The Last Rose of Shanghai
Weina Dai Randel
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Though this story features historical events, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, dates, and incidents are products of my imagination or used fictitiously.
1
FALL 1980
THE PEACE HOTEL, SHANGHAI
I’m sixty years old, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and a troubled woman. I’ve dressed carefully for the meeting today, wearing a black cashmere cardigan, an embroidered yellow blouse, black pants, and a custom-made shoe. I hope, with all my heart, that I look refined and humble, just as an easygoing billionaire ought to appear.
I turn my wheelchair around, moving from one octagonal table to another. It has been a long time since I last came here, and the hotel seems to greet me like an old friend: the chestnut wood–paneled walls, the black-and-white prints, and the golden chandelier hung on the ceiling like a blazing bird nest. In the air, of course, there are no familiar jazz tunes, or angry shouts, or his steady voice. After all, it has been forty years. Our past—my light, my tears—is gone, forever out of my reach. But I hope after today it will be different; after today, I’ll be at peace.
I’ve decided to donate this hotel—this iconic landmark built by a Briton, controlled by several governments, now under my ownership—to an American documentarian whom I’ll meet today. I’ll ask her to do only one thing: make a documentary. This is an unusual deal, a poor deal on my part, but I don’t care. The documentarian has flown across the ocean to meet me, and I’m eager to meet her.
At a black table near Corinthian columns, I park my wheelchair. I shouldn’t be nervous, but my heart races. Did I forget to take my medication this morning? I don’t remember, and I can’t seem to move, either, caught in the crack of memories.
2
JANUARY 1940
AIYI
About two years after the fall of Shanghai, four months after the war started in Europe, I was twenty years old, and I had a problem. My nightclub, a million-dollar business, was running out of liquor due to the wartime shortage. My visits to the breweries and trading companies had yielded no luck, and the customers had taken notice of their adulterated wine. At my wits’ end, I went to see the last person in the world I’d ask for help: my business rival, the British businessman Sir Victor Sassoon.
He lived in his hotel, located in the heart of the International Settlement near the Huangpu River. Close to the building, I asked my chauffeur to park my brown Nash sedan so I could get out and walk the rest of the way. My scarf around my face, I passed squeaky rickshaws and rumbling automobiles, my head bent low, praying no one would recognize me.
It was late in the afternoon; a great storm had blown through, the sky looked gloomy, and the sun lay behind the clouds like a silver coin. The air, chilly, smelled of perfume, cigarette smoke, and the fried dumplings from the racecourse a few blocks away. When I reached one of the hotel’s entrances, I saw ahead of me a jeep crash into a man on a bicycle—a local Shanghainese, I could tell—who held his leg, screaming, his face bloody. From the jeep jumped a Japanese soldier in a khaki uniform. Smirking, he stepped up to the poor biker, took out his pistol, and shot him in the head.
The loud gunshot pierced my ears and my heart, yet there was nothing I could do but look away. We had lost the city to the Japanese; now, sadly, all of us Chinese in Shanghai were like trapped fish in a sunless marsh. To avoid the hook of death and go on living, we had no choice but to remain unseen under water.
I quickened my pace, went up to the landing at the hotel’s main entrance, and stepped through the revolving door. A gust of warm air roared to greet me in the lobby. Letting out my breath, I unwound my scarf and took in the rich Persian rugs, gleaming marble floor, luscious burgundy leather chesterfields, and bouquets of fresh roses and carnations nestled in tall indigo vases. I loved this hotel. Before the war, I had often pampered myself by booking the Jacobean, one of the hotel’s extravagant suites that featured unique French decor.
I didn’t see Sassoon, but a blond man on a chesterfield, clad in a gray flannel suit similar to one my fiancé owned, was frowning at me. Near him, three men in blue American Fourth Marines Regiment uniforms, who must have heard the gunshot, stopped smoking their cigarettes and turned to me as well. They looked annoyed, as if I were an intruder who had just broken into their dining room.
I wondered if they thought I had something to do with the shooting outside, but mostly likely they were displeased because I was the only Chinese guest in the lobby. I had to be careful. Everyone knew the Chinese and foreigners were like salt and sugar that must not be mixed, since the foreigners in the Settlement viewed the locals as a nuisance and we shunned them as enemies. These men in the lobby didn’t know me, but people in Shanghai, including Sassoon, held me in high regard.
And I had come in my usual finery: a tailored red dress with a slit near the thigh and a luscious black mink coat with a tuxedo collar, accessorized with gold leaf earrings, a gold necklace, and an expensive purse. There were not many girls in Shanghai like me—young, fashionable, wealthy, dare I say beautiful, and skillful from years’ experience of running a nightclub. I knew how to handle all kinds of people.
I didn’t sway my hips like a flirt, didn’t lower my eyes like a servant, didn’t smile like someone for hire. Instead, I raised my free hand, gave them a polite nod like the businesswoman I was, and said in perfect American English, “Good afternoon, gentlemen. How are you?”