Den australske tilflytter Alan Palamountain skrev under pseudonymet Tasman Ile i 1929 romanen Shanghai Nights. Han var da 26 år. Romanen er en kulørt historie om en tilflyttet amerikaner, der bliver gift med en smuk, men beregnende kinesisk pige. Romanen afspejler den racisme, som var normen i de hvide kredse i Shanghai. Den tager sin begyndelse i det tidlige forår 1927 under et teselskab på Hotel Astor. Den engelske journalist James Endsley sidder her sammen med sin amerikanske kollega Harold Desmeyer og betragter klientellet. Desmeyer får øje noget, han ikke tidligere var vant til at se:
”By jove!” he exclaimed in surprise, ”how long has this sort of thing been going on?” directing his companion’s attention to a table across the polished dance-floor.
Endsley looked. He saw seated thereat a young foreign girl whom he took to be one of his own country-folk, a young shipping clerk whom he knew - by reputation - as one of the hundreds of similar young men of the city of just that age likely to lead him into troubles both moral and financial in the Far East, and a young Chinese couple.
Of the latter the young woman alone wore her national dress. That is to say, as much of it as the modern young Chinese woman considers sufficient in order to maintain connection with her relatives and yet allow her to seek the company of the dashing young Westerner who will lead her into the mysteries and - to her - fascinating paths of the foreigner.
The young woman on whom Endsley’s eyes rested was of that type which is rapidly carving for itself a niche in the changing social plain of this Paris of the East. Indeed, as Endsley presently remarked, she was but one of thousands whose lives have been deeply influenced by contact with europeans and Americans and she had, it could easily be seen from the shyless demeanour and cigarette between her scarlet lips, already taken several steps up the “social” ladder of the city.
She was speaking rapidly, in English to her companion, her cigarette punctuating her remarks, the smoke curling upwards about her sharply-vivid face in misty spirals - incense to the Goddess of Modernism.
“Oh that,” said Endsley at length, “is becoming a common enough sight these days. It is quite easy to see that you have been neglecting your studies, Steve. If this surprises you old man, you had better come along with me some night and get educated. I tell you, this is getting to be a bum town for us foreigners. What with all these returning students dragging out their little ‘almond-eyes’ for a round of jazz, and the local talent, not to be beaten, pulling out their prize peacocks for an exhibition of terpsichore, we’re gonna be crowded right off the dance-floors before we know it. There are so many of the blighters that even if the craze affects only one-half per cent of the population of this burg we’ll have so many crowding around us, we shan’t be able to find our own friends.”