Shanghai

by Harriet Sergeant

In the 1920s and '30s, Shanghai was known as "The Whore of the Orient," home to gangsters and warlords, nightclubs that never closed, and hotels that supplied heroin with room service. The city became the epitome of glamour, immortalized in books and films. With its bustling, polyglot population of British, Chinese, Americans, French, Germans, Japanese, and White Russians, and with its extremes of poverty and wealth, it appeared to straddle both East and West. By the time the Chinese Communist takeover in 1949 had destroyed the illusion, Shanghai had passed into legend. Here, through firsthand accounts, skillful research, and imaginative reconstruction, Harriet Sergeant brings the city's heyday vividly to life in a captivating account of its rise and fall. Harriet Sergeant is the author of Between the Lines and The Old Sow in the Back Room , which Booklist hailed as an "elegant, emotional, and fascinating portrayal."

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction, Asia

371 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1990

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sparkling history of modern Shanghai (well until the Communist takeover), short on depth and novelty but alive with the fractious spirit of one of the world's most eclectic cities. Between 1842 and 1937, a combination of cultural excellence, foreign influence, high finance, and illicit criminality made Shanghai, according to Sergeant, ``the most international metropolis the world has ever seen'' but that is one of those statements that sound good but can't be proved and a minimum of thought makes all but the credulous realise its inanity.

By 1932, three million people lived in a city, divided by French, British, and American conquering agents after the Opium War. Sergeant visits this old Shanghai in two ways: from the vantage point of a disenchanted modern Westerner who now sees a ``mummified'' Shanghai, rendered ``spiritually dead'' under Communism, and through interviews with Western and Chinese survivors of the pre- Revolutionary period, who recall in vivid detail the high and wold side of former era. A British former banker, one of many who in the Thirties used Shanghai as a center of money speculation, helps to recall when Sergeant names ``the spoiling life'' of wealthy foreigners, employing Chinese servants at lavish parties and pursuing foot-bound women as exotic sexual toys. ``In pursuit of profit, the British created a corrupt, unlovely and pitiless city,'' writes Sergeant. The influx to Shanghai of White Russians fleeing Bolshevism is recounted, as are the city's own political heroes and feats. Sergeant visits the one-time home of Chinese liberator Sun Yat Sen, tracks down the quarters of Chinese political satirist Lu Xun, and recalls the powerful resistance in Shanghai to both Japanese and Nationalist assault in 1927 and again in 1937. A history of the Shanghai cinema rounds out the cross-cultural portrait. A whirlwind tour of an extraordinary place.

But remember this book was published in 1991 and any references to Shanghai 'today' must be taken with huge pinch of salt as Shanghai has changed in unbelievable ways since 1991.

[William Irvine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This history of Shanghai in its heyday, the first half of the twentieth century, is well worth reading. The book is well researched - Harriet Sargeant's managing to track down so many old 'Shanghailanders' is a major achievement, and I greatly enjoyed the several anecdotes that she pulls together to give a historic kaleidoscope of the city.

I'm not entirely sure why - perhaps the way the book is structured or maybe the written style - but the reading felt like hard work occasionally. I persevered because my grandfather was amongst the British who lived and worked there between 1908 and 1935. I was weaned on tales of Shanghai from a young age by my mother who spent her early childhood there living on Weihaiwei Road. Reading 'Shanghai' gave much of what she told me historical context. It was definitely worth the effort.

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some great parts, but I found it pretty slow going. I'm not sure if it is to do with the chapter arrangements, but there was a bit if repetition. After an introduction, the chapters are divided along race - so a chapter on the White Russians, another on the British, another on the Chinese. As well as this, the three wars have a chapter each (1927, 1932 & 1937) and a final chapter. Maybe it is that there is coverage of various events in each of the race chapters.

As I say, it had some great parts, such as the anecdote on the first page, which i have shortened down a little from the direct quote: 1932, lord Bangor - We had gone on a walk, in the hopes of getting a pheasant or a duck. Colonel Hayley Bell was one of the party. He had lagged behind to examine an old shrine. Suddenly the rest of us were charged by a water-buffalo. They were very dangerous and hated foreigners, I suppose we smelt differently, but a Chinese child could control them. They let their animal loose on the foreign devil then demand a dollar to drive the brute off.
I was up a tree, and my two friends in a shed, the buffalo was shorting and flicking his tail. A Chinese boy arrived and asked for his dollar. I was eager to pay when Hayley Bell appeared on the scene. The beast stamped a foot and lowered its head. Hayley bell walked straight up to it and kicked it hard on the nose. The astonished animal turned tail and lumbered off followed by the urchin. 'Shock tactics is what it's about' said Hayley Bell as I climbed out of the tree, 'I am not going to be blackmailed by some snotty-nosed Chinese infant. Just go up to the animal and show it who's master'

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book. Shanghai was a real hub of history in the early 20th century with the beginnings of the triads, the Kuomintang and the influx of white Russians after the Russian revolution. You really feel history come alive in the stories told and the people portrayed. One i can and do read and dip into on a regular basis.

[Laini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic glimpse of Shanghai's glory days.

I liked the way the author classified the chapters-- by the different groups who settled in Shanghai, then converged them all at the end to show how they all coped with what happened to the city during the 1930s and 1940s.

I learned a lot about Chiang Kai-Shek and how his actions sentenced China to a much worse fate than if he'd taken the threat of the Japanese seriously at the outset. He was so focused on fighting the Communists, he lost his country to one of the most brutal regimes the world had ever seen. The Rape of Nanking might not have happened but for his intransigence and selfishness. I had no idea.

You learn a lot about what made the town tick and its culture. Its gangsters, sing-song girls, the British watching the war from nearby rooftops with cocktails in their hands, and then having to pay attention when it moved closer to the International Settlement and things got real.

I subtract one point for some tangents that made the book a bit longer than it should have been and weren't that useful for my needs. But as a research book for my current topic, it was top notch. Keep in mind that 27 years have passed since its writing. Shanghai is now vital once again, not as depressing as the author describes it, just emerging from the Cultural Revolution and the wall of solitude that China stood behind for over 40 years.

[LaShana Claude · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Egyptian religion of the Middle and Late Kingdoms was as much a thing of philosophic invention as later Greek myth, only, so far as we have the means of judging, it was not nearly so artistic or successful. For, whereas we find numerous allusions in the texts to definite myths, we seldom find in Egyptian literature the myths themselves. Indeed, our chief repository of Egyptian religious tales is the De Iside et Osiride of the Greek Plutarch—an uncertain authority. It is presumed that the myths were so well known popularly that to write them down for the use of such a highly religious people as the Egyptians would have been a work of supererogation. The loss to posterity, however, is immeasurable, and, lacking a full chronicle of the deeds of the gods of Egypt, we can only grope through textual and allied matter for scraps of intelligence which, when pieced together, present anything but an appearance of solidity and comprehensiveness.

[Neotony21 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms Sergeant’s book leads one to the observation that in the 1920’s and early 1930’s at the apex of Hong Kong society were the Westerners, at the apex of Beijing society were the Chinese, but in Shanghai no group was the clear winner, and so the interplay of the different cultural groups was much more dynamic. This was particularly true in the management of the French Concession. Ms Sergeant’s description of Shanghai in that period provides an interesting insight into one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities of that era.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst interesting and a real insight into the city of Shanghai, it was also really heavy going and jumped about a bit.

[Ker Gibbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read on Chinese history, one I recommend often.