Helen Zia

Helen Zia's 'Last Boat Out of Shanghai' is a beautifully-told story of four individuals from China before, during, and after the Communists came to power. As the book's title portends, these individuals are faced with the daunting and often almost-impossible decision of whether or not to leave their homeland as Mao Zedong's Communists romp towards Shanghai.

This book was really a pleasure to read, and the impressive average rating here on Goodreads (4.47/5.0, as of this typing) is show more well-deserved. While it is non-fiction, the author weaves together these inspiring, heart-wrenching, and immersive stories from the four main characters and their families & friends to make this something I had trouble putting down, even at 1am, knowing full well it was a work night. It's a testament to the magnitude of what these people, among millions of other Shanghai residents and broader Chinese people, had to endure, but also a testament to the skill of the author. She crafts these stories in a way that is lucid, flowing, and just made for a really fascinating book.

I particularly appreciated two themes within the book. Helen Zia makes sure to illustrate the main characters' experiences prior to the Communist takeover of Shanghai so that it captures imperial Japan rule in the late 1930s into the early 1940s. Where many books about China in this 1940s time period focus (understandably) on what's happening between the Communists and Nationalists, Zia deliberately paints vivid pictures of Japan occupation. Some parts of that timeframe in this book are difficult to read because of their graphic nature, however, it is up to us as people to understand these atrocities as they happened and ensure they never happen again. You should make an effort to read these harrowing sections if you're able.

Second, I learned quite a bit about how exactly the Nationalists fell to the Communists. My education thus far from the American school system impressed on me that the Nationalists almost beat down the Communists entirely, Mao then regrouped with a hardcore group in the mountains of China, and this band of fierce-fighting peasants won primarily on their guerilla warfare tactics and rural support. The author here shows another dimension by way of the four main characters' experiences, with vivid recounts of extensive corruption and seriously questionable governmental choices by Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist administration. It's now clear that more credit must be given to the Nationalists' ineptitude, corruption, and mistreatment of the population as additional reasons the Communists were able to claim victory. Sections of this book covering the tail end of Japanese occupation through Communist victory provide glaring examples of key missteps by the Nationalists which, at best, hurt their chances to win; at worst, prevented any possibility of victory in the first place.

This was an expertly crafted book and was a pleasure to read. The material was engaging, informative, and coherent, and the author clearly has a skill for bringing true stories to life without embellishing or otherwise artificially altering them. Five stars for a real must-read book. show less

This book is stunning, and is yet another I will likely send to my dad to read, as it combines his interest in military history but also our shared fascination with the history of the Chinese diaspora. To listen to an interview with the author, check out this live episode of They Call Us Bruce.

I was initially surprised to find that it was a narrative read, following four individuals from childhood through their diaspora adventures. Even more surprising, these are *true* narratives, show more collected over many interviews through the course of 12 years (in addition to over one hundred interviews with other Shanghainese immigrants). Nonfiction can get very dry, citing reports and contemporary news articles without personifying things, but this was a gripping tale. My family are Taishanese folks, but the stories here are adjacent to my family's, with an uncle remembering Japanese atrocities in the ancestral village during WWII, and his wife being a refugee yet also a "sophisticated city girl" to his self-described "country bumpkin".

Last Boat Out of Shanghai covers the mostly untold story of the exodus of millions out of Shanghai around the Communist takeover of the city in 1949. Zia mentions the perception that the people who fled Mao's revolution were the landowners, the bourgeosie, the rich and intellectual, but the Japanese occupation and the following civil war disrupted life for all classes. Annuo and Bing's stories consistently are about staving off poverty (both girls also leave and return to Shanghai various times during this period too), Benny goes from a spoiled son of a corrupt police official to struggling to find a way to finish his education, while Ho is trapped in limbo, a student overseas trying to figure out if he should go home to find his family or find a way to stay in a country that doesn't want him.

Though a historical, biographical narrative, it's not hard to draw comparisons to modern day discussions about refugees displaced on the globe. Zia digs in her acknowledgements that even at the height of Cold War and McCarthyism paranoia, the US government didn't want to separate parents from their children. The stress of having enough money to enter another country, having the right papers, making sure your family is all covered (or do you divide members in case the safe haven't isn't that safe?) are still questions people need to consider when thinking about fleeing home. show less

narrative nonfiction following four individuals through the turbulent time of 1937-1948 Shanghai (and sometimes nearby towns along the Yangtze R.) as power changed hands over and again -- the student son of a landowner (Ho Chow); the wealthy son of a high-level puppet policeman under Japanese control (Benny Pan); the adopted daughter given up by her rural family and taken in by city socialites (Bing Woo); and a daughter of a Nationalist officer (Annua Liu). The focus is specific to Shanghai show more rather than mainland China overall, as the city generally had operated in a uniquely separate bubble, but also follows each person's travels into the 1950s (New York City, Taiwan, Ann Arbor, Hong Kong, Nanjing, etc.) and though my ancestors did not pass through most of those places I still found it very interesting to see all the things that could happen to a person during this time period, depending on (or regardless of) where your allegiances may appear to lie.

Very readable and extensively researched--any work done in researching this period is necessarily meticulous, and the author has done her job well. show less

This was an interesting read about Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc during and after WW2. It focuses on a few different people's lives and how they were affected, but they are partly symbolic for a large number of people.

Shanghai was probably the most (only?) modern city in China before the Japanese took over. It was like the roaring 20s there. Actually, I guess it pretty much was the roaring 20s. Lots of rich people going out dancing and drinking, and a lot of Westerners living in their own show more sections.

The Japanese didn't mess around with them too much, especially not the Europeans, but it was still pretty bad for the common Chinese there. It actually seemed to get worse when the Japanese lost, and the Nationalists took over with the Communist invaders getting closer. The Nationalists were pretty worn out when they arrived after fighting the Japanese, and they took over whatever houses they wanted. They punished a lot of Chinese who had suffered under Japanese rule for cooperating with the Japanese when all they were doing was trying to keep out of trouble and stay alive.

Then, as the Communists got closer, the Nationalist leaders started abandoning the city for Taiwan while urging the army to fight to the end. They never had a chance, and the Communists took over, and of course, punished the poor Chinese for cooperating with the Nationalists. As the Communists invaded, a lot of citizens managed to escape to Taiwan or Hong Kong, often with very little to their name. They didn't want to live in Taiwan, which they considered too backward, or Hong Kong, which was remote with nothing to do. But they couldn't stay in Shanghai which was being continuously bombed by the Nationalists in Taiwan, and they were afraid of the Communists. Plus, they thought it would only be for a short time. Unfortunately, the US didn't want to continue to support them.

Once in Taiwan, a lot of them were suspected of being Communist supporters. And there weren't enough jobs or housing, so life was really bad. Some moved on to Hong Kong, which wasn't much better, and some managed to get to the US for college. But of course, the US had Joe McCarthy looking for communists everywhere, especially in the Chinese immigrants, and the US citizens didn't think very highly of any Asians after the war against Japan. They didn't really know the difference between Japanese, Chinese, or Korean.

It was a pretty sad story most of the time. It's interesting to learn about how hard it was to leave their country and come here with nothing, and makes me think about the current immigrants from countries that are run by dictators, etc, who come here and are discriminated against, can't get jobs, etc. A lot of these Chinese were very educated and smart, yet the Communists thought they and other educated people were evil rich people who stole from the common workers, so they were punished, often harshly. It was a really stupid thing from them to do, but hard-core ideologies often don't act in their own self-interests. show less