French Concession

1930s Shanghai: Gun-toting gangsters vie for influence with foreign and Chinese authorities; underground Communist cells disseminate bombs and forbidden pamphlets; beautiful (but dangerous!) women with bobbed hair slink through parties in cheongsams; and behind it all looms the menace of an ever-increasing Japanese military presence. The ingredients of Shanghai noir have been endlessly recycled in Chinese domestic TV shows, and occasionally exported in movies like Lust, Caution (Ang Lee's adaptation of a story by Eileen Chang) – but the challenge for a contemporary writer like Xiao Bai is to find a way to recombine these elements into a work that amounts to something more than a pastiche of generic clichés.