Shortly after arriving in Wuhan in 1935 to teach English at the university there, Julian Bell, the nephew of Virginia Woolf and son of Vanessa Bell, wrote to his mother about a Chinese literary and artistic coterie which reminded him of home: “ … the Chinese Bloomsbury in Peiping (Beijing) that’s very much like the London one indeed, so far as I can make out.” (Laurence, Julian Bell, p.20). Julian was actually reporting second-hand, as he was reflecting on the comment made by his literary confidante and lover, Ling Shuhua, the wife of the dean of the Faculty of Letters, Chen […]