Shanghai between the two world wars was not one but three cities: the International Settlement with its businesses, its Fifth Avenue and Bond Street all rolled into one in the form of bustling Nanking Road; the French Concession with its own Champs Elysees, Avenue Joffre, and its Rue du Consulat with arcaded shops modeled after Paris's Rue Rivoli; and the "native city," its wall long gone but its narrow and fetid streets still home to most of Shanghai's hardy Chinese population. There they scrambled to survive, packed like sardines into narrow alleyways of ramshackle shops and houses. Most foreigners never went there. The cliché of the two worlds which never meet could well have been coined in Shanghai.

Separate lives, yes, but the Chinese world and the foreign one met every single day in the two concessions (which from their inception had never been able to maintain their "foreigners-only" residency policy). In addition to the Chinese who actually lived there it was Chinese ricksha coolies who plied its streets and broad boulevards, Chinese who waited on the Western ladies while they shopped, who served them their afternoon tea, were their cooks, their amahs, their "No. 1 Boys" -- in fact provided all the services that made life for the foreign taitai free of care and toil (and consequently sometimes a trifle boring).

The picture changed when the foreign refugees started pouring in, first the impoverished Russians fleeing the Revolution and then the Germans, Austrians and Poles, most often Jewish, fleeing Nazism. Unlike the earlier Europeans these late-comers had little money and no protective passports. The Russians competed with the Chinese for their jobs in the service industries, often jobs no foreigner had ever before deigned to do.

The Russians actually added glitter to this fabulous city. The dance halls and cabarets began to feature those most exotic of flowers, tall fair-haired Russian girls who could be hired, could entertain and be entertained -- all for a price of course. Now the entrances of upscale nightclubs were guarded by imposing Russians with flaring mustaches and in dashing uniforms, even more dashing than the dusky Sikh policemen in their colorful turbans in the International Settlement. Did any city in the world truly have so much to offer its residents, such an international atmosphere, so much sophistication and glamour? Certainly the Shanghailanders thought not.

From morning to night the city throbbed and hummed, commerce flourished and money flowed like water -- at least for the fortunate few. And if not today, then perhaps tomorrow; there was money to be made if only you had the right connections or a bit of luck. There was always the Canidrome, jai lai and horse racing to bet on, if you did not wish to be seen at the roulette wheels in the discreet gambling houses in the mansions on the fringes of Frenchtown. More than one fortune sprang from such shaky foundations (although admittedly most were based on the more solid ground of real estate investment).

In the Thirties the city grew by leaps and bounds and construction continued (interestingly enough, even through the Japanese occupation of the foreign concessions and indeed almost until the war's end). The Bund ran out of prestigious plats. Fortunes amassed in opium trading grew in land speculation as the city spread farther and farther to the west, as the wealthy -- Westerners and Chinese alike -- built their mansions in the quieter, greener suburbs which lay beyond the concession boundaries. Much of the city we now know sprang from that glittering late pre-war era.

The Shanghailanders, unlike the native-born Shanghainese who could read their tea leaves better, thought it would never end. By 1939 the Japanese were all around them and World War II had engulfed Europe but it was business -- and pleasure -- as usual in the concessions of Shanghai. Did the Russians sometimes recall their old proverb, "What good is gaiety and laughter in the old sleigh when that thing at your elbow is a wolf?"

The wolf was at the door and on December 8, 1941, the door to the concessions was thrust open by the Japanese conquerors. The time had come for the Westerners to pay the piper for the dance, their long long dance. Life for the foreigners in Shanghai would never be the same again. It lives now only in their memories.