Book Review on Midnight in Peking

choi

Fergus M Bordewich, Little Trouble in Big China. wall Street Journal, apr 21, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 40124001171752.html
(book review on Paul French, Midnight in Peking; The true story of a bizzare murder in the last days of Old Peking. Penguin, 2012)

Quote: "'Peking was simply the most beautiful city in the world,' recalled the American aesthete George Kates, who lived there on the eve of World War II.

Note:
(1) Dubuque, Iowa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubuque,_Iowa
(The city lies at the junction of three states: Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin)

The city, and county of the same name, are anmed for Julien Dubuque (1762-1810), the first white--born in Quebec, of French descent--permanent settler in present-day Iowa, who arrived at what is now Dubuque in 1785 (and died there).  
(2) Bayswater
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater
(section 1 History: Bainiardus (whose Anglicized name was Baynard), Baynard's Watering, his watering-place now takes the abbreviated name Bayswater)
(3)
(a) Josef von Sternberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_von_Sternberg
(1894-1969; an Austrian-American film director; collaborated with actress Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932))
(b) Shanghai Express (film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Express_(film)
(Dietrich as Shanghai Lily)
(4) James M Cain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cain
(1892-1977; American; usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction)

* hardboiled
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardboiled
("The term comes from a colloquial phrase of understatement. For an egg, to be hardboiled is to be comparatively tough. The hardboiled detective—originated by Daly's Terry Mack and Race Williams and epitomized by Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Philip Marlowe—not only solves mysteries, like his 'softer' counterparts, the protagonist confronts danger and engages in violence on a regular basis. The hardboiled detective also has a characteristically tough attitude")

(5) quaint (adj): "pleasingly or strikingly old-fashioned or unfamiliar <a quaint phrase>"

All definitions are from www.m-w.com, unless otherwise specified.
(6) For "girt," see gird (vt)--whose past tense and past participle may be "girded" or "girt"--is defined as
"to encircle or bind with a flexible band (as a belt)"
(7) asawrm (adj): "filled to overflowing : SWARMING <streets aswarm with people>"  
(8)
(a) aeolian (adj):
"1 often capitalized : of or relating to Aeolus
2: giving forth or marked by a moaning or sighing sound or musical tone produced by or as if by the wind"
(b) Aeolus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolus
(9)
(a) aesthete (n): "one having or affecting sensitivity to the beautiful especially in art"
(b) Lucian W Pye, book review: George N Kates, The Years That Were Fat; Peking, 1933–1940. Oxford University Press, 1988. The China Quarterly, 118 : 386-387 (1989).  
http://journals.cambridge.org/ac ... ine&aid=3536004
(10) The review quotes Mr Kates as saying Peking servants "would do credit to a good Newport establishment."
(a) do credit to someone (also do someone credit): "to bring praise and respect to someone"
Cambridge Dictionaries Online
to bring praise and respect to someone
(b) credit (n): " good name : ESTEEM"
(c) Newport, Rhode Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport,_Rhode_Island

(11) Fox Tower, Peking, in a website the publisher set up for the book.
http://www.midnightinpeking.com/downloads/fox-tower/
(12) Beijing Legation Quarter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Legation_Quarter
(13) tea dance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_dance
(14) for Tartar City of Peking, see
(a) Beijing's History
http://china.org.cn/english/features/beijing/30785.htm
("A city plan was first laid out in the Yuan Dynasty. Yet only after extensive reconstruction during the Ming and Qing (1644-1911), did the city emerge as an architectural masterpiece fit to serve as the capital of the Chinese empire. A north-south axis bisects the city with the Imperial Palace was knows as Danei (The Great Within)")
(b) The Economic History and Economy of Beijing. Department of Economics, San Jose State University, undated
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/beijing.htm
("Under Ming rule Dadu not only got the new name Beijing but a new section of the city was laid out. The Yuan city was known as the Tartar City. South of that city a rectangular plot was laid out and walls built on the other three sides. This came to be known as the Chinese City. It was during the Ming dynasty that the inner walled enclosure of the Forbidden City was built in the old Tartar City")

(14) The "peroxide-blond White Russians" refer to hair dying by treatment with peroxide.
(15) Regarding "slumming members of the respectable foreign community."

slum (vi): "to visit slums especially out of curiosity; broadly : to go somewhere or do something that might be considered beneath one's station —sometimes used with it <slumming it in budget hotels>"
(16) soldier of fortune (n): "one who follows a military career wherever there is promise of profit, adventure, or pleasure"
(17) louche (adj; French, literally, cross-eyed, squint-eyed, from Latin luscus blind in one eye):
"not reputable or decent"