Introducing Weina Dai Randel

Susanna here, and I'm proud to host my friend and fellow Sourcebooks author, Weina Dai Randel, for a guest post today.

Weina is the award-winning author of a linked pair of historical novels, The Moon in the Palace and The Empress of Bright Moon, about China's only female emperor, Wu Zetian.

Weina's writing is lyrically beautiful, which should surprise no one since she holds an M.A. in English from Texas Woman's University, but it's remarkable in that English is not her first langauge—she was born in China and lived there until she was twenty-four, when she emigrated to the United States and, as she puts it, "began to speak, write and dream in English".

Her Empress Wu duology of novels, which have been translated into seven languages, have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Booklist, and ShelfAwareness, and BookReporter called them the “most beautifully written, impeccably researched and well-constructed historical fiction novels released [that] year.”

The Moon in the Palace won a RITA® in 2017, was nominated by Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Historical Fiction, nominated by RT Book Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Historical, called one of the Biggest Historical Fiction books of 2016 by Bookbub, and recommended by Texas Library Association’s 2017 Lariat Reading List.

When fellow Wench Andrea and I ran into Weina last June at the Historical Novel Society conference in Maryland, she mentioned she was at work on something new. It turns out, her current work-in-progress is a novel titled The Last Rose of Shanghai, set in 1939 in Shanghai at the start of WWII, and featuring a nightclub owner and a refugee pianist—two people from different cultures who bond over music that leads them to love.

This novel sprang from a deeply personal place for Weina, as you'll learn in her post (she's also included photos she took herself in the jazz bar that she writes about, including a photo of the instruments used by the original musicians). I love a good wartime romance, so I can't wait to read The Last Rose of Shanghai. In the meantime, settle back and learn a little bit about...

A Brief, Tragic History of Jazz in Shanghai

By Weina Dai Randel

On a bleak afternoon in March, 2018, I arrived in Shanghai after a sixteen-hour flight, exhausted, shocked, and heartbroken. I had just received a call from my brother the previous day that my mom had a heart attack and passed away. Maybe I was too quiet and distraught, my college friend who picked me up at the airport suggested to take me to the Fairmont Peace Hotel for live music. Since the train to my hometown was the next day, I agreed.

The small bar was not yet busy at seven o’clock in the evening. In a small area that barely fitted a compact car was a band that played the drum, double bass, saxophone, cello, violin, trumpet and the piano; the musicians were not lively, young, charismatic players one might see in the House of Blues. They were all gray-haired old gentlemen. Octogenarians and even nonagenarians, actually. Sipping a red cocktail that was too sweet, I listened. They were playing jazz. I was not familiar with jazz; although I had heard of the history of the Peace Hotel, built in 1929, by Sir Victor Sassoon, a rich British man said to own more than 100,000 properties in Shanghai, I did not realize several members of the band actually played in the Jazz Bar many years ago.

Because I still refused to believe what happened to my mom, I kept my mind busy by digging into the history of jazz in Shanghai on the train to my hometown. It seemed to me that the rise and fall of the music in Shanghai was inseparable with the city’s dark past. The period when jazz came to Shanghai was most tumultuous–the early 1930s. At that time, Shanghai, already a growing industrial and financial power with international banks and companies, was ruled by the ineffective Nationalists facing constant threats from the aggressive Japanese. Already under the western influence because of the International Settlement and the French Concession, the affluent young people in Shanghai were ready to embrace something new.

Then came Buck Clayton, an American jazz trumpet player, who arrived in Shanghai in 1934, one of the many jazz musicians sought work by traveling overseas because of the Great Depression in the U.S.. Clayton would play an important role in introducing jazz to Shanghai. He was said to be influenced by Louis Armstrong, one of the most influential figures in jazz, so I could imagine he played many of Armstrong’s popular songs, St. Louis Blues or Heebie Jeebies, in the Canidrome in the French Concession. Clayton and his jazz band became an immediate sensation, and he was introduced to Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s circle. Clayton stayed in Shanghai for two years, working closely with his Chinese partner, the composer Li Jinhui.

The collaboration between the two heralded the jazz era in Shanghai. Li Jinhui fused jazz into the Chinese folk music and created a new type of music, shidaiqu, the Music of the Times. He was now called the father of Chinese popular music. With the rising popularity of shidaiqu and jazz, the Chinese music industry, which had been nonexistent, flourished. Recording companies opened, many female singers rose to fame, and domestic movies were produced with the new music as a major appeal.

The Music of the Times was sung mostly by female singers with innocent and childlike voices and featured lyrics of yearning of love, which the traditional puritanical Chinese believed indecent to talk about. So some people denounced the music was depraved. Author Lu Xun, who doggedly believed in revolution and criticized the bourgeois’s ways, mocked it sounded like “a strangled cat” in one of his essays.

In the 1940s, after Clayton left Shanghai, jazz, against all odds, reached the height of popularity in Shanghai. This happened as the city faced its greatest tragedy: the war between China and Japan broke out, and the Japanese won. All the Chinese in Shanghai lived under the Japanese subjugation. Suddenly, horrors such as public beheadings, arrests, shootings, assassinations, robberies haunted Shanghai; bodies were left on the street to decay; mobsters, spies, criminals, opium dealers terrorized the streets. Ordinary people, powerless and fearing for the future, flocked to listen to jazz in the dance halls and night clubs for consolation. Paramount, The One Hundred Joys Night Club, was the most luxury club in Shanghai and had bands play live music nightly. Jazz became an outlet of relief for people, a reminder that they could still find happiness. With such a mixed background of mobsters and merrymaking, jazz, somehow, was tied to Shanghai’s hedonistic reputation.

Many well-known songs that people remember today were created in that era, such as The Evening Primrose by Li Jinhui, Night in Shanghai (my personal favorite), and In the Mood. The popular songs were also reflected in films such as Wang Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, and in the recent blockbuster movie Keven Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians.

(Here are two playable songs, courtesy of NPR's article: "Remaking All That Jazz from Shanghai's Lost Era")

 

The party of jazz ended, however, in the 1950s, when the Communist Party defeated the Nationalists and took power. Jazz and the Music of the Times were condemned as the Yellow Music that would corrupt people’s souls. The dance halls were shuttered. The singers were silenced. The musicians’ instruments confiscated. The composer Li Jinhui was sent for reeducation and died.

Jazz and the Music of the Times struggled to survive in Hong Kong in the 1960s, then in Taiwan in the 1970s, when the talented singer, Teresa Deng, revived the trend by producing well-known songs such as When Will You Return.

Today, Shanghai has all the razzle-dazzle of wealth, technology, and modernity. Jazz is the wind of nostalgia, the music that helps people forget about the stress in daily life and, perhaps, also speaks frankly of what their hearts long for. From this perspective, it’s a consolation that such music lingers over the long river of history.

I arrived at my hometown and saw my mother’s face for the last time. She looked peaceful. She was a Buddhist, and I saw her off in the Buddhist style, burning papers, chanting the soothing Buddhist prayer—that, too, was the voice of the heart.

 

 

 

Comments

[Mary M.]

Susanna, thank you so much for introducing writer Weina Dai Randel to me. I will be reading her Moon books soon and looking forward to the new one with its very different era.

I am fascinated by all things Chinese. What's fascinating to me about the music is how, from jazz to rock, they took the Western blues scale and adapted its music to the Chinese pentatonic scale with such good results. I know, wonky comment, but dazzling to me. Too bad jazz went tragic in China, along with so much other culture, but I'm glad to hear that what's gone around is coming around again.

Jazz in Shanghai is totally new to me, so I have a new genre to listen to and I just found out I can stream some of it via my Prime membership--exciting!

[Weina Randel]

Hi, Mary,

I'm glad you mentioned the Chinese pentatonic scale! This, actually, was a challenge Clayton faced when he arrived in Shanghai and that was why he collaborated with the Chinese composer Li Jinhun. :)

I'm also happy to hear you enjoyed Chinese jazz. Enjoy!

Thanks again, Susanna, for having me on your website!

Weina

[Kareni]

Welcome, Weina, and thank you for your thoughtful post. I'd not known about the history of jazz in Shanghai, so I've learned something today. Best wishes for the success of The Last Rose of Shanghai.
And belated sympathy on the death of your mother; I hope that memories of past happy times continue to bring you comfort.

[Anne Gracie]

Welcome to the Word Wenches, Weina, and thanks, Susanna for bringing her. I loved this interview. I've always found what little I know of pre and post-war Shanghai fascinating, and your jazz story has inspired me to find out some more. I've just bought two of your books. And one day I'll visit Shanghai.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Weina, what a fascinating story! I knew none of that (though my mother lived in China as a girl, before the jazz times.) I'm so sorry that you lost your mother, but there's blessing in that traveling to see her for the last time, you discovered something rare and beautiful and inspiring.

[Sue McCormick]

Weina, I am fascinated by this story. I have been interested in things musical all my life. Born in 1927, I lived in the American mid-west during the times that early U. S. Jazz mutated into Swing. I had never heard of Chinese Jazz before. Wishing you the best of luck with your new novel.

[Laura]

Adding these titles to my reading list!

[Karin]

This is fascinating to me! I would love to read Weina's new book, partly because I know a bit about Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai just before World War II. It was quite a melting pot, and I imagine some of the European Jews who lived there also participated in jazz culture. There was an exhibit about this history in the Brooklyn Museum last year, and a New York Times article. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/nyregion/jewish-refugees-shanghai.html
My own grandparents, when they were trying to flee Austria after the Nazi annexation, applied for visas to the U.S. and Australia. The U.S. one came through first, but if not for that, my family might have ended up down under!

[weina]

Thank you so much for your kind words, Karen!

Weina

[weina]

Thank you so much for giving me a chance, Anne. I hope you'll like them! This is such a lovely group of authors -- I confess I've read a number of the books written by four of you. :)

Weina

[weina]

Thank you for your kind words, Mary!

[weina]

Thank you!

[weina]

You're right on, Karin. My work-in-progress has much to do with the refugees in Shanghai... And I have a special connection to them. I hope you'll read it when it's published. :)

Weina

[weina]

Thank you so much, Sue. I love all kinds of music, jazz, swing, ragtime, and classical. :)

[Annette N]

WOW! First of all, thank you so much for the music. I am going to have to see if I can find more of this good stuff.

I am sorry for your loss. I am aware that is a great loss in any woman's life, to lose your mother.

And finally. I love history, any kind of history. You have provided new information to me. I thought I was semi- familiar with the pre-war era in China. But you have given me so much more to seek.

The world has been such an interesting place. Human beings do wonderful and exciting things. And years later someone comes along and feels they have discovered an entire new world. So, I thank you for sharing this world which is so new to me.

And since music is so important to my soul, you have given me the gift of an entire new genre and new artists and new ideas.

Thank you so much for all you have shared today. And I look forward to your book when it is published.

[Cindy A]

I'm going to not only check out the books, but also more music! I especially like "Can't Get Your Love."

[weina]

Thank you so much, Cindy! I'm glad you like the song too!

Weina

[weina]

Hi, Annette,

I'm glad to hear my article is interesting to you. Thank you so much for your kind words. I hope you'll enjoy the Shanghai jazz!

Weina

[Kathy K]

Me too!