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https://www.rp-net.ru/book/archival_materials/ivelskiy.phpThis is a very simply but vividly written memoir of a poor émigré's sojourn in China, from his arrival in 1924 to his departure in 1950. During this time he lived in Harbin, Tianjin and Shanghai, always scraping the bottom, working as a dockworker, a bodyguard and a truck driver. He ( Read more... )

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Another curious rediscovery is described in James Ross’ Escape To Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (1994). This book, by the way, is quite comprehensive and full of exclusive details; it also gives an excellent summary of the relationship of Russian and European Jews in wartime Shanghai.

So the author goes to the New Ashkenazi Synagogue, ( Read more... )

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"My contract with Casanova is ending. I have an offer to dance at the Farren's, upstairs, but I don't want to work there. Their main number is striptease, which means I'll just be a filler. In our business, it's important to keep up the brand. Once you undersell you can never be center stage again ( Read more... )

From the newly published book of Einstein's travel diaries. I added illustrations from the era. The visit took place in November 1922.


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There are fewer accounts of old Shanghai in Russian than in English or French, but Russian stories are frequently more entertaining. In a detailed memoir of his visit to Shanghai in 1880, the journalist Vsevolod Krestovsky writes about the British opium hulks in the middle of the Huangpu, the boredom of the city life, the merrimaking in the Jewish ( Read more... )

One of the most informative and entertaining accounts of Shanghai in the 1940s was written by Victor Smolnikoff. He was born in Harbin in 1914, studied in Aurora University in Shanghai and worked as a doctor in the Marshall & Partners firm until 1954. His situation was unique compared to other Shanghai Russians: he was a full-on partner in the ( Read more... )