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August 2, 2015

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Murder and intrigue in Shanghai

GREAT men, great deeds and great events — the world has never fallen short of them. However, it is often the events of small probability that have changed the course of one’s life and then pushed the world in a different direction, Shanghai writer Xiao Bai says.

One summer afternoon, in the reading room of the Shanghai Archive, when Xiao Bai first came across the sentence, “It was the White Russian woman who first attracted Lieutenant Sarly’s attention,” in a stack of old files of the French Concession police between the years 1931-43 of Shanghai, he knew he had the beginning sentence of a story that he had saved for months to write.

Set in 1931 in the foreign concessions, Xiao Bai’s “Zu Jie,” or “French Concession,” is a sensual and intellectual thriller that twists around the assassination of a Nanking politician upon his arrival in Shanghai. The assassin shoots the official and then himself amid the raucous sound of firecrackers.

Who is the dark hand behind the assassination? What happens to the official’s wife, who arrives with him by boat, but disappears in the enduing chaos? And what is the real conspiracy behind all of this?

Back room power struggles

Like putting puzzle pieces together, Xiao Bai, 47, uses the decoded secret files from the British and French Foreign Ministries, telegraphs between intelligence agencies, old newspaper reports and an entry — “pass port to port” — from a pilot’s logbook of Shanghai Port on the day of the assassination to reconstruct the power struggles behind the scenes, between the local gangsters, the Communists, the Nationalists and the international spies.

“I would read a few chapters of the fictions written by Mao Dun and Ding Ling, known as the ‘New Literature’ of 1930s China under the influence of Brecht, to get a feel of the time and the way people would talk and react to the events. Because other than that we know nothing about them,” Xiao Bai told Shanghai Daily. “‘The truth lies in the piles of files,’ as my character Lieutenant Sarly would say in the novel.”

From the early 19th century until the 1930s, Shanghai evolved from a small fishing village to the commercial and cultural capital of China. Nicknamed the “The Paradise of World Adventurers,” it was home to “Shanghailanders,” foreigners who were granted the privilege to live and trade in Shanghai. It was also a refuge for white Russian emigres, Jewish refugees and migrants from China’s hinterlands.

With a bit of imagination and luck, Lieutenant Sarly, head of the political section of the French Concession, and a Franco-Chinese photojournalist trace the assassination to a revolutionary cell that was left astray after the Shanghai Massacre of 1927; Therese Irxmayer, a Russian spy and arms dealer; and a “Big Shanghai” plan that Chiang Kai-shek demanded be built north of the foreign concessions to compete with the Shanghailanders.

To make the story even more convincing and realistic, Xiao Bai forges a file labeled U731-2727-2922-7620 for “IRXMAYER THERESE.” It includes so much detail that it seems authentic. But don’t be fooled, if you look up the four-corner dictionary, a method for decoding Chinese characters using four numerical digits per character, you’ll find the series of numbers says “I am fooling you!”

What do you think of 1930s Shanghai?

In the 1930s, the skyline of Shanghai was expanding as the population kept growing. Everyone, especially the young students, wanted to come to Shanghai with a common aim to join the ‘revolution.’ Many see it as an era full of possibilities and opportunities to make either fame or fortune. Meanwhile, it was also a difficult period when violence escalated and truth hidden in the dark due to clashes of ideas and different interest groups — quite a situation like what I had experienced in the 1990s Shanghai when everyone was mobilized to go for a “deep reform.”

What’s the most valuable information you learned while researching and writing the book?

The speedboat! When a passenger liner arrived in Shanghai at that time, ordinary passengers were not allowed to get off the ship immediately. They had to wait for a pilot who would then navigate the ship into the narrow mouth of Whampoa, a much widely known spelling for today’s Huangpu River. Only the rich or the privileged would send for a speedboat to pick them up from the pier. And that speedboat gave me the precision of time and place for an assassination to take place.

What do you think makes for good historical fiction?

I think part of the purpose of writing historical fiction is to show the time period in all its facets. For me, historical fiction is a fun way to dig up old things and cast doubt on history as if it could have been interpreted from a different angle. I have always believed in “small events probabilities.” The year when I finished writing the “French Concession,” Hilary Mantel wrote the “Wolf Hall,” a fictionalized biography that I deemed a very good alternative to learn more of Thomas Cromwell and the role he played in Henry VIII’s court.

What’s coming up next?

I am presently working on another novel about Shanghai in the 1940s. You will see, 10 years after the Japanese invaded Manchuria, how fast the society had been changing and what a big impact the war had on the concessions in Shanghai.

About the Author

Xiao Bai, originally named Zhang Haibo, started writing in 2009 when he was bed-ridden for close to a year following a traffic accident that permanently damaged his back. His sharp, witty and fun style of writing quickly caught the attention of the literary circle. “French Concession” is his first novel to be translated into English and was released in July on amazon.com. He is also the author of “Horny Hamlet,” an award-winning collection of essays, and “Game Point: A Novel.” He lives in Shanghai.




 

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