Foreign angels and demons in Chris Taylor’s debut novel

For better or worth

The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai is a debut novel with great promise

One photojournalist’s ambitious attempt to tell the story of modern China through photos

American writer Emily Hahn

Emily Hahn was brilliant, beautiful and shameless. Arriving in the city in 1935, she rapidly scandalized Shanghai society by taking a Chinese lover, an addiction to opium and a gibbon named Mr. Mills. And if her behavior was eccentric, it was not without precedent; her convoluted route to Shanghai had taken in a 3,900 km car journey across the United States disguised as a man, two years living with a pygmy tribe in the Belgian Congo and a crossing of central Africa, alone and on foot.