Xiaobai's new book is a dramatic novel in praise of Shanghai's concessions, dripping with historical details and vivid descriptions. Zhang Kun reports.

Shanghai in the 1930s has been a favorite setting for movies and novels at home and abroad. The latest endeavor to return attention to this city is Concessions by the Chinese author Xiaobai, about a half-French half-Chinese photographer who is entangled with a Jewish gunrunner, a terrorist group and the police.

This is the second full-length novel from Xiaobai, who writes under this penname and does not want to reveal his real identity. Since the story was published in the literary bi-monthly Harvest and later published as a book by People's Literature Publishing House, critics have been praising it. A domestic filmmaker has offered to adapt the novel for the big screen.

"Xiaobai has done something totally different," says Feng Tao, a book editor and critic in Shanghai. "He didn't write about the 1930s and the concessions as background for his story - they are the subjects of his writing. He's writing in the tradition of Honore de Balzac."

"Modern history studies have always wanted to break through the bottleneck of historical narration, trying to represent the sounds, smells, ambience, and feelings of the past. I think the novel might be a better instrument to deal with this," Xiaobai says.

From vegetable leaves floating in the harbor to the smell of horse dung on the racecourse, the author succeeds with vivid details and descriptions.

"I've always been concerned about placing an imaginary incident in a particular time and space. If I'm to write about an assassin, I'll have to imagine the density of population on the block, height of the buildings, control of the time and distance, and even how clear the air is," he says.

Xiaobai, 42, says most of the concessions remained unchanged until the late 1980s. Even now, Astor House (also known as Richard's Hotel, the first modern hotel in Shanghai, built in 1846) retains the old floor, reminding Xiaobai of his old shikumen house in Shanghai.

"Ever since Shanghai became an open harbor in the 1840s, there existed in the city a different lifestyle in the dark, completely different from that of the regular citizens' daily lives. You could describe it as heart throbbing, or legendary," he says.