By the late 1930s, Europe sat on the brink of a world war. As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open port available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But instead of a storybook China, they found overcrowded streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens, and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive.

In this unique travelogue, an artist depicts his experiences and observations while living in western China with colorful illustrations. The nation of China is a constant source of fascination, yet we rarely glimpse life beyond its urban centers. Far west of Beijing and Shanghai, in the remote Chinese province of Yunnan, pioneering artist Henrik Drescher settled over a decade ago. While residing in his adopted home, Drescher records his experiences and observations in his illustrated notebooks, capturing everyday life in settings ranging from street markets to mountainscapes. These richly illustrated pages are compiled here for the first time. Drescher’s loyal fans will appreciate this window onto the life of the artist at the height of his powers, while those with an interest in Chinese culture will marvel at this rarely seen view of a country in the global spotlight.

Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl follows the true-life story of 23-year-old American, Miss Amelia, as she takes on the Communists and beats the odds to open China's first burlesque nightclub. Based on her personal diary, she exposes the details of her astonishing story - on stage and off - as well as eye-opening insights into what it's really like to live, love, and do business in China, set against the backdrop of forbidden cabaret and nightlife at its naughtiest.

The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of publication and digitization. The authors also explore different diary formats, including the travel diary, the private diary, conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and engagement with the diary as literary form and historical documentation.

When Hitler came to power and the German army began to sweep through Europe, almost 20,000 Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai. A remarkable collection of the letters, diary entries, poems, and short stories composed by these refugees in the years after they landed in China, Voices from Shanghai fills a gap in our historical understanding of what happened to so many Jews who were forced to board the first ship bound for anywhere. Once they arrived, the refugees learned to navigate the various languages, belief systems, and ethnic traditions they encountered in an already booming international city, and faced challenges within their own community based on disparities in socioeconomic status, levels of religious observance, urban or rural origin, and philosophical differences. Recovered from archives, private collections, and now-defunct newspapers, these fascinating accounts make their English-languge debut in this volume. A rich new take on Holocaust literature, Voices from Shanghai reveals how refugees attempted to pursue a life of creativity despite the hardships of exile.

Includes section "Our book table."