by Tom Carter

Created on: July 23, 2010   Last Updated: July 24, 2010

A Critical Review of “Our Hart” by Lloyd Lofthouse

At stuffy Shanghai cocktail parties and underground Beijing book clubs taking place back in 2008, Chinese literati were as scandalized as they were (unadmittedly) titillated by American author Lloyd Lofthouse’s new novel, My Splendid Concubine and the lascivious adventures therein of real-life 19th century China expatriate Sir Robert Hart (1835-1911) and his concubines.

 
Certainly concubinage was as commonplace a practice in that age as it was to, say, smoke opium or hold large-scale rebellions; nothing to get red in the face about.  Typically in denial of its own past, however, China’s Communist-run newspapers publicly denounced Lofthouse’s ‘Concubine’ as “little more than the author’s own fantasy and Asian fetish.”

Conversely, Sinologists and historical fiction fans from Peking to Poukipsee who saw past ‘Concubine’s’ prurient veil applauded Lofthouse for penning a book as scholarly as it was entertaining in its depiction of Robert Hart, the true “Godfather of China’s Modernism,” a title the Chinese face-savingly prefer to confer on one of their own: Deng Xiaoping, architect of China’s new economic reform.

Indeed, this may be the real reason why Lofthouse’s book was ostracized.  Half a century after Hart’s death, the Communist Party put the Irish “imperialist” on trial for his “intimate corrupted life,” conveniently forgetting the fact that Sir Robert Hart, an advisor to the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, was responsible for introducing to China such modern conveniences as a railway network, postal service and a standardized education system.
 
LUST? CAUTION! 

For its academic accuracy as well as its honesty, ‘My Splendid Concubine’ was hailed “sleeper hit of ‘08” and went on to receive honorable mentions at book festivals across the globe.  Rather than resting on his literary laurels, Lofthouse instead returned to the decade’s worth of files he had accumulated while researching the life and times of Robert Hart.  A year later he has emerged with a sequel, ‘Our Hart.’

When we last saw our hero, or should we say, our Hart, 19th century China was being raped, ravaged and rebelled against from every direction.  South China has been taken over by European merchants determined to turn the

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