With vivid firsthand descriptions of Asia's most cosmopolitan city from the 1920s to the 1950s, this recollection chronicles Liliane Willens' life and trials in Shanghai as China collapsed under the weight of foreign invaders and civil war. Engaging and often humorous, this unique memoir relates Willens' experiences as a Jewish Russian living in early Communist China.

Liliane Willens is a former professor at Boston College and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now retired, she lectures on China and Old Shanghai. She lives in Washington, DC.