City of Devils by Paul French

Author:Paul French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

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24

Plum rains; gold fever. The annual plum rains, the meiyu, hammer Shanghai in July 1939, steaming off the sidewalks as the newly arrived humidity evaporates the rainwater to a fine mist. Settlement streets become unpassable and Frenchtown basements swiftly flood, drowning Chinese refugee families caught by surprise. In Hongkew, the Sawgin Creek overflows, the drains back up, sewage spills into the streets. Flooding in the Soochow Creek washes dead bodies downriver and deposits them in the alluvial mud flats of the Whangpoo by the Bund, to be fished out by the marine police using long bamboo poles with boat hooks on the end before the taipans in the offices overlooking the river have their luncheons disturbed by them. Riverside godowns flood in a matter of minutes; legions of rats swarm out of their trapdoors into the surrounding alleys.

On Shanghai’s streets Chinese shroffs and bookkeepers hold sodden newspapers over their Kobe felt hats; Shanghailanders sweating in worsted wool suits still—linen is in short supply this year—turn up their collars despite the newly humid air. Office ladies, shop girls, and off-duty taxi dancers raise their oiled paper umbrellas as they hurry along the Bubbling Well Road up near the Paramount, skip the puddles in Frenchtown on the Avenue Joffre, seek sanctuary in the cafés of Little Russia, and huddle under the awning outside DD’s till the worst passes. It’s not cold, though the plum rains do bring the temperature down to a more comfortable level; it’s simply damp. And then the rains stop as suddenly as they come. The people sheltering in the doorways of the Settlement and under the plane trees of Frenchtown resume their journeys. Rickshaw pullers wipe off their seat cushions and look for the richest pickings from among the crowd of pedestrians. Pedicab drivers push down on their pedals to get moving, stiff limbs responding to their efforts, and look once again for fares. Shanghai is temporarily cleansed.

But the queues outside the bullion dealers on the Bund never move during the plum rain downpours. The isolated and surrounded city has slumped into massive stagflation: the value of notes and coins changes daily, and the exchange rates leave people dizzy. The expectant have risen early to join the line at the Shanghai Gold Exchange, behind people who have spent all night on the pavement to be first in the doors. Others queue by the brokers’ offices—a line two hundred long waits patiently, soaked, snaking round the corner from the offices of Simmons, the Settlement’s largest bullion brokers. Wealthier Shanghainese pay peasants to sleep out in the queue and hold their place till morning. Gold becomes an obsession, and rumours swell: only gold is safe, only gold will survive and increase in value. The exchanges see prices rise sky-high; brokers like Simmons see their profits surge on the fears of the populace. Prices swell for everything. Bread that was twenty cents before the Japanese came is now $1.20 Chinese; coal that was a ten-spot a tonne is now 250 Chinese bucks and largely dust.

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