The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Weina Dai Randel
- Genre: Jewish Historical Fiction, Historical Japanese Fiction, Jewish Literature
- Publish Date: 1 December 2021
- Size: 3 MB
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Avail for Download
- Price: Free
FALL 1980
THE PEACE HOTEL, SHANGHAI
I’m sixty years old, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and a
troubled woman. I’ve dressed carefully for the meeting today,
wearing a black cashmere cardigan, an embroidered yellow
blouse, black pants, and a custom-made shoe. I hope, with all
my heart, that I look refined and humble, just as an easygoing
billionaire ought to appear.
I turn my wheelchair around, moving from one octagonal
table to another. It has been a long time since I last came here,
and the hotel seems to greet me like an old friend: the chestnut
wood–paneled walls, the black-and-white prints, and the
golden chandelier hung on the ceiling like a blazing bird nest.
In the air, of course, there are no familiar jazz tunes, or angry
shouts, or his steady voice. After all, it has been forty years.
Our past—my light, my tears—is gone, forever out of my
reach. But I hope after today it will be different; after today,
I’ll be at peace.
I’ve decided to donate this hotel—this iconic landmark
built by a Briton, controlled by several governments, now
under my ownership—to an American documentarian whom
I’ll meet today. I’ll ask her to do only one thing: make a
documentary. This is an unusual deal, a poor deal on my part,
but I don’t care. The documentarian has flown across the
ocean to meet me, and I’m eager to meet her.
At a black table near Corinthian columns, I park my
wheelchair. I shouldn’t be nervous, but my heart races. Did I
forget to take my medication this morning? I don’t remember,
and I can’t seem to move, either, caught in the crack of
memories.
JANUARY 1940
AIYI
About two years after the fall of Shanghai, four months after
the war started in Europe, I was twenty years old, and I had a
problem. My nightclub, a million-dollar business, was running
out of liquor due to the wartime shortage. My visits to the
breweries and trading companies had yielded no luck, and the
customers had taken notice of their adulterated wine. At my
wits’ end, I went to see the last person in the world I’d ask for
help: my business rival, the British businessman Sir Victor
Sassoon.
He lived in his hotel, located in the heart of the
International Settlement near the Huangpu River. Close to the
building, I asked my chauffeur to park my brown Nash sedan
so I could get out and walk the rest of the way. My scarf
around my face, I passed squeaky rickshaws and rumbling
automobiles, my head bent low, praying no one would
recognize me.
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