The Last Rose of Shanghai

by Weina Dai Randel

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.

There is a kind of love that strikes like a thunderbolt; it blinds you, yet opens your eyes to see the world anew. Within its light, a pathway was illuminated.

the Jews in Berlin faced inhumane pogroms after the Kristallnacht. They were ordered to get out of Germany or risk being sent to concentration camps, but many countries were reluctant to accept them. With the world closed to them, about eighteen thousand Jews found their way to Shanghai. Mr. Reismann was one of those refugees. He was nineteen years old.”

“Ernest, may I remind you? This is a Chinese club. It might be good for you to know some etiquette. It’s rather inappropriate to shake a woman’s hand.” “I didn’t know. Why?” “Chinese people consider touching between men and women an intimate action.”

entitling me to a share of the family’s fortune equal to my brothers’. Sinmay argued that since women traditionally were not eligible to receive an inheritance, he, the firstborn son, had the right to execute the will his way. I sued him by the law under the new Republic of China, an unthinkable step for many people who regarded lawsuits as scandalous. But I won, and the money was returned to me, and Sinmay never forgave me for shaming him publicly.

A traditional woman who believed a woman’s role was to be a wife and mother, she disliked that I worked—in an immoral nightclub, no less! She always said I was old, since she believed girls with my upbringing must be engaged at ten, married at fourteen, and give birth to a first child at sixteen. Like her. But I wondered if she wanted me to have children so I could lose my good figure. After five children, soon six, Peiyu had trouble finding her waist.

many Chinese men kept concubines.

A love that couldn’t accept a lover’s flaws was a selfish love. He wouldn’t be selfish. He would love her, all of her, her beauty,

her smiles, her secrets, her mistakes, and her faults.

“God laughs when man plans, sir.”