Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution

For someone interested in the history of the area, this is more than just another brick in the wall. The stories of the people in the book are also the real stories of many more people who have experienced those years.

The book didn't cover their post Shanghai-escape lives like I would have liked. It seemed to make the main characters' post-escape lives (except for the one man who suffered under the Cultural Revolution for 10 years) passe. Also I would like to reiterate my continued disappointment in their 40 hours of talking the book in 3 cds. They should have this excellent book on cd on at least 20 cds. When I returned to my truck after a break from the listening to a cd I had to push the "forward" button 30 or more times to get to the point where I left off. Disgusting how they put this book on just 3 cds!

This book is a masterpiece of historical literature that will bring tears to your eyes with stories that you probably had no idea existed. Why had they not been told? Perhaps for many reasons, but one common thread is that it seems these remarkable emigrants who fled Shanghai 70 years needed a voice, and they could not have found a better writer to tell it than Helen Zia. As one of the four main characters of the book, Annuo Liu, exclaimed to Helen: “I’ve been waiting for someone to tell our story.”The most poignant and compelling story of the book is that of Bing – the author’s own mother, who sailed on the last ship to leave Shanghai in 1949, the General Gordon. Helen’s recount of Bing’s life, from misery and poverty in war-torn China, to her narrow escape from Shanghai and her turbulent start in America, is a heart-wrenching but majestically loving tribute to her mother. Sadly, we learn from the acknowledgements – at the end of the book – that Bing suddenly died before Helen’s book was completed. Fortunately for Helen, her family and the rest of us, Bing’s story had already been recorded for posterity. We also recently learned from an op-ed in the New York Times that it was only through Helen’s dogged persistence that Bing’s story even emerged. Helen reveals that Bing kept it a secret because she “thought she was protecting her children by not telling us her harrowing tale of fleeing China.”Helen’s book is such a warm and historically accurate page-turner that reading it brings to mind that old Walter Cronkite TV series called “You Are There.” Helen’s book was years in the making, involving painstaking research, travel and countless interviews that are explained in her acknowledgements and end notes. Officially launched a mere 10 days ago, Helen Zia’s book has received many rave reviews from other writers and sinophiles that incisively capture, much more eloquently than my Amazon review, why it’s such a great read. I think Harvard Professor Elizabeth J. Perry summed it up the best by describing The Last Boat as: “Impeccably researched and beautifully crafted ... Zia offers a warmly human perspective on one of the most wrenching political transitions of the twentieth century.”Bing found her voice in Helen. It’s so sad that she did not live to see her story told in The Last Boat.

This book is more about the sweep of history with a particular focus on Shanghai in the 30s to the 50s. Rather than backdrop, the story of the rise of Chinese Communism in a weak China often takes front and center. The threads of four people’s lives from childhood to adulthood are woven, sometimes a bit too lightly, into the historical brocade: two males and two females, and ultimately a sister of one of the males, is added to the mix, resulting in five separate stories.The title of the book is a metaphor - only one of the five actually gets on that “last boat out of Shanghai” to San Francisco. One comes to the US two years before the Communist take-over; one escapes to Taiwan; one makes it to Hong Kong; one is stuck in China and suffers the consequences. In the very end, they all make it to America and that’s how the author gets wind of their stories.I wonder if I had read each person’s story separately if I would’ve gotten more out of it. For a 430-page book, each person’s story averages less than a hundred pages, not a lot for each person who’s survived to an old age. As such, lots of questions arise, but this is what it is, a book more about history than personal story, but still an interesting book. And you do see pragmatism arise out of circumstance, and the effects of decision and indecision.The ending in a sense reminds me of a Broadway musical I had seen years ago in the 70s, Pacific Overtures. (I’m dating myself and I know the play’s more about Japan, China’s mortal enemy at the time.) The endings of both make a giant leap from a pivotal historical period to the present with a fast enumeration of current-day accomplishments; in the book, Ms. Zia offers us a list of present-day luminaries, all of whom have Shanghainese blood. The book then concludes with a few afterthought lines comparing the plight of the five Shanghainese to those of current refugees worldwide. A convenient ending.

This book starts a bit slow but picks up as the story progresses. The story follows the lives of several young people who grew up in Shanghai, China to experience the international zone, the Japanese invasion and how it unfolded until 1941, and then the war years, and then the defeat of the Nationalist by the Red Army.These individuals than take paths to escape the Communists. One individual remains in China.It is a good overview of how the Nationalists failed, the Red Army succeeded. It is interesting how the Japanese were so powerful, or so it seemed in 1937-44 thus besting the Nationalists and Red Armies. By 1950, no one could imagine Japan engaging China.That Nationalists were run by corrupt people skimming wealth and the US gave up on them. Sound familiar? Vietnam and Afghanistan had similar leadership issues.The US immigration policies towards Chinese were very racist into the 1950s making life difficult for the Chinese refugees how made it here.The people in this book endured a lot and were survivors. A few became a Good Americans, despite Americas policy towards them.

Excellant. A fascinating, historical and very moving as the lives of the children move into adult hood. Also very shocking when one sees the privations they suffered during the war torn years. Interesting also to read their experiences and tribulations in the USA! This is all about the Chinese for a change!

I lived in Shanghai for 15 years worked in formerly French area on doing ping road .this was great eye opener for me as a louwai always wanted to know the history from this time great read

Gave westerners / even Asians prelim understanding of old Chinese era time

To understand more about the process of the Shanghainese fleeing Shanghai (late 1940s) told through real characters. Fascinating intense read.

A real eye opener to the war time struggles of the Chinese families who wanted a life of freedom and peace and the hardships they went through to achieve it. Shame on all the countries that rejected and persecuted them.