Shanghai between the World Wars was a place like no other had ever been or will ever be again - yet Shanghai was forever changing. Disparate people of every sort lived side by side without really ever connecting with others unlike themselves. The more China fell apart the more people flocked to Shanghai to seek the shelter and opportunities that Shanghai alone in China offered. They were vicious criminals, whores, rich Mesopotamian Jews who had prospered in the opium trade, White Russians fleeing the Reds, British traders whose families had been in Shanghai for generations, European Jews fleeing Hitler, famous persons from around the world who had come to see and experience for themselves the so-called “Wickedest City in the World,” Sikhs from India directing traffic, starving poor and homeless victims, saints and sinners, charlatans and fools, and ordinary people seeking to live a normal life in a most unusual place. At last even Shanghai succumbed to the combination of internal violence and turmoil among the Chinese themselves, antipathy between Chinese and the foreigners who ruled Shanghai, global economic collapse, and the gathering storm clouds of war that would ultimately end in savage Japanese aggression. “Maskee Shanghai” in 3 books of 10 chapters each lets the reader meet all these people and experience Shanghai through time as it undergoes these changes over nearly 30 years as seen by characters both real and fictional as those persons deal with each other and with a changing Shanghai in a tumultuous world.
