Bits & Pieces - July 2025 - Taiwan’s First Belgian Student, Madame Chiang’s Midlife Canvas, and the Immovable Last Emperor’s Cousin – S5-E21
This Bits and Pieces episode blows from here to there—just like Typhoon Danas, which recently battered John’s beloved Chiayi. It’s a little chaotic, a little wild. We jump from Belgium to Yemen to 1950s Taipei, where we meet Pierre Ryckmans, a young scholar who arrived in Taiwan on a cargo ship and ended up learning brushwork from the cousin of China’s last emperor—a famously tedious teacher who refused to leave his studio to tutor Madame Chiang Kai-shek after she took up painting at 53. We wrap things up with the Generalissimo himself, who, despite a full-hour audience, somehow managed to leave absolutely no impression on Ryckmans, a man who would become a giant in the world of sinology.
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Cover features Madame Chiang Kai-shek (left), from the cover of Time Magazine. On the right is a Wiki Commons image of Pierre Ryckmans / Simon Leys. Wiki says, "Ryckmans wrote in French, English and Chinese. His books on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and on Maoist China - beginning with his trilogy Les Habits neufs du président Mao (1971), Ombres chinoises (1974) and Images brisées (1976) - gave scathing descriptions of the cultural and political destruction in mainland China while denouncing the hypocrisy of its western defenders." And in the center is a small image of Pu Ru 溥儒, via Wiki Commons. According to Wiki, Pu Ru was a traditional Chinese painter, calligrapher and nobleman. A member of the Manchu Aisin Gioro clan, the ruling house of the Qing dynasty, he was a cousin to Puyi, the last Emperor of China. It was speculated that Puru would have succeeded to the Chinese throne if Puyi and the Qing government were not overthrown after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.
Images below:
1. Pu Ru 溥儒, via Wiki Commons.
2. Pierre Ryckmans / Simon Leys via Wiki Commons
3. Madame Chiang Kai-shek on the cover of Time Magazine (March 1, 1943)
4. Art by Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
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