In this article from Shanghai Daily, we get a few more snippets of the contents of Andrew Field’s forthcoming book about Shanghai’s ballrooms of the 1930s. I missed his talk a few weeks ago that he gave about it, but friends who saw it were disappointed with the delivery, saying it was too much like a classroom lecture.
Well even if his book ends up reading like a textbook, I’m looking forward to reading it. I feel like I should have a better understanding of Shanghai’s earliest jazz history, since it seems the current popularity of jazz here now owes a lot to that legacy. I guess I could start by checking out the book that he mentions in the article by Shanghai history expert Lee Ou-fan, Shanghai Modern.