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My father was a millionaire in Shanghai in the 1930s. Polo ponies, a Sikh chauffeur, a villa on eight acres in Hungiao, in the western part of the city. Nights out with my mother at the Cercle Sportif Francais, the Venus Cafe, the Cathay Hotel, the Del Monte - those were the details of his life. He was also an insurance salesman and a smuggler, an importer-exporter and a prisoner, a borrower and a spender, leading, much of the time, a charmed life, always seeming to play the odds and for a long time coming out on top. On the day he was born, in the province of Shantung, neighbors presented my missionary grandparents, the only Americans for miles, with noodles in great abundance and one hundred chicken eggs, in honor of their son's birth.

- From Distant Land of My Father: A Novel of Shanghai by Bo Caldwell