Two recent guest blogs – Post-1949 Chinese revolutionary art and design

I have recently published* a pair of guest blogposts on the subject of post-1949 Chinese revolutionary art and design. The first, ‘Knock Down the Gang of Four!’: caricatures in the British Library’s collection of post-1949 Chinese posters, is available from the Language of Authoritarian Regimes website. The second, ‘Do the Chinese always smile?’ Exhibiting the…

The earliest reference to a person of Chinese origin in Leicester?

The Chinese Giant Rummaging in the British Newspaper Archive has churned up a few more gems. Ostensibly seeking more information about Mr On Lee and his ‘Chinese oath’, I stumbled upon a reference to ‘The Chinese Giant’ (aka ‘Chang woo goo’). ‘Chang woo goo’ or Zhan Shicai to give him his accepted name today was,…

‘From Red Guards to Bond villains’

I was recently interviewed by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore for a BBC online article about the Mao suit (Zhong shan fu 中山服). The article has recently been published and you can read it here. Image from the WBUR Boston’s NPR News Station’s Flickr photostream and used under a Creative Commons license.