Old Shanghai and the Clash of Revolution

In the early 20th century, life in Shanghai played out against a shifting political backdrop that eventually melded into the Pacific side of World War II, shattering the structures and burning off the patina that for centuries had made 'Old Shanghai' a world unto itself. In this personal history we follow one man through the cataclysmic changes in China during the past 75 years. His life spans Japan's conquest of Shanghai in 1937 to the civil war and Communist takeover, through Mao's desperate attempts to modernize a medieval country while fending off real and imagined threats of foreign intervention and subversion from within. Finally, after watching Deng Xiaoping open the economy while keeping a tight rein on social freedoms, in an atmosphere of burgeoning corruption, the protagonist makes it to the United States to see for himself what the tales of freedom and democracy might offer. The author shows in particular how property owners and intellectuals fared under all the turmoil and all the great leaps forward -- and backward – from the Japanese to Chiang Kai-shek, Mao and Deng Xiaoping. Meanwhile, the Chinese people had been allured by the ideals of democracy and freedom of speech as promoted by the West, and longed for the chimera of a life of ease and abundance, while corruption grew. A wave of emigration followed as many took the first opportunity to go to the West and taste a different world.