Delve into
the history of Shanghai in the interregnum between two World Wars and you will find an assortment
of characters involving taipans, buccaneers, fortune-seekers,
soldiers-of-fortune, intrepid newsmen, shady underworld triad bosses, spies,
Communist insurgents, political emigres and colourful Western adventurers
taking residence in Shanghai. These names will crop up again and again: industrialist
and magnate Sir Victor Sassoon and his son E.D. Sassoon (who constructed the
famous Cathay Hotel); triad bosses Du Yue Sheng, Curio Chang and Pockmarked
Huang; Morris ‘Two-Gun’ Cohen (bodyguard to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen); Trebitsch Lincoln
(the spy called ‘abbott of Shanghai’); revolutionary fighters like Chang Hsueh Liang, newsmen like
John B. Powell, Victor Sheean and Edgar Snow; writers and intrepid China
chroniclers like Emily Hahn and John Gunther; literati poets and writers like
Lu Xun and Zau Sinmay, just to name a few. All these moseying around the centre-stage action -- the seismic
political and corrupt chicanery of Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek and the Soong
family in battling the early beginnings of Communism, Mao Tse-tung and the
Japanese invasion.
