Why a Booktrail?
1936: The forgotten story of black musicians in the Chinese jazz age
Night in Shanghai
What you need to know before your trail
In 1936, classical pianist Thomas Greene is recruited to Shanghai to lead a jazz orchestra of fellow African-American expats. From being flat broke in segregated Baltimore to living in a mansion with servants of his own, he becomes the toast of a city obsessed with music, money, pleasure and power, even as it ignores the rising winds of war.
Song Yuhua is refined and educated, and has been bonded since age eighteen to Shanghai’s most powerful crime boss in payment for her fathers gambling debts. Outwardly submissive, she burns with rage and risks her life spying on her master for the Communist Party.
Only when Shanghai is shattered by the Japanese invasion do Song and Thomas find their way to each other.
Locations
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Shanghai
This novel is based almost entirely on true events, and many people in the novel are based on real living persons. There are some differences however:
Josef Meisinger visited Shanghai to demand the city’s Jews should be murdered in 1942 and not in 1942 as in the novel
The story also over-emphasises the role of the Green Gang in the city’s jazz clubs. The gang did wield enormous power and controlled much of the city’s drug supply, but it wasn’t exactly as they are depicted as in the novel.
The experiences of Song are true of many people of the time. During this tim, people in China are experiencing hard times. Disasters such as the Great Leap Forward, famine, and the Cultural Revolution all had serious consequences on the population and many people were jailed. As China started to open up after 1976, past traumas were not forgotten.
Shanghai has changed a lot since then of course, but the Chinese catchphrase for the city’s golden era remains Ye Shanghai, Night in Shanghai.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Night in Shanghai
Destination: Shanghai Author/Guide: Nicole Mones Departure Time: 1930s
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