The Last Rose of Shanghai

by Weina Dai Randel

I hated to be threatened, but everyone in Shanghai knew this too—the Settlement’s Sikh policemen were biased, and we the locals, the losers of the war, couldn’t rely on them for any sort of justice.

Ernest Reismann, a Jew fleeing from Nazi Germany, had just landed in Shanghai on an Italian ocean liner hours ago.

He had never seen a Chinese girl in Berlin. The one today had been fascinating, a creature of beauty.

He hoped, with all his heart, that he would see her again.

Jews had arrived in Shanghai to make a fortune as early as in 1843, after Britain defeated the Chinese Qing dynasty during the first Opium War. When the Bolshevik Revolution broke out in Russia, many Russian Jews, fearing persecution, had fled to Shanghai as well.

He had been driven out of his home for being a Jew; now, after crossing the oceans to an alien land, he was driven out again for being a refugee.