Luke Slade, a young Congressional aide, begins this business trip to China like all other international travel he's endured with "Leo the Lyin'": buried under a slew of diplomatic runarounds, non–functioning cell phones, and humiliation from the Congressman at every turn. But on their first night in Beijing, their trip is plunged into a deeper chaos: Leo goes on a drunken bender and disappears into the night. Unsure what dubious business his boss had planned, Luke must piece together the Congressman's lies while maintaining appearances with their Chinese contacts. Amidst the confusion, a little bleary from jet lag and alcohol, Luke receives a briefcase full of money from the mayor of a provincial Chinese city. Luke accepts the "gift," but when he later reconsiders and wants to return the cash, he discovers even more anxiety–inducing news. There's been a mysterious death, and he appears to be under surveillance by Chinese police. As Luke tries to navigate a complex minefield of corruption, he must also confront his own role in the events. Unwitting marionette? Fall guy? Or perhaps someone more capable of moral compromise than he would have liked to believe? Last Days in Shanghai is an unforgettable debut by a writer to watch. It's both a hold–on–to–your–seat thriller and a pitch–perfect exploration of present day China—the country's rapacious capitalism, the shocking boom of its cities and the wholesale eradication of its traditions.

Unpublished paperback galley proof of a diary kept by the author's wife (chapters 6-11), with initial chapters 1-5 by Aldred F. Barker, former Chair of Textiles at the University of Chiao-Tung, Shanghai. Describes events that took place in their lives in Shanghai over the course of four years 1933-1937.

How a single day revealed the history and foreshadowed the future of Shanghai. It is November 12, 1941, and the world is at war. In Shanghai, just weeks before Pearl Harbor, thousands celebrate the birthday of China’s founding father, Sun Yat-sen, in a new city center built to challenge European imperialism. Across town, crowds of Shanghai residents from all walks of life attend the funeral of China’s wealthiest woman, the Chinese-French widow of a Baghdadi Jewish businessman whose death was symbolic of the passing of a generation that had seen Shanghai’s rise to global prominence. But it is the racetrack that attracts the largest crowd of all. At the center of the International Settlement, the heart of Western colonization—but also of Chinese progressivism, art, commerce, cosmopolitanism, and celebrity—Champions Day unfolds, drawing tens of thousands of Chinese spectators and Europeans alike to bet on the horses. In a sharp and lively snapshot of the day’s events, James Carter recaptures the complex history of Old Shanghai. Champions Day is a kaleidoscopic portrait of city poised for revolution.

"It was thanks to its cabarets that Old Shanghai was called the `Paris of the Orient.' No one has studied the rise and fall of those cabarets more extensively than Andrew Field. His book is packed with fascinating information and attests on every page to his understanding of Shanghai's history." LYNN PAN, author of Sons of the Yellow Emperor --

"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Shanghai, 1936. The Cathay Hotel, located on the city's famous waterfront, is one of the most glamorous in the world. Built by Victor Sassoon--billionaire playboy and scion of the Sassoon dynasty--the hotel hosts a who's who of global celebrities: Noel Coward has written a draft of Private Lives in his suite and Charlie Chaplin has entertained his wife-to-be. And a few miles away, Mao and the nascent Communist Party have been plotting revolution. By the 1930s, the Sassoons had been doing business in China for a century, rivaled in wealth and influence by only one other dynasty--the Kadoories. These two Jewish families, both originally from Baghdad, stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than 175 years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and losing nearly everything as the Communists swept into power. In The Last Kings of Shanghai, Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families participated in an economic boom that opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil at their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival. The book lays bare the moral compromises of the Kadoories and the Sassoons--and their exceptional foresight, success, and generosity. At the height of World War II, they joined together to rescue and protect eighteen thousand Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism. Though their stay in China started out as a business opportunity, the country became a home they were reluctant to leave, even on the eve of revolution. The lavish buildings they built and the booming businesses they nurtured continue to define Shanghai and Hong Kong to this day. As the United States confronts China's rise, and China grapples with the pressures of breakneck modernization and global power, the long-hidden odysseys of the Sassoons and the Kadoories hold a key to understanding the present moment.

This book sets out to explain how Shanghai emerged from relative obscurity in 1842 to become one of the world's best-known finance and industry hubs. As China's largest city, Shanghai today plays a central economic role, much as it did in the 1920s. The author provides a concise diachronic survey of the economic history of modern Shanghai, setting out how the city's urban infrastructure, municipal institutions, consumer culture and industry have shaped, and have been shaped by, this economic power house. The work is aimed at a broad readership of all who are interested in Asian history, and tackles a range of themes including: the city's millionaires, then and now; racial tensions and quotidian liaisons between Europeans and Asians before World War II; and the gambling and prostitution industry. The post-war era is portrayed in comparative discussions on Shanghai under Mao Zedong, and during the reform era. These discussions bring the narrative up to date to cover important events such as the designation of the Pudong precinct as the city's new engine of growth in 1991. The city's illustrious pre-war past is compared with its present ambitions to become Asia's leading financial centre. The book employs insights from studies frameworks of new institutional economics as well as from the development trajectory of other world cities by way of better understanding Shanghai's historic distinctness, its relative weaknesses and contemporary strengths.

The autobiography of Ron Ratcliffe, a western boy growing up in Shanghai. It begins in the 1880s with the arrival of his grandfather in the mysteri-ous and fascinating city of Shanghai. He records tales of the adventures of his grandfather, an 'old hand' in the East, of Ronny's own travels on the great ocean liners, his journey across the USA, and later, during the early stages of World War Two, across the USSR on the Trans Siberian railway. It tells of his beautiful mother who performed on the now notorious German owned radio station, XGRS, and of his own thrills and spills as a half German, half English child/adolescent during the pre-war, world war and post-war periods in China. Through all these adventures and humorous tales of his early life, Ronny gives timely and priceless insights into the events, philosophy and politics of a tumultuous era. He holds a spotlight on a time and place few have ever experienced but which many would love to know, his family thinks his story too good not to share.

This is Shanghai, once the commercial capital of the Far East, in the days of the Chinese revolution. Shanghai-born Sam Tata returned there in 1949. His photographs show vividly the old Shanghai, a multi-racial city of swarming streets and alleys, and document Chinese city life, rich and poor, Europeans and Chinese, the flight of refugees, and summary trials and executions. The introduction tells the story of Shanghai, and gives the recollections of Chinese and Europeans living in the city at the time. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

After the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7), American sailors of the Asiatic Fleet (where it was December 8) were abandoned by Washington and left to conduct a war on their own, isolated from the rest of the U.S. naval forces. Their fate in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies was often grim--many died aboard burning ships, were executed upon capture or spent years as prisoners of war. Many books have been written about the ships of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, yet few look into the experiences of the common sailor. Drawing on official reports, past research, personal memoirs and the writings of war correspondents, the author tells the story of those who never came home in 1945.

Drawing upon a unique and untapped reservoir of newspapers, magazines, novels, government documents, photographs and illustrations, this book traces the origin, pinnacle, and ultimate demise of a commercial dance industry in Shanghai between the end of the First World War and the early years of the People's Republic of China. Delving deep into the world of cabarets, nightclubs, and elite ballrooms that arose in the city in the 1920s and peaked in the 1930s, the book assesses how and why Chinese society incorporated and transformed this westernized world of leisure and entertainment to suit its own tastes and interests. Focusing on the jazzage nightlife of the city in its "golden age," the book examines issues of colonialism and modernity, urban space, sociability and sexuality, and modern Chinese national identity formation in a tumultuous era of war and revolution.