John P. Marquand on Shanghai, 1935

I blogged about John P. Marquand’s 1935 novel Ming Yellow a while back (here). Though nobody much reads them nowadays and their reputation has been unfairly tarnished by the rather daft yellowface films with Peter Lorre, Marquand’s series of Mr. Moto books are actually very good and insightful reads on the situation between America and Japan and the state of China in the late 1930s. You dismiss them as simple pulp or as racist at your peril! Here is Marquand on Shanghai in 1935’s Your Turn, Mr. Moto, the first book in the series (of six)….

“I doubt if any city in the world is more amazing than Shanghai, where the culture of the East and West has met to turn curiously into something different than East and West; where the silver and riches of China are hoarded for safety; where opera-bouffe Oriental millionaires drive their limousines along the Bund; where the interests of Europe meet the Orient and clash in a sparkle of uniforms and jewels, where the practical realities of western industrialism meet the fatality of the East…Believe me, I repeat, anything can happen in Shanghai, from a sordid European intrigue to a meeting with a prince.”