Literary festival Shanghai has begun. Last Year, the China Daily interviewed me and quoted me along with the owner, Alex, of Book Worm in Beijing, and I said, that if there were not a literary festival in China, I would probably not live here!
Sunday, March 4
The lit festival is always held in the darkest and dankest part of year. The sun has not shone for three weeks, except for an occasional tease for ten minutes or so.
Mishi: After all, women are difficult creatures. Women like to be asked properly. Boys just like to talk about what they have done. What is important to a woman is the way she is asked.."
I will agree wth that 100 percent; it makes the whole difference between a debacle and a debut!
Mishi: In your book,women feel sad and men feel hungry after marriage???
Hanif: Everything is not going to be all right. Someone is going to die.
Hanif: I knew him. I loved his poetry. He died in a car crash. I used these lines: "In every man there is a thief, and in every man there is a peacock."
Hanif distinguishes between journalism being a good way to "send a message" and fiction, a good way to tell a story! He continues: "You cannot write if you are not a reader. You can't be in a band if you don't like music."
Mishi: Most people have a good book in them and that is where it should stay.
Hanif: Best way to write is to keep your ass on the chair."
Hanif: My favorite books: The Bible. Urdu books. Mario Vargas Llosa. Peruvian writer. The Feast of the Goat. , about a dictator. Hanif concludes, "If he can write that, so can I."
Erudite Geremie R. Barme. Editor of the e-journal China Heritage Quarterly. Discusses: "West lake: A world Made by Literature and Politics"... talks about intellectuals in China. Mao spent more time during the cultural revolution in Hangzhou as he liked it...and it has been a base for many government officials and for wealthy individuals, as well as for the scholars and poets...what is most important is that the artists and intellectuals today still have some connection in part with their origins in or education in Hangzhou. Hangzhou had educational institutions which prepared the people for their roles in society. Having lived in Hangzhou last year for one year, the very year that it finally achieved World Herigtage UENSCO status, that was exactly my impression, that Hangzhou is a true hidden source of contemporary art talent, which is very real and is visible in the galleries of Shanghai and Beijing. They go to Beijing and Shanghai for their press and money, but they learn their craft in the oldest Song capital. He and I are congruent, on the fact that the rise or decline of gardens depends on empire. An empire is known by its gardens. He mentions a study being done now at Dumbarton Oaks, which is a part of Harvard university; I attended their seminars for more than a decade.Each Spring, a theme and international scholars; it was wonderful! A scholar is editing Jiang writing...about regulation of the environment. A phrase rose, "lick the eyes" so others could see what he had seen, taste the things he had seen. Look in CULTURAL HERITAGE QUARTERLY to find out more...He cites the ten views, drawing power from loss ,Tides of Change: Those who will go with it will prosper and those who will not, will be destroyed."
Geremie Barnes also cites David Hawkes, Songs of the South. Paul Cohen, "Speaking to History".
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"Great Debate: Will China's Rise Spell America's Decline?"David Pilling is the Asian editor of the Financial Times. He won "best foreign commentator award in 2011 for his columns on China.These two young actors, An Asia Fellow, the micro blogger, and the other, now on the press desk in Beijing, formerly of the Wall street journal.. blew all the high seats Edward Luce chief US commentator for the FT; he was formerlly Washington's FT bureau chief. out of the water, with her statistics and uncannily accurate and cautious analysis of the hyper optimism about China. No conclusions were reached. Stay tuned.
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... the last words on Mrs. Walis Simpson, or That Woman...with Anna Sebba, who has written a bio of Laura Ashley, among others. King Edward Viii gave up his monarchy for her, as he said he could not perform his duties without the woman he loved by his side. No wonder so many men divorce their lovely wives who spend their money to marry their devoted secretaries. It turns out that if the King had not left a velvet pouch with jewelry on her pillow each night, it might have turned out differently. She engaged in adultery but then became a prisoner of the monarch's love, and to her dying day wrote to her dear Ernest, who had fallen in love with her best friend, Mary, whom she had sent to distract him, while she engaged with her dalliances with the Prince...but Ernest had understood her. I asked the question, was there any versimilitude with Camilla and Prince Charles and of course, she agrees...and thought that "The Queen" had set a good precedent for her own book. We also concur that, of course, the historical context set the stage, as now royals marry commoners; no problem. Tess Johnston is hosting her, and read the book in two nights, she told me. Have to read the book for this menage a trois, which is probably not uncommon among the Princes of the world.
Anna Sebba says that Wallis has been demonized and villified by the British public and by all royals. She also says that the dossier on her attending whore houses and learning the cults of the East is false, though she did spend one year in Shanghai, enjoying herself. It was her "lotus year'. She went to Shanghai to get a divorce from her abusive alcoholic husband, but it did not happen. (1924-25) She led a sexually liberated life and as Gretchen asks: how was her sexuality; she could not have children, so that factored into her promiscuity. She stayed at the Astor House. "Robby" in her diary was Harold Robinson who escorted her about and never would say a word against her. He thought she was wonderful. They would have tea for two and tea dance together. It is more likely that she was more strategic in her planning; she studied the men she met and learned everything about them and then listened to them attentively. Sounds like Jackie Onassis, who, when she was JFK's wife, enchanted all the heads of state, by whispering to them and focussing on them. After getting a divorce, she met another married man, Edward Simpson and stole him, and the life of the woman who loved him. The daughter was very bitter about Wallis marrying her father. Edward liked American women and liked the wife of another man before Wallis, but she knew he would not abdicate for her...so she broke it off. Wallis told Edward, though, "We will only make disaster together", but he threatened suicide if she would not marry him. His need for Wallace seemed pathological. She wrote love letters to Ernest, her husband, saying she was governed by her pride...that he was so good and sweet...but of course that changed nothing. My question hinged on my own experience; all princes whom I have had as friends, including Prince Murat, are all child like in some way and subject to their wives. He was charming and vulnerable and I enjoyed playing tennis with him, and all the other occasions we were together. I invited him to Thanksgiving dinner, along with his daughter, when the UN ambassador and his wife(Americans) invited me to join them.
Wallis called Edward, to the end, "Peter Pan", the boy who would not grow up. She pleaded that she was more "sinned against, than sinning". No H.R.H was granted to her. No royal wedding. He gave her a bracelet of crosses and the question was, who was bearing the cross, him or her? Edward had to take her somewhere for his honeymoon where she would be well received and that was to the Fuhrer in Germany...as noone would curtsey to her. She worked hard with the Red Cross effort during the War and is pictured with Eleanor Roosevelt in America. She says the story is both Gothic and faustian. Anna Sebba likes to write it as "ordinary people caught up in the sweep of events"...now I have to read it for myself.
http:// www.annasebba.com
Sunday, March 4
The lit festival is always held in the darkest and dankest part of year. The sun has not shone for three weeks, except for an occasional tease for ten minutes or so.
Mohammed Hanif, "Our Lady of Alice Bhatti" , --Pakistani journalist, who lives in Karachi, as BBC correspondent, and is the author of "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" short listed for the Man Prize; now this new book, is about a Catholic nurse, who inspired him when she was taking care of his mother when she was dying-- he never forgot her, so he wanted to know her and wrote this story...set in modern Karachi. She has a love affair with a soccer player....and Mishi, interviews him, --radiant and bemused...she was absolutely amazing. Mishi was such a dear friend, graduated Wellsley, grew up in Switzerland, goes back to India, married an American who works for APPLE, and has finished her novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF LIGHT, to be published late this year or in 2013. She is the author of the memoir adventure of following the footsteps of the monk,"Chasing the Monk's Shadow: A journey in the footstesp of Xuanzang (Penguin, 2005) I followed some of that very journey myself....except the part into Afghanistan. Mishi is fluent in Mandarin, Hindi and French. (and of course, English!)
Mishi: "How did you conceive of character?"
Hanif: Obsession. I remember as a teen seeing this nurse leaning over my mother in hospital when she was dying; I never forgot her face and 20 years later, I created her. I wanted to get to know her.
Mishi: We will keep this question elusive, elliptical and at the same time, clear!
What about the carnal, randomness of the violence? There seems to be an underlying fury!
Hanif: We sanction violence by shifting channels, if we dont' like what we see.
Hanif: Smilelys are banned by the Taliban...if a woman sends a smiley, she reveals her inner nature and this is forbidden.
Mishi: Why did you dedicate your book to Hussein? the poet?
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Geremie Barnes also cites David Hawkes, Songs of the South. Paul Cohen, "Speaking to History".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Great Debate: Will China's Rise Spell America's Decline?"David Pilling is the Asian editor of the Financial Times. He won "best foreign commentator award in 2011 for his columns on China.These two young actors, An Asia Fellow, the micro blogger, and the other, now on the press desk in Beijing, formerly of the Wall street journal.. blew all the high seats Edward Luce chief US commentator for the FT; he was formerlly Washington's FT bureau chief. out of the water, with her statistics and uncannily accurate and cautious analysis of the hyper optimism about China. No conclusions were reached. Stay tuned.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... the last words on Mrs. Walis Simpson, or That Woman...with Anna Sebba, who has written a bio of Laura Ashley, among others. King Edward Viii gave up his monarchy for her, as he said he could not perform his duties without the woman he loved by his side. No wonder so many men divorce their lovely wives who spend their money to marry their devoted secretaries. It turns out that if the King had not left a velvet pouch with jewelry on her pillow each night, it might have turned out differently. She engaged in adultery but then became a prisoner of the monarch's love, and to her dying day wrote to her dear Ernest, who had fallen in love with her best friend, Mary, whom she had sent to distract him, while she engaged with her dalliances with the Prince...but Ernest had understood her. I asked the question, was there any versimilitude with Camilla and Prince Charles and of course, she agrees...and thought that "The Queen" had set a good precedent for her own book. We also concur that, of course, the historical context set the stage, as now royals marry commoners; no problem. Tess Johnston is hosting her, and read the book in two nights, she told me. Have to read the book for this menage a trois, which is probably not uncommon among the Princes of the world.
Anna Sebba says that Wallis has been demonized and villified by the British public and by all royals. She also says that the dossier on her attending whore houses and learning the cults of the East is false, though she did spend one year in Shanghai, enjoying herself. It was her "lotus year'. She went to Shanghai to get a divorce from her abusive alcoholic husband, but it did not happen. (1924-25) She led a sexually liberated life and as Gretchen asks: how was her sexuality; she could not have children, so that factored into her promiscuity. She stayed at the Astor House. "Robby" in her diary was Harold Robinson who escorted her about and never would say a word against her. He thought she was wonderful. They would have tea for two and tea dance together. It is more likely that she was more strategic in her planning; she studied the men she met and learned everything about them and then listened to them attentively. Sounds like Jackie Onassis, who, when she was JFK's wife, enchanted all the heads of state, by whispering to them and focussing on them. After getting a divorce, she met another married man, Edward Simpson and stole him, and the life of the woman who loved him. The daughter was very bitter about Wallis marrying her father. Edward liked American women and liked the wife of another man before Wallis, but she knew he would not abdicate for her...so she broke it off. Wallis told Edward, though, "We will only make disaster together", but he threatened suicide if she would not marry him. His need for Wallace seemed pathological. She wrote love letters to Ernest, her husband, saying she was governed by her pride...that he was so good and sweet...but of course that changed nothing. My question hinged on my own experience; all princes whom I have had as friends, including Prince Murat, are all child like in some way and subject to their wives. He was charming and vulnerable and I enjoyed playing tennis with him, and all the other occasions we were together. I invited him to Thanksgiving dinner, along with his daughter, when the UN ambassador and his wife(Americans) invited me to join them.
Wallis called Edward, to the end, "Peter Pan", the boy who would not grow up. She pleaded that she was more "sinned against, than sinning". No H.R.H was granted to her. No royal wedding. He gave her a bracelet of crosses and the question was, who was bearing the cross, him or her? Edward had to take her somewhere for his honeymoon where she would be well received and that was to the Fuhrer in Germany...as noone would curtsey to her. She worked hard with the Red Cross effort during the War and is pictured with Eleanor Roosevelt in America. She says the story is both Gothic and faustian. Anna Sebba likes to write it as "ordinary people caught up in the sweep of events"...now I have to read it for myself.
http:// www.annasebba.com
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