The Last Rose of Shanghai(14)

“But why donate this hotel? You know the value of it. It can make thousands of documentaries.”

“I’ve told you Mr. Reismann is precious to me, and I’m an old woman with one foot, as you can see. I only wish to have no regret before I go to my grave.”

She cocks her head, looking skeptical.

“I shall put this into writing, if you still have doubts. And one more thing, Ms. Sorebi. Please do me a favor and don’t call me ma’am.”

“Why, of course, Ms. Shao.” She’s smiling to placate me, or perhaps to try to forget the unfavorable description of my association with Ernest that she has heard.

I lean back in my wheelchair. “The first thing you need to know, young lady, is the truth: in Shanghai, if you’re a woman and a business owner, you cannot climb through a tunnel of spiders without catching some cobwebs in your hair.”



I was the seventh and youngest child of the Shaos, one of the wealthiest families in Shanghai, and people called me a jade leaf growing on a gold branch, Jin Zhi Yu Ye. My illustrious grandfather, whose name was on many lips, had modernized the mud town Shanghai and founded many enterprises in the late 1800s—a railway company, a telegraph firm, a large iron-and-steel joint venture, and a university still prominent today. He was a prime minister of the collapsed Qing dynasty. When he died, his funeral procession was attended by officials and ambassadors from Russia, Britain, Germany, the United States, and even Japan. It extended from the west end of Nanjing Road to the Huangpu River. He had left my family the great fortune we relied on as well as a legacy of patriarchy my brothers seemed all too happy to carry on.

My father, who had lived like a typical dandy, was an intrepid mayor of Shanghai for years before his opium addiction. I had few memories of him; all were unpleasant, including his bouts of anger. Maybe he felt threatened by Mother, the oldest child of a powerful warlord. A woman with bound feet but an excellent skier who took trips to the Alps, she was known for her shrewdness and clever maneuver of finance. Thanks to her, in the throes of my father’s opium addiction the bulk of my family’s wealth was squirreled away.

As a child, I grew up in an enclosed compound, educated by an aging tutor who lectured on obedience and family honor, pampered by an army of servants, and screened from the vileness and violence of the world. As a young woman, I was materialistic, in love with dresses and purses, lipsticks and limelight. But I knew my future as soon as I could understand things: I would marry Cheng, my cousin, and after marriage, I would become a mother and produce as many children as possible. As a child, I hadn’t known better and had gone along with this plan, since this was what Mother had arranged for me—but it would become the biggest sorrow of my life.

I think my story would have been different if I had never heard jazz at my best friend Eileen’s house. Once I heard it, I became an ardent fan. There was no popular music in Shanghai, in the sense of music as you know now. Recorded music didn’t exist in our culture when I was born. I begged Mother to send me to the high school where Eileen was enrolled, St. Mary’s Hall, a private girls’ school run by American missionaries, so I could hear more of the music. Mother doted on me, so even though everyone else in the family objected, I was enrolled.

At school, I feigned sickness during Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson and hid in a spacious red-brick auditorium, listening to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, marveling at their sensational record sales. I decided what to do with my life: become an entrepreneur like Elizabeth Arden or Coco Chanel. So it was apt to say that literature taught me Western tradition, but American jazz inspired me to become a businesswoman.

While still in school, I made my first investment, a secret investment, in a record company run by a cousin, with my sizable allowance. The company failed, and I lost all my money.

Then tragedy struck: Mother died in an accident, a heavy blow after the death of my father the previous year. After her funeral, I wept as my siblings, one by one, left my life. My second brother joined Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army to hide in the heartland; my third brother severed the family bond to become a Buddhist monk; my fourth brother died of fever; and my only sister ran away with a tycoon selling porcelain toilets in Hong Kong. When the nightmare of war started, Eileen fled to Hong Kong, the maids who pampered me were relocated, and I was left with two brothers, a fiancé, and no bank account.

I purchased the jazz nightclub with the help of my cousin, the same cousin whose record company I had invested in, and began to work. I had been struggling, managing it for two years, when I met Ernest. My life was changed forever.





11


AIYI


All was going well.

After many phone calls and inquiries on the day I hired Ernest, I finally heard that one of Cheng’s cousins kept a piano for his second wife’s daughter, so I borrowed it from him and had it swiftly transferred to my club.

Sassoon, to my delight, delivered the alcohol to my club three days later. Gordon’s Distilled London Dry Gin. Gilbey’s. And Old Taylor from America. Their fragrance perfumed the air as my managers carried them to the storage room and displayed them on the shelves at the bar. Holding a highball glass filled with gin adulterated with water to save the alcohol, I examined the piano—a small instrument in oak, not a Steinway like the one in Sassoon’s Jazz Bar—and toured around the empty tables that I hoped would soon be filled up with eager customers. Ernest’s stride piano and Sassoon’s imported gin and whiskey. This could be the turn of my business.