Hey London - the Bank Holiday weekend's going to be a scorcher! Great time to take one of my VoiceMap Publishers GPS Walking Tours of London - Marylebone by mews or garden square, Mayfair by mews and the artists of Belsize Park.... all on the Voicemap site and app...https://voicemap.me/

Whistler opens at the Tate today - it’s impressive & has a strong focus on his Chinese/Japanese influences. Symphony in White No.2: The Little White Girl (1864) featuring Joanna Hiffernan holding a Japanese uchiwa fan depicting a woodcut by Hiroshige (1797-1858) titled The Bank of the Sumida.

Got a sneak peek at the Whistler exhib at Tate 21/5-27/9. Among the many delights is a reconstruction of The Peacock Room, an extravagant Japanese and Chinese inspired installation of stylized peacock motifs and Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. I’m writing up the whole retrospective for the SCMP….

As people ask me about vintage Chiang Yee books occasionally - there's a Silent Traveller in Dublin up for sale at a reasonable price... www.easyliveauction.com/catalogue/lo...

Massive congratulations to Yang Shuang-zi and translator Lin King on the excellent Taiwan Travelogue winning the International Booker 2026 (and on being first book in mandarin Chinese to do so)….. if you haven’t read it, but it today (and support small presses too….)

Center Stage (1991), directed by Stanley Kwan. Maggie Cheung embodies the tragic, doomed screen siren of the Shanghai studios Ruan Lingyu, known as the "Greta Garbo of China," in this staggering biopic.

Big Liu’s embroidery and furs shop, “The Western Lanes”, Qianmen, Peiping (Beijng), c.interwar

This fortnight my Crimereads Crime and the City column heads to Cologne (Köln) for a little Rhine-Ruhr crime writing action…. crimereads.com/crime-city-c...

Looking through some old books I came across The Companion Book Club’s (UK) newsletter from 1956. & it included a profile of Ernest Gann and his book Soldier of Fortune, set in HK & Macao. I wrote about the novel in Macau Closer mag if your interest is piqued macaucloser.com/opinion/erne...

The Great Wall, c.1907–1909

The Manchurian Restaurant, Amsterdam, 1990s

Last chance to pre-order The Last Emperor of China (out 8/26) at a 20% discount on Bookshop.org.uk

Remembering le Carre’s visits to the 1970s HK Foreign Correspondents’ Club, it’s role in The Honourable Schoolboy, & an interview with Adam Sisman on his biography of Le Carre, all while sitting at the bar having a beer or 3…. The HK FCC Correspondent magazine May issue… issuu.com/fcchk/docs/t...

The German Kap family photographed at home with servants in Tianjin, 1914 (with some excellent rattan furniture). I wonder if they all shaved their heads for hygiene (nits?) except mutti?

I fear this guy at the WSJ is having an attack of what my Mum used to call the (cultural) collywobbles… i fear for many of us he may need to come up with three better examples….

Remember it’s the odious Michael Gove the editor who commissions and then signs off this crap….

Just in case you missed it, or fancy something to listen to this weekend my BBC Radio doc on the Kowloon Walled City is on Sounds…. (Best listened to with headphones BTW)…. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Peking Cart and Mule, c.1920s, Peking Art Series

Among all the hilarious MAGA takes on Trump’s visit to the “forbidden” Temple of Heaven (open 8am-8pm daily, tickets $5) and the “beautiful hidden gardens” of Zhongnanhai (basically Xi’s Take a Child to the Office Day)… this is my favourite so far…

Anna Mary Hotchkis RSA (Scottish, 1885-1984) 'Ma Fang Shan, The Pilgrim's Way, Western Hills near Peking'

Omei Shan by Scottish Artist Anna Hotchkis, c.1932. Mount Emei, alternatively Mount Omei, is a 3,099-metre-tall mountain in Sichuan Province, China, and is the highest of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China.

The Chueh Ssu/T'an Chou Ssu - the Monastery of Clear Pools and Wild Mulberry or Temple of the Pool and the Zhe Tree - aka the Tanzhe Temple, or as Scottish artist Anna Hotchkis called it the Tan Che Ssu, in the Western Hills near Beijing. Painted some tome between 1922 and 1937

From May 13th to 17th, Bookshop.org in the UK will be offering a 20% discount code on pre-orders of my new book The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (Elliot & Thompson). uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-... You can use the promo code below at checkout.

Three photos of the (unnamed) 1906 Hong Kong typhoon was a tropical cyclone that hit Hong Kong on 18 September 1906. The typhoon caused property damage exceeding a million pounds sterling, affected international trade and took the lives of around 15,000 people

Superb FU to Trump from Chinese State media

May 13 2026 - ChinaRhyming - Spooks, Refugees and Deals Le Carre in Hong Kong, a UK pre-order deal on The Last Emperor of China, a Strangers on the Praia give away and the latest on ChinaRhyming.com open.substack.com/pub/paulfren...

“Shanghai Millionaire” Monopoly style board game. Supposedly created by Berlin Jewish refugee children Manfred and Siegfried Lobel in the Hongkou Ghetto (aged 10 and 14 reputedly) in 1946 (by which time the property prices had largely collapsed!!).

That’s quite the duo…. www.france24.com/en/culture/2...

A factory in the outskirts of Weihaiwei (Weihai), c.1929-1932

The old East Gate, Weihaiwei (Weihai), c.1929

If you want to know how Trump’s illegal, mishandled and ridiculous war with Iran is impacting the UK - popped into Europarts in East Sussex for a litre of engine oil and they’re rationing it…..

Photographs of the staff at a foreign family’s home In Weihaiwei (Weihai), Shandong c.1929-1931

Caroline Sanderson’s August 2026 UK Non-Fiction Picks for The Bookseller magazine…

& they say nobody reads history!! Massive congrats to friend, research collaborator, & fellow Social Sciences Academy Press (SSAP Beijing) author 邹施主 (Zou Dehuai) for hitting a 3rd printing of his collection of China in WW2 photos and analysis 山河在（Our Country), a social science bestseller in China!

This fortnight my Crimereads Crime and the City column heads to Ottowa…. crimereads.com/crime-and-th...

Torygraph off its meds again today

HMS Kent arrives in Shanghai, 1939 – what was then known as “Gunboat Row”. From the collection of Henry Killingback who served on Kent. An interesting photo giving the lie to the popular misconception there was nothing Pudong-side until the 1990s. As you can see this was always wrong.

Looking for a new audiobook? I’ll just reup my Murders of Old China from 2019. It was commissioned as an Audible Original so has never been published in book form…. www.audible.co.uk/pd/B08287RLK...

It’s looking like a lovely London Sunday - why not take a walk across Marylebone experiencing its beautiful garden squares…. voicemap.me/tour/london/...

Scottish artist (pathologist and Stanley Camp internee) Robert Cecil Robertson (1890–1942), “Dhows” (Robertson’s term) at Shanghai, c.1920s

I don’t think he read the entire memo

Book Giveaway - a few copies of Betrayal in Paris: How the Treaty of Versailles Led to China’s Long Revolution (2014) as part of the Penguin series commemorating the centenary of WW1. As ever reply here - it’s 1st come, 1st served and I can mail anywhere except the PRC & the USA…

Scottish artist (pathologist and Stanley Camp internee) Robert Cecil Robertson (1890–1942), three views of Suzhou (Soochow), c.1920s

hey UK - if you need to escape the unremitting politicking of the local elections this week... step into 1920s China...now in paperback for under a tenner.... www.amazon.co.uk/Her-Lotus-Ye...

English, Hong Kong-born, Bernard Howell Leach (1887-1979). Attended the Slade and the London School of Art, studied etching under the legendary Frank Brangwyn. Taught and studied art in Japan 1909-1920. In 1918 he visited Peking and produced this soft ground etching of the “Chen mun" (Qianmen) Gate.

May 8 2026 - ChinaRhyming on Substack... A new bio of JG Ballard & my thoughts on his Shanghai childhood, Last Emperor preorders in Australia, a book giveaway on China at Versailles, hanging out at the China Club and recently on ChinaRhyming... paulfrench.substack.com/p/may-8-2026...

Scottish artist (pathologist and Stanley Camp internee) Robert Cecil Robertson (1890–1942), two views of Kashing (Jiaxing), on the Grand Canal, Zhejiang, c.1920s

The Grand Canal along the Tartar Wall, c.1920s

Midnight in Peking, the Vietnamese edition from 1980 Books of Hanoi…..

Zhengyangmen, popularly known as Qianmen("Front Gate"), is a historic, well-preserved double-gate complex serving as the southern entrance to Beijing's inner city, built in 1419 during the Ming Dynasty. This image is c.1920s…