Double happiness for Shanghai's journo's

Sneevliet or Ma Lin

Coming week will not see one, but two happy hours for foreign correspondents in Shanghai, a true record after very little activity.

The official Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club will host an official happy hour on Tuesday in that club that is confusingly called the Foreign Culture Club at 889 Julu Lu from 7PM. While everybody seems to be welcome, provided you RSVP here, it is going to be an effort to get the club going again. So, if you intend to be a regular at these meetings, better be there.
On Thursday there is of course Maria's happy hour at the Cotton Bar at the corner of Anting Lu and Jianguo Xilu. Official start at 8PM, but if you want to enjoy the tail of the real happy hour, do get there before.

This week, when all is well, I will also receive a DVD with a TV-documentary on the Dutch revolutionary Sneevliet, in China better known as Ma Lin, the representative of the Comintern who attended the establishment of the Communist Party in China. It focuses on his time in China. Sneevliet or Maring (his code name) was instrumental in forcing the Chinese communist to team up with Russia. That choice was of course very important for China's development until the 1960s.
The documentary was shown on Dutch TV in December 2006 and I ordered it for a viewing at the Shanghai FCC. I actually paid money for the DVD and last week I called the TV-station to find out where my DVD was. They were a bit upset about my call, since they obvious do not like to work as hard as we do in China. Anyway: there is still a small logistical problem, since the production is in Dutch, but it will be soon on the agenda of the Shanghai FCC.
There is very little English literature about this communist secret agent, but if you have deep pockets you can order Tony Saich's The Origins of the First United Front in China: The Role of Sneevliet (Alias Maring). In Dutch there is slight more avaible.