Download Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love and International Intrigue on the Eve of the Second World War AudioBook Free
Over the eve of WWII, the foreign-controlled dock of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the 20th century's most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eyes of the fabulously rich Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily Hahn was a legendary New Yorker writer who would cover China for practically 50 years, and play an intrinsic part in starting Asia up to the West. But at the height of the Major depression, "Mickey" Hahn, had just arrived in Shanghai nursing a busted heart after having a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she'd never love again. After stepping into Sassoon's glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is ingested into the public swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton, and the colourful gangster named Morris "Two-Gun" Cohen. But when she fulfills Zau Sinmay, a Chinese language poet from an illustrious family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eye: the city of rich colonials, triple brokers, opium-smokers, displaced Chinese language peasants, and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees - a location her innate interest will lead her to find first palm. But danger lurks on the horizon and Mickey barely makes it out alive as the brutal Japanese job damages the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai and Mao Tse-tung's Communists come to force in China.
