Ahead of his appearance at the Shanghai International Literary Festival this month, Paul French shares a snippet of his new book, Destination Shanghai. He'll be presenting a session on March 23 at 4pm. How well do you know your old Shanghai sojourners? Over the decades so many foreigners – rich, poor; famous, infamous; European, American; dodgy, legit – came to Shanghai. It’s hard to [...]
"This book is a record of descendants of Baghdadi Jewish merchants who settled in the Treaty Port of Shanghai in the mid-19th century," says Maisie Meyer. "They are authentic voices, allowing us a glimpse of bygone days of privilege, and the rich diversity that made the community so vibrant. It offers infinite perspectives of personalities whose lives were shaped by [...]
Author Robert Wang spoke about his new book on Radio 3 yesterday, and you can now listen to the interview online. Hear how he fled from civil-war Shanghai in 1949 and took a perilous journey to Hong Kong, jumping from the train when it came under attack. Robert's memoir of his incredible life, Walking The Tycoons' Rope, is Dymocks' book [...]
How long would it take to walk across the world's most populous country? Find out by listening to Graham Earnshaw's story. He'll be speaking at Garden Books -- 325 Changle Road, Shanghai -- at 6pm on Saturday 26th February. 40 RMB includes one drink. Graham's book The Great Walk of China is a journey into China's heartland, away from its [...]
How long would it take to walk from Shanghai to the edges of Tibet? Long-time China resident Graham Earnshaw is in the process of finding out. His westward trek is described in his new book, The Great Walk of China, out at the end of this month. Through his conversations with the people he meets along the way, Earnshaw paints a [...]
Veteran Hong Kong and China journalist Graham Earnshaw -- who is currently engaged on a series of walks from Shanghai to Tibet, picking up each time from the place he left off -- was interviewed this week for Shanghai Urbanatomy's Why I Write column. His latest book, The Great Walk of China, will appear in early 2010. Graham will also [...]
Three copies of Bernd Hagemann's Sleeping Chinese are on their way to readers who can stay awake long enough to answer this question: There are sixty minutes in an hour. But how many winks are there in a nap? Answers to pete at blacksmithbooks dot com, Asian postal addresses only. (Does not include the Land of Nod).
Some years ago now, I crossed the border from Kazakhstan into Xinjiang in China's far northwest, and found myself stuck in Urumchi with the equivalent of US$50 and no onward tickets. It wasn't a problem; saving my cash for food, I 'hitch-hiked' on China's trains by boarding them at small-town stations and then jumping off before the ticket collectors reached [...]
Mild-mannered photographer Bernd Hagemann tiptoes around Shanghai with his camera. He has to keep quiet to avoid waking his snoring subjects. But despite his low profile, his photo website Sleeping Chinese has been getting a lot of attention from media as far afield as Apple Daily and La Repubblica. Britain's Daily Telegraph reports: "Bernd Hagemann moved to the Far East [...]
Beijing-based dealmaker Jack Leblanc's book Business Republic of China has just been reviewed by the South China Morning Post: It has been just under 20 years since Belgian Jack Leblanc heeded a call to go to China and arrived in Chongqing with a suitcase of science books to teach at a university. The freshly minted nuclear physics graduate had abandoned [...]
Excited spectators gathered with their camera phones today to watch daredevil Alain Robert scale the 88-storey Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai. The 420-metre ascent ended in arrest for the fearless Frenchman, but he took it in his stride: having climbed the world's three tallest buildings barehanded, he wasn't about to let the fourth-tallest pass him by. Reuters has the story: [...]