Shanghai: High Lights, Low Lights, Tael Lights.

Shanghai: Tridon Press,, 1936. A Shanghai that has somehow failed to get into tourist books, learned treatises or into the movies First edition, first printing, rare in commerce, of perhaps the most memorable of all guides to interwar Shanghai. "The treatment of the subject is also somewhat of an innovation. Most people approach the writing of such a work with either pompous authority, eerie mystery, or devil-may-care Halliburtonishness. We have done none of these silly things" (p. i). The authors strike a refreshing contrast. As they note in their preface, titled "an explanation but not an apology", "Shanghai has been written about by all sorts of people, and in all sorts of veins. By people who knew all about it, by others who thought they knew all about it and by people who knew they didn't know anything about it but took a chance anyway. We, the collaborating undersigned, are pioneers of a New Group. We know very little about it, but know a lot about that very little" (ibid.). This approach is manifested in their gentle satirizing of some of the many clichés of the China guidebook genre: "the feminine writer of an extremely entertaining book entitled 'Audacious Angles on China' [Elsie McCormick] states that 'in Shanghai a person may enter practically any restaurant or cafe and merely inscribe his name and address on a slip paper' in settlement of the account. Either this learned lady was in Shanghai prior to the depression or we'd like to get a list of the cabarets and cafes she visited for future reference" (p. 12). Before moving to Hong Kong, Allan "Pat" Patterson (c.1900-1991) was Canadian businessman who represented Western aircraft manufacturers in China, selling planes to the country's various warlords and regional governments. A keen flier and a friend of Chiang Kai-Shek and Claire Chennault, he was one of the first two people to be issued a pilot's license in China and was also the country's first recorded skywriter, writing the character for "long life" in the sky on the occasion of Chiang's 50th birthday. Information on his co-author is, unfortunately, elusive. The illustrator, V. Edward "Eddie" Smith, worked for the China National Aviation Corporation in the 1930s, flying the route between Shanghai and Hankou. Octavo. Illustrations throughout, some by V. Edward Smith. Original black boards, recently renewed white thread xianzhuang stitching, front cover lettered and illustrated in off-white, purple map endpapers. Mid-century blue pencil ownership inscription of one M. C. Baxter on title page. Boards clean with rubbing to extremities, small indentation on rear cover, light toning and scuffing internally. A very good copy.