Shanghai Grand
Forbidden Love and International Intrigue on the Eve of the Second World War
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A vivid account of the love triangle between an American journalist and adventurer, a wealthy expatriate businessman and a Chinese poet in Shanghai in the late 1930s.
On the eve of the Second World War, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century's most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the illustrious Sir Victor Sassoon.
Emily 'Mickey' Hahn arrived there at the height of the Depression. A legendary New Yorker journalist, Hahn's vivid writing would play a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life in China. But on reaching Shanghai, Hahn was nursing a broken heart after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter; she was convinced she would never love again.
Checking in to Sassoon's glittering Cathay Hotel, Hahn was absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton and the colourful gangster Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen. But when she met Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovered the real Shanghai through his eyes: the city of rich colonials, triple agents, opium-smokers, displaced Chinese peasants, and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees - a place her innate curiosity led her to explore first hand. Danger lurked on the horizon, though, as the brutal Japanese occupation destroyed the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Tse-tung and the Communists' rise to power.
A compelling tale of fatal glamour and forbidden love, Shanghai Grand is their story, meticulously researched and vividly told.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Grescoe's narrative is a keenly observant, sometimes soulful portrait of Emily "Mickey" Hahn, an American writer who lived in Shanghai from 1935 to 1943, and of China's political and social realities during that tumultuous period in its history: war with Japan, encroaching communism, and widespread squalor and opium addiction. Grescoe also portrays the unique culture and personalities of Shanghai. Mickey, a Missouri-born free spirit, arrived in China in 1935 during a stopover en route to Africa, and stayed for eight years. Her 52 books and numerous New Yorker vignettes made her famous; her pet gibbon, penchant for cigars, and affair with a married man made her infamous. She was linked with Sir Victor Sassoon, the wealthy owner of Shanghai's Cathay Hotel; the "decadent" poet Zau Sinmay, who initiated her voracious opium addiction; and Charles Boxer, who became her husband after a scandalous affair. Grescoe (Straphanger) incorporates a plethora of detail about events, including the Battle of Shanghai, Black Saturday, and WWII, and famous figures such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. This is a wonderful book, but the voluminous detail might make it slow going for some readers.
