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midstream,but Shanghai’s hotels, bars and nightclubs were as busy asever.
    With their villages and rice fields destroyed, thousandsof destitute peasants from the Yangtze basin flocked toShanghai and fought to enter the International Settlement.They were viciously repelled by the Japanese soldiers and bythe British-run police force. I saw many Chinese who hadbeen bayoneted and lay on the ground among their bloodstainedrice sacks. Violence was so pervasive that my parentsand the various nannies never tried to shield me from all the brutality going on. I knew that the Japanese were capable oflosing their tempers and lunging with their fixed bayonetsinto the crowds pressing around them. Later, when I waseight or nine and began my long cycle rides aroundShanghai, I was careful to avoid provoking the Japanesesoldiers. They always waved me through the checkpoints, asthey did the Europeans and Americans. Sometimes theywould check our family Buick, but only when the chauffeurwas driving.
    I assume that the Japanese leadership had decided thatShanghai was of more value to them as a thriving commercialand industrial centre, and were not yet prepared torisk a confrontation with the Western powers. Most of myearliest memories date from this period, and life in Shanghaiseemed to be an endless round of parties, lavish weddings,swimming club galas, film shows laid on by the BritishEmbassy, military tattoos staged on the racecourse, glossyfilm premieres, all under the bayonets of the Japanese soldierswho guarded the perimeter checkpoints around theSettlement.
    As soon as the fighting ended, the Cathedral Boys’ Schoolmoved from the cloisters of Shanghai Cathedral, not farfrom the Great World Amusement Park, and took over partof the Cathedral Girls’ School on the western edge of theInternational Settlement. I could now cycle to school, and nolonger needed to be chauffeured in the family car, with thenanny keeping an interfering watch over me. I began to take longer and longer rides around the city, using the excuse thatI was visiting the Kendall-Wards or other friends. I liked tocycle down the Nanking Road, lined with Shanghai’s biggestdepartment stores, Sincere’s and the vast Sun and Sun Sunemporiums, dodging in and out of the huge trams with theirclanging bells that forced their way through the rickshawsand pedestrians.
    Everywhere I turned, a cruel and lurid world surgedaround me. Shanghai lived above all on the street, the beggarsshowing their wounds, the gangsters and pickpockets,the dying rattling their Craven A tins, the Chinese dragonladies in ankle-length mink coats who terrified me with theirstares, the hawkers wok-frying delicious treats which I couldnever buy because I never carried any money, starving peasantfamilies and thousands of con men and crooks. Weirdquarter-tone music wailed from Chinese theatres and bars,fireworks crackled around a wedding party, a radio blaredout the speeches of Generalissimo Chiang, interrupted bycommercials for a Japanese beer. I took all this in at a glance,the polluted and exciting air I breathed. If they were in themood, the British soldiers in their sandbag emplacementswould invite me into their dark interior world, where theylounged about cleaning their equipment. I liked theseTommies with their strange accents I had never heard before,and they let me clean their rifles and use the pull-throughsto ream the rust from their barrels, then gave me a bronzecap badge as a present. They told wonderfully broad stories of their service in India and Africa, and Shanghai to themwas just another name on the map. I explored almost everycorner of the International Settlement, and schoolfriendsand I would play games of hide-and-seek that covered thewhole city and could last for months. It amazes me now thatnone of us ever came to any harm, and I assume that thethousands of plain-clothes Chinese police agents in effectkept watch over us, warning away any petty crook temptedto steal our cycles or pull the