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xi, [7], 318 pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Autographed copy

xi, [7], 318 pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Autographed copy sticker on front of DJ. Signed by author on the fep. Stella Dong is the author of many historical books on China, most notably Shanghai 1842-1949: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (Harpers), Peking: Heart of the Celestial Empire (Formasia) and Sun Yat-sen: Enigmatic Revolutionary (Formasia). Born in Seattle, she worked for several magazines before her first book. She is known for her perceptive articles on Chinese-American writers, and has a regular column on American-Asian cultural affairs in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. She has also written for the New York Times and Washington Post. Shanghai at the turn of the twentieth century was the place to be. Opium was all the rage, parties were wild, and decadence was a way of life. Journalist Stella Dong looks back on a city that in its heyday was a thrilling combination of Las Vegas, the Wild West, Paris in the '20s, and Chicago during Prohibition. She captures the excitement of its most notorious years--the decades before Mao's revolution--when the city was populated with bankers, gangsters, revolutionaries, drug traffickers, gamblers, world royalty, industrial magnates, celebrities, and heiresses. Shanghai was the one place on the globe where no restrictions were placed on immigration. As a result, political refugees and outlaws sought its sanctuary. At that time, this truly international city was free of a central government's scrutiny and quickly became a breeding ground for revolutionary activity. This lively biography describes the thrill and excitement of those years.