Jonathan Chatwin @jmchatwin Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Jonathan Chatwin

@jmchatwin

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Non-fiction writer. New book 'The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future' out now from Bloomsbury.

Birmingham, England

https://t.co/5LALsdPs03

Joined September 2010

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

2 months

My long read for CNN on the architectural and political history of the most closely guarded place in China, Zhongnanhai. Feat. Linda Jaivin and MA Aldrich

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Zhongnanhai: The scenic garden that became China’s secretive seat of power | CNN

Zhongnanhai is often thought of as China’s equivalent to the White House, or the Kremlin. Synonymous with China’s ruling communist party elite, and among the country’s most secretive places, it is...

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

After a week of compellingly bad China takes, I present this, from today’s Times, without comment.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Architect Liang Sicheng’s 1951 sketch of a plan for Beijing’s city walls, repurposed as public parks, with teahouses in the gate towers and fragrant, colourful flowerbeds.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 months

The original Yongdingmen, ca 1915-20 from ‘The Pageant of Peking' by Donald Mennie

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Shenzhen, 1984.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Street food in old Beijing, 1901.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 months

Red Army soldiers, Shaanxi province, ca 1937 - photographed by Harrison Forman.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Last day of my thirties! 10 years ago today I was sitting on the rooftop of a hutong bar in Beijing enjoying a jug of cold Tsingtao… seems, in so many ways, a lifetime ago!

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Hard to believe this portrait was taken not long after the end of the Second Opium War: a Guangzhou woman photographed by John Thomson, 1869.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Deng Xiaoping in France; the work card from a shoe factory where he worked in 1922&3 - the note at the bottom reads 'refused to work, do not take him back'. The name – 'Teng Hi Hien' – is a phonetic attempt at Deng Xixian, by which he was known until 1927 when he became Xiaoping.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Seen this doing the rounds - it’s worth saying Shougang was one of the most important industrial sites in China. For a long time, the criticism has been that the country razes everything in sight for rebuilding - here they’ve done a decent job of reusing what is there… /1

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Xifan Yang 杨希璠

3 years

😳🤷🏻‍♀️

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

I was supposed to be writing a review of @JulianGewirtz ’s new book on the 80s in China. But then the South China Morning Post decided to shutter their books pages with immediate effect… so I will just say here: do pick up a copy, it’s great.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Four years, five thousand miles, two children, a global pandemic and 65,000 words on… I think I might just about be done with this manuscript (for a bit, at least).

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

The video of Hu *should* act a reminder of how little we understand about what’s going on in the upper echelons of the party, & of how foolish speculation and conjecture can make commentators look in the medium/long-term…

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Beijing’s Lama Temple, 雍和宫, photographed in 1860. The first two images are taken from the old city wall - now the second ring road.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 months

‘Through the great iron doors to the Dragon Throne’, the Forbidden City, 1901.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Beijing Capital Airport, 1959.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Former US President Ulysses S. Grant and Li Hongzhang, taken in Tianjin in 1879, photographed by Liang Shitai.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

My piece for the ARB on “City on Fire: the fight for Hong Kong” by ⁦ @antd ⁩ - a compelling, urgent book on 2019’s protests. Cc: ⁦ @jwassers ⁩

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

🚨 In 2019, I spent five weeks retracing the journey of Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, travelling 3000 miles in his footsteps. I’m delighted to announce that Bloomsbury will be publishing my book on the Southern Tour - an accessible history of this seminal journey and era.

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Jonathan Chatwin

11 months

Personally I wanted something with more dragons, but delighted nonetheless to share the cover of my forthcoming book, The Southern Tour.

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Jonathan Chatwin

5 years

The 'City Roads' website draws maps of just the roads in any city you choose. Here's Beijing, with its dense 'fish-bone' structure of hutongs just about visible.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Inside Zhongnanhai - photos of the far from lavish interiors of China's leadership compound (including the indoor swimming pool beloved of Mao).

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Map of Wuhan, 1930, showing the three cities of Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang.

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Jonathan Chatwin

1 year

Quite something to see one of the original copies of the Treaty of Nanjing, the first of the ‘Unequal Treaties’, at the British Museum’s ‘China’s Hidden Century’ exhibition. Signed aboard HMS Cornwallis on Aug 29, 1842, the treaty required the Chinese govt to pay an indemnity…

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Aerial view of old Beijing - looking west along Chang’an Jie. (ca 1945?) Tiananmen is to the right of the image; what became Tiananmen sqaure to the left. The lake in the top right is the bottom of the two lakes making up Zhongnanhai. Most of what you see here was razed long ago.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Train arriving, Beijing, 1902.

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Jonathan Chatwin

7 months

Some light Easter reading, weighing in at a mere 800 pages.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

“A pretty little teahouse known as the Willow Pattern”, Shanghai, 1901.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

One thing I always find remarkable in maps of old Beijing is how empty the Outer City was. A sprawling network of less-than-perpendicular hutong spread out from Qianmen, but then, around the Temple of Heaven, the city becomes simply walled countryside. (Map ca 1914).

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

A busy street in old Shanghai - 1900, taken from the city wall (pulled down in 1912).

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Reading Zhu Rongji's 'On the Record', and there's a bit where he gives an actual interview to western journalists, with questions that aren't pre-approved, and answers that are frank and full. Truly a different era. (Great cover too).

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Boats in the Huangpu River, Shanghai, 1900. This is the view from the Custom House: Pudong on the opposite bank.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Tiananmen ca 1900.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Shanghai photographed by Harrison Forman, during the post-1937 war years.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Beijing in 1947, taken by Life photographer Dmitri Kessel. Chiang Kai-shek’s portrait is on both Zhengyangmen and Tiananmen.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 months

‘A Manchu Bride’, 1871, cleaned up from an original image by John Thomson.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

The Great Wall at Badaling, 1870. Photographed by Thomas Child.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Images of Beijing, October 1860 by Felice Beato. Andingmen Shops in Peking Coal Hill (Jingshan) The Forbidden City via @vischina

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Looking east from the balcony of the Drum Tower, Beijing ca. 1907. 📷: H.C.White Co.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Postcard of Beijing Drum Tower, 1908.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

The 'Xiaoping Path' in Jiangxi province, along which Deng Xiaoping walked each day for three years during his Cultural Revolution exile.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Beijing's Imperial Examination Halls, demolished in 1913. Located in eastern Beijing, near what is now Jianguomen. 'Candidates were kept in solitary confinement in their cells for three days and two nights, a board for a seat, another for a table, their only luxuries.'

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Jonathan Chatwin

5 years

That Wuhan is known as 九省通衢 or 'Thoroughfare of Nine Provinces' suggests just how central a transportation hub the city has long been. (Its reputation as the 'Chicago of the east' 东方芝加哥 likewise - a term apparently first used by Walter Weyl in 1918)

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Photos of a rather neglected Forbidden City, taken in 1901 by Japanese photographer Ogawa Kazumasa.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Hand-drawn 1875 map of Beijing. Note the T-shaped area which is now Tiananmen Square; then a processional corridor with the ‘Great Qing Gate’ as its southern entrance (now destroyed). The red walls show the extent of the imperial city, which included Zhongnanhai.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Beijing's Workers' Stadium: built in 1959 as one of the city's 'Ten Great Buildings' celebrating the 10th anniversary of CCP rule. It was torn down for replacement last year.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Snapshots from 1980s Beijing.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

A view into the Forbidden City, Beijing 1900.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Aerial view of Shanghai - taken on September 19th 1945. 📷:

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

6 years

A Cultural Revolution era map of Beijing, with streets renamed so as to be appropriately revolutionary. The road running through the Legation Quarter became ‘Anti-Imperialism Street’.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 months

One for @chinarhyming - Peking, ca 1907.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

The entrance to China’s leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, was originally built by the Qianlong Emperor for a favoured concubine. It was named the Precious Moon Tower, but was also known as the Gazing Home Tower as it looked south to a mosque and market place designed to...

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

7 months

Lake Pagoda, ca 1871, from John Thomson’s collection ‘Foochow (Fuzhou) and the River Min’. Only 46 copies were published (one sold at auction in 2012 for nearly £350,000).

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

5 years

Over the course of the summer, I travelled 3000 miles retracing the route of Deng Xiaoping's 'Southern Tour' of 1992. Next year, I'll be launching a podcast which follows the journey, stop by stop, with episodes on each of the cities he visited. I'll be interviewing those... /1

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

The twin pagodas of Qingshou Temple, Beijing. They were torn down in 1954 to make room for western Chang’an Avenue. Liang Sicheng argued they presented no obstacle to traffic and, if flowers and grass were planted around them, they would become ‘beautiful islets’.

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Jonathan Chatwin

1 year

Plan of Shanghai, 1899, from ‘The Mystic Flowery Land’ by Charles Halcombe.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Next month would mark Bruce Chatwin’s 80th birthday and @jeremybassetti and I are doing a special episode of his podcast to celebrate. We’d love to hear below what his work has meant to you, where and when you first read him, what worlds he opened up...

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

The Shanghai Bund, photographed in ca 1869 by John Thomson.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Photographs of the return to Beijing of the Empress Dowager Cixi and Guangxu Emperor on January 7th 1902, having fled the capital eighteen months earlier in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Pudong, across from Shanghai’s Bund, ca 1920.

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Jonathan Chatwin

6 years

@RobGMacfarlane This is the case in China, too, where there are 24 solar terms or Jie Qi. Right now is ‘Insects Awakening’.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

8 years

This could seriously compromise the journalistic integrity of People’s Daily.

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What is Mail Online doing in partnership with the People's Daily of China?

Capitalist media organisation’s digital link with the official organ of the Chinese communist party ‘does not compromise Mail’s independence’

www.theguardian.com

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 months

Legation Street, Peking, ca 1902.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Iron and Steel works that once employed 200,000 people. The apocalyptic look of the second image doesn’t capture what for me is an interesting example of repurposed modern Chinese industrial design (it’s also not that grey in real life fyi).

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

“Bird’s eye view of the Bund”: postcard of Shanghai, 1920s.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Three views of Tiananmen ‘square’: 1946, by Life photographer Dmitri Kessel.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Iris arrived on 14th June; in a hurry and with a full moon rising, she already knows how to make an entrance.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Beijing in 1898. Qianmen; Chongwenmen Avenue; Tiananmen and the Great Qing Gate; the Foreign Legation Quarter.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Cultivating water plants in the moat along the north wall of the Forbidden City, Beijing - 1927.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Beijing’s Zongli Yamen - essentially China’s foreign office in the 19th century - photographed, remarkably, in 1878.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

by repurposing existing buildings as offices/leisure facilities etc as well as the ski ramp. I see little difference between this and, say, Battersea power station’s renovation in London. The site is a significant relic of Beijing’s Maoist industrial past - a huge /2

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

1 year

Bruce Chatwin’s birthday today - he would have been 83. A few from his wonderfully rich archive of photographs.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

10 months

They say everyone has a story to tell, but in the case of the expats of HK, I’d really like them to stop telling it.

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@kjoules

Joel Chan

10 months

It’s “Expats: I Can Relate” by @Cathman [My years living the expat high life in Hong Kong; Just like Nicole Kidman in her new film, I was once a trailing spouse in the Asian city. It still has part of my soul]

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

The British Legation, Beijing, 1902, seen from atop the Water Gate through which allied forces arrived to end the Boxer siege. In the back left you can see the roofs of the Forbidden City and Jingshan.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Beijing’s Drum Tower, late 1860s. One for @alecash

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Suspension bridge across the Mekong River, Yunnan Province, 1904. From ‘A Yankee on the Yangtze’ by William Edgar Geil.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

A wonderful bit of time travel: Beijing's Drum Tower photographed in the late 1860s by John Thomson.

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Jonathan Chatwin

9 months

‘Rich native bazaars on Nanking Road’, Shanghai, 1901.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

The Gate of China, on Tiananmen Sq - formerly the Great Ming/Qing Gate. Destroyed in 1954 and eventually replaced by Mao’s mausoleum.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

5 years

Safely arrived into the world last night, a little early but we were very glad to meet her.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Beijing in the snow, 1920.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

The border crossing between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, at Luo Hu - postcard from the 1950s.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Shanghai, 1902 - view from the Imperial Bank of China along the Bund.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Very much worth two minutes of your time - though possibly not the pervasive sense of ennui provoked by seeing what Beijing has lost in the last century.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

3 months

1902, the gap in the Peking city wall where the railway was brought in, near Yongdingmen. Map shows the initial terminus, near the Temple of Heaven.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

The streets of Beijing, ca 1879. From an album of photographs by Lai Fong:

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 months

Mao Zedong, Peng Dehuai and Zhou Enlai, photographed at Yan’an, 1944 by Harrison Forman.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

In the hope that some actual bookshops might be open, the paperback edition of Long Peace Street (with new preface) will now be available from April 6th. Please retweet for the chance to win one of 5 signed copies! @ManchesterUP

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

This image of the Randeng Pagoda along the canal from Tongzhou is said to be the earliest photo of Beijing; Felice Beato took it in September of 1860. The pagoda – restored after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake – is still there.

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Jonathan Chatwin

7 months

In the mountains of Sichuan, John Thomson, 1898.

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Jonathan Chatwin

5 years

Settling in to write an article on Shenzhen that doesn’t at any point use the phrase ‘from fishing village to megacity’. Wish me luck

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Jonathan Chatwin

1 year

Proofs arriving in pdf rather than hard copy these days seems to lack a little magic, but still seems as though I have actually written a book.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Among the junks on the river, Shanghai, 1903.

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Jonathan Chatwin

3 years

Another of the Huxinting in Shanghai, commonly known by westerners as the Willow Pattern Tea House, ca 1909.

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Jonathan Chatwin

4 years

Happy paperback publication day to 'Long Peace Street'! To celebrate, here are four photos taken of the road in 1959, when it was widened for the 10th anniversary of CCP rule: an audience of 700,000 people would watch over 11,000 soldiers parade along it on October 1st.

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Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

1918 map of Shanghai, by the North China Daily News.

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Jonathan Chatwin

8 months

‘A street of "Flower Boats," places of amusement and debauchery, Canton, China’, 1901.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

2 years

Another 1869 portrait from Guangdong; a Tanka woman photographed by John Thomson.

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@jmchatwin

Jonathan Chatwin

4 months

Peking, 1869. John Thomson.

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