Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (2000) By Stella Dong

Chinese history is complex no matter what century or dynasty you look at.  Breaking it down into manageable parts helps … somewhat.  Stella Dong’s excellent nonfiction book Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City looks at the country’s commercial capital from 1842 until 1949 when the Communists finally consolidated their control of the mainland.   Then, and now, Shanghai is to China, what New York City is to the United States.

As the book begins, Shanghai is a Treaty Port – a port city where foreign merchants (British, French, Americans, and many others) are not answerable to Chinese law and do not pay Chinese taxes.  As an international port city chock full of sailors, immigrants, refuges, capitalists, criminals and rapidly alternating pockets of Chinese political activists, it’s wide open.  Romanticists will call it the Paris of the East, others will compare it (repeatedly) with Chicago’s Al Capone era, and each can provide a mountain of evidence to support their view. The Al Capone comparison relates to China’s attempt to wipe out the (domestic) opium trade, and the impact of Prohibition in the US, and their respective roles on the development of organized crime.  It is a compelling argument.

During World War II, there was an unholy alliance between the Communist insurgency led by Moa Tse Tung, and the forces of the post-dynasty Republic, to battle Japan, the common foe.  When the Japanese retreat at the war’s conclusion however these two groups will resume their delayed civil war.  In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (the western-backed leader of the Republic) was forced to flee to the island of Formosa/Taiwan, taking with him the Bank of China’s gold deposits. The western powers, now denied the unbridled spoils of the Treaty Ports, would spend much of the next few decades in denial of the permanency of the Communist victory.

Shanghai, The Bund, circa 1930

But national history is just an extension of Dong’s book, the primary focus is on Shanghai itself and how it became one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world … as seen through western eyes. In the “glory day” if you will of the Treaty Port era, the Bund, the main riverfront street of the city, was an avenue of banks, hongs (import/export trade companies) and luxury hotels.  They were bankrolled by immense trade revenues, not the least of which were from opium.  Collectively these commercial enterprises built an economy that could support a limitless market for “sin” in the city: drug use, prostitution, and gambling. 

That the commercial success of Shanghai was built on a structured inequality, seemed lost to those who could never understand the political appeal of the Communist insurgency.  There are many, many “what-ifs” in this history, Stella Dong wisely leaves them to the reader to pose and answer.

One interesting sub-story in the book concerns the (then) status of Shanghai as an open port, meaning no visa was required.  This allowed countless refuges to access the city, not the least among these groups were “stateless” Jews escaping Nazi-era Germany, some 30,000 of whom made it to Shanghai establishing a new home in the Hongkew neighborhood.  Significantly, when the Japanese military occupied the city, Jews were either restricted to Hongkew ghetto, or like all allied-Europeans and Americans, interned in prisoner of war camps.  The Japanese however did not implement the “final solution” their German allies requested. While the reason is unknown, the Japanese failure to do so was likely not humanitarian in nature, more likely they just couldn’t be bothered.  After the war and the declaration of an independent Israel, most Jews living in Shanghai immigrated.

Recommendation:  Yes, for history buffs.

The Round House (2012) By Louise Erdrich

The story told in The Round House by Louise Erdrich is constructed on a plot involving the rape of a Native American woman living on a reservation in North Dakota.  People who shy away from picking up this book fearing the topic will be unbearable will be missing a brilliantly written work that while it contains a great deal of hurt, also entails a great deal of humanity. 

The main characters of the book are the woman, her husband, and their son.  How each of them deals with the brutal attack and its aftermath could be stand-alone novels yet Erdrich has skillfully woven them together. 

The father is a tribal judge, though the legal system on the reservation is as defined and imposed by treaty, and obstructs justice as often as it finds the truth.  It is important to note that as recently as 2009  86% of the rapes of Native Americans were perpetrated by non-Native Americans, and prosecution is rare, with a success rate that is even rarer.

The mother's story is critical, her silence is not merely reaction, it becomes a important part of the plot.

The son is your typical 13-year old, until he is not – the rape and its impact become an all-encompassing subplot in his coming of age story.  I won’t go into detail about how this story unfolds, because doing so would require a spoiler alert. Let’s just say, the book goes where it needs to go.

Writing about “Rez Life” has become a significant genre in literature. Louise Erdrich, with her lineage as a Chippewa, is one of several authors from this genre I have read.  Others include what could be categorized as the Rez “pop culture writer" Sherman Alexie author of SmokeSignals and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, who grew up on the Spokane reservation; and David Treuer, an Ojibwe raised on the Leech Lake reservation in Northern Minnesota, whose novel titled Prudence details the lasting impact of reservation life well beyond the days of the American Indian wars.

Recommendation:  Yes, excellent book, do not be afraid of the topic.