Podcast appearances and mentions of frances wood

In this episode we look at the life and work of Lynn Pan, one of the most imaginative of writers in English about modern China and particularly Shanghai, who died last year, and was commemorated at a special event at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival earlier this month. Her books, including In Search of Old Shanghai, The New Chinese Revolution, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, Shanghai Style and When True Love Came to China, were accessible, often witty, and always deeply researched. Duncan Hewitt discusses her legacy with Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking and Her Lotus Year, Frances Wood,  SOAS Research Associate and former curator of Chinese collections at the British Library, and Michelle Garnaut, founder of the Shanghai Literary Festival. With a further contribution from Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor of History at University of California, Irvine.Photo of Lynn Pan by Robert Martin.________________________________________The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.________________________________________SOAS China Institute (SCI) SCI Blog SCI on X SCI on LinkedIn SCI on Facebook SCI on Instagram ________________________________________Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Frances Wood is a British linguist who has surrounded herself with ancient Chinese manuscripts and books for most of her life. In this podcast, she tells about what inspired her interest in Chinese culture and what it was like to restore the Diamond Sutra – an incredible scroll described as the world's earliest-dated printed book.

Frances Wood was born into a family of linguists – people who loved studying foreign languages. In her childhood and teens she mastered French and Spanish, so by the time she was thinking about what she wanted to study at university she was looking for a new challenge. She chose Chinese at Cambridge and in 1971 following her graduation, she was able to visit China with the first British youth delegation allowed to enter the country for a long time.When Wood returned to the UK she got a job in the library at SOAS – the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. She found it wonderful to be surrounded by students and teachers speaking Chinese and being able to choose books about China to equip the library. But Wood was still keen to improve her Chinese spoken language so she returned to China in 1975 on a British Council scholarship for a year.The pinnacle of her career was to restore the Diamond Sutra. In 1900 a walled-in enclosure was excavated by Wang Yuanlu, a Taoist monk who had long been a custodian of a cave complex in Dunhuang and the treasures contained within them. Inside were thousands of priceless manuscripts dating from the early days of Chinese Buddhism. To fund the restoration, Wang sold some of the manuscripts to foreign scholars. Thousands were brought back to London by an archaeologist called Aurel Stein in 1907, including the Diamond Sutra – an incredible scroll described as the world's earliest printed book. This remarkable manuscript and the other treasures taken from the caves would keep Wood busy for a large part of her career.Presenter: Louise GreenwoodDiamond Sutra extract read by Quan ChenchenSeries Producer: Elizabeth MearnsProducers: Alice Castle, Sun LanSound Editor: Terry WilsonBridge Builders Series Editor: Guo Chun

Author Frances Wood talks about her recent book, Betrayed Ally, China in the Great War, that she wrote jointly with Christopher Ardnander. Frances tells how in 1912 the Qing Dynasty had ended thousands of years of Imperial autocratic rule. President Yuan Shikai, who seized power in 1914, offered the British 50,000 troops to recover the […]

It was an extraordinary journey, and a life that reads like a fairy tale. Xuanzang was born at the start of the seventh century in China. He studied as a monk and travelled for 16 years - first westwards, and then in a crescent back and down over the Himalayas to India . He returned a famous man, laden with Buddhists texts and artefacts. Historian Michael Wood has followed much of his route; he first discovered Xuanzang at university and became intrigued about his life. "I'm tempted to say this is one of the greatest lives in all the civilisations of the world," says Michael. Joining him in discussion is Frances Wood and the presenter Matthew Parris. The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

In Episode 2: The Oldest Paper in the World Gail, Hazel and Jennie talk to Frances Wood, librarian, sinologue and former head of the Chinese Collection at the British Library; Andrew Hawkins recounts the story of the oldest paper in the world; and we find out which books our readers are hoping for this Christmas. [www.foxedquarterly.com/pod](https://foxedquarterly.com/pod) Books Mentioned * Ernest H. Shepard illustrated [Winnie-the-Pooh](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/a-a-milne-winnie-the-pooh/) and Wind in the Willows. His memoirs are [Drawn from Memory and Drawn from Life](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/drawn-from-memory-no-44-drawn-from-life-no-45/) * [A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/a-country-doctors-commonplace-book/) * [Issue 60 of Slightly Foxed](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/slightly-foxed-issue-60-published-1-december-2018/) * David Seabrook, [All the Devils Are Here](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/david-seabrook-all-the-devils-are-here/) * Jonathan Coe, [Middle England](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/jonathan-coe-middle-england/) * Peter Frankopan, [The Silk Roads: A New History of the World](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/peter-frankopan-silk-roads/) * Max Hastings, [Vietnam](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/max-hastings-vietnam/) * Philip Kerr, [Greeks Bearing Gifts](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/philip-kerr-greeks-bearing-gifts/) * Germain Greer’s White Beech is out of print, but we may be able to get hold of second hand copies. Please [get in touch](https://foxedquarterly.com/help/) for details * Michael Palin, [Erebus: The Story of a Ship](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/michael-palin-erebus-story-of-a-ship/) * Sebastian Fauks, [Paris Echo](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/sebastian-faulks-paris-echo/) * BB’s books are [Brendon Chase](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/bb-brendon-chase-classic-childrens-books/), [The Little Grey Men and Down the Bright Stream](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/bb-little-grey-men-down-the-bright-stream-classic-childrens-books/) * Andrew Roberts, [Churchill: Walking with Destiny](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/andrew-roberts-churchill-walking-with-destiny/) * Hilary Spurling, [Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/hilary-spurling-anthony-powell/) * Carys Davies, [West](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/carys-davies-west/) * Sally Rooney, [Normal People](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/sally-rooney-normal-people/) * Rachel Kushner, [The Mars Room](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/rachel-kushner-mars-room/) * Katie Stewart’s Times Cookery Book is out of print, but we may be able to get hold of second hand copies. Please [get in touch](https://foxedquarterly.com/help/) for details * Julian Barnes, [The Pedant in the Kitchen](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/julian-barnes-pedant-in-the-kitchen/) * Nigel Slater, [The Christmas Chronicles](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/nigel-slater-christmas-chronicles/) * Qiu Xiaolong’s Detective Chen series begins with [Death of a Red Heroine](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/qiu-xiaolong-death-of-a-red-heroine/) * Frances Wood, [Hand-grenade Practice in Peking](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/hand-grenade-practice-in-peking/) Related Slightly Foxed Articles & Illustrations * [Luna North](https://www.lunanorth.co.uk/) produced the cover for [Issue 59](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/slightly-foxed-issue-59-published-1-september/) of Slightly Foxed, Autumn 2018 * Frances Wood’s article, [The Oldest Paper in the World](https://foxedquarterly.com/british-library-the-oldest-paper-in-the-world/), appeared in [Issue 27](https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/slightly-foxed-issue-27/) of Slightly Foxed, Autumn 2014 Other Links * The [Slightly Foxed Readers’ Day 2018](https://foxedquarterly.com/slightly-foxed-readers-day-2018-art-workers-guild/) took place...

Friday night hotmix, broadcast live on from the studio last night. Includes the Freemasons getting hold of Fatboy Slim, a cool remix mashup of The Shamen and La Luna, a pinch of Mark Knight and Pryda, Hull producer Carlos and my remix of vocalist Frances Wood to finish things off. Crank it up for those weekend vibes!!  Fatboy Slim - Right Here Right Now (Freemasons Remix) The Ethics - To The Beat Of The Drum BANG! BANG!! (Bootleg Remix) Stuart Ojelay-Good Old Days (Original Mix) The Chemical Brothers - Sometimes I Feel So Deserted (C2 Trigger Remix) Mark Knight - Yebisah (Original Mix) Pryda - The Truth Carl Shawn - Vertex (Original Mix) Epicentre - Archetype (The Electro Adjust Mix) Fifth Avenue feat Frances Wood - Feel With Me (Epicentre Remix)

Harriett Gilbert talks to Murray Lachlan Young & Deborah Frances-White about good reads.

If we're to live well together we must first learn to live well with the dead, says Timothy Secret. At traditional Chinese funerals money, and sometimes paper effigies of goods like washing machines and aeroplanes are burned so that the dead might be adequately equipped in the afterlife. To the Western onlooker this can feel strange but Timothy Secret believes we have something to learn. For Confucius, the Chinese teacher and thinker, respect for and obedience to your parents is one of the most important rules to follow in life and Frances Wood, an expert in Chinese history and society explains why this applies even after their death: observing proper mourning rituals and then honouring your ancestors through twice yearly grave tending. Darian Leader, a psychoanalyst, sets out how Western attitudes towards mourning and the dead have become disrupted veering between the two extremes of determined "closure" and "moving on" on the one hand and excessive obsession with the dead on the other. Producer: Natalie Steed.

Rhys & Scott speak to Frances Wood off The Voice UK. Tunespop is TV Themes and its a battle between Scott, Producer Craig and Big Rich. We find a Halloween CD?? Scott & Rhys tell us what it is like putting out flyer round Weymouth. This week in Karaoke, Scott Sings Eminem - Not Afraid.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer and historian Frances Wood. As head of the Chinese collection at the British Library she is the gatekeeper to some of the rarest printed texts in the world. Her life has been immersed in the language and culture of the Far East and, along the way, she's spent time learning how to throw hand-grenades, plant rice in the paddy-fields and bundle Chinese cabbages. She was in China in the final months of Mao Zedong's regime and remembers being aware of the sense of national unease: "There were the bodies that floated down the Pearl River to Hong Kong - you did get a real sense of foreboding. You did know that the whole country was on edge." Producer: Leanne Buckle Record: Don Carlos Book: A copy of Chinese dictionary Cihai, (which means Sea of Words) from the 1930s Luxury: The War Memorial outside Euston Station.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer and historian Frances Wood. As head of the Chinese collection at the British Library she is the gatekeeper to some of the rarest printed texts in the world. Her life has been immersed in the language and culture of the Far East and, along the way, she's spent time learning how to throw hand-grenades, plant rice in the paddy-fields and bundle Chinese cabbages. She was in China in the final months of Mao Zedong's regime and remembers being aware of the sense of national unease: "There were the bodies that floated down the Pearl River to Hong Kong - you did get a real sense of foreboding. You did know that the whole country was on edge." Producer: Leanne Buckle Record: Don Carlos Book: A copy of Chinese dictionary Cihai, (which means Sea of Words) from the 1930s Luxury: The War Memorial outside Euston Station.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called Silk Road: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder, and it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India. The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting and mingling of civilisations, which lasted for well over a thousand years.With:Tim Barrett is Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Naomi Standen is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Newcastle University; Frances Wood is Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called Silk Road: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder, and it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India. The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting and mingling of civilisations, which lasted for well over a thousand years.With:Tim Barrett is Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Naomi Standen is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Newcastle University; Frances Wood is Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question; why Europe and not China developed modern technology. What do these things have in common? Fireworks, wood-block printing, canal lock-gates, kites, the wheelbarrow, chain suspension bridges and the magnetic compass. The answer is that they were all invented in China, a country that, right through the Middle Ages, maintained a cultural and technological sophistication that made foreign dignitaries flock to its imperial courts for trade and favour. But then, around 1700, the flow of ingenuity began to dry up and even reverse as Europe bore the fruits of the scientific revolution back across the globe. Why did Modern Science develop in Europe when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? This is called the Needham Question, after Joseph Needham, the 20th century British Sinologist who did more, perhaps, than anyone else to try and explain it.But did Joseph Needham give a satisfactory answer to the question that bears his name? Why did China's early technological brilliance not lead to the development of modern science and how did momentous inventions like gunpowder and printing enter Chinese society with barely a ripple and yet revolutionise the warring states of Europe? With Chris Cullen, Director of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge; Tim Barrett, Professor of East Asian History at SOAS; Frances Wood, Head of Chinese Collections at the British Library.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question; why Europe and not China developed modern technology. What do these things have in common? Fireworks, wood-block printing, canal lock-gates, kites, the wheelbarrow, chain suspension bridges and the magnetic compass. The answer is that they were all invented in China, a country that, right through the Middle Ages, maintained a cultural and technological sophistication that made foreign dignitaries flock to its imperial courts for trade and favour. But then, around 1700, the flow of ingenuity began to dry up and even reverse as Europe bore the fruits of the scientific revolution back across the globe. Why did Modern Science develop in Europe when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? This is called the Needham Question, after Joseph Needham, the 20th century British Sinologist who did more, perhaps, than anyone else to try and explain it.But did Joseph Needham give a satisfactory answer to the question that bears his name? Why did China’s early technological brilliance not lead to the development of modern science and how did momentous inventions like gunpowder and printing enter Chinese society with barely a ripple and yet revolutionise the warring states of Europe? With Chris Cullen, Director of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge; Tim Barrett, Professor of East Asian History at SOAS; Frances Wood, Head of Chinese Collections at the British Library.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question; why Europe and not China developed modern technology. What do these things have in common? Fireworks, wood-block printing, canal lock-gates, kites, the wheelbarrow, chain suspension bridges and the magnetic compass. The answer is that they were all invented in China, a country that, right through the Middle Ages, maintained a cultural and technological sophistication that made foreign dignitaries flock to its imperial courts for trade and favour. But then, around 1700, the flow of ingenuity began to dry up and even reverse as Europe bore the fruits of the scientific revolution back across the globe. Why did Modern Science develop in Europe when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? This is called the Needham Question, after Joseph Needham, the 20th century British Sinologist who did more, perhaps, than anyone else to try and explain it.But did Joseph Needham give a satisfactory answer to the question that bears his name? Why did China’s early technological brilliance not lead to the development of modern science and how did momentous inventions like gunpowder and printing enter Chinese society with barely a ripple and yet revolutionise the warring states of Europe? With Chris Cullen, Director of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge; Tim Barrett, Professor of East Asian History at SOAS; Frances Wood, Head of Chinese Collections at the British Library.