February 17 - ChinaRhyming - It's time for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2025
It's Hong Kong Lit Fest time - March 1-8 is a feast for the reader in Hong Kong... and I'll be there along with Jake Adelstein (Tokyo Vice), Bernadine Evaristo (Mr Loverman) & many, many others....
The Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2025
In March I’ll be at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival with plenty of events…
Most thrillingly I’ll be closing the show and bringing Wallis in China to Soho House in conversation with the fabulous Michelle Garnaut (of “M” restaurants fame) as part of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival - it’ll be a fun night - gossip, scandal, 1920s China, books & wine! Get your tickets here
I’ll also be discussing the Chinese Titanic survivors' time in Hong Kong and their possible Hong Kong roots with Steven Schwankert, author of The Six….get tickets here
And, very importantly, I’ll be one of a panel discussing the life, work and legacy of the author, historian and great Shanghailander Lynn Pan…. It’s a free event but you can reserve a ticket here….
Wallis's 1924 Hong Kong Sojourn for the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong Magazine
Wallis’s 1924 Hong Kong sojourn - for the American Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong magazine…. click here to read..
My Latest for Macau Closer - Simon Kent's Ferry to Hong Kong
Every couple of months I write a column for Macau Closer magazine on representations of Macao in popular culture. This time the story of a man stuck forever sailing between Hong Kong and Macao.
Published in 1957 Simon Kent’s Ferry to Hong Kong is a novel almost unique in its simplicity, though it could perhaps be better named Ferry to Macau. Let me explain…. Clarry Mercer is a troubled and washed up American in Hong Kong who, after a bar fight, is expelled from the British colony. The cops escort aboard the Fa Tsan, better known as the “Fat Annie”, a Victorian-era paddle steamer that provides a cheap, but slow, ferry between Kowloon and Macau. Arriving at the ‘drugged, stucco sprawl of Macau’, the Portuguese authorities deem his papers invalid and refuse him permission to enter. He then becomes a virtual captive aboard the Fat Annie, seemingly doomed to repeatedly make the crossing between Macau and Kowloon forever.
The book was a bestseller – did everyone feel somewhat adrift, unable to settle in the post-war 1950s? Britain’s Rank film studios made a movie version in 1959. Mercer became an Austrian called Hart (played by Curt Jürgens), Herzl was played by a suitably corpulent Orson Welles, and the dark Latin beauty Anna became a prim, blonde English governess played by Sylvia Syms.
Click here to read in full...
Harmony Express: Travels by Train through China with Thomas Bird - SOAS, London 18/2/25
Thomas Bird will introduce his latest publication Harmony Express: Travels by Train through China, a travelogue that recounts the years he spent railway-wayfaring in China, from 2014 until late-2019, when the country was in the midst of a railway building boom, plying the world’s longest high-speed network.
SOAS, London - 18/2/25 - 5pm - Free but register here
Crime & the City - Fiji
This fortnight my CrimeReads Crime and the City column heads for a little break to Fiji - as ever in a paradise crime writers ensure things can go very wrong….click here
The Crazy Headline Writers of Hong Kong
A nice review in the South China Morning Post of Her Lotus Year ahead of some events in March at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Interesting to note the different headlines for the piece in print and online - a somewhat different take by the web team!!
FYI
Details of my next book - Her Lotus Year: China, The Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson here
You can also pre-order the third in my Destination… series - Destination Macao on amazon US and amazon UK … Destination Shanghai and Destination Peking are not both available in e-book editions as well as paperback
I’m off Twitter for good now - (Musk can go fuck his-self) - but I’m on Bluesky at @chinarhyming.bsky.social
Remember I still blog at www.chinarhyming.com
I also still post a lot of images on my Instagram feed - @oldshanghaipaul
And, all the books noted above are available from my Bookshop.org page - an online bookstore funding independent bookstores