Miracles of Life Read Online Free PDF

Old City, a nightmare of earsplittinggongs and grimacing masks; a trip to the jai alaistadium with its ferocious Chinese gamblers and Filipinoplayers with huge scoop-rackets that seemed to propel theball at rifle speed (the fastest ball game in the world, myfather said, which greatly impressed me, as did anything thatwas fastest, tallest, highest and deepest); chasing the trucksthat carried the ever-friendly US Marines, cheering me onuntil my front wheel jammed in a tramline and I pitchedheadlong among the Chinese shoppers outside Sincere’s; and regular trips to see the Idzumo moored off the Bund. Yetwith all these excitements, I still found myself thinking for afew moments at least of the Chinese beggar-children on theash-tips near the chemical works by the Avenue Joffre,picking away in the coldest weather for the smallest lumps ofcoke. It was the gap between their lives and mine thatbothered me, but there seemed no way of bridging it.
    That gap, and Shanghai itself, would close sooner than Icould have guessed.
     

War in Europe (1939)
     
    In September 1939 the European war began, and quicklyreached across the world to Shanghai. Outwardly, our livescontinued as before, but soon there were empty places in myclass at school, as families sold up and left for Hong Kongand Singapore. My father spent a great deal of time listeningto the short-wave radio broadcasts from England, whichbrought news of the sinking of HMS Hood and the hunt forthe Bismarck , then later of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain.School was often interrupted so that we could visit one ofthe cinemas for screenings of British newsreels, thrillingspectacles that showed battleships in line ahead, and Spitfiresdowning Heinkels over London. Fund-raising drives wereheld at the Country Club, and I remember the proudannouncement that the British residents in Shanghai hadfinanced their first Spitfire. There was constant patrioticactivity on all sides. The German and Italian communitiesmounted their own propaganda campaigns, and the swastikaflew from the flagpoles of the German school and the German radio station, which put out a steady stream of pro-Nazi programmes.
    Newsreels soon became the dominant weapon in thisinformation war, many of them screened at night against thesides of buildings, watched by huge crowds of passingpedestrians. I think I saw the European war as a newsreelwar, only taking place on the silver square above my head, itsvisual conventions decided by the resources and limits ofthe war cameraman, as I would now put it, though even my10-year-old eyes could sense the difference between anauthentic newsreel and one filmed on manoeuvres. The real,whether war or peace, was something you saw filmed innewsreels, and I wanted the whole of Shanghai to be filmed.
    The English adults began to talk now about ‘home’, a rose-pink view of England that seemed to consist of the West Endof London, Shaftesbury Avenue and the Troc, a glitterysparkle of first nights and dancing till dawn, overlaid by acomfortable Beverley Nichols world of market towns andthatched roofs. Did my parents and their friends convincethemselves, or were they keeping their morale up? Theyplayed cricket at the Country Club, usually after too manygins, and subscribed to Punch , but they drove American carsand cooled their vermouth in American refrigerators. Theytalked about retiring, not to the Cotswolds, but to SouthAfrica, with its abundant cheap servants. I think that, despitethemselves, they had been internationalised by Shanghai,and their Noël Coward/ Cavalcade notions of England were a nostalgic folk memory (when we arrived in England in 1946,some of us were assumed to be American, and not becauseof our accents).
    This probably explains why many of the British residentsstayed on in Shanghai even though it was clear that waragainst Japan was imminent. There was also the firm belief,racist to a large extent, that while the Japanese had easilyrouted the Chinese armies they would be no