The Last Rose of Shanghai: A Novel

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The book is beautifully written. I wasn’t aware that Shanghai was a safe harbor for European Jews early in the war. About 20,000 Jews settled in Shanghai from 1938 to 1941, but the living conditions for the Jewish refugees in Shanghai deteriorated over the course of the war due to pressure on the Japanese from their German allies. The descriptions of life in Shanghai, including the luxury living of jazz clubs and fancy hotels as well as the settlements and ghettos, were captivating and allowed me to visualize the time and place. The book is also well-researched, and the author does a great job of exploring the relationships and distrust among the Chinese, Japanese, and foreigners who are all co-existing and trying to survive in the war-torn city. I did think the love story between Aiyi and Ernest got quite dramatic at times (blindly running into battle zones more than once to find each other!), but I found them to be really enjoyable characters and I cared for them from beginning to end.

The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel | Goodreads The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel | Goodreads

Shanghai-born Ballard’s fictionalised memoir of his time in a Japanese civilian internment camp at Lunghua on the edge of the city annoyed many of his fellow camp inmates when it was published, as they didn’t come out of it very well. Ballard took the decision to fictionalise his experiences the better to show the often “casual surrealism” of war. While he reveals the ignominies and deprivations of the camp, the earlier chapters also provide a vivid description of life for a wealthy and privileged foreign family in the city before the war with Japan. Shanghai. Twenty-year-old Aiyi is the owner of a successful night club. Rich and beautiful, she appears to have firm control over her life, but she knows her future path. She is engaged to another rich Chinese, and she knows she'll be expected to give up her business and settle into the life of a glam wife. When a young German Jewish refugee named Ernest Reismann joins her club as a pianist, her life changes, her dreams change. But can she change her future, risking it for an impoverished refugee who'll never be accepted by her people? Add to this the increasingly unstable local environment, thanks to the Japanese occupation. How will life turn out for Aiyi and Ernest? A very successful and transporting novel that beautifully captures the sounds, smells, and social mores of seventh-century China.” — Historical Novels Review (Editors’ Choice)The Last Rose of Shanghai vividly depicts the clash of East and West as Jewish refugees flee Hitler’s Berlin for faraway Shanghai, where they struggle to survive amid the uneasy coexistence of Chinese magnates and Japanese invaders. Sophisticated heiress Aiyi knows she is taking a risk when she hires Jewish pianist Ernest to play jazz in her nightclub, but she has no idea she will be risking her heart, her family, and everything she holds dear as forbidden love blossoms and Japan’s hold on her beloved home city tightens. Weina Dai Randel’s poignant, sweeping love story paints a vibrant portrait of a little-known slice of World War II history. Not to be missed!” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code and The Huntress Aiyi is a young Chinese woman from a prominent family who has arranged her upcoming marriage to Cheng, a controlling man with traditional values. She defies Chinese customs by owning her own jazz club, One Hundred Joys Nightclub. With Cheng’s opposition and a wartime economy, Aiyi struggles to keep her club from failing. Ernest, a pianist, and his young sister arrive in Shanghai from Berlin, destitute and hungry. With so much antagonism against the refugees, no one will hire a foreigner, let alone a Jew. After Ernest gives Aiyi an audition playing her favorite song, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” she takes a chance in hiring him, hoping her patrons will overlook who he is and allow his piano to enthrall and entertain. Ernest, after suffering under Nazis in Germany, is subjected to brutality from the club’s patrons, a jealous Cheng, and cruel Japanese soldiers. Ernest and Aiyi find solace and happiness together, but that changes when they are separated after Germany persuades the Japanese to take action against the Jews. And from Ernest’s perspective, there’s all the usual stuff about how he can’t really offer Aiyi much in terms of a stable future, but even more central to his character is his devotion to his younger sister, and his desire to give her a good life despite their current circumstances. His relationships with Aiyi and with his sister come to a head in a single, tragic moment, and the resulting rift between him and Aiyi afterwards feels both heartbreaking and totally understandable. In fact, I’d say that it’s Aiyi and Ernest’s own story arcs that really make the novel shine, even more than the romance between them. The love story aspect began to feel a bit episodic after a while, when just as things seem headed for a happy resolution, something new happens that keeps them apart again. After a while, the obstacles themselves began to feel a bit convenient, like a TV writer stretching out the story over an entire season’s worth of episodes. The ending to this plot line, with the big reveal in the final few chapters, was satisfying, though I wish there had been more of an emotional payoff.

The Last Rose of Shanghai: A Novel by Weina Dai Randel The Last Rose of Shanghai: A Novel by Weina Dai Randel

This romance is one of the two main sources of tension throughout the story. Aiyi’s got a boyfriend/fiancé already, but it’s an arranged match, and she’s not exactly in love. But her family is traditional and looks down on foreigners. Ernest, being Jewish, comes from a much different culture and is an outsider in the city. Fans of sweeping, dramatic WWII epics that are rich in historical detail, such as Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls or Paullina Simons’s The Bronze Horseman will be enthralled.” — Booklist The Moon in the Palace depicts Empress Wu’s sharp, persistent spirit but does not neglect to make her believably naive and vulnerable, an untried girl among ruthless women. The intrigue and machinations of the imperial court come to life under her hand, a vast and dangerous engine with each piece moving for its own reasons.” — Shelf Awareness (starred review) Weina's latest novel, Night Angels, features an introverted biracial American woman from Boston and a compassionate diplomat who saved thousands of Jews by issuing them visas to Shanghai. The novel is based on Dr. Ho Fengshan, hailed as the Chinese Schindler.As the Last Rose of Shanghai opens, it is 1990 and an older woman awaits the arrival of her niece and a documentarian. In the case of the latter, the woman, who we soon learn is Aiyi, a Chinese woman who is one of our main protagonists wishes for the documentarian to know the story of Ernest Reismann, a German refugee who arrives in Shanghai during the 1930’s and was a well-known pianist. Ernest will also be our other main protagonist and the chapters alternate between the past and the present. It is a tale of war, heartache, and the willingness of people to survive despite the hardships they endure. Immensely popular, her third novel, The Last Rose of Shanghai, sold 100,000 copies within six months of its publication. In Japanese-occupied Shanghai, two people from different cultures are drawn together by fate and the freedom of music... I had high hopes for The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel. High enough that I semi-broke one of my personal rules, which is to avoid World War 2 historical fiction.

The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel | Goodreads

Aiyi isn't a likeable character. While she should have been inspirational by virtue of being a successful business owner in a patriarchal world, she is shown as selfish, judgemental, and short-sighted. She doesn't shy away from flaunting the rewards of her wealth, and looks down on those who are careless about their appearance. This adds a nice challenge to the story: how to be patient with a character who gets on your nerves. The book can be called a coming-of-age story, with Aiyi's character as the lynchpin. Aiyi Shao is a young heiress and the owner of a formerly popular and glamorous Shanghai nightclub. Ernest Reismann is a penniless Jewish refugee driven out of Germany, an outsider searching for shelter in a city wary of strangers. He loses nearly all hope until he crosses paths with Aiyi. When she hires Ernest to play piano at her club, her defiance of custom causes a sensation. His instant fame makes Aiyi's club once again the hottest spot in Shanghai. Soon they realize they share more than a passion for jazz—but their differences seem insurmountable, and Aiyi is engaged to another man. First, though I give the author credit for writing in a language that is not her first, the writing is not particularly enjoyable. I've always heard that one of the principal rules of writing is "Show, don't tell." This book has a whole lot of telling and very little showing. Aiyi, our first-person narrator, spends tons of time telling us about how rich she is, what lavish jewelry and clothing she wears, about her nightclub and her servants and the reputation of her family. And yet there are instances when the reader has to infer that something has happened because it isn't explicitly stated that it has. I'm thinking of one part here in which a character is shot by a soldier; the book says that the soldier has a gun and that the character is bleeding, but it never actually explains the connection. I listened to the audio CD of The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel and learned so much about Shanghai’s history during World War II. The audio CD was pleasantly performed by Josh Bloomberg and Emily Woo Zeller. Most of the books that I had previously read about World War II and the Holocaust took place primarily in Nazi occupied countries in Europe. Little had been written about Shanghai’s fate during World War II. The Last Rose of Shanghai captured the little known history of the more than twenty thousand Jewish refugees that escaped the throes of the Nazis and found safety in Shanghai. It also focused on the effects Japanese-occupied Shanghai had on the Chinese inhabitants, foreigners that had made Shanghai their home and on the Jewish refugees. The Last Rose of Shanghai was well written and impeccably well researched. Weina Dai Randel proved that she was a gifted storyteller with this book. The Last Rose of Shanghai was engrossing, rich in details about the time period and an unforgettable love story. The chapters alternated between the POV’S of Aiyi and Ernest during the war and occupation and then by Aiyi in present time. There's only one Japanese guy who keeps harassing them almost throughout the book. Seriously, only one. Every time. No matter what the scene or location.Although unusual, the alternating narrative approach didn’t bother me. Once you realize that the book follows this pattern, you barely notice. The best of the Shanghai-set novels by China’s leftwing realist writers of the 1930s – who also included Lu Xun and Ba Jin – which accentuated the harsh and often brutal capitalist face of the city and offered an intimate portrait of working-class life. This is Randel’s main tool to keep the story moving—toggle the relationship between pure love and forbidden love. I suppose such a relationship, had it existed, would have been awkward at times. But it became a crutch for keeping the story tense. I guess I’d say that Randel went to the well too often with this plot device. In a Nutshell: First half pretty good, second half is a cheesy, corny mash. Offers a decent look at Shanghai during WWII, but the romantic relationship overshadows the war story. When I took a friend's advice to write a story of Jews in Shanghai, I didn't know what I was getting into.

The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel ~ a Review The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel ~ a Review

During WW2, a Jewish refugee Earnest seeks a new life in Shanghai where he meets Aiyi, a nightclub owner who hires him as a pianist. But as WW2 progresses their lives are changed forever. Many details were glossed over. It felt like the events were being listed off and they weren’t descriptive enough for me. I was being told, not shown what was happening. For example: After Ernest was hired, time skipped forward by several months and the club was flourishing. It didn’t go through the details of Ernest assimilating to life in Shanghai or the developing romance, they just kind of happened. Three years later, and now that The Last Rose of Shanghai is officially released, I will say, The Last Rose of Shanghai is a story of race, of love, of war's horrors, of forgotten-history of WWII, of choices, of destiny, of cultures, of rebuilding your life in a strange land, of finding a home, of losing the home, of family, of self-discovery, of religion, of losing faith, of parenthood. This book is my favorite kind of historical fiction – an engrossing story that also opens my eyes to a piece of history I wasn’t familiar with. The story is set in Shanghai under Japanese occupation during WWII and is told from the alternating points of view of Aiyi and Ernest. Aiyi is a young Chinese heiress with a love for jazz who owns one of Shanghai’s most popular nightclubs (she is quite the entrepreneur for her day!). Ernest is a penniless Jewish refugee from Germany searching for shelter in Shanghai. The two are brought together through music, and a great story of love, survival, and redemption unfolds. Weina Dai Randel is the Wall Street Journal bestselling, award-winning author of four historical novels, Night Angels, The Last Rose of Shanghai, The Moon in the Palace, and The Empress of Bright Moon, historical novel series about Empress Wu (Wu Zetian), China's only female emperor.In Japanese-occupied Shanghai, two people from different cultures are drawn together by fate and the freedom of music… I read lots of World War II books but most of them are about the war in Europe and the reprehensible actions of the German leaders. This book is about life in Shangri during the Japanese invasion. It gave a unique look at how badly the Japanese soldiers treated people during the occupation of China. It's a dual time line book taking place in the 1940s and 1980. The timeline during the war is told by Aiyi and Ernest and the 1960s timeline is told by told by Aiyi Shao and Ernest. I’ve read a number of WWII books focused on Europe or Japan, but I wasn’t aware of the events in Shanghai. I’m really glad I came across this book, and the author has piqued my interest about this piece of history. She included a list of further reading at the end of the book to learn more about Shanghai during WWII, and I will definitely be adding some of them to my TBR list! Old Shanghai, the city that existed between the two world wars, is a conundrum. Not strictly a colony but rather an International Settlement, a port city forced open by imperialist aggression in 1842 after the first opium war. The part of the city that was sectioned off came under foreign control, its residents subject only to the laws of their home countries. The irony is that as a result of this, Shanghai was to become a refuge during the 1920s and 30s for more than three million Chinese fleeing civil war, warlordism, disease, drought and famine. In the late 30s, it also became a port of last resort for some 30,000 Jewish refugees fleeing fascism in Germany and Austria.