'The Last Rose of Shanghai': Q&A with author Weina Dai Randel

Why did you title the novel The Last Rose of Shanghai?

From the very moment of the novel’s conception, I believed that it should be a love story of people from different cultures, and the magic and the pains of the city would unfold through the two main characters’ perceptions. Because of the restraints of tradition, the shackles of history, and the strife of war, their story would be an uphill battle sprinkled with resilience, hopes, and self-discovery.

Jazz club owner Aiyi, one of the protagonists, is the fictional younger sister to the real-life Shao Xunmei, who was a renowned poet and publisher during the era. Could you talk about the research you did to bring the family to life with as much authenticity as possible?

Shao Xunmei was written as Shao Sinmay in the novel. (The reason is that I wanted to honor his Shanghai heritage–his name is pronounced as Zau Sinmay in Shanghainese.) Yes, you’re right; he was a renowned poet and publisher. You might have heard that he was a typical aristocratic dandy who grew up with wealth–he was given an elephant as a pet for his birthday when he was 5. His romance with Emily Hahn, the American journalist from St. Louis, was the talk of the literary world for years.

I started with his poems, and I adore them–he was a man of immense talent and overlooked in history. I also researched several publications about him in both Chinese and English, such as T’an Hsia, Liang You, and Taras Gresco’s Shanghai Grand, which was very helpful. For the family life, I drew on my own experience as a younger sibling in China and the inspiration from the plays by prominent Chinese authors such as Mao Dun and Lao She, the memoir Remembering Shanghai by Isabel Chao and Claire Chao, and the incomparable stories written by Eileen Chang.

I confess it was a struggle to portray Shao Xunmei as the patriarch–there should be a novel about him! But as it happened, sadly, his adult life, his entrepreneurial vision, and his enterprise as a publisher were confronted by war and the Japanese occupation. In the novel, he battled with his sister, so the dynamic shifted to sibling rivalry.