Upton Close

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COPYRIGHT UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD STUDIOS, N. Y.
UPTON CLOSE
Henceforth America Is the Vanguard in the Meeting of West and East.  There Is No Essential Knowledge So Neglected Among Americans Today as Knowledge of Pacific Asia



UPTON CLOSE
(Josef Washington Hall)

Explorer, Interpreter of Oriental Life and Culture, Author, Correspondent, Lecturer


As a Scholar and Authority:
I wish I had a hundred young men who knew as much about China as Upton Close.—Lord Northcliffe.

Lecturer on Pacific Asian Life, Languages and History, Faculty of University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.

Author, with Dr. H. H. Gowen, of An Outline History of China: the Story of the Immortal Nation (Appleton's, 1926).

Contributor on Oriental Culture to American Academy of Political and Social Science, Atlantic Monthly, Asia Magazine, etc.  (See Annals of American Academy, November 1925, Atlantic Monthly, March 1924, Asia, March 1925, etc.)

Upton Close should become our most popular interpreter of the civilization and mind of the Orient.  His book shows a remarkable ability of observation and a grasp of evaluations in life strange and piquant to us.—Dr. Henry Suzzatto, President, University of Washington.



As an Explorer and Adventurer:
The most amazingly adventurous life with which I have ever had contact.—John Drinkwater.

Member, Explorer's Club, New York.  Member, Ends of the Earth Club.

Investigator, for National Geographic Society, of Kansu Earthquake.  (See National Geographic Magazine, May 1922.)

Chief of Foreign Affairs on the Staff of General Wu Pei-fu, Chinese Dictator, 1922.

It is doubtful if the scholar and soldier of fortune have ever been combined in a more fascinating way.—James B. Pond.



As an Entertainer and Humorist:
A fascinating combination of thrills, laughs and philosophy.—Lake Erie College for Girls.

Author of In the Land of the Laughing Buddha (Putnams, 1924; Syndicated in one-hundred American, British and Oriental Newspapers, 1925).

Author of Moonlady, a thrilling novel of the new Chinese youth movement (1926).

Translator and adapter of Joy-lady and other Chinese farces, produced by University players and Drama Leagues.

Upton Close is an adventurer of the first order.  He knows his subject, not alone from the point of view of an expert journalist, but that of a born traveller as well.  His experiences are chockful of romance, adventure and humorous intrigue.  He provides information in a narrative that is now thrilling, now humorous, now tragic, and all the while interesting.  He is good for everyone, but most of all for the man or woman who likes adventure, seasoned with a rich humor and sprinkled with a keen insight into humanity.—George Palmer Putnam.



As a Club Speaker and Orator:
As a correspondent Upton Close is accurate and trustworthy, as a speaker, vivid and witty.—Charles R. Crane, Ex-Minister to China.

Lecturer with Pond Lyceum Bureau on three transcontinental tours.

With Ellison-White Lyceum and Chautauqua Association three seasons.

With Emerson Bureau, Chicago, one season.

Pleasing personality, force, exquisite diction combined with one of the most pleasing speaking voices we ever heard, make Upton Close a finished orator.—Women's University Club, Tacoma.

In content and delivery the address of Upton Close was a masterpiece.—Civic Club, Portland, Oregon.

The best thing we know of for men's night.—Women's Club, Rockford, Illinois.





SPECIAL LECTURES AND COURSES:

The End of the White Man's World
The fascinating story of the other half of the world never mentioned in our World Histories, how it came under the virtual dominion of the white peoples of Euro-America, how it is reassuming a position of equality in world affairs and what that means to us.  No slobbering sentimentality for the colored peoples, no Nordic arrogance, but much humor—that grace which must save the races in their contract.  Mr. Hall begins with the origin of human civilization in Central Asia, and its division into two great streams which are now meeting.  He touches, in passing, what he calls not a belief, but a suspicion, the evolution theory.

My God, but we have been ignorant.—An auditor at the City Club of Portland, Oregon.



An American Barbarian in China
Upton Close's thrilling, side-splitting story of his own eight years among Chinese diplomats, bandits, generals and students.  An amazing but very human story, comprising an eye-witness history of China during the Republican era.  The material of the lecturer's remarkable book, In the Land of the Laughing Buddha.

More than a lecture—a swiftly moving panorama disclosing the motives, humor and pathos of one of the world's greatest peoples.—Seven Arts Society, Long Beach, California.



ILLUSTRATED: China, Japan and America—Parallels and Contrasts
A pictorial lecture in which slides, motion pictures and autochromes taken by Upton Close in his travels show you the fundamental differences, mental and physical, between the three great Pacific peoples in whose relation lies the destiny of civilization.

Since the Upton Close lecture we are planning our next tours to China.—Chicago Women's Athletic Club.



Cherry Blossom and Pear Orchard
Two lectures (abridged and combined into one, if desired) on the literature and stage of China and Japan.  Did you ever wonder what romances are hid within the mysterious and beautiful ideagraphs of their languages, what emotions are behind the queer conventions of their theaters?  Mr. Hall's readings of Chinese and Japanese lyrics, reinforced by a personality and a voice exactly suited to their delicate nuances, is an experience never to be forgotten.  Always afterwards, the exclamation is: I never knew there were such treasures in Pacific Asian literature!  He makes listeners sense vividly the spirit of times when Everyone who was a gentleman or a lady was a poet,—when


Songs were bought with yellow gold
And laughter with bright jewels.

Upton Close is himself a poet and writer of lyrics which have been set to music.  His lecture includes readings from his own lyrics and translations of Chinese poems and laughter-compelling farces.  He is perhaps the best equipped lecturer on Chinese and Japanese literature on the American platform, having taught these subjects for three years at the University of Washington.

English dramas and verse must have new inspiration and it seems due to come from the East.  This is a treat for schools, literary and drama clubs.

An evening of the unusual, during which we glimpsed the rich and sumpathetic soul of an ancient but ever-youthful culture.—Drama League of Atlanta.



Chinese and Japanese Culture, Art and Literature
Four to twelve lectures, several illustrated.  Mr. Hall has given this course in the Extension Division of several Universities and under the auspices of women's clubs and department stores in several cities.  Particulars of the course, full information about topics covered, arrangements, fees, etc., will be supplied upon special application.



Problems of the Pacific and Their Backgrounds
Two to six lectures.  A journalistic survey of the fundamentals of Chinese, Japanese and Philippine history as they involve America and other western nations; and consideration of the outstanding unsettled controversies on the Pacific.  Did you ever wish for a background which would enable intelligent following of news events concerning the so-called Far East—America's Near East?

Mr. Josef Hall's two addresses on China given to our students and faculty this week made a very fine impression indeed.  By their intellectual quality and their humanistic spirit they made an impression that will have its influence upon the future thinking of a considerable part of those who heard him.—Selden Smyser, Washington State Normal School, Ellensburg, Washington


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Journalism, and the Work of the Correspondent in the Orient
One, or two lectures.  Upton Close, for eight years an editor and correspondent in China, Japan and Russia, has the dope.  This topic has been given to the students of many Schools of Journalism throughout America.



FOR SCHOOLS and COLLEGES
Arrangements are frequently made with Upton Close for General Assemblies, or Chapels, on one of his popular subjects, followed by special group talks on the same day or following days to students of foreign trade, literature, history or political science.  Special prices are granted to educational institutions.

You have turned the thoughts of our students into a new channel.—University of Illinois.





An Adventurous Career
The most amazingly adventurous life with which I have ever had contact.—John Drinkwater.

UPTON CLOSE (Josef Washington Hall) was born in the State of Washington in 1894.  His father had been a mining pardner of Juaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras, in the fifties and sixties.  His mother, of a French family which produced early geologists, artists, archeologists and Arctic explorers, came to Portland, Oregon, to open the first classes in music and art in what was then a frontier trading post.  Their son, following an education completed at Washington, D. C., and some cub reporter experience in the American capital (with a digression for an evangelistic campaign among the poor whites of the South—where he had as many adventures, he says, as later on the borders of Tibet), completed the cycle of westward adventure by going to China.

His work was to have been on the staff of a magazine in Chinese, but the World War brought him to the assistance of the American diplomatic service as secret investigator.  In this capacity he travelled in Shantung in disguise, keeping watch first on the Germans and later on the Japanese.  Through a ludicrous telegraphic error he got his nom de guerre, as the Atlantic Monthly called it, of Upton Close.  Japanese generals offered Mr. Hall money to discover for them the Upton Close who was sending out the first eye-witness reports of their attempt to appropriate the Chinese sacred province.  Several years later when Mr. Hall revealed his identity, the Japanese were good enough sports to reply with a tour of Japan, all expenses paid!

His investigations brought him into contact with the Chinese student group which engineered the remarkable Student Revolution of 1919, that saved China from being sold by a traitorous governing clique.  From counsellor to the Chinese students Upon Close became editor of the Peking daily which is descended from the oldest newspaper in the world, founded 875 B. C.  The editorship was literally flung at him from a rickshaw by a fleeing political refugee—one of the dramatic anecdotes which he has to tell.  Incidentally he was an attache to the large American Congressional party which toured the Orient in 1920.  He left his editorial desk and headship of a news syndicate he had built up to engage in relief activities during the terrible famine of 1922.  In this capacity he was guide to Mrs. Eleanor Egan who acquainted American people with the famine through the Saturday Evening Post.  The famine was hardly over when the world's most unusual earthquake took place in Kansu, on the Tibetan-Mongolian border.  Mountain ranges turned into torrents of loose earth which poured down over a dozen valleys, burying cities and carrying individual farmsteads miles from their original position.  200,000 lives were snuffed out, and a Moslem Holy War, just beginning, was literally buried alive!  Mr. Hall turned explorer, visiting the remote district for the International Relief Committee and the National Geographic Magazine.  His findings were published in the Literary Digest and United Press Features, l'Illustration and La Nature of Paris, and elswhere, and he was elected to membership in the Explorer's Club, that unique group founded by Admiral Peary, Nasen, Amundsen and General Greeley.

Upton Close nearly lost his life in this expedition.  His wife, hearing, through the gossip of Chinese telegraph operators, that he had taken cholera, wired from Peking: Bring the corpse.  When the telegram reached him he was again on horseback, having recovered through the Chinese kill or cure remedy of kerosene oil and opium.  He had the pleasure of wiring back: Bringing it myself.

After a year or two as a news correspondent he embarked upon an even more dangerous adventure as Chief of Foreign Affairs on the staff of General Wu Pei-fu during the wars which brought the Chinese Little General (who first came into prominence by championing the students) to supreme dictatorship of his country.  The young American successfully performed a mission for bringing the legitimate President, Li Yuan-hung, back to office.  Then while on a secret tour of investigation in the territority of the bandit king Chang Tso-lin, he took typhoid fever.  After two months between life and death he was invalided home, and on arrival in Seattle was invited to become Lecturer in the Oriental Department of the University of Washington.  With time off for much magazine writing, the production of several books and numerous lecture tours he has held this position since.  He makes frequent return trips to the Orient to gather fresh material and keep up personal friendships with the leaders of Japan and China.

Mr. Hall has the capacity of having friends on all sides and yet being perfectly frank in his opinions.  He is intimate with many Japanese, although their government once offered a reward for his apprehension.  He was the confidant of Congressman Albert Johnson, author of the Japanese exclusion clause, and at the same time of Ambassador Hanihara who tried so desperately to avert this action which he knew his people would regard as an insult.  He has travelled with Congressman Stephen B. Porter, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the House of Representatives, and is highly regarded as an authority by members of the State Department.  Department of Commerce, War Department and unofficial bodies such as the Williamstown Institute of Politics.



After the Handshaking is Over
Some Comments and Commendations
A decided success.—Fortnightly Club, Chicago.


The most unique speaker and the most remembered program of our year.—
Milwaukee Open Forum.

We wanted something different, and got it.—Whitehall Club, New York.


We have had Upton Close four times.  We will have him every time he comes within reach.  He means a full house.—
San Diego Open Forum.

Your lecture stands out as one of the most interesting we have had this year.—Santa Barbara Woman's Club.

Masterful, laughter-provoking—thought provoking.—Knife and Fork Club, Salina, Kansas.

He has sailed into our port with a redolent cargo of silk and gems, and there is star-dust on his sails.—MacDowell Club, Los Angeles.

I am particularly writing to express thanks for the lecture which I was so fortunate as to hear you deliver.  I hope many of our club women will have the opportunity of hearing you.—Mrs. Etta Gould Lee, President, New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs.