The Badlands: More Stories from Midnight in Peking

by Paul French

More tales of intrigue in Old Peking from bestselling author Paul French

Through portraits of eight residents of Peking’s infamous Badlands district, Paul French brings the area and 1930s Peking vividly to life. A small warren of narrow hutongs, the Badlands sat just inside the eastern flank of the Tartar Wall, which at that time enclosed the old Imperial City of Peking. Its habitués were a mix of the good, the bad and the poor unfortunates, among them the fiery brothel madams Brana Shazker and Rosie Gerbert; the pimp Saxsen, who had no regard for the women he exploited; the young prostitutes Marie and Peggy, whose dreadful working lives drove them to madness and addiction. There was the cabaret dancer Tatiana Korovina, a White Russian girl who did not succumb to the vice of the district but instead married, had a family, and eventually left China to lead a long and happy life. There was the American Joe Knauf, who dealt violence and fear as well as drugs, and finally the enigmatic Shura Giraldi, of indeterminate sex, who was to some a charmer and to others a master criminal, but to everyone the uncrowned King of the Badlands.

Paul French first discovered the Badlands while researching his bestselling Midnight in Peking. As the book was published in China, Australia, America, and the UK, the families and acquaintances of the people he had written about contacted him from around the globe, adding stories and recollections to his own research. The result is this short but potent portrait of a time and place now lost to history, here vividly brought to life.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

137 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2012

About the author

Paul French has been based in Shanghai for many years as Chief China Representative of research and analysis consultancy Access Asia. He is a regular commentator of China and North East Asia on the international media. He is the author of a number of previous books including the well-received North Korea: The Paranoid Pensinsula for Zed Books.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting only if you've read the author's "Midnight in Peking" and want to read material on the notorious Badlands area of 1920's and 1930's Beijing that serves as the setting of "Midnight in Peking." It's a quick, inexpensive read; it's like a series of magazine articles about various characters from the Badlands. The characters outlined in "The Badlands" are quirky, depraved and sad, and while the author does a nice job writing up what he has there isn't enough remaining historical information on most of them to really make them come alive. I felt that French's earlier book had already done a good job of painting a picture of the Badlands, this follow-on title doesn't add much more.

I highly recommend "Midnight in Peking" for anyone visiting or living in Beijing, this is just for people who love that earlier book.

[Tocotin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh… no. This is so not good. I hoped for way more than that. I should have listened to other reviewers… It’s just a loosely assembled collection of sketches about the inhabitants of the Badlands who appear in Midnight in Peking and are – mind – of European/American extraction. Almost no new information or interesting detail, maybe apart from the two chapters (are they even chapters?) about Marie and Peggy, and the two madams. But the flair is gone, the atmosphere is gone, the compassion is also gone. All that remains is harsh and callous relation about weak, lost, destitute people. Wow. Is it because there’s no pretty Pamela in the background?

And why is John Blofeld called a “sensationalist”? See, I’ve just finished Blofeld’s book about Peking and it was heavenly. Oh well. At least I didn’t pay too much for this one.

I like the Badlands in World of Warcraft. Just had to say something randomly positive!

[Elliott Petty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stick with Midnight in Peking. This ebook was clearly cobbled from material he couldn't fit in his book. Like any meal, clothing, etc. made solely from leftovers, it's subpar. The subject is also quite dark, and unlike Midnight in Peking there is no hero to balance the filth and depressing lives described. Quite depressing actually.

[Amy Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

More information on the Badlands of Beijing (or as Paul calls it in his lovely British accent: "The seedy underbelly of Peking.") of the 1930's. Interesting to read -- glad I didn't live there then! And I'm sorry to hear that much of that area is going to be destroyed soon.

[Pip Jennings · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed with this - was left feeling a bit unsatisfied. I realise that the information about the characters was very scarce, but it just didn't quite fulfill the expectations. I really enjoyed his "Midnight in Peking" and probably expected too much.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes in popular culture a story is told in which the background characters threaten to overshadow the main story itself. The best example I can think of is the film Casablanca, in which the varied refugees, travelers, criminals and other supporting cast each have their own fascinating personal tales, which may be hinted at but never told.

Such was the case when I recently read Paul French's Midnight in Peking, about the brutal murder of a young Englishwoman in Peking in 1937, on the eve of the Japanese occupation. Living as she did in the respectable Legation quarter, hard by the seedier and dangerous area of the city called the Badlands, Pamela Werner's story necessarily featured some of the miscreants and unfortunates who lived or worked in that part of the city. But their full histories, even when known, seldom were strictly germane to the murder investigation, so when French was finished telling Pamela's story he was left with all this information about these fascinating, repugnant, or tragic people, and their stories were too compelling to be left untold.

This is a slender volume, only about 60 pages of narrative, because so little is known about these characters who lived in the shadows and generally preferred it that way. That French was able to collect as much information as he did, and piece together their lives and relationships with one another, is a triumph of scholarship and research. This is an easy evening's read, and it more than makes up for its brevity with the rich details and fascinating (horrifying, titillating) stories French relates so skilfilly.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Badlands makes a nice addition to Paul French's other books on Peking and Shanghai. Several of the characters he made mention of in those lengthier histories get a full blown sketch, here. But they aren't more than sketches. It's not that French has done an incomplete job. It's simply that the figures he writes about were difficult to document even during the height of their notorious fame and fortune. Later, after they mostly had disappeared into the Japanese occupation or postwar China, they became virtual ghosts. So what French has managed to acquire through the last memories of survivors of that era is still impressive. Alas, it also makes for a work that is rather too brief. You want to know more. That's the frustrating part of reading this. The events and people, however much they provide an illustration for life during that time of the Peking Badlands, a semi-lawless zone on the outskirts of the city's legation quarter, they still cannot give what I think is an adequate description of the place. If anything, Badlands reminds me of Somerset Maugham's On a Chinese Screen, where Maugham wrote a series of vignettes on the people and lives he encountered during his trip to China in the 1920s.

[Matt Conger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great as an afterward, mediocre as a companion, and bad as a standalone book.

I loved Midnight in Peking. The audiobook format for that was particularly amazing, and I took the Paul French-approved walking tour of the Badlands from Bespoke Travel when I lived in Beijing. I was excited to jump back into the world of Midnight in Peking with this book. Yet it is so short and straightforward that it came across as a Wikipedia article with just a bit of flourish rather than the type of vivid prose and taut storytelling of Midnight in Peking.

To be clear, I loved this additional detail about the Badlands. But I'm thankful I picked this up as an ebook from my library rather than pay the USD $16 that it is currently retailing for on Amazon.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short read describing a very awful place. Could’ve woven a better story, just describing people. But shining a light onto a very obscure place it does it well.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay okay okay anyone remember when I read Midnight in Peking? Anyone? Okay, if you don't, Midnight in Peking is about the murder of Pamela Warner in Peking, China (now Beijing) in the last days before the Japanese invaded China in World War II. There is a side person named Shura, an intersex crime boss who presented as a man or a woman apparently depending on how they felt that particular day, and was generally SO INCREDIBLY AWESOME I CAN'T EVEN. So I was talking in the review about how I wanted a book about Shura.

This is a book about Shura.

Well, it's not solely about Shura. It's about a bunch of people mentioned in Midnight in Peking, from a couple of prostitutes named Marie and Peggy to some really evil people to SHURA MY HEART CALL ME. French has done a really admirable amount of research on people who would be very difficult to find, and I want to commend him for that. Some of the people profiled are not nice at all, but he never condones what they do and in fact is really aggressively against it. He also managed to track down the fates of a surprising number of these people, who all have vested interests in staying away from records. So good for him.

ALSO THERE IS AN ENTIRE CHAPTER ON SHURA. And guys, Shura lived happily ever after! They settled down to presenting as male and I think they had a boyfriend! Everything was adorable and happy. I'm so pleased.

Couple of caveats: French continues to use the h-word to refer to Shura, so if that word pisses you off/hurts you, I would reconsider reading this. Also, it's kinda disjointed and uninteresting if you haven't read Midnight in Peking, or aren't interested in anyone but Shura (which I fully understand). So I don't think I could recommend it except there is a WHOLE CHAPTER ABOUT SHURA GUYS SHURA IS SO COOL.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

tore through it in an afternoon... sure it was kind of captivating, but mostly i wanted to be done with it. so much of the content was so irredeemably vile that i felt like throwing the book away (or, at times, setting it on fire...)
and even though it managed to illicit such an emotional response it was kind of a dull account of something that should have been much more interesting

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you couldn't get over how good Midnight In Peking was, this is for you.
A series of character sketches, background research, really, of some of the
elusive figures that populated the worst neighborhood in the city. Pimps,
drug dealers, madams - these are not nice people, but their stories are
fascinating - and sad.

[Anna Bosman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A black-and-white picture of a world that's gone for good. White Russians play the biggest and the saddest role in this small... documentary? Somehow, I feel that preserving all the little glimpses is important. May they all rest in peace.

[Christopher Hagen]

Awesome read, well researched.