A few pictures from Bussiere Garden, the Western Hills retreat of Jean Augustin Bussiere. I led a Royal Asiatic Society Beijing day trip out there last Sunday for a look around.
Bussiere was the French Legation doctor (who also treated Yuan Shi-kai), attached to both St Michael’s Hospital Peking and PUMC, a founder of Aurora College in Shanghai, organiser of Peking’s premier French language salon between the wars and WW2 resistance fighter who ferried medicines to the 8th Route Army.
Bussiere arrived in China in 1913 and stayed for 41 years. He built Bussiere Garden, just beyond Haidian into the Western Hills and adjacent to the old rail line that carried coal from the Mengtou mines, in 1923, including the main “cottage” and barbican tower with additional out-buildings added over the years.
The property has recently been restored, with exhibits showing Bussiere in residence and with his fellow salon members, but is far from crowded and worth an hour or twos visit.
We’re delighted to invite you to a special talk with acclaimed historian and journalist Vaudine England, author of Fortune’s Bazaar, followed by a book signing.
In this captivating session, England will explore Hong Kong’s dynamic, multicultural past and the extraordinary mix of people who shaped the city — from its humble beginnings as a fishing village to its rise as a global port and cosmopolitan hub. Expect rich storytelling, fresh insights, and a deeper appreciation of the diverse communities behind Hong Kong’s unique character.
📅 Date: Wednesday, March 18th 🕡 Time: 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM 📍 Venue: Bookazine Social, Tai Kwun, Central 💵 Admission: $100 (includes a $100 Bookazine voucher)
Excellent to see Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue – a clever meta-fictional reflection on colonialism, culture and the complexities of translation – in a UK edition, translated by Lin King and nominated for the 2026 International Booker Prize Longlist….
Don’t think I’d ever seen a Yuan Shikai dollar before, also known as the “fatman dollar” issued between 1914-1916. Interestingly it was also designed by Tianjin Mint engraver, the Italian Luigi Giorgi. It was designed to replace the imperial Dragon Dollar and the various foreign silver dollars in circulation in China. The coin features a profile bust of Yuan wearing a military uniform on the obverse, with a wreath of grain and the denomination of one yuan on the reverse. Yuan is depicted wearing a military uniform and a crew cut and apparently he approved Giorgi’s design. Production of the dollars began at the Tianjin Mint in December 1914. The Nanjing Mint followed in January 1915, alongside the Canton Mint at some point in the same year and then the Mukden and Wuchang Mints too.
From 1914 to 1919, all coinage in the series was marked as Year 3 (1914) – as below. Mints began to strike coins with new dates in 1920 (Year 9), although differing mints marked them as Year 8, 9, or 10, and in the following years no mint consistently updated the date to match the year of production. Missionary Mildred Cable reported that Yuan Shikai dollars circulated in Gansu in 1926, but only coins featuring Year 3 dates were accepted at full value, as coins with dates following Yuan’s death were suspected to be counterfeit. The Fatman Dollar was eventually replaced by the “Momento Dollar” which featured Sun Yat-sen. China then abruptly abandoned the silver standard in 1935 and so large amounts of paper currency were introduced until 1945 when, due to hyperinflation, Mints in the Nationalist-aligned southern and western provinces returned to minting silver coinage in an attempt to stabilize the currency.
Portraits of western women, on silk, in traditional Japanese dress. There are many of these around and seem to have been popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The subjects are usually portrayed wearing kimono and geta sandals, as well as with parasols and/or fans. Most commonly they were painted in Yokohama. Yokohama officially opened as Japan’s premier treaty port on June 2, 1859, transforming from a small fishing village into the central hub for foreign trade, diplomacy, and cultural exchange. The artists almost universally anonymous, though artists such as Goseda Horyu and others have been identified. The portraits were of course souvenirs for visitors to, or residents of, Yokohama. Scenes of Mount Fuji or the Yokohama Bluff were also often added.
A wonderful literary evening atop the fabulous roof of the 1928 Hotel Central on the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro (Da Ma Lo) as part of the Macau International Literary Festival. Especially great that the festival’s director Ricardo Pinto and the Hotel Central’s proprietor Simon Siu, who so brilliantly restored the hotel to its former glory, could join us too.
Cocktails, conversation, history and readings from the work of Han Suyin, Ian Fleming, Richard Mason and Ernest Gann – as well as the stunning view across the old town.
It was from Upper Park Road, Belsize Park, NW3, that Chinese artist Chiang Yee set out for the Lake District to paint and write his first “Silent Traveller” book, The Silent Traveller in Lakeland (1937). It was a big hit with British readers who saw familiar scenes through “a Chinese lens”. Chiang went on to write The Silent Traveller in London, in Wartime, and in the Yorkshire Dales while living on Upper Park Road before he was bombed out in the Blitz and moved to Oxford.
Chiang Yee was just one of the Chinese artists and intellectuals living and working in Belsize Park between the wars alongside the architects of the Bauhaus, Piet Mondrian, George Orwell, Barbara Hepworth, Stella Gibbons, Henry Moore, CR Nevison, Norm Garbo, William Empson, Ben Nicholson, Herbert Read and many more.
All of them, their homes, studios and stories, are featured in my VoiceMap GPS walking tour ‘Historical Hampstead’s “Gentle Nest of Artists”: a Belsize Park Walk’ available on the VoiceMap app here….
Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – Sunday March 15 – Author Paul French will lead an excursion to Bussiere’s Garden, a hillside retreat in western Beijing where French doctor Jean Jerome Augustin Bussiere lived for three decades. Please sign up at Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/
Bussière Garden/Jardin Bussière, north of Sujiaguo into the Western Hills outside Peking, is a villa and watchtower retreat built by Jean-Augustin Bussière, a French doctor who came to China in 1913. Bussière was the French Legation doctor who also treated private patients such as Yuan Shi-kai and Gladys Nina Werner (the wife of ETC Werner and mother of Pamela Werner), was a trustee and President of Aurora College in Shanghai, involved with Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) and, much later, active in the anti-Japanese resistance.
His expansive Western Hills retreat was also the greatest salon in Peking for French speakers. Weekends saw visits from the likes of key French luminaries in Peking – the diplomat Alexis Leger, aka the poet Saint John Perse (Anabase etc), Andre D’Hormon, Sinologist and translator of Le Rêve dans le pavillon rouge and diplomat and art collectorJean-Pierre Dubosc.
Other occasional (and French speaking) Peking “Foreign Colony” guests included the famous Peking/Paris art dealer CT Loo (Jean-Pierre Dubosc’s father-in-law), the English former diplomat and Sinologist ETC Werner, and diplomat and tutor to Puyi, the Scotsman Reginald Johnston (who had his own weekend retreat, Cherry Glen, near by).
