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properly dieted, they look very presentable; and they are renowned for being tough, quick on their feet, and capable of carrying really heavy weights for long periods. They even made very passable polo ponies, despite the fact that the soles of their riders’ boots were alarmingly close to the ground.
    Seen for the first time, these sturdy little ponies seemed tiny. But it’s surprising how soon one gets used to their size: less than two years later, when I saw a normal-sized racehorse in Hong Kong, it looked to me as large and as clumsy as a carthorse compared with the little ‘China ponies’ I had become accustomed to.
    I had been enthralled by Singapore and Hong Kong; they were both places that I had taken an instant fancy to and felt that I would dearly like to stay in for a long while – two or three years, perhaps. Or even more. They were places where one could put down roots. Not so Shanghai. Although socially speaking I couldn’t have had a better time, I always felt that I was a raw newcomer, a foreigner from a different world.
    Back in what was then British India the social structure had been different: starting at the top with the Viceroy and his staff and moving down to Governors of Provinces. Next came members of the ‘Heaven-born’ – ICS (India Civil Service) – and the Foreign-and-Political, followed by the Army, the British Cavalry, British Infantry, Indian Infantry and Cavalry, and finally the merchants and traders, whom Anglo-India loftily called ‘box-wallahs’. There was no such pecking order in Shanghai. Here the box-wallah was King and the Shanghaiers behaved as though they were a breed apart – free citizens of some powerful city-state. It was this, I suppose, that had enabled the denizens of the International Settlement to stand out in the street in evening dress and watch with detached interest as Japanese marines attacked the Chinese suburb of Chapei. It was not their business. It still astonishes me to think that only a little while later, while ugly wisps of smoke could still be seen rising from the ruins of Chapei, I was lunching, dining, dancing and generally enjoying a terrific party in a city where the curtain had already gone up on the hideous overture to the Second World War – and where representatives of every nation that was to take part in it had been able to sit and watch the opening of hostilities from the stalls …
    The protagonists were all there. The French and British, Americans, Japanese, Germans, Jews and Gentiles from every country in the world. Russians, too; hundreds and hundreds of Russians. For the late Great War-To-End-War had only been over for fourteen years, the Russian Revolution for fifteen. Hordes of ‘White Russians’ had fled for their lives. The westernized ones, who had money in foreign banks, made for Europe, while the rest turned eastward, trudging across Siberia to Vladivostok and, when that too fell to the Red Army, to Harbin in Manchuria – and eventually, to Tientsin and Shanghai.
    Many died on that journey. But many survived, and one of the saddest sights of Shanghai during the early years of the Revolution was the sight of White Russians: tattered and barefoot men, begging from coolies or, if they were lucky, pulling rickshaws. By the time Tacklow brought us to Shanghai the Russians in that city were estimated to number more than 25,000 – they were the second largest group of foreign nationals, the first being the Japanese. And though still technically stateless, the White Russians had taken over the night-life of the city. Every dance-hall had its quota of Russian ‘hostesses’, some as young as twelve or fourteen, some elderly and raddled, women who would partner anyone for a price, either for the duration of a dance or for the remainder of the night. You saw them everywhere, working as shop-girls, waitresses, hat-check girls, or in the chorus-lines of cabarets or