All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
A trio of albums purchased in Shanghai sometime around c.1900-1912….(see here and here, here and here). And a Japanese made album (date unknown) that features a Chinese junk-like craft on the cover.
A new ChinaRhyming Substack this week with everything I’m up to at the HKILF (March 1-8) & in HK… & then mid-month up in Beijing including events at the old Grand Hotel de Pekin & on the legendary Shijia Hutong. Sign up – it’s free (& some links to articles too) – click here to sign up
Bookazine HK Author Spotlight!
Dive into the mind of acclaimed author Paul French as our Bookazine editorial team reveals his inspirations and insights. Curious? Don’t miss our latest blog post ⬇️
But wait, there’s more!
Paul French will be in HK next month for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival as well as an intimate evening at Bookazine Social in Tai Kwun on March 13th from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM. Paul will discuss his latest masterpiece, “Her Lotus Year,” a mesmerizing exploration of Wallis Simpson’s life in China during a vibrant era.
Sign up now! here
Coming Sunday March 9 – BBC Radio 3 8pm (& then on BBC iPlayer everywhere) – The Defectors – click here – inspired by the the defection of North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador to the UK, interwoven with accounts of people who made the journey from North Korea to the UK.
My thanks to Paul Midler (of the entertaining Poorly Made in China) for images of this copy of the rare Chungking Directory, the wartime guide to the who, what, where of the Chinese capital…. particularly interesting are the number of foreigners registered in the city in 1943 during the war (as detailed below including a category for “White Russian”) and one solitary “stateless” person (apparently the White Russians were not considered stateless in WW2 Chungking). Compare those growing numbers of allied nationals to 1939, which included the Germans (all gone by 1943)…..
While I’m in Hong Kong I’ll be signing copies of all my books at Bookazine’s swanky new Bookazine Social space at Tai Kwun on Hollywood Road….
I could totally wrong here but I’m going to assume that this bass drum was from a band, The Blue Syncopaters, that played aboard the ships of the Ocean Steam Ship Company, better known as The Blue Funnel Line. It’s dated as from the 1940s/1950s. Famously the Blue Funnel line, often with majority ethnic-Chinese crews, connected Liverpool with Shanghai and Hong Kong
The Bloomsbury Handbook of North Korean Cinema (Bloomsbury), Travis Workman (Anthology Editor) , Dong Hoon Kim (Anthology Editor) , Immanuel Kim (Anthology Editor) – super expensive but handy if you can get a library to acquire it…
This first handbook on North Korean cinema contests the assumption that North Korean film is “unwatchable,” in terms of both quality and accessibility, refusing to reduce North Korean cinema to political propaganda and focusing on its aesthetic forms and cultural meanings.
Since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) has played diverse roles: a Cold War communist threat to the US, the other half of a divided nation to South Korea, an ally to the Soviet Union and China, one model for anti-colonialism to national liberation movements, an exotic political and cultural anomaly in the era of globalization.
This handbook provides a solid and diverse foundation for the expanding scholarship on North Korean cinema. It is also a road map for connecting this field to broader issues in film and media studies: film history, affect and ideology, genre, and transnational cinema cultures. By connecting the worlds of North Korean cinema to broader questions in global cinema studies, this book explores the complexity of a national cinema too often reduced to a single image.