Barnes & Noble in the USA is offering a 25% pre-order promotion for just four days only–6/23-6/26! From 6/23-6/26, Barnes & Noble will be offering 25% off all online pre-orders for rewards & premium members only, including print, audio, and ebooks. Premium members get a bonus 10% off all preorders, too. There is a free membership option as well. Code required: Preorder25. Just click here…
Very pleased to blurb an early copy of David Guerrero’s You Won’t See Me: When the Beatles Ghosted Imelda(Penguin Southeast Asia). An amazing story:
The Beatles, on what would be their final world tour, arrived in a place unlike any other. The Philippines was home to America’s biggest military bases in the region at a time when Vietnam was ramping up to its height. The Marcoses were photogenic, and on the surface at least, poster children for democracy: Ferdinand and Imelda were dubbed the ‘Jackie and JFK’ of Asia, by Life Magazine. The Beatles management saw the tour as a lucrative opportunity to open up new markets.
At some point before their arrival invitations were sent directly and via the local promoter, to lunch at the Presidential Palace. Whether those invitations were responded to or not is disputed. But when escorts arrived to get the band on the morning of July 4, 1966, their manager, Brian Epstein, refused to go. This did not go down well. Over 300 people, including Imelda and her family, were left standing on live TV.
Despite two large and successful concerts, official displeasure left the Beatles fearful for their security and desperate to leave. A torrid time at the airport at the hands of Palace guards left them swearing never to return – and determined to end their touring career. Initially, the band distinguished between the fans and the officials but later they all got lumped together into one ‘bad’ experience. The Beatles went on to greater creative heights as a studio-based band. The country, so little known in the West, became defined by the story.
And, if you happen to be in Liverpool (where else!) David Guerrero is speaking at Waterstones on College Lane on June 29th – click here for details…
The RAS China Journal is now receiving submissions for its 2026 edition. Authors intending to submit a contribution must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 1 July 2026, and completed articles will be due 10 August 2026. The journal generally comprises original unpublished research and observations, essays, book reviews, and other items of interest to our readership. Translations from Chinese into English are also welcome. The scope of the journal is broad, informing readers about life in China and Asia – past, present and future.Although authors are welcome to write about any subject of interest to Asia scholars, please note that material contravening the guidelines established by the Chinese government for speech and publications will not be accepted. For more information about the Royal Asiatic Society China and the Journal, please visit https://ras-china.org// You can view past examples of the RAS China Journal at the Royal Asiatic Society China Reading Room at Dongan Lu #888, West Bund, Shanghai. It holds an almost complete set of journals going back to 1858, which document the earliest years of the expatriate community in Shanghai, and the Royal Asiatic Society’s history in Shanghai.You can see the guidelines for author submissions below. Please feel free to contact Journal Editor Melinda Liu at raschina@ras-china.org for more information.
GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS
The Royal Asiatic Society China (RAS) publishes the RAS China Journal annually in print and online. The journal comprises original research articles, essays and book reviews on topics of Asian scholarship, with a focus on China.· All articles must be original and previously unpublished. Articles should be between 3,000 and 8,000 words, including notes and references. Book reviews should contain no more than 2,500 words.· Authors wishing to have their work considered for inclusion in this year’s journal should first submit, no later than 1 July 2026, an abstract or outline of the intended contribution to the journal editor, Melinda Liu at: raschina@ras-china.org · Authors should follow the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) Style Guide when preparing articles, to ensure consistency of style. The MHRA Style Guide is an easy to use and comprehensive guide, and is available as a free download at http://www.mhra.org.uk/style/ Please ensure that British English spelling and grammar rules are used. Articles should be submitted as Word or Pages documents (.doc, .docx, .pages).· It is the responsibility of an author to obtain any necessary permission for quotation of copyrighted material and for image usage. The author should ensure that permission to reproduce material in all territories and all media (e.g. print and electronic) is granted.· The text of articles submitted for consideration should be formatted using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. The title of the article and the author’s name should be printed in bold at the top of the document.· The document file name should include the author’s surname and brief reference to the article’s title.· Articles should include a reference list to acknowledge work cited, placed at the end of the article and titled “References”. The JRAS does not use bracketed references in the body of an essay. Instead, superscript numbers are used to indicate where other authors’ works are cited in the text, which appear at the end of the article in the Reference section, in the order that they were cited. The reference entries must contain the full reference for the work cited, following the comprehensive guidelines given in the MHRA.· In addition to numbered references indicating citations of other authors’ works within the text, authors may use footnotes to add brief explanatory notes that will be displayed at the bottom of the relevant page. Authors are requested to keep explanatory footnotes to an absolute minimum.· Authors submitting essays, which employ a more general tone, may prefer to include a bibliography of appropriate works to inform further reading, in lieu of a reference list.· All articles are to include an abstract of up to 180 words. The abstract should introduce the major aspects of the article and provide context.· Authors may include images in colour or black and white. In the printed edition, images will appear in black and white, but colour reproductions will be available in the online version. All images should be supplied in separate, well-labelled files in formats such as jpeg or png, and should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi (images should be as large as possible). Images should be labelled as “Figures”, and listed in numerical order. A text note in the body of the article should indicate the desired position of each image (eg: [Fig. 1 here]).· Authors should also include a brief introduction about themselves, including professional and/or academic background and any personal information that relates to their article. This should be no more than a couple of paragraphs (approximately 150 words), and may be edited by the editor to fit with the style of the journal. Authors should not include a CV or a self-portrait photograph.· Article submission final deadline: 10 August 2026. Please note that authors intending to submit must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 1 July 2026.· For further information about the Royal Asiatic Society China Journal and submission of articles, please email the journal editor Melinda Liu at raschina@ras-china.org
Robert Cecil Roberston, born in Kilmarnock, Scotland,1889 and died in Hong Kong 1942 while interned during the Japanese occupation. He was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW1. He was involved in The British Army Aid Group (BAAG) was a paramilitary organisation for British and Allied forces in southern China during the Second World War, interned in Stanley where he died. He’s buried in Hong Kong Cemetery. He was also a pretty good artist – some examples below….
Framed glazed oil paintings of war junks off the south China coast, 1870 by Commander Seymour Spencer-Smith (1841-1893). Spencer-Smith was stationed on the Royal Navy China Station at various intervals between 1869 and 1875 (by which time he attained the rank of Captain) involved in the suppression of heavily armed pirate networks in the South China Sea aboard the gunboat HMS Cockchafer, rampant a decade after the Second Opium War.
Seymour Spencer-Smith survived the Navy – serving on HMS St. Andrew during operations in Chinese waters and in command of HMS Rapid, only to die in a house fire at his Westminster home.
If anyone is able to identify the war junk flags I’d appreciate any information?
I’ll probably be talking about this new short story collection published this May, Taipei People, from Pai Hsien-Yung (Vintage Classic) more on the blog, but wanted to mention specifically that it includes the short story The Eternal Snow Beauty, a classic of Modernist writing about Shanghai.
Cover art by Yuwa Kato
Taiwanese-American author Pai Hsien-Yung has been often overlooked in translation, and this collection rectifies that omission. Guilin-born (1937) Pai was the son of a (Muslim) KMT General. He grew up in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing (with a brief period at a Catholic school in Hong Kong) before his family left for Taiwan. He later moved to America (and became a Buddhist – religion #3). Taipei People, a collection of short stories dealing with the relocation of various Chinese people from mainland China to Taiwan after the Nationalist defeat in 1949 (Pai’s family actually departed in 1952), was published in Chinese in 1971. His stories employ literary techniques of Modernism, nostalgia, melancholy and remembrance with historical fiction. The great literary critic CT Hsia believed Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing) and Pai Hsian-Yung were the best Chinese short fiction writers of the twentieth century. And, if you are a fan of Chang, particularly her more direct Shanghai/Hong Kong short stories such as Lust, Caution, Love in a Fallen City, The Golden Cangue then you’ll appreciate Pai.
But I want to just specifically mention his story The Eternal Snow Beauty. The aging “Snow Beauty” (Yin Hsueh-yen) looks back on her days as the belle of Shanghai’s Paramount Ballroom. She, like so many of her former clients, has left for Taipei but is still the centre of attention at upscale mahjong soirees she arranges at her new home. It is a quite incredible story as it both recreates the per-revolutionary days of the Paramount and the new lives of the slightly down-at-heel self-exiled former bourgeois Shanghainese in Taipei. Like Lust, Caution, old Shanghai aficionados will spot the Paramount, Park Hotel, the Jessfield, the Lyceum Theatre and other locations. For those interesting in 1950s Taipei it is also an evocation of that world the Shanghainese tried to recreate – a world of qipao, mahjong, ua-hua, xiaolongbao and smart social gatherings. The scene is the old Cheng Chong (Chengzhong) District, now incorporated into the larger Zhongzheng District, that was once the most fashionable area of town and heavily influenced by the Shanghainese who went to Taiwan and took their sophisticated bourgeois Shanghai ways with them.
The Eternal Snow Beauty, which was originally written in the 1960s (so only 15 years or so after its setting period) has been available in English before – in a translation by Catherine Carlitz and Anthony C Yü published in the excellent, but perhaps niche, Renditions (that translated so much good Chinese Modernist writing). And, indeed, this is the translation used in the new Vintage Classic edition too.
Anyway, while for those who study the city or just find old Shanghai fascinating the new edition of Taipei People in English and The Eternal Snow Beauty is a treat, accompanied by about another dozen stories that cove the same period and those who fled China for Taiwan.
Lucky Americans (don’t say that very often!) – to commemorate its 35th anniversary director Stanley Kwan’s acclaimed Shanghai classic “Centre Stage” has got a new restored 4K version which will be screened across North America from August 7, 2026.
For those that have never seen the movie, it’s based on the life of Chinese silent film actress Ruan Lingyu, portrayed by Maggie Cheung, one of the most prominent Chinese film stars of the 1930s. Sadly she committed suicide in her apartment in Shanghai at the age of 24. Cheung is fantastic as Ruan Lingyu and got the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival (the first Chinese-language actress to receive the honour).
My latest column (in Portuguese) for Paragrafo (#99) the arts and literature supplement to Macao newspaper Ponto Final. On Han Suyin’s autobiographically inspired novel A Many Splendoured Thing (1952) and how it represented Macao as a transgressive location at the time… illustration as ever by Rai Rasquinho – click here
