgotten…. Such “mothballed” shikumen proliferate across Shanghai awaiting their fate…
