Jack & Bronwyn's Shanghai Adventure

[unless otherwise specified, all photos by Bronwyn Lloyd]

We arrived in Shanghai on Monday morning (11/7): a characteristically misty day. This is the view from our window in the Guoman Hotel:

front window

side window

We had a chance to do some sightseeing the next day, Tuesday, stopping first at the breathtaking Jing'an Temple:

front courtyard

main steps
[photo by Paul Hinton]

Bronwyn & Jack
[photo by Paul Hinton]

Paul Hinton & Tracey Slaughter

Buddha's hands

Buddha

Guanyin

Jack

side temple

amazing detail in the wooden carvings

complexities of perspective

mandala picture

us

Tracey & Paul

Laughing Buddha

And here we back on the top deck of the bus for the city tour:

Jack & Bronwyn

Oriental Pearl Tower

extravagant topiary

Paul & Tracey

& here we all are in the Yu Garden, hunting for bargains:

entrance

lake

dragon

rooftop

We managed a bit of sightseeing later in the week. Here we are at the Temple of the Jade Buddha (which is one statue tourists are not permitted to photograph. It is phenomenally beautiful, though:

back of the main hall

Twin Buddhas

Buddha

reclining Buddha

Monster

back door

intricate goldwork

And if you're wondering why I'm looking like this, the picture below of me sampling a Mango Lassi dessert in one of Shanghai's top restaurants might offer a few clues (the statue of the pig is outside the Jackie Chan Museum, just beside our hotel):

Jack sampling some advanced fusion cuisine

Jack & pig

Ah, beautiful Shanghai!

*

[Addendum (1/8/16)]:

&, for those of you who've expressed scepticism about whether or not we actually attended any sessions at the said conference, please check out the following:]

JR third from right at the opening plenary session
[photos from ECNU website]

JR giving his views on the Chinese novel

JR checks his watch as the session runs wildly over time

Jack Ross, Robert Olen Butler & Mark A. Jarman

Xu Qin: "Story event a tale of literary exploration" (24/7/16)

This latter article, from the China.org.cn website, includes the following passage:

Jack Ross, a New Zealand poet and lecturer in creative writing, said: "For years people thought we belonged to the West. However, the colonial and Maori history of New Zealand has made us neither East nor West. With increased immigration from Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea in the latter part of 20th century, the new generation of New Zealanders are eager to take on their own identities."

So there you go, smartypants! Read 'em and weep.

NZ panel: Tracey Slaughter, Jack Ross, Frankie McMillan, Leanne Radojkovich, Bronwyn Lloyd

The picture above comes from Nuala O'Connor [Nuala Ní Chonchúir]'s literary blog "WOMEN RULE WRITER." She comments:

I really, really enjoyed the panel of New Zealand writers who were as down to earth and vibrant as one might expect. NZ author Frankie McMillan also gave an interesting paper on flash fiction which is having a renaissance in her country.

Thanks, Nuala. You're welcome in New Zealand anytime ...

Real Illusions: i.m. Russell Haley (d. 4/7/16)

Russell Haley (1934-2016)

I've just received some rather bad news. Ian Wedde has sent out an open letter to friends of Russell & Jean Haley:

Russell died on Monday 4 July of a brain tumour, at home in Whangarei. He wanted to be cremated without any ceremony, as simply as possible, and this was done on Tuesday. There will be a celebration at his and Jean’s place in Whangarei, on Saturday 9 July.

I can't be at that celebration, unfortunately, but I would like to put a few things on record here even so. I've known Russell Haley for a long time. He was (briefly) a fellow-tutor with me in the Auckland University English Department in the early 90s. I also met up with him quite often while Jan Kemp and I were working on the Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive in the early 2000s (in which he is, of course, included).

He taught life writing for us for one semester at Albany, and I'll always remember the masterly guest lecture he delivered on the relationship between voice and personality: using a recording of Kathleen Ferrier as a starting point, then moving on to his own biography of Pat Hanly, he took the students and me carefully through every stage of a complex argument about identity.

He was always cheerful, always interesting to talk to, always full of new ideas and original aperçus. We didn't meet often, but it never seemed to matter: there was always something to add to what we'd been discussing on the previous occasion.

Of course it's mainly as a writer that Russell will survive: will continue to be with us for the long haul, I'd venture to predict.

Here's a list of his major publications. Most of them I have, though there are one or two pesky gaps still waiting to be filled:

1. The Walled Garden (1972) [poetry]


2. On the Fault Line (1977) [poetry]


3. The Sauna Bath Mysteries (1978) [stories]


4. Real Illusions: A selection of family lies and biographical fictions in which the ancestral dead also play their part (1984) [autobiography]


5. The Settlement (1986) [novel]


6. Hanly: A New Zealand Artist (1989) [biography]


7. The Transfer Station (1989) [stories]


8. The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories (1989) [edited, with Susan Davis]


9. Beside Myself (1990) [novel]


10. All Done with Mirrors (1999) [novel]


11. A Spider-Web Season & The Transfer Station (2000) [stories]


12. Tomorrow Tastes Better (2001) [novel]

Russell Haley: All Done with Mirrors (1999)

Russell's work figures prominently in Matt Harris's Doctoral thesis on "Metafiction in New Zealand from the 1960s to the present day" (Massey, 2012), which was co-supervised by Mary Paul and myself. There is also a fascinating interview with him included as one of the appendices.

I guess he had a good innings. Somehow that doesn't seem to matter much when one hears news like this, though: Russell was just one of those people whom it's impossible to imagine gone for good: I'm sure I'll keep on expecting to run into him somewhere for quite some time to come - always with that cheeky smile and that fund of good stories and quiet, unobtrusive intelligence.

I was rereading the first few stories in The Sauna Bath Mysteries just last week. I know that sounds improbable, but it's true. It just suddenly stood out from the shelves and demanded to be read. That will probably keep on happening, too, I'm sure.

Love and good wishes go with you, Russell: and my best to all those gathered in Whangarei today, also.

Russell Haley: Hanly (1989)

Shanghai

So Bronwyn and I are off to Shanghai next week to attend the 14th International Conference on the Short Story in English (July 13-16) at East China Normal University (ECNU). The title of this year's gathering is "Influence and Confluence in the Short Story: East and West." Pretty exciting, huh?

Bronwyn's Author photo


Jack's Author photo

If you're at all curious (why would you be?) about the bewildering variety of workshops and panels we're supposed to be taking part in, you can check them out here. The short version, though, is that each of us is giving a reading, is taking part in one of the plenary panels, and is chairing a couple of sessions. I'm also giving an Academic paper on "Settler & Speculative Fiction in the NZ Short Story" (sounds fascinating, no?), and Bronwyn and I are both in a panel discussing Voice in the NZ short story, chaired by our good friend Tracey Slaughter.

The conference will be fun, I'm sure. The prospect of exploring Shanghai a bit is almost equally alluring, though. Pretty much all I know about the city comes from watching (and reading) J. G. Ballard's autobiographical Empire of the Sun, but I can't help feeling that it might have changed a bit since then.

Empire of the Sun: The Bund

The Bund today

Here's the location of the conference:

Peter Potrowl: East China Normal University (2010)

And here's our hotel:

Guoman Hotel, Shanghai

Looks pretty lux, eh? Too good for the likes of us, you'll be thinking, and I guess you're right. We're going to try to make the best of it, though. It's going to be hot (temperatures in the 30s at this time of year, I'm told) ...