Bund Nine

About

Shanghai, spring 1927. Yelena Kostrova plays the tea lounge at Bund Nine, a hotel whose guest list contains everyone who will decide what happens to the city. She is stateless — a League of Nations certificate instead of a passport, removable by anybody with a rubber stamp — and she has been surviving on tips, an arrangement with a Municipal Police inspector who pays part of her rent, and the two people she should not be involved with. Xu Baolin runs wharf labour for a Green Gang boss and has protected her twice without explaining. Zhou Meiying keeps the books for an opium syndicate six days a week and the treasury of a textile union's strike fund on the seventh, and has been in Lena's rooms since November. In February the unions stop the city. In April the gang is paid to start it again with knives, and both of the people Lena loves are on a list — on opposite sides of it. A love triangle in which all three corners are load-bearing, set in a city being auctioned: French Concession opium ledgers, Sikh constables on the Bund, foreign gunboats, an orchestra playing through a curfew. The reversal arrives twice — once in a policeman's cashbox and once in a strike fund spent on nine exit visas — and neither can be called simple treachery. Desire is frank and closes the door. The April violence is fast, close and graphic. Five endings; in four of them, somebody Lena loves is on a boat and somebody isn't.

Cast

• Y Yelena Kostrova protagonist; pianist at Bund Nine, stateless no portrait yet
• Xu Baolin Green Gang wharf-labour boss
• Z Zhou Meiying syndicate bookkeeper and secret union treasurer no portrait yet
• Inspector Reggie Hallam Shanghai Municipal Police; pays part of her rent
• S Sofia Kostrova Lena's mother; sells embroidery, remembers Vladivostok no portrait yet
• Foreman Chen Ah-fu textile union steward; the strike's face on the street