A key character in my novel is Irina. She is the daughter of a rich and influential Russian banker, who with his wife and baby Irina, fled the Bolsheviks, initially to Manchuria and then later to Shanghai. Both parents die, not being able to adapt to a life of poverty, leaving Irina alone and with nothing but debts.

Beautiful, but virtually destitute, I describe her background in Chapter 6.

Her situation is based on what truly happened, as thousands of rich White Russians lost everything, finding themselves stateless in Shanghai in the 1930’s. She is a character based on fact.

On February 7th 1920, Admiral Kok-chak, head of the Russian White armies in Siberia, was shot at Irkutsk by the Reds, and the White Russian cause against the Bolsheviks collapsed. Russian aristocracy and bourgeois who had fled the terror to Siberia began a long hopeless retreat which did not end until they reached Vladivostok in 1922.

Thousands of these refugees fled to Harbin in Manchuria. No group was worse equipped to make a living or ever chose a worse place to make it in. Having natural talents for singing and dancing they founded innumerable night clubs at Harbin.

Seeking a better livelihood, men and girls set forth alone or in groups along the Chinese coast. Presently the girls woke to find they were famous. They were not only beautiful they were reduced to making a livelihood with their beauty, and there were no other white women of this sort in the East. Their popularity became international, as dancers and singers, as mistresses and whores.

And in the quest of riches they came at length to Shanghai.

Meanwhile other White Russians had reached Shanghai, some overland and some by sea. The men got work as guards to wealthy Chinese, or as soldiers, the women filled the cabarets.

In 1931, the Japanese influence in Manchuria caused a new wave from Harbin to fall on Shanghai, bringing the total to 25,000 in 1934.

Some of the refugees are rich, as before the WWI the Russian investment in China, notably Manchuria, was second only to that of Great Britain. A few found employment as engineers and professional men. But these are the exceptions.

The great majority, though used to money, have none.

Shanghai scorns them and thrusts them into a social group apart. The Chinese, who have never seen before the degradation of a white man, despise and bully them. With their arrival white prestige took a beating, so the Europeans resent them.

Yet there they are. They have invaded whole sections of Avenue Joffre and other once fashionable residential districts. They start Russian bread shops and restaurants. Beautiful and educated, thousands of their women have gone forth into life of Shanghai to meet fortunes as varied as the city itself. They are popular with American sailors and marines, many of whom have married them. Some become mistresses of taipan’s.

Some become dancers or high class prostitutes. But their trail is always downhill. A move to the soldier’s dives in the French Quarter, to the Russian managed whore houses and a few Russian girls filter even lower to the Chinese whorehouses along the river front. Most commit suicide before that depth is reached.