By Jerome A. Cohen
In reciprocation for Winston Lord’s well-warranted, enthusiastic endorsement of Orville Schell’s new novel My Old Home, I write to alert those who have not yet seen Jonathan Kaufman’s book, The Last Kings of Shanghai. Although non-fiction, it is sometimes hard to keep this in mind as he unfolds in highly readable style an extraordinary, complex and fascinating story that covers the whole era of modern China in an even broader compass than the book’s title suggests. I was eager to see it because of my friendship with the Kadoories and my ignorance of the frequently-touted Sassoons who preceded and overlapped with them in many ways. I was also interested generally in the Jewish angle in the China story. Kaufman gives us much more. His research goes far beyond what even he could accomplish when formerly a distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering China as well as other subjects, and his interpretations and analysis have contemporary ramifications. The encomiums in the jacket blurbs are all entirely credible.
I say all this despite the fact that Kaufman apparently made no effort to interview me among the horde of relevant witnesses still alive whom he did pursue. Lawrence and Muriel Kadoorie welcomed my family to Hong Kong in the fall of 1963, and they treated us warmly. Kaufman actually provides evidence of this at page 226 when he anonymously quotes my six-year-old son Peter who, on ringing the doorbell of the Kadoorie country mansion for the first time, shouted: “Hey, what is this? A hotel?” The author must have gleaned this from an article I had published in the Hong Kong Law Journal. Oddly, it is not mentioned in the book’s helpful Notes. Twenty years later Lawrence Kadoorie retained me as the chief lawyer for negotiating the complex Daya Bay nuclear power joint venture, which was then by far the largest foreign investment in China and probably the most controversial. As Kaufman points out, this imaginative project was the centerpiece of the Kadoorie family’s many contributions to Hong Kong –China relations and the development of China.
I always urged Lawrence to write his memoirs. He was a great story-teller but steadfastly resisted, citing his belief that one should never look back, even in his eighties. He wanted to live forever and was convinced that he had to keep driving up Hong Kong’s steep hills into the future, whatever the risks to himself and his passengers! Fortunately, he need not have been concerned about the past, since Kaufman has given us a remarkably balanced, sophisticated account of Lawrence’s challenges and achievements, more credible than any personal self-assessment might have been. I also appreciated the book’s positive rendering of the many often underestimated accomplishments of Lawrence’s younger brother, whom we all called “Uncle Horace”. Thanks to Horace, the family did a lot not only for China’s industrial progress but also its agriculture.
But don’t neglect the Sassoons. Their story is eye-popping in many ways that others can still testify to.