Shanghai grand
Subtitle: forbidden love and international intrigue in a doomed world
By: Taras Grescoe
Edition: First U.S. edition.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 455
ISBN-13: 9781250049711
Subjects: Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945; Friends and associates; Adventure and adventurers; Travel; Relations with men; Americans; Cathay Hotel (Shanghai, China); Social life and customs; Aliens; Biography; History
Description: "On the eve of WWII, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century's most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily 'Mickey' Hahn was a legendary New Yorker journalist whose vivid writing played a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life in China. At the height of the Depression, Hahn arrived in Shanghai after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she will never love again. After checking in to Sassoon's glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton, and a colourful gangster named Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen. But when she meets Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovers 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--places her innate curiosity will lead her to explore first hand. Danger lurks on the horizon, though, as the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Tse-tung's Communists rise to power"--
Notes: "First published in the United Kingdom by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-436) and index.
Table of contents: title: Map: Shanghai, 1935; title: Prologue: Zhujiajiao Water Town, Shanghai Municipality, March 28, 2014; title: Part 1; title: Shanghai, January 28, 1932; title: Where China Meets the World; title: The Sassoon Gamble; title: Part 2; title: St. Louis, 27 May 1916; title: The Flapper's Progress; title: Shanghai Grand; title: Mickey Checks In; title: On the Shanghai Beat; title: Part 3; title: Shanghai, April 12, 1935; title: Cathay and the Muse; title: The Fantastic Mr. Pan; title: Cosmopolis-on-the-Whangpoo; title: Part 4; title: Shanghai, November 3, 1936; title: The Rise of the Dwarf Bandits; title: Sweetie Pie Goes to Nanking; title: Part 5; title: Shanghai, August 14, 1937; title: After Saturday; title: The Solitary Island; title: Waking from the Doze; title: Part 6; title: Shanghai, August 1, 1941; title: The Last Light in a Dark World; title: Check-Out Time; title: Settling the Bill; title: Epilogue.