The American Angle to The Last Emperor of China – for Amcham HK

Who was the American present at the final days of the imperial court in the Forbidden City in the 1920s – a missionary’s daughter from Philadelphia, born and raised in northern China, graduate of Wellesley and, fortunately, an ardent diarist and letter writer!! I tell her story here, and why she made a new version of the last emperor (and empresses) story both new and vital…. For the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong magazine…. click here to read…

Dynasties in Dialogue – Me and Xiaolu Guo at the British Library

Talking Tang to Qing with Xiaolu Guo at the British Library last week (sorry, the red ambient lighting makes the photos come out as if we’re doing a book event at a tanning parlour!!). Both Xiaolu’s Everyday Tang (Notting Hill Editions) & my The Last Emperor of China (Elliot & Thompson) are out now…..

From Hebei to Holland – The Journey of One Letter from China in World War one

An interesting letter sent in March 1914 from the Mines de Lincheng (Lincheng Mines Administration – Hebei Province) on the Pékin-Hankow Railway to a Mr Lionel Wiener in Holland. – Post Box 14, Scheveningue (Scheveningen), Hollande. Wiener appears to be a representative of the Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine (General Company of Railways and Trams in China).

A number of interesting things about this letter…

A circular PEKING postmark is visible in the lower-left corner indicating the letter went from Lincheng via the Pékin-Hankow Railway to Peking. The stamp indicates the letter passed through the Peking Post Office. Read vertically from right to left, the three columns show 三年 (Year 3), 廿三月 (23rd Month—which means November 23rd using a specialized numerical formatting shorthand common in Republican-era postal stamps where 廿 means 20), and 十九日 (19th Day).

From Peking the letter would normally have gone from China by train to Holland via the Trans-Siberian Railway through the new Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR). Russia was in obvious turmoil given the Bolshevik Revolution, withdrawal from the Allied side in the Great War and the onset of the Northern, Southern Russia and Siberian interventions (“Wars of Intervention”). Various nations, including China, had troops stationed in and around Vladivostok.

Hence, probably the letter went east via Japan (Kobe and Yokohama), crossed the Pacific or went via British-controlled shipping lanes, and entered the United Kingdom en route to continental Europe. Via British controlled territory seems most likely as, at some point, the letter was opened by a censor – I believe this is the reseal sticker of the “British Imperial Censor”.

The Lincheng Coal Mines, formed in 1905 were predominantly a Belgian and French financial investment and employed many nationals of those countries. The Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine was a Belgian railway and tramway enterprise founded in Brussels in 1900 which built the link between Kaifeng (Kaifong-Fou) and Luoyang (Honan-Fou) with the major Pékin-Hankow Railway an 185 km link known as the Chemin de fer du Pien-Lo, which officially opened in 1909. The Lincheng Coal Mines supplied the railway with coal for the steam trains.

Sadly we don’t know who was writing to Lionel Wiener, but we do a little about the recipient. He was the Dutch representative of Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine and living in Scheveningen, a seaside resort 15 minutes from The Hague.

He was also the author of the 1923 paper Les écartements des voies de chemin de fer (something about railway gauges in China) that was included in the papers of the Congrés des Chemins de Fer (Railways Congress). He also wrote somewhat technically about railways in Brazil when he was the Secrétaire general et Chef du Service de la Traction de la Compagnie auxiliaire de Chemins de fer au Brésil (circa 1910). For his 1931 book, Articulated Locomotives, he is noted as a “professor”. Just to show his international reach Wiener also wrote Egypt and its Railways 1879-1940 (1932).

So who sent the letter and what it contained only the sender, Wiener and the British censor know….but it made it….

WWII American Air Force silk cloth Asia Escape Maps

WWII American Air Force silk cloth Asia Escape Maps:

• Vladivostok, first edition, 1944

• Keijo (Seoul),  second edition, 1943

• French Indochina &  Central China, second edition, 1943

“Hands Off China!” – CPGB Leaflet from 1927

My thanks to the great collector of all things Chinese ephemera, Roy Delbyck in Hong Kong for this rare copy of a Communist Party of Great Britain leaflet on China from February 1927. .

General strike in Hankow, trouble in Shanghai and particularly The Wanhsien (Wanxian) Incident of 1926, a series of maritime conflicts on the Yangtze between British merchant shipping and regional Chinese military leaders, culminating in a battle with Royal Navy gunboats, which also fired cannons into the city of Wanxian. In 1926, while China was in the midst of the Warlord Era, Sichuan province, surrounded by mountains, was fighting its own civil war in which local militants were backed by various Chinese warlords. In May, Chinese Marshal Wu Peifu, facing an imminent threat from Chiang Kai-shek‘s Northern Expedition campaign, appointed General Yang Sen as the Governor of Sichuan. The latter had used British commercial shipping to transport troops along stretches of the river Yangtze.

All this, so the Communist Party of Great Britain (founded in 1920) believed made the possibility of war between Britain and China imminent. And so they issued the leaflet below – “Hands Off China!”

It’s interesting as well to see who was on the British Hands off China Committee. Many of the big names on the British revolutionary left at the time – Cook, Maxton, Tillett, Tom Mann as well as Harry Pollitt who be the long time leader of the CPGB. Also featured is the left intellectual Bertrand Russell (who wrote the 1922 book “The Problem of China”), as well as the Irish novelist Liam O’Flaherty and poet Sean O’Casey

William McLaren’s 1950 Illustrated Map of the Summer Palace

Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) map from Hope Daby’s  The Garden of Perfect Brightness: The History of the Yüan Ming Yüan and of the Emperors Who Lived There (Williams & Norgate, London, 1950). Illustration designed by Scottish artist and illustrator William McLaren (1923-1987).

City of Encounters: A London Divertissement, 1932

The front cover of the 1932 first edition book City of Encounters: A London Divertissement (Constable & Co.) by Thomas Burke, featuring a jacket design by the artist Gladys Hines.

From the New York Times review in 1932 – ‘a deeply atmospheric, episodic volume that blends personal memoir with sociological character sketches. Rather than serving as a standard layout of a city or a catalog of streets and historic landmarks, Thomas Burke treats London as a living, breathing landscape of distinct human personalities.’

The American Book Shop on Old Shanghai’s Nanking Road

Another gift from the old China collector Ed Lanfranco, ex of Beijing and now of California. An ex-libris from the inside cover of a book showing it was purchased at the American Book Shop at #78 Nanking Road (Nanjing Dong Lu), Shanghai. The Book Shop was part of the Chinese American Publishing Company run by well known American Shanghailander and Great War veteran Frank “FD” Mortimer….