In 1925, the largest warlord government (and the one which the West chooses to recognize, out of the many options) is crumbling in the face of popular anger at the discovery of secret deals made with the West at the end of the Great War which allowed invaders, such as the Japanese, to keep their Chinese conquests. The Democratic Nationalists (the driving force behind the 1911 revolution) were given new life in 1919 by the May 4th demonstrations, and they are sweeping across China in a dramatic military thrust from their southern strongholds. At the vanguard of the thrust are the Nationalist's current allies, the Chinese Communist Party, heavily supported by the Soviets. In 1925, Soviet strategists, agents, and "military advisors" are all over China, with instructions to support the Nationalists despite their significant ideological differences.
But Sun Yat-Sen, the grand old man of the Nationalist movement, died of cancer in March of 1925, and his successor, Chiang Kai-Shek, is less trusting of the Communists; he views with alarm the fact that CCP has increased in size by a factor of forty within the last year, swelling from a tiny organization to a force to be reckoned with. Right now the two groups operate together, but by 1926, Chiang Kai-Shek will murderously purge Communists from the ranks, forcing those that survive to flee into the hills. The young Mao Tse-Tung will barely escape with his life; his wife will not be so lucky. Russia will turn from supporting both the Nationalists and the Communists to just supporting the CCP . . . and, twenty-odd years of strife and war later, the CCP will eventually win that struggle.
Meanwhile, in Shanghai, business continues as usual.
The International Settlement at Shanghai in 1925 was capitalism's apotheosis - a completely free port. No papers were needed to live there; no restrictions were imposed on doing business there; no laws were wanted which might interfere with the making of money. Foreign nationals all had extraterritoriality - they were not subject to Chinese law, only whatever laws Shanghai might impose on itself. Which were few.
Although the International Settlement was nominally overseen by the British, and they had by far the strongest military presence there, it was governed by a council consisting of parties from all the interested nations - with the notable exception of the Chinese, who, since it was their country, might presumably have some objections to financial rapacity beyond a certain degree. So Shanghai was protected by troops of many nations - for example, the Americans had a large contingent of Marines there, who once a year steamed up the Yangtze in a battleship just to show the warlords they could do so with impunity; the Japanese kept soldiers their to protect their interests; and so on. In 1925, there was some alarm at the victories of the Nationalists, who were notably unnappreciative of foreign governance of Chinese lands, so the British beefed up the military presence - but in general, business went on, safe in the knowledge that too many countries found Shanghai too valuable to let it disappear.
Shanghai was an incredibly complex city - with 60,000 foreign nationals living in the International Settlement and the neighboring French Concession, uncounted numbers of "Shanghailanders", born in Shanghai and of mixed ancestry, and 300,000 Chinese nationals living in the city (with 3,000,000 more in the metropolitan area), the cultural mix was incomprehensible. Viennese coffee houses stood next to Buddhist temples; the most up-to-date of modern cities (Albert Einstein was a frequent visitor in the 1920's) in a country where foot-binding was still practiced (except by the Chinese Communists, who loathed the practice); the Victorian morality of Europe clashing with a land where homosexuality was considered not even worth a raised eyebrow (except by the Chinese Communists, who loathed the practice -win some, lose some.) It would be impossible to describe Shanghai without discussing the roles in city life of the sizable populations of Britishers, Japanese, Sephardic Jews, Austro-Hungarians, Belgians, Chinese, Brazilians, White Russians, Danes, French, Italians, Mexicans, Germans, Swedes, Peruvians, Norwegians, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Russian Jews, Indians, "Shanghailanders", and Americans, among many other smaller groups, not to mention the balance of power between the merchants, the city council, and the "Green Gang" of powerful mobsters, and the differences between the International Settlement, the French Concession, and the surrounding Chinese territory. So I'm not even going to try to cover all of that, because I don't want this fun fact to end up 300 pages long, and I pray that somewhere that a CoC supplement to 1920's Shanghai out there. So, narrowing the focus a bit, we come at last to:
The first large wave of Russians to come to Shanghai were Jews fleeing from the pogroms of the Tsarist regime. Although there was already a large population of Jews in Shanghai, the two groups did not, in general, mix. Before the Russian influx, Shanghai Jews were mostly descendents of the middle-eastern Sephardic merchants who had plied the Silk Road; they were money so old it was practically prehistoric-riche, and were considered to be among the city's elite (Shanghai had seven well-appointed synagogues by 1925.) The Russian Jews, on the other hand, were dirt-poor Ashkenasis, and the two groups had almost nothing in common. The Russian Jews settled in their own, much poorer, section of town.
The significant Jewish presence in China apparently resulted in some interesting stories; Katya was bemused to note that Sun Yat-Sen's bodyguard for many years, and an important supporter of the Democratic Nationlist cause, was Morris "Two Guns" Cohen (I swear I'm not making this up), who in 1925 was quite possibly still kicking around Shanghai.
The next wave of Russian refugees were "White Russians" - Tsarist sympathisers fleeing the Revolution. And although, clearly, there were Russians already there, once again the two groups did not mix. The White Russians were frequently antisemitic, and invariably anticommunist. The Russian Jews, while not necessarily procommunist, probably felt more fellow feeling for the revolutionaries than they did for their former persecutors (although it is probably wise to note that the Russian Jews of Shanghai did not, in general, return to Russia after the Revolution, and in the long run, this undoubtably proved to be a good idea.)
Many of the White Russians had not started out poor, but now were. Tales abound of former admirals forced to work as copy clerks, or star ballerinas toiling in dance halls. While some of these tales are provably true, it is also possible that in some cases there was some exaggeration going on - especially since many Russians dreamed of marrying a foreign national, thereby obtaining a passport which might allow them to live somewhere in the world other than Shanghai. It happened for some - particularly Russian women of both immigrant groups, who were legendary in Shanghai for their beauty - but many others presumably spent the years telling increasingly improbable tales of their former positions in Russia.
Interestingly, Russian refugees of both groups were noted for revitalizing the arts scene of Shanghai - quite a lot of dancers, artists, musicians, performers, and others of an artistic bent apparently ended up in China when they fled.
There was, of course, a third group of Russians in Shanghai, which was not as public as the other two - given the situation in China in 1925, the city was crawling with Soviet agents. And, for that matter, British agents, American agents, Japanese agents, Chinese revolutionaries, government spies, commercial spies, counterspies, leftover spies from both sides of World War I, and similar spooks of all types. As the business hub of East Asia, it was a prize everyone wanted to keep their eye on - not to mention that its status as a free port indirectly helped many fields of endeavor other than business. Including, perhaps, the endeavors of certain obscure cults.
Pleasant dreams.
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