The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
After cocktails with Coward, bloodshed
How the ‘Rothschilds of Asia’ took art deco glitz to Shanghai, in the face of war and revolution
The faster history moves, the more compelling a witness a great, enduring building becomes. The Cathay Hotel was Shanghai’s tallest structure when it was built in 1929: an “art deco rocket ship rising from the Huangpu River” in the words of one architectural critic, with granite facing and a copper pyramid topping off one of Asia’s first skyscrapers. Guests freshened up in silver- tapped bathtubs supplied with purified spring water, before making their way down corridors lined with Lalique crystal lamps and mirrors, traversing a marblefloored, mosaic-ceilinged lobby en route to the entertainment: tea dances, top-quality cabaret, and the thrill of celebrity- spotting, from Noël Coward to Charlie Chaplin.
But in 1937, residents of the lower floors found the view from their windows suddenly obscured by bloody hunks of human flesh, thrown up against the panes by explosions on the street below as fighting between Japanese and Chinese Nationalist forces reached Shanghai. Some of the staff at the Cathay were Communists now, keeping an eye on Nationalist leaders passing through and later on the Japanese army officers who seized the hotel for their HQ, ripping out carpets and fixtures when they were later forced to leave. Next came the Americans, their commander in China establishing his office there during a brief postwar occupation of Shanghai, before Chinese Nationalists returned to set up machine- gun emplacements in some of the rooms – a vain attempt to keep at bay the peasant-soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army. Before long, the drinks list above the Cathay’s bar had been replaced by a sign that read: “Leniency for those who make thorough confessions and expose others!” Communist party officials stood beneath in blue “Mao jackets”, serving up a miserable menu of lectures and punishments.
For all these fascinating fluctuations in the Cathay’s fortunes, the real star of Jonathan Kaufman’s epic family history, Kings of Shanghai: Two Rival Dynasties and the Creation of Modern China, is the charismatic impresario who built it, mixed its cocktails and masterminded much of its fun. Victor Sassoon, says Kaufman, “pioneer[ed] the idea of the businessman as celebrity”. He was the grandson of David Sassoon, a wealthy Baghdadi merchant who fled his home in 1829 amid anti-Jewish persecution. Setting themselves up first in British India, the Sassoons – talked about as the “Rothschilds of Asia” – built a flourishing financial and trading empire by attending carefully to the politics of each place where they did business. Victor was quick to see that Gandhi’s brand of popular nationalism spelt trouble for businessmen as close to the Raj as he – educated at Harrow and Cambridge, then injured in the First World War. Swapping Bombay for Shanghai, he helped to claim the latter for capitalism, making millions along the way.
Kaufman points out in his introduction that Google and Apple are not the first to “[struggle] with the moral and political dilemmas of working with China”. And it is in exploring these dilemmas that Kings of Shanghai really shines.
Complementing histories of modern China that focus on political developments, Kaufman uses a rich mix of materials including memoir and private correspondence to bring us the people who greased the wheels of change, by turns pushing the pace and getting ground underneath. Joining the Sassoons in Kaufman’s account are the Kadoories: another Jewish merchant family from Baghdad who set up shop in India and then Shanghai, weathering the same blend of snobbery and anti- Semitism to earn a high place in British society. (“He was Jewish,” recalled one wealthy British woman of Victor Sassoon, “but one couldn’t very well snub a man who played golf with the Prince of Wales. It was a perplexing topic at the Club, I can tell you.”)
The Sassoons and the Kadoories were not quite the “rival dynasties” of the book’s subtitle. Their stories run in parallel for the most part, rather than intersecting in meaningful ways. An important exception is their cooperation in caring for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany for Shanghai. Elly Kadoorie took the initiative, visiting Victor at his Cathay office suite in 1937 and demanding that he give up acting the “playboy” and help them. Victor agreed, picking up the phone to Chaplin and getting the celebrity donations rolling in. Between them, the Sassoons, the Kadoories and their allies supplied shelter, food and education to thousands of Jewish refugees.
For all his diplomatic skill in negotiating Shanghai’s mess of competing international interests, Victor could not stop the Chinese Nationalists freezing his assets and the Japanese occupiers forcing him out. With his prospects little improved by the Communist
When asked to help the Jewish refugees, Victor Sassoon called up Charlie Chaplin
Revolution in 1949, Victor chose to see out his days in the Bahamas. Some Kadoories were interned by the Japanese, their meagre portions of infested rice and rotten vegetables supplemented by meat salvaged from clapped-out contenders at the dog track. Survivors joined businessmen leaving Shanghai for British- controlled Hong Kong, where the Kadoories became associated with the development of the electricity infrastructure; they remain highly influential there today.
Wisely, Kaufman avoids speculating about where the relationship between business and politics might now go in China. Nor does he push his raw material beyond its limits. Aside from Victor and the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, a greatgrandson of David, few Sassoons or Kadoories appear to have been particularly memorable characters or talented phrasemakers. It would require a certain amount of dramatic license to make of their lives a Jeffrey Archer-style epic of entrepreneurship, or a colonial- era Succession. Instead, their part in the development of modern China offers drama enough to make them worthy of our attention. Kaufman ensures that they gain and retain it, with a well- paced narrative and plenty of helpful historical context. And the Cathay? It remains standing: now the Peace Hotel, complete with an art deco deli – Victor’s Café.