RAS 2013 October Newsletter - Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai

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Royal Asiatic Society China - Newsletter Vol 4 No 9 – October 2013RAS China Monograph Series 4COMING 2014The Happy HsiungsPerforming China and the strugglefor ModernityDiana Yeh‘Try Something Different. Something Really Chinese’The Happy Hsiungs recovers the lost histories of Shih-I andDymia Hsiung, two once highly visible, but now largelyforgotten Chinese writers in Britain, who sought to representChina and Chineseness to the rest of the world. Shih-I shot toworldwide fame with his play Lady Precious Stream in the1930s and became known as the first ever Chinese stagedirector to work in the West End and on Broadway. Dymia wasthe first Chinese woman in Britain to publish a fictionalautobiography in English in the 1950s. Through exhaustiveresearch and fieldwork among surviving family members andfriends, Diana Yeh traces the Hsiungs’ lives from their childhood in Qing dynasty China and youth amid theradical May 4 th era to Britain and the USA, where they became highly celebrated figures, rubbing shoulderswith George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie, H.G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Lin Yu Tang, Anna May Wong andPaul Robeson among others. In recounting the Hsiungs’ rise to fame, Yeh focuses on the challenges theyfaced in becoming accepted as modern subjects, as knowledge of China and the Chinese was persistentlyframed by colonialist legacies and Orientalist stereotyping, which often determined how their works wereshaped and understood. Yet, The Happy Hsiungs also shows how Shih-I and Dymia, in negotiatingacceptance, ‘performed’ not only specific forms of Chineseness but identities that conformed to modernideals of class, gender and sexuality, defined by the western middle-class nuclear family. Though fêted as‘The Happy Hsiungs’, their lives ultimately highlight a bitter struggle in attempts to become modern. DianaYeh lectures at Birkbeck College, University of London and at the University of East London. A formerFellow of the Sociological Review, she is currently a Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded project, China inBritain: Myths and Realities and on an AHRC Knowledge Exchange Partnership between Bristol Universityand Penguin Books China.She has published on race,ethnicity, diaspora, migrationand culture, and haspresented her research onBBC Radio Four, and atinstitutions such as the RoyalGeographical Society, theWellcome Trust, NationalPortrait Gallery and TateBritain.Biography / LiteraryFORTHCOMING 2014160 pp., 7” x 5”,PB ISBN 978-988-8208-17-3Price TBA COPIES WILL BE AVAILBLE AT RAS EVENTS“Thanks to the phenomenal success of his play Lady Precious Stream, Shih-I Hsiung was ahousehold name in the US and UK during the 1930s. The Happy Hsiungs tells the story ofhow Hsiung and his writer wife, Dymia, came to be feted across three continents, enjoyingcelebrity as part of a global cultural elite that included George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie,H.G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Anna May Wong, Paul Robeson, Lin Yu Tang, and Chiang Yee. Yehexplores their role in representing China and Chineseness to the rest of the world forcing usto rethink our vision of the British Chinese as invisible and insular, with little social, cultural orpolitical impact on wider society.”—Dr Anne Witchard, University of Westminster and author of Lao She in London andThomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie .14
15RAS China - Monograph Serieswith Hong Kong University PressBoth Lao She in London by Anne Witchard and Knowledge is Pleasure by Lindsay Shen arenow available on Amazon Kindle.Hard copies are available for purchase at RAS events and during library opening hours. Toreserve your copies email enquiry@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn putting “Monographs” in thesubject box.The monographs have achieved wide acclaim since their publication last year. Reviews ofLao She in London include:"A beautifully written book that combines literary biography with a remarkably succinct account of Britishmodernism and an evocative portrait of interbellum London, as viewed through Chinese eyes. AnneWitchard reminds us eloquently of the key role played by Chinese influences - both classical and modern -in literary modernism, and makes a great contribution to our understanding of Lao She's London years."and for Knowledge is Pleasure:Julia Lovell, Birkbeck College, University of London“This is a sensitive and elegantly written biography of one of the most passionate Sinologists of the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author moves fluidly between closely shadowing FlorenceAyscough’s remarkable life and immersion in Chinese culture and stepping back to illuminate her setting andkindred spirits. Those previously familiar with only a few of Ayscough’s pioneering achievements will findin this monograph a coherent narrative unfolding before them; those for whom she is an unknown name arein for the delight of discovery. Lindsay Shen is to be admired for recognizing that this impressive story isworth telling and for giving it such vividly human character. “Elinor Pearlstein, Associate Curator of Chinese Art, Art Institute of ChicagoMonographs are 100 RMB each and available at RAS events and RAS Library (cash purchase only)15
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RAS 2013 October Newsletter - Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai

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