For those interested in the period’s history all the main characters are fictitious but are weaved into actual historical events in Shanghai in 1936 and 1937 to create this novel.
Working for a Hong Kong trading house for ten years from 1973, I have some experience of taipans and compradors, which I was able to incorporate. Compradors were indeed likely to be richer than the taipan for whom they worked.
Two of the businessmen I met had fled from Shanghai in 1937. If only I knew I would write this novel over thirty years later, I could have picked their brains. While working selling houses in Spain in 2002, Jo and I came across a Russian who, as a child, was taken to the USA just before the Japanese invaded Shanghai and ended up as a qualified Spanish architect in my small town of Javea. Another coincidence or perhaps to encourage me?
Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong were key players in China in the period, although Mao and his communists did not enter Shanghai until 1949.
The Green Gang triad organisation existed, but the incidents as portrayed in this novel, are fictitious. Their leader, Du Yuesheng, was a very famous Chinese in those times. He was a key supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang army in their battle against the Communists. When Mao took over, and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, Du went into exile in Hong Kong and remained there until he died in 1951.
The Jews and Russians were also major players in Shanghai and in the links you can find some information about these groups.
Victor Sassoon was a larger than life figure at the time, whilst his and other buildings in the Bund or places like Bubbling Well Road did exist when I researched the city.
Shanghai fell to the Japanese invasion on 9th October 1937. This led to the end of the International Settlement and the French Concession agreements, which had allowed foreigners to operate in Shanghai as an independent treaty port on the Chinese mainland for almost a hundred years.
More of the true historical aspects of this novel are explained in the photos page of this site, where the buildings, people and some of these incidents, are explored.