The years Song spends in a cell, far in the novel’s future, were horrific years for most Chinese, especially for those with foreign training or connections. The hope and optimism of Song’s early years in the cause would have been withered by the Anti-Rightist Movements, the Great Leap Forward, the famine, and the Cultural Revolution. Yet in the post-1976 decades that followed these disasters, during which China opened irrevocably to the world, people like Song set about rebuilding their lives. Past traumas were not forgotten-indeed, their associated residues and reactions can often be seen today-but the rest of Song’s life would not have been about that persecution. As for the specific punishment she endures at novel’s end, it is based on a true story I heard in China decades ago from the American Sidney Rittenberg, who remained in China after 1949, was jailed during the Cultural Revolution, and forbidden for some years to turn over in bed-until the punishment was lifted and he was released.
Of course, Du Yuesheng never had an indentured servant named Song Yuhua, or an illegitimate son named Lin Ming. But he did believe that foreign music such as jazz would weaken China, and so did the Communists, who were later to ban Western music for almost thirty years. The song by Nie Er that prompted the Japanese raid on Summer Lotus, “March of the Volunteers,” is now China’s national anthem. Shanghai is much changed. Yet the Chinese catchphrase for the city’s golden era remains Ye Shanghai, Night in Shanghai.
Acknowledgments
Thanks
… to the historians without whose outstanding scholarship this novel could never have been written: Andrew F. Jones, Paul de Barros, Stella Dong, Andrew David Field, Poshek Fu, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Hanchao Lu, Lynn Pan, Gunther Schuller, and Ross Terrill.
… to those who were there, and whose first-person accounts opened the door to a world that vanished long ago: Buck Clayton, Ernest G. Heppner, Joy Homer, Sidney Rittenberg, Margaret Stanley, Desmond Power, Jacob and Aaron Avshalomov, John P. Powell, W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, and Langston Hughes.
… to the Estate of August Wilson, for generously permitting me to quote a couplet from Wilson’s play Seven Guitars, part of his ten-play cycle on African American life through the twentieth century; to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, for permission to quote a passage from Langston Hughes’s autobiography I Wonder as I Wander; and to Hal Leonard Music for permission to quote lyrics from “Exactly Like You.”
… to my researcher Daniel Nieh-whose discovery of an article about the Jewish Resettlement Plan, buried in a Chinese history database, changed the course of the story-for translation of Chinese source material, chasing down endless details, and even coaxing a Japanese steamship line to pull 1937 fare schedules from their archives and e-mail them.
… to Kevin Jones, Skip Reeder, Kemin Zhang, and the late Michael Turner for urging me to write this book; to the many readers who wrote from around the world with the same encouragement; and to those friends who kindly read and commented on early drafts: Reyna Grande, Jane Rosenman, and Po-Chih Leong.
… to the violist Jody Rubin for answering all my music questions; to Karen Christensen and Steve Orlins for great insight on China questions; to Deanna Hogg for sending me a copy of her uncle’s diary, written while he was struggling to stay alive through the Battle of Shanghai; and to Dvir Bar-gal, for his tour of the neighborhood and buildings in which Jewish refugees lived throughout the war years.
… to my editor Andrea Schulz for guiding me patiently and brilliantly through the mysteries of creation; and to my agent Bonnie Nadell, possessed of peerless judgment and a great friend besides.
… to Paul Mones, always.
And to Ben and Luke, for everything. This one’s for you.
For a full bibliography, and extended scenes, visit nicolemones.com.
A Note on Romanization
Chinese terms, phrases, and names in this book appear in pinyin, except for names of persons and places already well known in the West by alternate spellings, such as Chiang Kai-shek, the Yangtze, and Ho Feng-Shan.
About the Author
NICOLE MONES is the prize-winning author of the novels The Last Chinese Chef, Lost in Translation, and A Cup of Light, which have been published in more than twenty-five countries. Her nonfiction writing on China has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Gourmet, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. She is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. For more, visit nicolemones.com.
