ChinaRhyming - March 4 2024 - Wallis Simpson Cover Reveal, South China Rovings, Dangers Shared in WW2 & HKILF 2024

All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French

Welcome to March 2024…

I’ve been blogging for a long time about nineteenth and twentieth century China over at chinarhyming.com - since 2008! ChinaRhyming is all about Chinese history, books, what I’m up to, what other people are up to, what’s worth reading, watching or listening to. But there’s perhaps a chance here, with Substack, to pull together a monthly newsletter on what I’m doing.

And it’s free… because, after all, I’m basically trying to lure you into buying my books, buying other great books, listen to podcasts, read magazine articles, and other things that make me my living…. And, hopefully, there’s some good history along the way. So…. first up, something very personal that I’m obviously excited about….

Her Lotus Year - The Cover Reveal

China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson - Published November 12 2024

My new book Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson is out November 12 everywhere. This is the cover for the US edition from St Martin’s Press (Macmillan). There will also be a UK edition from Elliot & Thompson.

I’m delighted that it’s had some fantastic early blurbs from writers and historians I really admire. It is of course available to pre-order in hardback or as an e-book. Both the blurbs and some links to various retailers here.

As I’m sure people will ask, the cover image is by Man Ray and appeared in the June 1936 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. It showed Wallis posed by a statue of a Chinese Fire God, wearing a Qipao-inspired dress, adorned with Chinoiserie lace embroidery, and designed by the Manhattan-based courtier Mainbocher. Her hair is styled in a chignon, often referred to as a ‘Chinese style’. Wallis’s hairdresser of 30 years Alexandre de Paris was once asked about her distinctive and constant chignon. He said, ‘She learned about her hair from her days in China.’ The full-page photograph was captioned: ‘Mrs Ernest Simpson, the most famous American in London, wears a Chinese dinner dress.’

From the Publisher: New York Times bestselling author Paul French examines a controversial and revealing period in the early life of the legendary Wallis, Duchess of Windsor–her one year in China.

Before she was the Duchess of Windsor, Bessie Wallis Warfield was Mrs. Wallis Spencer, wife of Earl “Win” Spencer, a US Navy aviator. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, she rose to marry a man who gave up his throne for her. But what made Wallis Spencer, Navy Wife, the woman who could become the Duchess of Windsor? The answers lie in her one-year sojourn in China.

In her memoirs, Wallis described her time in China as her “Lotus Year,” referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. Though faced with challenges, Wallis came to appreciate traditional Chinese aesthetics. China molded her in terms of her style and provided her with friendships that lasted a lifetime. But that “Lotus Year” would also later be used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment.

The British government’s supposed “China Dossier” of Wallis’s rumored amorous and immoral activities in the Far East was a damning concoction, portraying her as sordid, debauched, influenced by foreign agents, and unfit to marry a king. Instead, French, an award-winning China historian, reveals Wallis Warfield Spencer as a woman of tremendous courage who may have acted as a courier for the US government, undertaking dangerous undercover diplomatic missions in a China torn by civil war.

Her Lotus Year is an untold story in the colorful life of a woman too often maligned by history.

Harry A Franck’s Roving Through Southern China (1925) - China Revisited #4

China Revisited is a series of mostly forgotten travel writing fom the Victorian era to the 1920s covering Hong Kong, Macao and Southern China. The series is published by Blacksmith Books of Hong Kong. We launched the first 3 titles in the series at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival last year, and the fourth book just last month - Harry Franck’s 1925 Roving Through Southern China. They do make a fantastic looking set at a super affordable price either individually or as a bundle of all four. They’re available in all Bookazine shops in Hong Kong, Livraria Portuguesa in Macao, selected independent bookshops in the US and UK, all the Amazons and Bookstore.org.

I recently did a podcast with RTHK3’s Annemarie Evans for her excellent Hong Kong Heritage show. You can listen here. And finally, just a little taster of Franck’s writing….

"Hong Kong loomed up through the mists of a late December morning during my second year in China; I was due to pass through it half a dozen times before I left the Orient. Like Shanghai, it had changed much since I first saw it, almost twenty years before. The same funicular cable-cars, however, still carry one to the Peak – so do automobiles also now – to look down upon a scene in a milder way almost as striking as Rio. From the compact narrow city below like the embroidery on the bottom of a skirt the eyes wander away across the deep-blue harbor scattered with scores of ships riding at anchor because the wharves on both sides of the bay are already crowded from end to end with others, merging into islands in the offing that seem likewise anchored in the blue sea, a harbor streaked by constantly arriving and departing steamers from everywhere and by the ferries to the various parts of the mainland suburb of Kowloon, beyond which one may even see hills that are still Chinese.

Two-storied street-cars, like those of Chile – though here classes are reversed and the haughty white man deigns to ride aloft – move from end to end of the narrow island town, through Happy Valley, promoted now from cemetery to race-track, Kennedy Town, and other sections of British nomenclature; and farther still motor-cars will carry those who can afford them up and over or clear around the steep little island. Motoring is cheaper across the bay, where motor-buses race in constant streams from the ferry-landing to every suburb, and there rickshaws have unlimited scope compared with the little level space in down-town Victoria, behind which the “Do Be Chairful Company” – English wit sieved through Chinese brains comes out in strange forms of facetiousness – provide many clean and comfortable conveyances that are not exactly chairs, though you may sit in them and be carried."

A Danger Shared - An Amazing, Never-Before-Seen Collection of Photos of China and Asia from the 1930s & WW2

I was very happy to write a foreword to Bill Lascher’s A Danger Shared, an amazing selection of photos curated by Bill from his relative Mel Jacoby’s archive. Jacoby was a foreign correspondent covering China in the 30s and WW2 who died tragically young. He was married to Annalee Jacoby (nee Whitmore), another entrepid Time magazine correspondent who co-wrote the classic Thunder Out of China from Chongqing in WW2 with Teddy White. A Danger Shared is now available to buy in all good bookshops in Hong Kong and here - it’ll be in booksshops in the US and UK in a few months.

From the Publisher: ‘A Danger Shared is a collection of never-before-seen images, readers experience glamorous Macau soirées, visit Guangxi farms, and witness wartime Chongqing’s wreckage and resilience. Along the way, Jacoby treats Filipino fishermen and Hanoi flower-sellers with the same care as the Soong sisters, Chiang Kai-Shek, and other icons.’

Anne Stevenson-Yang’s Wild Ride

Anne Stevenson-Yang is a Beijing veteran - a journalist and businesswoman turned author. This month Anne is publishing a memoir, Wild Ride, as well as a collection of short stories, Hello, Kitty.

Anne will be launching her new books along with her publisher Bui Jones Books at Hatchard’s on Piccadilly in London on March 6th - there are some other more formal events in London and Oxford the same week (see details below), but the Hatchard’s event (where I’ll briefly introduce Anne and her books) is a more social gathering with some wine, and in one of London’s loveliest bookshops. If you’d like to come along do RSVP to publicity@buijones.com

Hong Kong International Literary Festival

This year’s Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF) runs from March 4-10. For history fans there’s some good events including…

Fortune’s Bazaar - The Making of Hong Kong with Vaudine England;

James Zimmerman on his Peking Express, the history of the infamous “Lincheng Outrage” 1920s train hijacking;

Fuchsia Dunlop on the history of Chinese cuisine and her Invitation to a Banquet;

Ian Gill on his new biography of his mother, Searching for Billie;

Samuel Porteous on the fake Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo;

And a session on the tricky business now of writing Hong Kong history in Hong Kong (see below).

Details of the all event and more on the HKILF website.

And… The Ultimate China Bookshelf is Back…

When The China Project sadly folded last year I thought my column for them - which I enjoyed writing immensely - was dead. Deceased at 43 - that’s the number of books we did! But, thanks to Kaiser Kuo’s new Sinica substack the Ultimate Bookshelf is back…

And so book #44 is now up (and will be followed by one a fortnight from now on) - Lu Xun’s The Real Story of Ah-Q (1921)….

FYI

Remember I still blog at www.chinarhyming.com

I also still post a lot of images on my Instagram feed - @oldhshanghaipaul

And, all the books noted above are available from my Bookshop.org page - an online bookstore funding independent bookstores

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