City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2018

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Paul French, the best-selling author of Midnight in Peking. Paul has just written an outstanding new book called City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir, in which he tells a captivating story of two foreigners rising to prominence through conducting shady business in the underworld of Shanghai in the 1930s — a chaotic yet fascinating period, when the city was still known as the Paris of the Orient, leading up to the bleak realities of the war with Japan. Recommendations: Paul: A Killing Winter and A Spring Betrayal, two crime novels written by British author Tom Callaghan. Also, Hidden Man, a new movie directed by Chinese award-winning filmmaker Jiang Wen 姜文. Kaiser: The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton. Jeremy: Jo Nesbø, Norway’s best-selling crime writer, whose notable books include The Snowman, The Thirst, and The Redbreast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, the week of discussion, current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina.
0:14.8	SubChina is the best way to keep on top of all the latest news from China through our free email newsletter or our excellent revamped smartphone app.
0:22.3	If you want to support what ShepChina and Seneca are doing, please make sure to subscribe to our
0:26.8	premium access channel. It's great value and Jeremy and his team do an outstanding job.
0:32.2	Check out our explainer posts and videos on topics like Made in China 2025, the very controversial plan, which is
0:39.3	you know, kind of at the heart of all the trade tensions between the U.S. and China these days.
0:43.3	Also check out our growing stable of podcasts in the Cynica Network.
0:47.3	We are proud to welcome new voices, or new voices, a bi-weekly podcast on issues related to women.
0:52.3	I am Kaiser Guo, coming to you from the Seneca
0:55.7	South Studio in downtown Durham, North Carolina. Joining me from, I kid you not, Fiji, is Jeremy Goldcorn,
1:02.1	editor-in-chief of SubChina who's taking a well-earned holiday on that story in South Pacific
1:06.8	Paradise. Jeremy, filled as I am with envy, I nonetheless ask you to describe for me your
1:11.1	doubtlessly idyllic surroundings, and then greet the good listeners, won't you?
1:15.7	Okay, I'll greet the listeners first. I'm not really able to describe the surroundings too well.
1:20.8	We arrived yesterday, and I'm rather jet-lagged, but it does appear to be very lovely.
1:25.2	There are palm trees, coconut palms, as promised in blue sea,
1:29.7	and maidens with flowers offering you cocktails.
1:33.4	So far, it's as per advertisement.
1:37.5	Also, lots of Chinese signs.
1:39.2	So I'm going to go downtown and see what's going on
1:42.0	and try and find some decent Chinese food this evening.
1:44.5	Oh, yeah, that should be really interesting. We all write something for the site about it.
	...

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