What’s New Podcast Transcript Season 4, Episode 3: The Last Kings of Shanghai October 27, 2020

Host: Dan Cohen, Dean of Libraries and Vice Provost for Information Collaboration at Northeastern University.

Guest: Jonathan Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, and Director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism.

Host: Dan Cohen (00:08): We have long been told that this will be the Chinese century as the most populous nation in the world achieves economic dominance and as it extends its political influence across the globe. But that still emerging future will also be an extension of China's complex past when other nations arrived on its shores with colonialism, capitalism, and once distant cultures. Today on What's New, how the remarkable story of two Jewish families in Shanghai can tell us a lot about China past, present, and future.

Host: Dan Cohen (00:42): Welcome back to What's New, I'm Dan Cohen. With me in the virtual studio is Jonathan Kaufman, the author of a fascinating new book, The Last Kings of Shanghai; The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China. Professor Kaufman is a Pulitzer prize, winning reporter and author, and director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism. He has reported on China for three decades for the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal. Thanks so much for joining me today, Jonathan, over Zoom in our virtual studio.

Jonathan Kaufman (01:14): Thanks, Dan. It's great to be here.

Host: Dan Cohen (01:15): Delighted to have you here. And I just really enjoyed reading your book for many reasons. And I have to say, I just immediately recognize it as a kind of passion project where an author sometimes bumps into an incredible story while working on other things and that it just simply demands to be told and now you've had a chance to tell it. But what's the origin of this story as we go back through your own history?

Jonathan Kaufman (01:38): Well, bump into is exactly the right word to use. I'm a reporter, I'm a journalist. I've been covering China from back in the late 1970s, early 1980s when China first opened up. And on my very first trip out of Shanghai, back in 1979, this was just three years after Chairman Mao had died. China was still very much locked into the old communist imagery that we have, everybody in kind of those blue Mao suits, lots of bicycles, very few cars. And I was walking along in Shanghai, along the Bund, the famous waterfront with all those art deco buildings and I had to

1 use the bathroom. I went into a hotel and it was like stepping into a 1930s movie. I walked in there and the floors were marble. There were these elite crystal chandeliers. This bellhop was standing there in a little white uniform with a white hat on top.

Jonathan Kaufman (02:28): And I went up to him, and in English I said, is there a bathroom I can use? And he responded to me in French. And so I felt like I had stepped into a 1930s musical. And I think all good, at least as a reporter, all good stories start with a question and maybe all good books do as well. And I just found myself thinking, what is this place? And as I found out, it was built by a Jewish billionaire, a playboy, who had actually come from Baghdad and was one of the richest men in the world, Victor Sassoon. And then as I traveled around Shanghai and back and forth to China over the next years, I kept on stumbling across evidence of Jews who had been in Shanghai who had helped shape it. At one point, I was taken by the official Chinese government agency to visit the Children's Palace, which is a place where the Chinese kids were practicing piano and doing their ballet exercises. The kind of thing that the Chinese communists wanted to show to journalists to show how wonderful things were in China.

Jonathan Kaufman (03:28): And it was very nice, but it was this huge, huge mansion with like a huge ballroom and grand rooms everywhere. And as we left, there was a little plaque I noticed saying that this had once been the home of the Kadoorie family back in the 1920s and 1930s. And I knew the Kadoorie family because I was based in Hong Kong at the time and they were one of the wealthiest families in Hong Kong. They owned the Peninsula Hotel and all sorts of investments. And again, they were Jewish. So I think in both cases, I kept asking myself, what were these people doing here and what was their connection to China and China's history and China's story.

Host: Dan Cohen (04:07): Your book does such a great job tracing back where these two families come from and their immense impact. And I want to get, especially to Victor in a moment, but maybe if we could start with his ancestors who came from Baghdad of all places. How does the Jewish family from Baghdad get to Shanghai?

Jonathan Kaufman (04:24): Well, I think when we look at Jewish history, one of the things we're all familiar with is Fiddler on the Roof. That, I think, for most people, Jews and non-Jews is their image of Jews who came, they were in ghettos or they were being oppressed in Europe or in Russia or elsewhere. And they kind of rise up, come to America and succeed. That's a familiar story. And it's one that we know about in many different ways. But the story that Sassoons and the Kadoories is very different. Back thousands of years ago, after the destruction of the second temple, Jews were taken into captivity, into Babylon. We read about the Babylon captivity in the Bible. By the waters of Babylon, we wept as we remembered Zion. These were Jews that were taken to Babylon as captives.

2 Jonathan Kaufman (05:11): But in fact, what happened was, once the Jews got to Babylon, which is now Baghdad, they did very well. It turned out that the rulers of Baghdad, the Turks, the Persians, all the various rulers that passed through there relied on the Jews economically. They relied on them to run businesses. They even relied on them to act as almost the defacto secretary of the treasury, helping run the tax system and so forth. So at the same time that Jews are kind of being dispersed in other parts of the world, Baghdad is really a center of Jewish life and Jews there become very prosperous. So prosperous, in fact, that the rulers in Baghdad named one family as the Nasi, who were kind of the leaders of the Jewish community, almost the King of the Jews, that they would deal with on an almost equal basis when they were ruling Baghdad. And the Sassoons where that family.

Jonathan Kaufman (06:04): And in fact, they were so prominent that whenever the leader of the Sassoons was taken to meet with a Pasha of Baghdad, he was carried on a sedan chair and people throughout Baghdad, Jews and non- Jews, would bow their heads respectfully, as he passed through the street, carried aloft on his sedan chair. So this gives you a sense of this very powerful, influential Jewish community in Baghdad. Now as often happens, by the 1820s, 1830s, politics had changed and the rulers of Baghdad turned against the Jews and began to kidnap them and imprison them, demanding ransom. And so in the 1830s, David Sassoon, who's the patriarch of the family was about to take over this great business empire, but he was imprisoned and his father feared that he was going to be killed or some bad things would happen to him.

Jonathan Kaufman (06:57): And so he ransomed him out of prison, hustled him down to the waterfront, put him on a boat, gave him a cloak that had pearls sewn inside and sent him off on this boat to safety. Now David Sassoon was in his thirties at this point, he was leaving behind his family and he didn't know where he was going or what would happen. And in fact, he washes up on the shores eventually of India and spends his first night in a warehouse where he's sitting with a gun shooting rats that are skittering across the floor. So you can imagine, I mean, this is almost Shakespearian. This is sort of a prince who was about to take over this dynasty, who has his birthright ripped away from him. And what David Sassoon then does is, he's actually arriving in India at the very time, the British are expanding.

Jonathan Kaufman (07:49): The British have moved into India. They're about to make India part of the British empire. And from their part, the British are looking for people to help expand their business influence throughout Asia. So David Sassoon looks around. He has enormous expertise in business. He has all these connections throughout the Middle East. He's hoping to still get some of his money out of Baghdad. And he looks at the British and says, "I'm going to follow the Union Jack." Again, often we think of Jews as being liberal and socialist and fighting against authoritarian regimes and so forth. But in this case, David Sassoon decided that the British empire was going to be his family's path to success. He becomes very successful in India. He

3 gets most of his family out of Baghdad. He becomes a British citizen and he begins to educate his children, even though he himself doesn't speak any English at all, he educates his children in British history, in English.

Jonathan Kaufman (08:48): He allows them to occasionally wear Western dress, because he sees that Britain is the future. And then when the opium war takes place in the 1840s and China opens up, as a businessman, David Sassoon looks to China and thinks, that's where the future lies. He's begun dabbling in the opium trade. And it's really a business decision for him. He looks and says, this is sort of the new frontier and I see great opportunities for my family if we go to China and that starts their China journey.

Host: Dan Cohen (09:22): It's really remarkable just how he is at these key moments, obviously, in really global history, right? I mean, I think the colonial period here in India, and then in China, to have this family be part of that and really to exploit it. You bring this family under some criticism for their role in the opium trade, for sure.

Jonathan Kaufman (09:44): Yes. And I think what's important to understand, there are a couple of things. One is the Sassoons essentially become so successful in dominating the opium trade that they drive out more established businesses. The opium trade has started and initially run by these big British firms that have sailing ships. They're very well connected back in Britain. And they're making a lot of money selling opium to China. The Sassoons are upstarts and the way they succeed in some ways is maybe even reminiscent of our own day. They succeed by being innovative, by taking advantage of all these kinds of new innovations and communications and technology. So for example, they buy steam ships, which are much faster than sailing ships and that means that when you're trying to ship your opium from India, where it's being grown, to China, where you want to sell it, their steam ships can kind of move a lot faster than the sailing ships that other companies have.

Jonathan Kaufman (10:40): The Sassoons also become pioneers in using this new invention called the telegraph. And what the telegraph enables them to do is to station people in Shanghai, in Hong Kong, who can then telegraph back to Bombay and say, the price of opium is going up. Ship the opium now. Or the price has fallen, keep it in the ports and let's wait until the price rises. So it's really an incredible business story about the creativity that the Sassoons bring to this. But there's also clearly a very strong, moral or immoral component. When I talk to the Sassoons today, the descendants, they tend to treat opium a bit like we treat cigarettes or alcohol. We all know about the Kennedy family and alcohol, about the cigarette companies and the excuse is, well opium was legal, which is true. The British government taxed it. The Sassoons, in fact, increased their influence in London because they had the Prince of Wales and British aristocrats involved in the opium business, buying stock and so forth.

4 Jonathan Kaufman (11:45): So the Sassoons basically say, look, this was a business decision. It was a vice the Chinese had, we were selling them the opium. But the fact is, when you go through the records, the Sassoons knew very well, as all the Westerners did, how destructive opium was for the Chinese. Probably about 12% of China was addicted to opium. And if we think today, I think perhaps maybe two or three percent of Americans are affected by the opioid crisis. And we see the upheavals it causes in America. I mean, just imagine a crisis six, seven times as large and how angry Americans would be. And even when you look through the Sassoon family documents, they're having to fire people, Chinese employees, all the time because they're addicted to opium. So I think in the end, the Sassoons were imperialists. They were colonialists, and this was an immensely lucrative trade.

Jonathan Kaufman (12:40): After the communists took over, they seized all the Sassoon business records in Shanghai, and they went through them, and I was able to look at them as well. They concluded that from the opium trade and all the investments that ended up spinning off and through the decades, the Sassoon family made probably almost a billion dollars in the opium trade in China. So I think that like with everything involving China, but everything involving colonialism and imperialism, there is a moral reckoning here along with a dramatic family story and a remarkable economic and colonial story.

Host: Dan Cohen (13:19): That money, not just the Sassoons, but really the opening up of China and the role that Shanghai plays in that as a key trading port to Bombay and to the Middle East, into Europe, becomes really key in the rise of this city. And I have to admit, I did not know a lot about Shanghai in the first half of the 20th century, before the rise of the communists and really how big and prosperous it was in general beyond the Sassoons. So can you sort of paint a picture of what it would have been like for say someone from London to take a steamship to Shanghai and to walk through the streets and see this hotel that you stumbled into 30 years ago?

Jonathan Kaufman (13:58): Well, if you were, if you were living in London or really anywhere in Europe, in the 1920s or 1930s, and you were wealthy, you had some discretionary income, you would probably get on a cruise ship and go to Shanghai as part of your world tour. Shanghai at that point really was one of the great cities of the world, but also had this kind of frisson of excitement and danger and exoticism. So Shanghai essentially was being carved up by all the various colonial powers. China was prostrate at this point. The British would go in and say, we want to take this part of Shanghai. The French would go in and say, we want to take this part. The Americans, another part. The Japanese, another. The Germans, another.

Jonathan Kaufman (14:40): What that meant was when you got off your cruise ship on the Bund in Shanghai, you faced a place that didn't look at all like China. It didn't look like pagodas and people kind of walking

5 around killing rice fields. It looked like a European city. It had these beautiful art deco buildings. It had trams running along the streets. It had electric lights. And then your first stop would probably be the Cafe Hotel. The Cafe Hotel was the finest hotel in Asia and Victor Sassoon was a playboy millionaire. He was descended from the Sassoon family, had been raised in London and was really seen as bit of a party boy. And he always had a chorus girl on each arm. He loved to drink heavily, and the family didn't have much hope for him. But during World War I, he fought in World War I and was in a plane crash and became crippled. He lost use of both of his legs and had to use crutches. And for someone who's so used to living the bond vivant life, this really affected him.

Jonathan Kaufman (15:40): He really felt that he couldn't have the kind of glamorous life he had been having in London with these disabilities. And so he decided to go to India and to China, where the family fortune was, and to take over running the company. And he turned out to be a brilliant businessman and wanted to move all of the money out of India to Shanghai. And he did that in part, because in Shanghai, if you were a young, British aristocrat, you had the run of the city. He had girlfriends all the time. He had race horses. And he decided to build this wonderful hotel and at the top of it, he put his own suite and it would overlook the Bund. And in his penthouse suite, in his bathroom, he put in all the latest fixtures and put in two bathtubs. And I remember going back there when I was working on the book and I said to the Chinese, I said, "Why are there two bathrooms in this bathroom?"

Jonathan Kaufman (16:34): And they said, "Well, Victor Sassoon always said that he didn't mind sharing his bed, but he hated sharing his bath." So that gives you a feel for what life was like in Shanghai. If you were a wealthy westerner. But what Victor then did was, he turned the Cafe Hotel into this kind of social hubbub. He loved giving parties and so he would give parties, costume parties, often where he made all the expatriates dress up as, he would be the school master and they'd all be students. He would be the circus master. They would be circus acts. So over the course of the twenties and thirties, Charlie Chaplin went to Shanghai and became friends with Victor Sassoon. Noel Coward stayed in the Cafe Hotel, wrote Private Lives.

Jonathan Kaufman (17:17): Wallis Simpson, who ended up marrying the King of England and making him leave his throne, posed for pictures in Shanghai, wearing only a life vest and would go to sort of brothels there to learn sexual techniques. I mean, it was really an extraordinary place and it was a place that also allowed you to not realize what was happening in China. Because at the same time these parties are going on and this wild kind of exotic scene is developing, the communist party is being formed literally a mile away. Shanghai was a Chinese city. There were millions of Chinese who live there, and most of them lived in terrible poverty. They saw this kind of wealth around them, this inequality around them all the time. And in fact, when Mao formed the communist party with other leading communists, they did so in Shanghai. Mao himself lived in an

6 apartment that was owned by a wealthy Jewish family. I'm not sure they ever met, but Mao was certainly aware of that.

Jonathan Kaufman (18:19): And so this great resentment built up against the foreigners on the parts of the Chinese who saw all these foreigners exploiting them and taking advantage of them. but at the same time, and I think this is an important thing to remember, for middle and upper middle-class Chinese, Shanghai was a window to the world. And one of the things that I found so striking and researching the Last Kings of Shanghai and researching the book was that I would meet these very elderly Chinese, 80s and 90 years old now, who had grown up in Shanghai. And they would talk about the time their parents took them to Victor Sassoon's hotel for lunch, or they heard about these parties. And China was so closed off that the chance to go into Shanghai, to go to these hotels, gave wealthy Chinese and Chinese businessmen, a glimpse of the wider world. And I would argue that the ability for China to connect with the world really starts in Shanghai and starts with people like Victor Sassoon, who both in business dealings, but also in the kind of huge footprint they had in the city, really turned Shanghai into a global city, which today still feels so much different than Beijing or any other city in China.

Host: Dan Cohen (19:36): It really does end up being the sort of portal to the outside world. And I wanted to bring in another key family and set of characters, the Kadoorie family, because it's also at this time when Victor is riding high, that in a sense he has sort of rival in the Kadoorie family and their merchants and connections to the Sassoons.

Jonathan Kaufman (19:56): The Kadoorie family were in a sense, the poor relations of the Sassoons. They were in Baghdad. They were distantly related to the Sassoon family. And when things turned bad for them, their father died. There were six boys. And so the mother decides to send some of the boys to work for the Sassoon family, because that's a way they can make money and then send it back home to Baghdad. So Elly Kadoorie, who becomes the founder of the Kadoorie dynasty is only 15 years old when he leaves Baghdad. He's 18 when he finally makes it to Shanghai. And imagine what it must be like to be 18 years old, you're landing in China, you don't speak a word of Chinese. But he's an ambitious young man and he sees all the money being made by the Sassoons and he decides to strike out on his own. And he systematically builds up his fortune.

Jonathan Kaufman (20:45): He's a little different than the Sassoons. He's scrappier. The Kadoorie family always feel like they're one step behind the Sassoons and they have to work very hard to kind of make their money. They're ultimately very successful. I think one of the moments that kind of captures the dynamic of the families is that in the late 1930s, these Jewish refugees start showing up in Shanghai. This is a time now, when Naziism is rising in Europe, Jews are trying to flee Europe. And as we know, all across the world, countries are closing their doors. The US won't let Jewish refugees in. Europe won't let Jewish refugees in. And word suddenly spreads that Jews can go

7 to Shanghai because Shanghai is all divided up and there's no functioning government, you don't need a visa to enter Shanghai. So if you're able to gather enough money and get on one of these cruise ships, you're going to Shanghai not to go to the grand hotels or buy naughty pictures, you're going to try to save your family and to try to save your life.

Jonathan Kaufman (21:46): And so hundreds of cruise ships start going from Europe to Shanghai, and about 18,000 Jewish refugees from Berlin and Vienna are showing up in Shanghai. Shanghai is overwhelmed, of course, and the two wealthiest families, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, who are Jewish, are somehow being asked to solve this problem. And it's an interesting moment where Victor is in his great hotel. He's having his lavish parties and Elly Kadoorie, who's always been, as I say, one step behind the Sassoons, shows up at the hotel and he meets with Victor and he says to him, "Victor, look, I know you're a playboy. I know you're wealthy, but there's a crisis going on in Europe and you have to step forward. You have to stop being a playboy and help save these refugees." And much to Victor's credit, he does that. He still continues with his parties, but he and the Kadoories work together to help these refugees.

Jonathan Kaufman (22:43): They find housing for them. They give them money for food. Victor Sassoon begins employing many of them. Elly Kadoorie and his sons start a school for these Jewish refugees, where the children can learn. And it ends up being one of the most kind of astonishing stories of the war and of the Holocaust that 18,000 Jews who wash up in Shanghai are saved. None of them are killed, even when the Japanese occupied the city, even when the Nazis starts showing up in the 1940s and telling the Japanese, you need to solve your Jewish problem by loading all these Jewish refugees on barges and sinking them in the river.

Jonathan Kaufman (23:20): It's really a moment that I think isn't fully appreciated for the way that the Sassoons and the Kadoories really produce one of the great humanitarian acts of the Holocaust. And Victor Sassoon, being the charming playboy he is, even manages to persuade the Japanese, by entertaining them at his hotel, not to turn against the Jews and he's able to spy at them at the same time. So it's just an incredible story of intrigue in which both these families end up doing an incredible moral good.

Host: Dan Cohen (23:53): The political acumen is really incredible in that story. I wonder if we could talk also about the remarkable women of the family. And I just it's really captured, especially by the story of Flora Sassoon, a strong and powerful woman, but also with a sort of grim downfall in this era. Could you tell us a little bit about her?

Jonathan Kaufman (24:15): Yeah. I think it's a challenge for any historian. It was certainly a challenge for me to find out about women because no one writes about women in the 17th, 18th, 19th century. They're

8 really invisible. And so at one point, when I was doing my research, I stumbled across this item, which is that in the early 1900s, the Sassoons turn their family business into a joint stock company. And I just thought that was odd. It was a family business. Why would it need to be a joint stock company? So I began to pull at the thread and it turned out that by the late part of the 19th century, the Sassoons were doing so well, David Sassoon had had eight sons and the sons had done extremely well, but many of them had moved to England where they were living the high life, building estates, hobnobbing with the King, visiting Buckingham Palace.

Jonathan Kaufman (25:01): And there was only one brother left back in Bombay and Shanghai to run the business. And he died at a very young age. And that meant that there was no one to run the family business. And so his wife, a woman named Flora Sassoon stepped forward and said, our son is still a teenager. I will run the business until he comes of age, kind of a regency, until he comes of age and can take things over. So the brothers all agree thinking, here's this woman, we'll control her. She'll be our puppet. Well, it turned out Flora Sassoon was an incredibly smart woman, a very talented businessman. She had been educated in many languages. And at a time in India, when not only could women not run a business, women could not even appear in public in India. It was what was known as purdah.

Jonathan Kaufman (25:46): So Flora Sassoon essentially starts running this empire from her living room. Gradually begins to step out more, violating some of these norms, visiting factories, running the business, this global business from Bombay. At one point in times, in a way, similar to our own a plague hits Bombay. There's a bubonic plague and factories have to close down. People are scared of the plague and Flora Sassoon helps finance a cure for the plague. She brings over scientists to Bombay. And when they develop a vaccine, she publicly has her picture taken getting a shot of this vaccine to assure her Indian workers and others that if this prominent wealthy lady can get this vaccine, it must be safe. So she's so successful that the brothers begin to resent it. And they fear that she will not give up power when her son comes of age.

Jonathan Kaufman (26:41): So they stage a boardroom coup. That's what the joint stock company turns out to be about. The brothers gathered together in London. They make arrangements to turn the family business into a joint stock company and they kick Flora Sassoon out of the company. Now when you read about Flora's history, what people always write about is she was a great hostess in London, and she was a very well-respected philanthropist. But the fact is what she was most known for was being a business woman. And she leaves Bombay, she sails to London and she does have a grand salon and is a great philanthropist, but she never sets foot in the Sassoon business offices again. And really, until I wrote about it, her achievement is really lost to history. And this is a pattern you see over and over again, in both families where the women were extremely talented, Elly Kadoorie and the Kadoorie family, his wife traveled around with him all around China.

9 Jonathan Kaufman (27:35): She was very involved in building schools for Chinese girls, something incredibly progressive at the time. She was in a way the moral voice of the Kadoorie family. She dies in a house fire trying to rescue her Chinese governess in the 1920s. So all the women are both accomplished, but they're also, somebody said they're limited by the bamboo ceiling. They're never really allowed to kind of rise as far as they would have, or as far as they should have.

Host: Dan Cohen (28:03): So many fascinating figures in the book. I thought we might close, actually, with where you open the book. You really open with this beautiful metaphor of furniture. The furniture actually of these families, of the Kadoories, of the Sassoons, are literally still around in Shanghai. There's someone who's sleeping on Sassoon bed, and someone has a dresser or their plates. What's interesting about furniture is, it's sort of part of daily life. It's a fixture, but we often don't see it because it fades into the background. I wondered as you look back at all of this research on this remarkable set of people in these families, what is their sort of hidden import and main legacy in China that maybe is a little bit hard to see today in the 21st century?

Jonathan Kaufman (28:48): Well, I think part of what the communists have done in China is they've tried to obscure the complexities of history. They've tried to create this narrative where, China was a great empire. It was exploited by the west. Then the communists came along, recaptured their country and now China is on the rise again. And there's a lot of truth to that history, but it's also true that as, I think, as we've talked about in the twenties and thirties, Shanghai was a very globalized city and China was open to Jewish families and American families, Japanese families. I mean, there was an incredible vibrancy there. And a lot of that was then transferred to Hong Kong. These families, in fact, the Kadoories, moved to Hong Kong after the communists took over and they built a huge legacy there. And so when you talk about the furniture, I also think of DNA.

Jonathan Kaufman (29:35): And I think if we look at Hong Kong these days, both at the democracy protest that took place there, but also the vibrancy of Hong Kong. A lot of that is the legacy of these families and of globalization, which really transformed China in the twenties and thirties and through to today. It had negative effects, but it also had very positive effects. And anybody who goes to China understands and sees how different Shanghai feels than the rest of China. So I think the furniture that remains is also in people's heads.

Jonathan Kaufman (30:08): When you talk to people in Shanghai or Hong Kong, they do feel part of the world and they do recognize the role that these families played in sort of developing their worldview. I think we're at a time now where everywhere, as we know, in the US, as in China, doors are closing, but I think this history is really a reminder of the powerful difference that globalization can make, that bringing in immigrants can make, and that it really enriches our societies. I mean, one hopeful thing is that the Chinese have decided to translate my book into Chinese and to publish

10 it in China. And that says to me that even though relations between the US and America are so bad, there are people in China who do want this history out there.

Jonathan Kaufman (30:55): And so my hope is that in the same way, I hope the US doesn't close doors to new ideas and new approaches, China too will recognize that it has a lot to gain from having open doors and that the legacy of these families is something they can draw on in both positive and negative ways and embrace the complexities of their histories, the richness of it, and the family sagas that helped shape part of China's rise.

Host: Dan Cohen (31:21): Well, Jonathan Kaufman, thanks so much for joining me today on the podcast. Jonathan Kaufman's new book is The Last Kings of Shanghai; the Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China. We'll link to that in the show notes, as well as some photos from the twenties and thirties in Shanghai. It's incredible to see that and wonderful to read your book. Jonathan, thanks so much again for joining us on the program.

Jonathan Kaufman (31:46): Thanks very much, Dan. I really enjoyed it.

Host: Dan Cohen (31:54): What's New comes to you from the Northeastern University Library produced by John Reed and myself, Dan Cohen, and with production assistance from Deborah Smith, Evan Simpson, Debra Mandel, Sarah Sweeney, and Brooke Williams. You can catch all our episodes and transcripts and subscribe using your favorite podcast app at whatsnewpodcast.org. We'll see you next time on What's New.

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