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).
Talking books to movies, Ballad of a Small Player, and depicting contemporary Macao with novelist Lawrence Osborne (L) and Goodchaos producer Mike Goodridge (M) at the Macao International Literary Festival….
Next month at Veranda Books, in Seymour Place, Marylebone (just back from Maerble Arch)has been designated Asia Month, a 4-week focus on the translated literature of Japan, Korea, Vietnam and China. Veranda is a fantastic bookshop specialising in translated fiction and non-fiction from around the worlld. As a taster before we explore the poetic, here’s a round-up of the prosaic: our current favourite books about China from the non-fiction shelves.
Follow their website for more events and recommendations…
Where to begin making sense of China, land of 1.4 billion souls, home to 300 languages, and countless stories to be told. If you’re curious to know more, Veranda suggest these…
Breakneckby Dan Wang Highly-regarded technology writer Wang spent the last 6 years in China witnessing its messy, miraculous growth and declining relations with the West up close. A brilliant blend of political, economic and societal analysis.
Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang Born in China, raised in the UK, Yang returned to her homeland as a journalist and brings us this intimate account of the lives of 4 women born in the late 80s/90s. Through this lens, Yang exposes the seismic shifts in Chinese society and their impact on the population.
Daughters of the Bamboo Groveby Barbara Demick The gripping true story of separated twins and their respective fates in China and the USA, this book asks questions about the consequences of the one-child policy and tackles assumptions about the quality of life in the East vs West. Demick’s seminal book on North Korea, Nothing to Envy was shortlisted for – and won – a number of prizes, and this outstanding book looks set to be similarly garlanded.
Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China by Jack Weatherford For history buffs wanting a deeper understanding of just how deeply-rooted China’s influence is, this is a vibrant account of how the grandson of Genghis Khan conquered China and established the most powerful navy in the world.
The Sunset Session: A Literary Celebration of the Hotel Central, at this year’s Macao Literary Festival for all (cocktail) history and literature lovers – March 9 – 6.30pm on the panoramic rooftop.
Join writer and China historian Paul French along with journalist and broadcaster Annemarie Evans for a rooftop cocktail and celebration of the Hotel Central’s literary heritage.
Revel in the history of this amazing hotel, its generations of denizens, packed gaming rooms and scandals, all illustrated with the writings of Han Suyin, Ernest Gann, Richard Mason and Ian Fleming, among others. And all with the amazing views from the Hotel Central’s roof.
