Immersed once more in old Shanghai

Two duplications of photos of Shanghai taken in the 1930s show that the city had a big foreign presence at that time. Photos Provided to China Daily

Xiaobai, 42, says most of the concessions remained unchanged until the late 1980s. Even now, Astor House (also known as Richard's Hotel, the first modern hotel in Shanghai, built in 1846) retains the old floor, reminding Xiaobai of his old shikumen house in Shanghai. The house features a big gate made of stones and is traditional Shanghai architecture.

"Ever since Shanghai became an open harbor in the 1840s, there existed in the city a different lifestyle in the dark, completely different from that of the regular citizens' daily lives. You could describe it as heart-throbbing, or legendary," he says.

Shanghai was known as an "adventurers' paradise" in the 1930s. "True adventurers always go for the risk itself, and all the other profit is supplementary. That's the very origin of the city's vitality. But now the quality is all gone - formatted and institutionalized," he says.

In his novel, the protagonist Weiss Xue finds his Russian jewel-dealer girlfriend Theresa is selling weapons to gangsters and assassins, and a woman he happened to take to the movies is involved in murder. Hired by the French police, Xue becomes involved in the conspiracy and takes a key role in the hijacking of an armored car. What he later chooses to reveal or cover up will decide the future of the concessions.

The novel portrays a kaleidoscope of characters and scenes in the concessions. People from all kinds of backgrounds, from various parts of the world, come to try their luck in Shanghai. There are expats bored of life at home, an American who tries to erase his fingerprints and thereby his criminal record, a Korean terrorist trained in Russia and much more.

The stories and characters are all fictional, but the historical background and details - from the names of the streets to the shape of a table lantern - are factual. The author has also added copious footnotes, providing more related information.

It is possible to get bogged down in Xiaobai's historical details and vivid descriptions and lose track of the storyline, but the author insists this is because he doesn't want to sacrifice detail for a fast read.

Xiaobai started writing five years ago. His first novel Game Point (Ju Dian), published recently, tells about a group of marginalized people in Shanghai plotting against each other over a 1-million-yuan (110,880 euros) check in the 1980-1990s, in the early years of China's reform and opening-up.

That's also when Xiaobai worked for international corporations, founded his own companies, and joined China's first group of voluntary movie translators, providing Chinese subtitles for pirated Western movies.

"It was purely for fun. Nobody got a penny from the work," he says. "Now I'm a player who enjoys reading, observing and thinking. I can live without the royalties from my writing.

"I'm fascinated by narration - how we always hide some information while we tell our stories. Truth is transient - what's past is past. All we have is 'narration'. Once we realize this, narration becomes a combat with various versions of the 'truth'."

Xiaobai also worked as a picture editor with the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, including on the latest Chinese edition of American author and literary theorist Susan Sontag's On Photography.

"Images show all kinds of information, lost or neglected by text recording," Xiaobai says.