And boy did it not disappoint.

This has to be one of the most exciting wartime escape stories–and probably the most underreported one.

To start, the cast of [...]]]> After much anticipation, I finally received and read Tim Luard‘s fabulous Escape from Hong Kong: Admiral Chan Chak’s Christmas Day Dash, 1941 (Hong Kong University Press, 2012).

And boy did it not disappoint.

This has to be one of the most exciting wartime escape stories–and probably the most underreported one.

To start, the cast of characters couldn’t be more fascinating. As the title states, it was Admiral Chan Chak who led the escape. But Chan wasn’t just another career military man.

He was stationed in Hong Kong and presided over the Chinese (Nationalist) Navy’s southern forces. Oh, and he only had one leg.

Chan’s aide-de-camp was the dashing, devout Christian, six-foot-three-inch Henry Hsu, born in southern China, trained at the famed Whampoa Military Academy, and educated in the law in Shanghai.

The British Navy agreed to help Chan, Henry Hsu, and Chan’s bodyguard escape Hong Kong as soon as the colony fell to the Japanese because the Admiral couldn’t be captured, what with all the classified information he possessed. Plus, he had excellent connections in southern China, even in the Japanese-occupied areas just north of Hong Kong, and could be of great help to the top British Navy personnel (which included a Canadian, a New Zealander, some Scots, and a Russian Jewish refugee by way of Shanghai)–and others who tagged along for the ride.

But the escape didn’t start off as planned. When a boat carrying the Admiral, Henry Hsu, his bodyguard, and Colonel SK Yee was attacked by the Japanese, the three men stripped to their underwear and jumped overboard while the non-swimmer Colonel Yee stayed on the boat–with Chan Chak’s wooden leg (and a couple hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars stuffed inside the leg).

After the trio met up with five British torpedo speed boats, they made their way north to Mirs Bay. In all, more than sixty men escaped together in this group. They walked and rode overland through occupied China, dodging Japanese patrols and wading through paddy fields, until they reached Free China–all guided by Admiral Chan and his guerilla devotees north of Hong Kong. Many of the escapees made their way to Chungking and some on to Burma, where they once again fled the Japanese.

For more about this harrowing tale, check out the Escape From Hong Kong blog at http://www.hongkongescape.org/.

I like the Peninsula not so much because it’s a fancy hotel, but because it reminds me of the original Peninsula in [...]]]> Yesterday I took my two little ones up to Chicago for lunch at the Peninsula Hotel. There we met my two sisters-in-law in what’s become an annual tradition over the last five years.

I like the Peninsula not so much because it’s a fancy hotel, but because it reminds me of the original Peninsula in Hong Kong.

Peninsula Hotel, 1965

Okay, so the exteriors aren’t similar, but the Chicago Lobby Lounge was modeled after that in Hong Kong. The original Pen was a popular meeting spot when friends or friends of friends came to Hong Kong when I lived there. We usually met for afternoon tea or sometimes a drink before dinner, because for a newcomer in Hong Kong there’s nothing quite as easy to understand as “meet me at the Pen”.

So yesterday it was like stepping back into Hong Kong for a couple hours. My kids were by far the youngest, and quickly made their presence known.

They sat still long enough to enjoy an appetizer of edamame. I ordered a truffle mac and cheese for them to share and a fancy version of beef pho for myself. But when they saw the beautiful presentation of the pho, they quickly gave up theirs for the pieces of wagyu beef and strands of long noodles in my soup.

Then my sisters-in-law and I took turns chaperoning them around the Lobby Lounge.

They covered most of the lobby.

The Peninsula is owned by the Kadoorie family, Iraqi Jews who settled in Hong Kong 100 years ago. We enjoyed this nice touch for Hannukah, which starts tonight.

After two hours, I packed the kids up, said good-bye to my sisters-in-law, and headed back to the suburbs.

My husband enjoyed the truffle mac and cheese that evening while the two of us sat down to watch Anthony Bourdain’s new show, The Layover. Last night’s episode was filmed in–where else–Hong Kong.

I heard from my mom yesterday, both on e-mail and Facebook. She’s been e-mailing here and there since she set off for the old Silk Road a couple weeks ago, but it was the first time she’d Facebooked from Central Asia.

This is what she wrote from Bukhara, Uzbekistan:

Spent our last day [...]]]>

Bukhara

I heard from my mom yesterday, both on e-mail and Facebook. She’s been e-mailing here and there since she set off for the old Silk Road a couple weeks ago, but it was the first time she’d Facebooked from Central Asia.

This is what she wrote from Bukhara, Uzbekistan:

Spent our last day in Bukhara today.  It is very nice, smaller than the other cities we have been in, but tomorrow we go to Khiva, which is smaller still.  It is very dusty here, because it is in the desert and because they are doing major reconstruction jobs, so an awful lot is being torn up.  At one time, the Bukharan emirate was the most powerful in the whole area.  Many of the Jewish population that was here emigrated at the time of the fall of the USSR…many of them to New York City.

We have a very long bus ride tomorrow.  Our guide mentioned tonight that the tour buses that arrived here tonight from Khiva passed 40 miles of non-road, where they drove through the sand.  Should be interesting!!

And I thought China was dusty.

Twelve years ago I read an article in The New Yorker about 1930s writer Essad Bey, aka Kurban Said. What stayed with me all these years was that Tom Reiss, the author of the article, revealed that Bey/Said was in fact a Russian Jew named Lev Nussimbaum.

Reiss expanded the article into [...]]]>

The Orientalist

Twelve years ago I read an article in The New Yorker about 1930s writer Essad Bey, aka Kurban Said. What stayed with me all these years was that Tom Reiss, the author of the article, revealed that Bey/Said was in fact a Russian Jew named Lev Nussimbaum.

Reiss expanded the article into The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (Random House, 2005), which I read last week.

I just love how Reiss describes Lev as “a kind of ethnic cross-dresser”. He elaborates:

Many Jewish journalists and scholars were writing books on the Middle East at the time…but they did not tramp around Berlin dressed in turbans, speak of their filial ties to warrior chieftains, and call themselves by fancy Turkish names.

Lev’s life was just as colorful as his eccentricities.

Although he was born in Kiev, Lev spent most of his childhood in Baku, Azerbaijan. Lev’s mother was friendly with a pockmarked Georgian named Ioseb Jughashvili, who would later be known as Joseph Stalin. On the other end of the spectrum, Lev’s father, Abraham, made his fortune in Baku oil.

As you can imagine, the Bolshevik Revolution would forever change the Nussimbaums. After Lev’s mother commits suicide, Abraham and a teenage Lev escape through the Caucasus to Persia, back around to Constantinople, and finally end up in Germany.

I enjoyed how Reiss seamlessly weaves modern Near East history into Lev’s story. By the time Lev settles into Berlin, Hitler comes into power and thus begins a new chapter in tragic 20th century history.

Rather than run away from the problems brewing in Germany, Lev converts to Islam and flaunts his (faux) Eastern roots, as described in the excerpt above. Interestingly, Lev continues to hang around Jews in Berlin and marries a Jewish shoe heiress. And they all know his true identity.

He would become a famous memoirist, biographer (of Czar Nicholas II, Lenin, Stalin, and Mussolini), and novelist. When Jews are prohibited from publishing in Germany, Lev writes under the name Kurban Said and publishes an international best-seller, Ali and Nino.

By the time he settles in Positano, Italy during the war, he’s simply known as “the Moslem”. (John Steinbeck traveled to Positano in the early 1940s to write an article for Harper’s Bazaar and mentions a “Moslem”, not knowing Lev’s true identity.)

I loved so many aspects of Lev’s story: how he looked east, not west; how he believed in Muslims and Jews living together in harmony as they had in the Baku of his youth; how he found himself in the middle of early 20th century history, be it in the USSR, Western Europe, or the US.

Reiss uncovered Lev’s story from scratch, traveling to the places where Lev lived and interviewing the handful of people still alive who knew Lev (many have since passed away). It’s a haunting and tragic story, but one that shouldn’t be forgotten again.

I learn something new every day. And that’s what keeps life fascinating.

For instance, I recently learned that up until the early 1950s, Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Iraq lived among one another in friendship. I also knew little about Kurdish Iraq, especially its Jewish population.

In fact, [...]]]>

My Father's Paradise, by Ariel Sabar

I learn something new every day. And that’s what keeps life fascinating.

For instance, I recently learned that up until the early 1950s, Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Iraq lived among one another in friendship. I also knew little about Kurdish Iraq, especially its Jewish population.

In fact, I didn’t even know it had had a Jewish population until I picked up Ariel Sabar’s memoir, My Father’s Paradise (Algonquin Books, 2006). Sabar delivers a fascinating account of modern Iraqi history told from the point of view of his observant Jewish father’s family.

When Sabar’s father, Yona, was still a teen, his family left along with 120,000 other Iraqi Jews for the promised land of Israel.

Only it wasn’t the haven European Jews experienced or envisioned. Sabar recounts how the founders of Israel pictured the new Jewish homeland almost as a Mediterranean Vienna: classical music, cafe culture, flaky pastries.

And then came the Iraqi Jews (along with Jews from Libya, Yemen, Bulgaria, and other rustic countries). Of these, the Kurdish Jews were treated like street sweepers (which is where many found employment). The Iraqi Jews were so looked down upon that the leaders of Israel left them stranded in Iraq for a year after they were rounded up for a mass exodus out of an ever-increasing hostile Iraq.

The book is split into three sections: Yona Sabar’s childhood and family roots; the family’s difficult new life in Israel; and Yona and son Ariel’s troubled relationship, then later reconciliation, in Los Angeles, Israel, and Kurdish Iraq.

Each section could almost serve as a stand-alone book. Put together, they form a heart-rending story of a family who is forced to leave their home–and a simple, stress-free way of life–forever.

In all this Tiger Mother hype and hysteria, I remembered reading that National Public Radio’s Scott Simon recently wrote a memoir about adopting his two daughters from China. So I fired up the Kindle (I’m loving it!) last week and downloaded Baby, We Were Meant for Each [...]]]>

Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other

In all this Tiger Mother hype and hysteria, I remembered reading that National Public Radio’s Scott Simon recently wrote a memoir about adopting his two daughters from China. So I fired up the Kindle (I’m loving it!) last week and downloaded Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other (Random House, 2010).

(I must confess another reason for wanting to read Simon’s book. Many years ago I kind of knew his wife. She studied at the university where I worked right out of college. We had some mutual friends and ended up at some of the same parties. All the women wanted to be her and all the guys wished they were in the right league to date her.)

Anyway, back to (everyone else’s) reality. Simon and his glam wife Caroline opted for adoption when they found they couldn’t become pregnant. Since he and Caroline had both traveled extensively, it seemed only natural to adopt a baby from a foreign country.

Simon writes a little about traveling to China, seeing his daughter Elise for the first time (and then three years later, daughter Lina). But the bulk of the book consists of other people’s adoption stories, both from the point of view of the parents (both birth and adopted) and the children (both young and grown).

The subtitle, In Praise of Adoption, therefore rings quite true. I’d recommend this book for anyone who is considering adoption, has been adopted, or knows and loves a friend or family member who’s been adopted (which includes just about everyone).

Although Simon doesn’t go into as much personal detail as I’d hoped for, just knowing that he and his lovely family are thriving is enough for me.

So twenty years ago I celebrated Christmas in Yokohama. As I posted yesterday, my mom and I flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo days before Christmas.

I remember driving around Yokohama on Christmas day with my mom’s old friends, the Nakajimas (pictured here with my mom), Christmas carols playing on the [...]]]>

click to enlarge

So twenty years ago I celebrated Christmas in Yokohama. As I posted yesterday, my mom and I flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo days before Christmas.

I remember driving around Yokohama on Christmas day with my mom’s old friends, the Nakajimas (pictured here with my mom), Christmas carols playing on the car radio as we saw the city’s sights.

At one point we stopped in Chinatown. It was the cleanest Chinatown I’d ever visited, even cleaner than the streets of Singapore (where I spent Christmas with my parents four years later).

Although I’d just come from Hong Kong and couldn’t get enough fresh Japanese food, spending the afternoon in Chinatown wasn’t unwelcome. Because, as Jewish folk know, what’s Christmas without Chinese food?

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate today!

Continuing the theme of 1930s Shanghai (it’s not going away), I’m excited to see new images of the refurbished Peace Hotel.

Three years ago it closed for massive renovations. After much anticipation, it re-opened last month.

Built in 1929 by Victor Sassoon, the north building was called the Cathay Hotel [...]]]>

courtesy of Simon Fieldhouse

Continuing the theme of 1930s Shanghai (it’s not going away), I’m excited to see new images of the refurbished Peace Hotel.

Three years ago it closed for massive renovations. After much anticipation, it re-opened last month.

Built in 1929 by Victor Sassoon, the north building was called the Cathay Hotel back then (image on left). Just south of Nanking Road (Nanjing Lu today) stood the Palace Hotel (which was built on the site of the 1850s Central Hotel). Interestingly enough, the south building became a wing of the Peace Hotel in 1965, a year before the Cultural Revolution.

When I stayed at the Peace in 1995 (in the north building; but I ate in the nondescript ground floor restaurant in the south building), the greatest luxury in my room was a bathroom scale.

On that trip, my parents enjoyed listing to the Old Jazz Band at the Peace, one of the remaining throwbacks to the Peace’s glorious past. I remember standing on the rooftop terrace (just under the bottom of the green copper roof), looking over the Whampoa (Huangpu River) to the construction jungles of Pudong.

The Peace played up its decadent past even back in the mid-1990s. The postcards sold in the sparsely-stocked hotel gift shop featured sepia photos of 1930s Shanghai. So that’s what I sent to family back in the US.

Oh, for the decadent pre-Communist-era of Shanghai! Vice, glamor, high stakes, and violent outcomes. 1930s Shanghai has become a genre unto itself–novels, narratives, restaurants, films, couture.

The latest film in this genre, simply titled Shanghai, is to come out sometime this month if the advertisements ring true. (It’s been in the [...]]]>

click to enlarge

Oh, for the decadent pre-Communist-era of Shanghai! Vice, glamor, high stakes, and violent outcomes. 1930s Shanghai has become a genre unto itself–novels, narratives, restaurants, films, couture.

The latest film in this genre, simply titled Shanghai, is to come out sometime this month if the advertisements ring true. (It’s been in the works for years, with an original release date of over a year ago.) The movie starts out on a high note with a stellar cast of John Cusack, Chow Yun-Fat, Gong  Li, and Ken Watanabe.

The official synopsis touts it as a Casablanca-style international thriller set in the ancient Chinese city a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cusack’s character is good, Chow Yun-Fat’s is bad, and Ken Watanabe’s (my favorite actor in this lot, although Chow’s a close second) is an enemy by nationality. And Gong Li’s needs to be saved by the white guy.

I haven’t seen the film yet, so won’t form more opinions about it now.

A couple days ago I wrote about a visit to the Cathay Cinema in 1995 where I saw (surprise!) the 1930s Shanghai-inspired Red Rose White Rose. Later that summer, in the industrial city of Wuhan, I saw Shanghai Triad, the Zhang Yimou-directed film about–1930s Shanghai!

And then there’s the 2005 film, the White Countess, starring Ralph Fiennes and the late-Natasha Richardson. (My husband fell asleep during this film, but I’ll watch anything about White Russian and Jewish settlers in Shanghai, no matter how drab the story.) I just loved the documentary, Shanghai Ghetto (2002) about the Jewish settlers there.

Even if 1930s Shanghai has become a cliche, I’m still game.

I’ve been polishing and proofreading my memoir and just finished a part in which I stayed in Shanghai 15 years ago. Although I don’t write about the Cathay Cinema, I haven’t forgotten it.

The Cathay is an Art Deco beauty, built in 1932. (I recently read that Shanghai is home to [...]]]>

click to enlarge

I’ve been polishing and proofreading my memoir and just finished a part in which I stayed in Shanghai 15 years ago. Although I don’t write about the Cathay Cinema, I haven’t forgotten it.

The Cathay is an Art Deco beauty, built in 1932. (I recently read that Shanghai is home to more Art Deco buildings than anywhere else in the world.)

During that summer, I braved torrential rains one night and headed out to the Cathay to see Red Rose White Rose, a sensuous Hong Kong film that takes place in 1930s Shanghai. How a propos.

At one time, the Cathay Cinema was owned by Victor Sassoon, an Iraqi Jew who built the Cathay Hotel, now the Peace Hotel. A couple years before I visited the Cathay Cinema, it had received historic preservation status.

Although the building can’t be destroyed, the theater was converted into a triplex in 2003.

The interior no longer reveals any of its original decor.