ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: How did Bernadine Szold Fritz bring expats and Chinese together in Shanghai in the 1930s?
Bernadine Szold Fritz was born into a traditional Jewish family in the American Midwest at the turn of the 20th century, but her life turned out to be far from what you would expect. She became very involved in the cultural scenes of the time, first in Chicago, then New York, then Paris, and finally in Shanghai. There, she became a prominent organizer of all kinds of cultural events during the 1930s, and socialized with leading figures in politics, business and the arts.
Susan Blumberg-Kason has studied and lived in China, where she first heard of Bernadine and became interested in her story. Bernadine’s Shanghai Salon is a fascinating and entertaining book; it reads almost like a novel, but it is the result of extensive research, with copious footnotes, bibliography, a timeline of Bernadine’s life and a list of the many characters. Most of the documents Susan used are unpublished manuscripts and letters, which make the book even more unusual and intriguing.
