Paul French, author of New York Times bestseller Midnight in Peking and Old Shanghai gangland epic City of Devils, is back with a new podcast, Carry on Kidnapping.We’re heading back to 1932, to northern China, to a chaotic time when poverty, war and desperation led to an epidemic of kidnapping by local bandits eager to secure large ransoms.It was a pretty good business – families, businesses and governments usually paid up. Hostages were usually terrified.But it didn’t work like that when a bandit from the Manchurian hills kidnapped Englishwoman Muriel 'Tinko' Pawley – she was a handful, they were forced to take her three dogs along, newspaper readers as far away as London demanded her release and she constantly demanded more soap!Kidnapping Tinko Pawley was a big mistake for the bandit leader who thought she』d be easy money. Instead – she turned out to be his worst nightmare.Scan the QR code below (VPN on) to listen to Paul French reading all four episodes ofCarry on Kidnapping:And if you like that, you'll probably like...Opium Smuggling & Femme Fatales: Paul French'sThe Lady from Hong Kong
The year is 1939, and a curious tale unfurls after a mysterious woman, going by the name Seto Gin, is busted smuggling several dozen tins of opium into San Francisco.
New York Times best selling author Paul French reads the first four-part adaptation (for Morning Brew) of his Post Magazine article 'The Lady from Hong Kong' – "the best Hollywood movie of the 1940s never made."
It’s a tale of a woman who called herself Seto Gin, and arrived in San Francisco from Hong Kong in January 1939 with several dozen tins of opium hidden in her luggage.
Her story, and why she took the risk to smuggle so much dope into America, is the story of 'The Lady from Hong Kong.'
Scan the QR code below (VPN on) to listen The Lady from Hong Kong:
Sex, Drugs & Bank Jobs: Paul French's Peking Noir
And if you like that, you should also check out French'sPeking Noir,a drama that sees him on the trail of the enigmaticShura Giraldi, mysterious and mercurial legend of the Beijing Badlands.
Shura Giraldi, someone else insisted on the exact opposite. Shura was handsome and beautiful; Shura was kind and good, Shura was exploitative and evil. Shura was just another struggling White Russian refugee trying to get by in 1930s China; Shura was the heart and brains of a gang that ran clubs, sex workers, illicit booze and drugs, when not robbing banks and stealing gems to fence in Shanghai. Shura loved ballet and cabaret, creating the Shura Giraldi Dance Troupe that topped the bill at all the best Peking nightclubs.
Shura sometimes presented as male and sometimes as female. When passing as a man Shura bound his breasts tightly and wore a sharp tailored suit; when she was a woman she wore startlingly colored robes, both Chinese-style cheongsam and Western dresses, letting her raven hair flow loose, said witnesses. Shura had added an incredibly massive layer of confusion and obfuscation to anyone looking by changing gender. Switching for anonymity, for commercial gain or criminal advantage, for love, for a whim.
Paul French is a historian and writer who focuses on China in the first half of the 20th century. He's been on Shura’s trail for 15 years, digging through the paper records and archives in half a dozen countries in an attempt to get to grips with the enigma that was Shura. This story, a product of that tireless research, is full of truths, but like an old jigsaw brought down from the attic after decades, there are many pieces missing. So we're using drama, written by Sarah Wooley, to conjure and join the dots of Shura’s story, and go in search of a lost life and a forgotten world.
The search will take us from a Russian far east in violent revolution, to the chaos of the mass emigration of the White Russians, to the crowded hutongs of Peking; from that city’s nightclubs and cabarets, to the casinos of Shanghai; from a China wracked by rampaging warlordism, invaded by Japan, and then fighting its own civil war that culminated in its own revolution.
Shura saw it all; Shura lived through it all; Shura, in part, explains it all.
Scan the QR code below (VPN on) to listenPeking Noir :
Peking Noir is also available on Spotify and iTunes.
[All images courtesy of Paul French]
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