A photo of Ruth Day published in the Springfield Republican in 1930
My talk last week at the wooden box
A few years ago I sent Graham Earnshaw a PDF copy of a rare book, which I found in the New York Public Library back in 1995. At the time I discovered the book, I was beginning to conduct research for what would eventually be my doctoral dissertation on the nightlife and dance hall industry of Shanghai in the 1920s-1930s, which became my first book Shanghai’s Dancing World. The book I sent to Graham was titled Shanghai 1935. It was penned by a mysterious American author named Ruth Day. Among all of the various memoirs and first-hand accounts that I found by western writers, Ruth Day’s book struck me as one that was very genuine, thorough, and perspicacious in its descriptions of the people and places that the author encountered during her brief trip to Shanghai in the spring of 1935. Other than the copy at the NYPL, I could find no other extant copies of the book. Fortunately, I made a photocopy of the original book, and I had kept it in my research archives for all those years.
Having already successfully republished one memoir of Old Shanghai, Whitey Smith’s I Didn’t Make a Million, Graham and I agreed that this book was worth republishing. In the process, Graham asked me to write a foreword to the book and to learn more about the woman who wrote the book. The story of who she was and how I sleuthed her out of obscurity is told in some detail in the foreword to the book.
In a nutshell, Ruth Day was a high-society socialite, mother, and amateur thespian living in Springfield Massachusetts. Dr. Frederick Cleveland, her mother’s second husband, was one of the foremost financial experts of his age. He had been hired by the Nationalist Chinese government to help sort out their finances and he was living in China with Ruth Day’s mother. In the spring of 1935, she went out to visit her parents in Shanghai, and she ended up writing a memoir of her experiences there. During her stay in China, she also took a brief train trip up to Peking with her mother, and she relates that journey in the book as well. All in all, her book is a wonderful and vivid firsthand account of high life in the city during its heyday. While in Shanghai, she hobnobbed with folks like Victor Sassoon, Lord Li Jingmai (son of the famed Li Hongzhang of late imperial times), Lord and Lady Maze and many other elites of Shanghai society. She did of course take notice the vast social stratification and the dire poverty of the Chinese masses, but by and large this book is a closely observed account of the city’s elites and their lavish lifestyles.
I quote Ruth Day’s descriptions of her brief forays into the city’s nightlife in the introductions to both Shanghai’s Dancing World and Shanghai Nightscapes, and they appear periodically in entries to this journal as well. I strongly encourage those of you interested in this fascinating time period to buy a copy of this book. It is a wonderfully cogent account of what it was like for a foreigner to visit the city in its heyday, and her various encounters with the exotic cultures and habits of the Chinese people are still telling and full of humor today. She provides many lavish descriptions of banquets and dinner parties, and the book contains very detailed accounts of her visits to restaurants, theaters, nightclubs, and private homes. The fact that Ruth Day herself was no China expert and that this is not a “China’s place in the world” type of book makes it even more charming and valuable.
Last Saturday, October 31, I gave a talk at the Wooden Box (a local bar and café in our neighborhood of Shanghai), organized by Frank Tsai and China Crossroads and co-sponsored by the Royal Asiatic Society. Over 80 people attended my talk, and the crowd was very international. I asked the audience members to read out selected quotes that I chose from the book. These quotes were juxtaposed with images of the people and places she encountered. The quotes included a long firsthand account of her one big night on the town, which took her to the Kavkaz Restaurant, the Carlton Theater, the Paramount Ballroom, and the Del Monte Nightclub. The talk seemed to go quite well overall, and afterwards many people asked good questions. I hope to give more such talks in the near future and will happily take up the offers of other organizations to hold them.