Bookshelf: Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China

When we first meet Bernardine Szold, it’s 1929, and she’s on a train heading for Dairen (Dalian) to marry her fourth husband, suffering dreadful pre-wedding jitters (or perhaps it’s simply a premonition?). Chester Fritz, that fourth husband, did turn out be a mistake, but he had one thing going for him: Shanghai.

In dynamic, worlds-meeting Shanghai, Bernardine—bored and lonely–starts a salon, bringing together for the first time Chinese and foreigners, addressing cutting-edge topics. When she can’t accommodate all the people who want to come, she starts a theater, producing plays, ballets, and organizing lectures. Nearly every famous name who lived in, or visited, Old Shanghai attended Bernardine’s salons or productions. She was a fascinating character, the center of a vast social whirl, yet history has recorded her as a minor character—when it recorded her at all—and often misrepresented her.