In 1929, Bernardine Szold Fritz left Paris on a train bound for China. She was on her way to her fourth wedding, and her fourth husband: An American investment banker named Chester Fritz, who’d proposed after a whirlwind meeting earlier in Shanghai. Bernardine is then forced to find herself things to do in interwar China—and her husband isn’t helping much.
That’s how Susan Blumberg-Kason’s newest book, Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, starts. The book charts Bernardine’s life as she sets up a theater, and makes friends with such illustrious figures like Lin Yutang, Victor Sasoon and Anna May Wong.
In this interview, Susan and I talk about Bernardine, her life, and why interwar Shanghai remains such a compelling setting for fiction and nonfiction writers.
Susan Blumberg-Kason is also the author of a memoir, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong. She is also the co-editor of Hong Kong Noir. Susan is a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books, Cha: An Asian Literary Review and World Literature Today. Her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, PopMatters, and the South China Morning Post.