From the 1920s until the 1950s China’s largest and most cosmopolitan city Shanghai (‘The Paradise of Adventurers’, ‘The Paris of the East’, ‘The Whore of Asia’) was the exotic backdrop for pulp fiction, novels, magazine articles and studio bound Hollywood movies. Arguably the best films were ‘Shanghai Express’ (1932) and ‘The Shanghai Gesture’ (1941) both directed by Josef von Sternberg. In May...
Mongkok Police Station 1950s. Thanks to Karl Spencer from Hong Kong who provided information on another Shanghai Municipal Policeman (SMP) who came to Hong Kong after release from a Japanese internment camp in October 1945. He was a similar age to the publican Jack Conder who kept in contact with many of the ex-SMP in Hong Kong. Alexander Seddon Anderson was born in Queenstown, New...
In May 1955 Twentieth Century Fox released the film ‘Soldier of Fortune’ starring Clark Gable and Susan Hayward based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann. Hayward is an American woman in Hong Kong searching for her photo-journalist husband who disappeared after illegally entering China. She enlists the help of a wealthy businessman played by Gable who has made his fortune from smuggling between Hong...
In March 2020, after 28 years in Hong Kong, I moved to Penang as a base to travel in the region. The Covid 19 pandemic ended that plan and I spent much of the time re-reading books I had collected over the years. The only new book I bought was ...