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Maybe someday
46
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
47/100Critics
44/100Scholars
Author:
James Carter
Publisher:
W. W. Norton Company
Date:
June 16, 2020
How a single day revealed the history and foreshadowed the future of Shanghai.
What The Reviewers Say
... a lively work that uses the story of horse racing and the events of a single day at the races in the early 1940s to provide a panoramic look at a colorful city on the cusp of a dramatic transformation.
Anyone confused by the struggle over Hong Kong — the former British colony of Chinese people resisting Chinese control — could glean some insight from Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai, the story of another Sino-British enclave that eventually reverted to native rule. In it, author James Carter offers a clear-eyed, nuanced view of colonialism that’s a useful contribution to today’s long-overdue reckoning with racism.
The character sketches in Carter’s book trace a time plagued by racism and sexism. Not all women were household names like Emily Hahn or the Soong sisters, and Carter gives them voice.
Carter, whose knowledge of Chinese history and culture is abundantly clear, moves fluidly back and forth between the historical perspective and the bitter moments when Japanese occupation would eclipse the city's once flamboyant heyday.
