The dramatic real life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus from Shanghai in the wake of China’s 1949 Communist revolution is the basis of a compelling new book by award winning US journalist Helen Zia.

This enthralling, heartfelt narrative is a reflective precursor reminiscent of the struggles faced by migrants and refugees today.

‘Last Boat Out of Shanghai’ tells the story of Benny Pan who was raised in affluence as the son of the Shanghai Municipal Police inspector.

After his father was jailed for collaborating with the Japanese, Benny protected his younger siblings, helping one escape to Hong Kong, and struggled to survive while remaining in Communist China.

The book also relates the journey of academically gifted Ho Chow, a member of China’s land-owning gentry, who moved to Shanghai in 1937 to escape the imminent war with Japan, then continued his studies in the US while his family contended with postwar hyperinflation at home.

Bing Woo, the author’s mother, is also a subject of the book. She came from an impoverished family who gave her up for adoption; she fled to San Francisco at age 20 with her second adoptive family.

And Annuo Liu, the daughter of a high-ranking Nationalist official, tells how she escaped with her family to Taiwan, joining thousands of other unwelcome exiles.

At the centre of the story is Shanghai, then China’s “most modern, cosmopolitan and populous city” with its enclaves of foreigners, bustling markets, thriving port, and opium dens.

Overlaid on this picture of an almost western enclave is the war with aerial bombings, martial law, and panicked upper-and middle-class residents seeking refuge wherever they could.

Shanghai has historically been China’s jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao’s proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war.

Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, members of the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have revealed their stories to Zia.

It is a vivid, well-researched and engrossing book and Zia’s portrayals are compassionate and heartbreaking. Ultimately, they encapsulate the universal story of refugees who have to flee their homelands only to find different challenges.

Last Boat Out of Shanghai, by Helen Zia, Penguin Books

Laurie Nowell

AMES Australia Senior Journalist