How Two Shanghai Families Shaped Modern China

BOOKS over the Bund – Victor Sassoon. Clockwise from far left: Soldiers and Communist My reporting also took me to Party members mark the anniversary of the 1949 Communist victory; Sir Horace Kadoorie, Sir Elly a neighbourhood away from the Kadoorie and Lord Lawrence Kadoorie; Sir Victor waterfront. There, I spotted two elderly Sassoon at a party Chinese women picking over fruit at a market. Perhaps they might remember Kong. Over the next decades they helped Shanghai before the Communists turn Hong Kong into the miracle economy conquered the city? I approached of Asia. Today the Kadoories are China’s them and explained that I was visiting richest western family, worth $18 billion, Shanghai’s old synagogue. Before consulted by Chinese and western “Liberation”, as the Chinese called the politicians and business leaders, drawn by Communists’ victory, Jews might have their business skills and political acumen. lived in this neighbourhood. Did they In recent years, Shanghai’s remaining remember that? synagogues, the Ohel Rachel and the Ohel “Have you come back for the and industry. Its publishing Moishe, have been restored (the Moishe furniture?” one of the women asked. houses produced over 10,000 newspapers is now a Jewish refugee museum) and “What do you mean?” I said, baffled. and magazines. Its film studios churned there has been a boom in Jewish studies She directed us across the street and out hundreds of films. Colleges flourished. in China. The scholars who pursue these up a flight of stairs to the one room where So did politics. What would become Mao programmes are a thoughtful and engaged she lived. It had clearly once been part of Zedong’s Communist Party held its first group. But the impetus for the creation a larger apartment. Now it was chopped meeting in Shanghai, just a few miles from of such projects, I believe, is guided by a up into a series of rooms with dividers to the business headquarters and mansions desire to woo Jewish and Israeli tourists accommodate a half-dozen families. A of the Sassoons and the Kadoories. and by political and geopolitical concerns. mahogany bed clearly predating World Those families also helped create Certainly, both families were the SEPHARDI RENAISSANCE War II took up one corner of the room, a a thriving entrepreneurial culture. In beneficiaries of colonialism. The opium companion chest of drawers next to it. the Roaring Twenties and the 1930s, trade, which was the foundation of the “The Jewish people, they lived here”, middle-class and wealthy Chinese flocked Sassoon fortune, destroyed the lives of she said. “Then they left. They left the to Shanghai, drawn by its economic millions. The fortunes made by both furniture.” Did she mean the Chinese or opportunity as well as its glamorous families were built on low wages and unfair Japanese had deported or killed the Jews? department stores, hotels, nightclubs, and competition. They exacerbated inequality No, no, the woman explained. “They lived gambling casinos. Victor Sassoon’s masked that left Chinese dying in the streets of here during the war. After Liberation, the balls at his Cathay Hotel ballroom attracted Shanghai even as the Kadoories danced at Jews stayed for a while, then they left. For Noël Coward, Charlie Chaplin, and Marble Hall and Victor Sassoon presided Israel, for Palestine. Far American socialite Wallis over his Cathay Hotel parties. How two Shanghai families shaped away.” She pointed at “By the 1930s, Simpson, who reportedly And yet, many of the Sassoons and the bed and chest. “Have learned in Shanghai the Kadoories were in keeping with the you come back for the led by Victor sexual techniques that accepted colonial assumptions of the SEPHARDI RENAISSANCE modern China furniture?” In a sense, I Sassoon, the city would entice a king to times, or were more progressive than guess, I had. had a skyline leave his throne a few the times. In Hong Kong, the Kadoories For over 100 years, the Kadoories and Sassoons dominated Shanghai’s business and cultural life. For decades, China’s years later. recognised the importance of education, Jonathan Kaufman uncovers their – sometimes controversial – legacy Communist rulers that rivalled When the Japanese healthcare, housing and helping refugees, obscured the stories of Chicago’s” invaded China and even when their paternalism masked, for t was a muggy, late-summer day in 1979 from the vaulted ceilings. Marble stairways children playing the piano and taking the Sassoons and the joined Germany as an many, the progressive impact of what they when I stepped out of the Shanghai heat ran off the lobby. In a corner, a poster ballet lessons – a forced normalcy. Kadoories, two rival foreign families Axis power, both families joined forces were doing. The Jewish background of the Iinto the cool, marble lobby of the Peace advertised a nightly jazz band. I walked I was right about the propaganda, who had journeyed to China in the 19th and achieved one of the miracles of World families complicated how they navigated Hotel. I was 23 years old, a fledgling foreign toward the elevators. An elderly bellhop, but the ‘palace’ overwhelmed me. It was century and became dynasties. They War II. As 18,000 European Jews travelled these different worlds. Inequality in correspondent on assignment. The United dressed in a cropped white jacket and a a European-style mansion that wouldn’t painted the century these families shaped 5,000 miles from Berlin and Vienna and Shanghai was a scourge that radicalised the States had just established diplomatic small white cap, stepped up to me. have been out of place on the outskirts of – from the end of the First Opium War in streamed into Shanghai fleeing Nazism, Chinese, helped bring the Communists to relations with China after 30 years of the “Puis-je vous aider? Que voulez -vous Paris or London: soaring ceilings, elaborate 1842, which opened China to the West, to Victor Sassoon negotiated secretly with power, and decimated the fortunes – and Cold War. China was opening itself to voir?” Can I help you? What would you like chandeliers and sumptuous rooms with the Communist takeover in 1949 – with the Japanese while Nazi representatives moral credibility – of both families. the world. The hotel sat on a curve of the to see? inlaid wooden floors. It felt like the the broad brush of propaganda. The urged the Japanese occupiers to pile the From the perspective of the 21st Bund, the promenade that runs along the “Je ne parle pas français,” I stammered. home of a British noble family. That’s not Communist leadership wants its people Jewish refugees onto barges and sink them century, we can judge what these families busy Huangpu River waterfront. Its façade “Quel dommage,” he said with a smile. surprising, my Chinese guide told me. to remember how such foreigners lived in in the middle of the Huangpu River. The did, as the Chinese themselves have. But jutted toward the sea, anchoring a skyline What a pity. From 1924 until the Communist takeover splendour, exploiting the Chinese working two families protected every Jewish refugee we also need to understand the complexity of art deco buildings that overlooked the What was this relic of European luxury in 1949, it had been the home of a British class and imprisoning Chinese citizens in who set foot in their city, among them of their history, and China’s, to understand river. China was preserved in amber circa – even hedonism – embalmed in a country capitalist family – the Kadoories. I stopped. squalor and a haze of opium. thousands of children. the choices they made. n 1949, the year the Communists seized that 30 years of Communist totalitarianism The Kadoories? I knew from my time There is much truth in this version In 1949, when the Communists power and “liberated” the country from had turned drab and egalitarian? in Hong Kong that the Kadoories – led by of history. But there are other truths as expelled all foreigners, the Sassoons The Last Kings of Shanghai: Two Rival capitalism. A decade passed before I visited Sir Lawrence Kadoorie – were one of the well. Shanghai was China’s melting pot, left China and never returned; they still Dynasties and the Creation of Modern China Everything was cast in black and white. Shanghai again. It was 1989, a few days city’s most powerful families, owners of the the crucible in which all the forces that loom large in British politics, business by Jonathan Kaufman, Little Brown, 2020. No billboards or advertising or colourful after the Tiananmen Square massacre legendary Peninsula Hotel with its elegant shaped China – capitalism, communism, and culture. The Kadoories fled to Hong Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning storefronts enlivened the streets. Black- that killed hundreds of students in Beijing lobby and afternoon teas. The Kadoories imperialism, foreigners, and nationalism reporter who has reported on China for 30 years framed bicycles thronged the roadways. and sent the rest of China into armed also owned Hong Kong’s largest electric – came together. By 1895, Shanghai had a for The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal Men and women wore white shirts and lockdown. I spent much of my time company. They were “taipans” – a leftover modern tram system and gas works that and Bloomberg News. He is the author of several dark blue Mao suits. For 30 years, China speaking furtively to students and other colonial term that conveyed power and rivalled London’s. By the 1930s, led by books and director of the School of Journalism at had been cut off from the world, certainly Chinese. One of the few official visits I was money and roots that stretched back to taipan Victor Sassoon, it had skyscrapers Northeastern University in Boston.

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