In Tasman Ile’s (Alan Palamountain) novel Shanghai Nights, published by the author in 1929 (), the metropolis’ status as a gateway between east and west is portrayed through the metaphor of a split-up household: For once the seductive/destructive power of Shanghai is not only played out in the stereotypical romantic relationship between a Chinese woman and a European or American man. Rather it is the union of a wealthy Chinese merchant and an impoverished British woman, which produces the ethnically mixed offspring that is Shanghai.

Alas, far from resulting in harmony between the Occident and the Orient, the daughter despises both her parents: “Her feelings were then double-barreled – scorn for her mother for having married a Chinese; hate of her father for being one.” (36)

Not surprisingly, she is herself the victim of the same cultural logic, which makes it impossible for her to accept her parents. Unable to bridge the two cultural spheres of her parents, she fails to belong to either side: “a girl upon the world who from her birthday wore a double yoke – unwanted by the Occident; despised by the Orient.” (37)

Zhang Ailing’s (张爱玲) ‘Aloeswood Incense’ (沉香屑·第一炉香) is another example of how the traditional motif of the seductive/destructive metropolis is transposed and complexified. In this short story, first published in 1943, the Shanghainese protagonist develops a taste for Hong Kong high society and falls in love with the dashing ‘mixed-blood’ playboy, George Qiao.

Here, in contrast to Shanghai Nights, being poly-ethnic seems desirable as witnessed by the unsurpassed popularity of George’s sister: “This was Zhou Jijie, peerless among the party girls of Hong Kong’s younger set. Her genealogy was said to be very complicated; it included, at the minimum, Arab, Negro, Indian, Indonesian, and Portuguese blood, with only a dash of Chinese.” (Zhang 2006: 38, translated by Karen S. Kingsbury)

Yet the practical problems facing these jet-setters, as a result of cultural agoraphobia and plain racism, are the same: “We can’t marry Chinese – we’ve got foreign-style educations, so we don’t fit in with the pure Chinese types. We can’t marry a foreigner, either – have you seen any whites here who aren’t deeply influenced by race concepts?” (ibid. 44)

Though Ile’s novel quickly descends into a cliché narrative of the Shanghai seductress, these two stories never the less add an interesting multiethnic perspective to the cosmopolitan status of Shanghai and Hong Kong, reminding their readers that what we embrace today as multiculturalism was often a carefully managed coexistence of separate groups with difficult lives in store for the few who transgressed the cultural boundaries.