In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen.

Nicole Mones

Categorized in : City History Time Reading

Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners. by Nicole Mones

Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners.

diners gourmet chef

But I get frightened sometimes," she admitted."I know. Fear is only fear, though.""And somehow you live without it.""No," he corrected her. "You live with it.

frightened knows sometimes

So this is one of those times when life is just handing you something, telling you what to do, which way to go. So enjoy it. It'll be fun. I guarantee. I can't guarantee we'll find the goddamn thing, but it'll be interesting. Then if we do find it - if we do- the payoff's huge.

fun way interesting

What was more brutal than loss of hope? by Nicole Mones

What was more brutal than loss of hope?

brutal loss

Chinese food tries to engage the mind, not just the palate. To pr... by Nicole Mones

Chinese food tries to engage the mind, not just the palate. To provoke the intellect.

just chinese-food mind food

Both the nationalists and the communists disapproved of jazz and feared it. They thought it would weaken people's resolve to fight off the invasion. And most Americans know, China did ban all Western music for about 30 years, starting in 1949. This is where it started.

fight thought music people

Food is the main engine that drives connectedness, relationship i... by Nicole Mones

Food is the main engine that drives connectedness, relationship in Chinese society.

engine society food relationship

You know how someone - something - surprises you. You wake up a little bit. That's done through Chinese cuisine - for example, through dishes of artifice. That's a whole sub-tradition in Chinese cuisine. To create a dish that comes to the table looking like one thing but actually is something else.

looking someone you wake-up

They say that the cuisines of different Chinese provinces arose originally to serve different kinds of constituencies. Beijing was the cuisine of officials. In Shanghai, that was the cuisine of wealthy merchants and industrialists. In Szechwan, the food of the common people. Many great Szechwan dishes originated in street stalls.

street great food people

Even though Japan and Germany were not formal allies at the time that Japan conquered Shanghai in 1937, still, Frenchtown was an area that Japan could take complete control of - and they did. And it was the locus of nightlife.

control germany japan time

In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible.

music freedom struggle life

You can't portray wartime Shanghai without writing about the Holocaust - about 25,000 Jews survived the Nazi death machine by taking refuge there.

without you writing death