Clifford Pier Ferry Terminal, Singapore, 1938

Must see photos by Mel Jacoby, discussed by Bill Lascher & from A Danger Shared (Blacksmith Books) - Life in Chongqing, unlikely wartime capital of China, captured scmp.com/magazines/post… in photographic ode to the city -

Rolling the cricket pitch on the Padang, Singapore, 1938

Buying Malacca canes from an itinerant vendor, Singapore, 1938

“Literature was the most dangerous career I could possibly choose in China.”

This week's pick for your #UltimateChinaBookshelf is Kang Zhengguo’s cultural revolution memoir 'Confessions.'

Read more from Paul French 🖋️: buff.ly/3UfuBfr

A rather dull postcard of Tientsin’s (Tianjin) Chinese Arsenal, 1909, with a Peking postmark

Why we still love globes, and the ‘political minefield’ of making them
scmp.com/lifestyle/arts…

Exclusive Mel Jacoby photographs from the new collection A Danger Shared (Blacksmith Books) in this weekends South China Morning Post magazine….

Manchu Ladies, John Thomson, c.1868, albumen silver print

‘    The government-drafted bill does not include the right to collective bargaining, nor the right to strike’ - so that would be an ‘anti-union law’ really?

ChinaRhyming April 12th 2024 - Getting Kinda Surreal - open.substack.com/pub/paulfrench…

Kid in a lights and lanterns store, Singapore, 1937

Swiss, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, SG, Thai, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Spain & Malaysia all have 15-day visa free access to PRC. The UK doesn’t & neither self-obsessed No.10 or the clueless FCO seem bothered or understand the lost opportunities.

Yes interesting how so much paperwork over a decade has disappeared. We have laws to protect public records but these are being ignored.

Barges on the Singapore River, 1937

New ChinaRhyming substack of bits & pieces of China history out this Friday - do sign up if interested (for free) - substack.com/@paulfrench1?r…

Library Book stamp - Macau Orphan Asylums Workshop

The Man from Hong Kong (1975) - A Hong Kong policeman (Jimmy Wang Yu) who knows kung fu busts an Australian drug lord (George Lazenby) who’s not afraid to fight back.

I have a lot of thoughts about Ripley Netflix UK & Ireland - all good - but Andrew Scott’s face when confronted with Dickie Greenleaf’s “art” is priceless.

From Bertha Lum’s 1922 book Gods, Goblins & Ghosts: The Weird Legends of the Far East, a series of stories about Japanese legends that Lum discovered reading Lafcadio Hearn, whom she greatly admired (PS: there’s an essay on Lum in my book Destination Peking - Blacksmith Books)