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China - Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical. With some account of Ava and the Burmese, Siam, and Anam -
Julia Corner
1853 - Henry G. Bohn, London - First Edition
A compilation of various writings on China, with steel engraved map, and 85 black and white woodcut illustrations. Beautifully bound in modern pictorial cloth.
A large portion of the writing is from Julia Corner’s History of China, other authors include John Davis and Wells Williams.
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Price HK$ 3,000
1853 - Henry G. Bohn, London - First Edition
A compilation of various writings on China, with steel engraved map, and 85 black and white woodcut illustrations. Beautifully bound in modern pictorial cloth.A large portion of the writing is from Julia Corner’s History of China, other authors include John Davis and Wells Williams.
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Price HK$ 3,000
China in Sign and Symbol - with decorations by Kent Crane -
Louise Crane
1926 - Kelly and Walsh, Shanghai - First Edition
‘All symbols are of universal use and date from earliest antiquity. Mrs. Louise Crane has taken in hand in this volume to describe some of the symbols she has observed in the social life of the Chinese... symbols are our agents.’
Gorgeously presented in a vivid art-deco dust jacket, this profusely illustrated work is a nicely put together study of the ornate shop signs and enigmatic symbols from 1926, explaining the customs and tradition they are based on. Illustrated by Kent Crane with 49 photographs and full colour plates, depicting different symbols and signs, all brightly coloured, some heightened in gold, and including two large folding coloured plates.
Organised to show how each group of symbols applies to life - The Inner Man; The Outer Man; His Occupation; His Funds; His General Needs; His Health; and His Future State.
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Price HK$ 14,000
1926 - Kelly and Walsh, Shanghai - First Edition
‘All symbols are of universal use and date from earliest antiquity. Mrs. Louise Crane has taken in hand in this volume to describe some of the symbols she has observed in the social life of the Chinese... symbols are our agents.’Gorgeously presented in a vivid art-deco dust jacket, this profusely illustrated work is a nicely put together study of the ornate shop signs and enigmatic symbols from 1926, explaining the customs and tradition they are based on. Illustrated by Kent Crane with 49 photographs and full colour plates, depicting different symbols and signs, all brightly coloured, some heightened in gold, and including two large folding coloured plates.
Organised to show how each group of symbols applies to life - The Inner Man; The Outer Man; His Occupation; His Funds; His General Needs; His Health; and His Future State.
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Price HK$ 14,000
Handbook for China (Including Hong Kong) -
Carl Crow, Carl Sowerby
1933 - Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai - Fifth Edition, Revised Throughout
A superb copy of this uncommon, detailed guidebook, with 390 pages of text. Illustrated throughout, including six folding colour maps. At the rear are 48 pages of traveller focussed advertisements, and a ten page detailed index.
Fascinating and comprehensive, Crow’s handbook includes informative sections for the traveller on Shanghai, Peking, and Hong Kong, each with numerous maps, as well as chapters on flora and fauna, climate, transportation, and hotels, together with historical sketches, the religions of China, arts and industry, and the government.
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Price HK$ 2,800
1933 - Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai - Fifth Edition, Revised Throughout
A superb copy of this uncommon, detailed guidebook, with 390 pages of text. Illustrated throughout, including six folding colour maps. At the rear are 48 pages of traveller focussed advertisements, and a ten page detailed index.Fascinating and comprehensive, Crow’s handbook includes informative sections for the traveller on Shanghai, Peking, and Hong Kong, each with numerous maps, as well as chapters on flora and fauna, climate, transportation, and hotels, together with historical sketches, the religions of China, arts and industry, and the government.
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Price HK$ 2,800
Yün-Nan. The Link between India and the Yangtze -
Major Henry Rodolph Davies
1909 - University Press, Cambridge - First Edition
An exceptional and thus rare example of the first edition. The Brooke-Hitching copy, housed in custom slipcase. With the seven folding vocabulary tables in the rear pocket together with the large and important folding map of the area outlined in colour. Illustrated throughout with photographic frontispiece and a further 103 photographs on 73 plates.
‘H. R. Davies (1865-1950) was an English army officer and member of the British intelligence service. Between 1894 and 1900 he was asked by the British government to lead survey expeditions into the Chinese province of Yunnan to discover possible routes for a railway connecting British-occupied Burma with the upper Yangtze river and through to Sichuan.
This work contains an account of his travels though Yunnan province, written as a travelogue. The region had been little explored by westerners before Davies' expeditions, and this is the first detailed description of Yunnan from a European traveller. The society, diverse indigenous cultures, geography, economy and political situation of the province are described in detail, with an introductory three chapters on the political context of the expeditions, and on railway construction in south-east Asia in the late nineteenth century’ - Cambridge University Press.
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Price HK$ 20,000
1909 - University Press, Cambridge - First Edition
An exceptional and thus rare example of the first edition. The Brooke-Hitching copy, housed in custom slipcase. With the seven folding vocabulary tables in the rear pocket together with the large and important folding map of the area outlined in colour. Illustrated throughout with photographic frontispiece and a further 103 photographs on 73 plates.‘H. R. Davies (1865-1950) was an English army officer and member of the British intelligence service. Between 1894 and 1900 he was asked by the British government to lead survey expeditions into the Chinese province of Yunnan to discover possible routes for a railway connecting British-occupied Burma with the upper Yangtze river and through to Sichuan.
This work contains an account of his travels though Yunnan province, written as a travelogue. The region had been little explored by westerners before Davies' expeditions, and this is the first detailed description of Yunnan from a European traveller. The society, diverse indigenous cultures, geography, economy and political situation of the province are described in detail, with an introductory three chapters on the political context of the expeditions, and on railway construction in south-east Asia in the late nineteenth century’ - Cambridge University Press.
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Price HK$ 20,000
A History of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club 1863-1930 -
C. Noel Davis
1930 - Kelly and Walsh Limited, Shanghai - First Edition
A remarkable insight into one of the important social events in Shanghai, from the late 1800s through to the 1930s. Introduced by the British, frustrated by the lack of animals for a proper hunt, the paper hunt involved one horseman who would ride ahead of the others to act as the hunted prey, marking the trail with coloured paper. One of the main rules was that only Mongolian ponies were accepted as a valid ride.
The list of participants and winners is a veritable who’s-who of influential traders, bankers and diplomats. Founded in the 1860s in the midst of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), the Club thrived through revolutions, warlord control, communist insurgency and suppression, the Japanese occupation and civil war.
Containing anecdotes, poems, songs, black and white photographs including a long fold-out panorama photogrpha by Ah Fong of the Meet of the Christmas hunt 1929, drawings and cartoons by Edmund Toeg (including a colour fold-out of the winners of the hunt challenge cup 1910-30).
Complete with six large-scale folding maps of the riding and hunting country.
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Price HK$ 9,000
1930 - Kelly and Walsh Limited, Shanghai - First Edition
A remarkable insight into one of the important social events in Shanghai, from the late 1800s through to the 1930s. Introduced by the British, frustrated by the lack of animals for a proper hunt, the paper hunt involved one horseman who would ride ahead of the others to act as the hunted prey, marking the trail with coloured paper. One of the main rules was that only Mongolian ponies were accepted as a valid ride.The list of participants and winners is a veritable who’s-who of influential traders, bankers and diplomats. Founded in the 1860s in the midst of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), the Club thrived through revolutions, warlord control, communist insurgency and suppression, the Japanese occupation and civil war.
Containing anecdotes, poems, songs, black and white photographs including a long fold-out panorama photogrpha by Ah Fong of the Meet of the Christmas hunt 1929, drawings and cartoons by Edmund Toeg (including a colour fold-out of the winners of the hunt challenge cup 1910-30).
Complete with six large-scale folding maps of the riding and hunting country.
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Price HK$ 9,000
Son of Heaven -
Princess Der Ling
1935 - D. Appleton-Century Company, New York - First Edition
The story of the colourful, dramatic, and tragic life of Kwang Hsu, taken from his parents at the age of four to be placed as Emperor on a puppet throne, handsome, attractive, diligent as he grew into a realisation of his potential power, loving no one save the concubine Pearl, dying at the age of 37 at the hand of his aunt, the relentless Empress Dowager Cixi, a day before her own death. Princess Der Ling herself had served as first lady-in-waiting to Empress Dowager Cixi.
‘Princess’ Der Ling - daughter of a Manchu aristocrat, granddaughter of a Boston merchant, educated like a boy in the Confucian classics, a baptised Catholic blessed by the hand of Pope Leo XIII, a woman who donned chic Western fashions in China and her ceremonial court robes in the United States, and wife of an American soldier of fortune... Der Ling was a fascinating human battleground of warring identities, a victim of the hallucinogenic effects of too much publicity, much of it prompted by Der Ling herself, and a figure whose life provides a glimpse into one woman’s experience of living not just between two cultures—that of China and the West—but among many worlds: social, religious, moral, political. - Grant Hayter-Menzies author of Imperial Masquerade, the Legend of Princess Der Ling.
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Price HK$ 2,000
1935 - D. Appleton-Century Company, New York - First Edition
The story of the colourful, dramatic, and tragic life of Kwang Hsu, taken from his parents at the age of four to be placed as Emperor on a puppet throne, handsome, attractive, diligent as he grew into a realisation of his potential power, loving no one save the concubine Pearl, dying at the age of 37 at the hand of his aunt, the relentless Empress Dowager Cixi, a day before her own death. Princess Der Ling herself had served as first lady-in-waiting to Empress Dowager Cixi.‘Princess’ Der Ling - daughter of a Manchu aristocrat, granddaughter of a Boston merchant, educated like a boy in the Confucian classics, a baptised Catholic blessed by the hand of Pope Leo XIII, a woman who donned chic Western fashions in China and her ceremonial court robes in the United States, and wife of an American soldier of fortune... Der Ling was a fascinating human battleground of warring identities, a victim of the hallucinogenic effects of too much publicity, much of it prompted by Der Ling herself, and a figure whose life provides a glimpse into one woman’s experience of living not just between two cultures—that of China and the West—but among many worlds: social, religious, moral, political. - Grant Hayter-Menzies author of Imperial Masquerade, the Legend of Princess Der Ling.
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Price HK$ 2,000
The China Coast – Signed -
Ivon A. Donnelly
1931 - Tientsin Press, Tientsin - First Edition
Boldly signed by Donnelly on the front free endpaper.
A wonderful account of voyages on China’s coast and waterways, Profusely illustrated throughout with Donnelly’s charming line sketches, six wonderful full page colour plates from water colours, and nine maps. With a poem by Joan Power at the end of each section.
Chapters on the Gulf of Pechili, Taku Bar, the Yellow Sea, the Yangtze estuary, the Chusan archipelago, and the South China Sea.
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Price HK$ 3,000
1931 - Tientsin Press, Tientsin - First Edition
Boldly signed by Donnelly on the front free endpaper.A wonderful account of voyages on China’s coast and waterways, Profusely illustrated throughout with Donnelly’s charming line sketches, six wonderful full page colour plates from water colours, and nine maps. With a poem by Joan Power at the end of each section.
Chapters on the Gulf of Pechili, Taku Bar, the Yellow Sea, the Yangtze estuary, the Chusan archipelago, and the South China Sea.
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Price HK$ 3,000
A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet: containing the geography and history (natural as well as civil) of those countries -
Jean-Baptiste Du Halde
1738-1741 - Printed by T. Gardner...for Edward Cave, London - First folio edition in English.
Two large folio volumes in contemporary bindings. One of the most celebrated of all 18th century works on China, illustrated with 65 engraved plates, including D’Anville’s exceptional maps (42 large folding maps most engraved by Bowen), nine town-plans, and 13 full-page plates depicting dress, customs and ceremonies. With exquisitely engraved headpieces and initial letters.
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Price HK$ 245,000
1738-1741 - Printed by T. Gardner...for Edward Cave, London - First folio edition in English.
Two large folio volumes in contemporary bindings. One of the most celebrated of all 18th century works on China, illustrated with 65 engraved plates, including D’Anville’s exceptional maps (42 large folding maps most engraved by Bowen), nine town-plans, and 13 full-page plates depicting dress, customs and ceremonies. With exquisitely engraved headpieces and initial letters.
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Price HK$ 245,000