The travelogue author Aage Krarup Nielsen was traveling in China in spring 1927. In his book ”The Dragon Stirs” that was published in Denmark the next year, he describes his journey by ship from Hong Kong to Shanghai in May. Aage Krarup Nielsen arrived in Shanghai by boat from Hong Kong after playing mahjong with a group of young, wealthy Chinese aboard the ship:
I wouldn't really have minded continuing the game of mahjon until we reached Japan or Honolulu, but all the dull grey armored vessels filling the harbor of Shanghai and all the barbwire fences and sandbag barricades drew me back to reality and reminded me that I wasn't in China to make excursions across the Pacific, so while ”Taioy Maru” floats on towards the sunlit islands of Hawaii with the small Misses Wong and others take my place at the mahjong table, I roll into the busy anthill of Shanghai; the city that is the final solid rock of the white race in the Chinese maelstrom.
More than ever before, Shanghai has become the fortified tower from which you gaze vigilantly over the churning sea of millions that's Shanghai.
In the cover of the wall of steel that the foreign powers and the local volunteer corps has raised around Shanghai, the most deeply diverse of the proper China policy meet.
(...)
Countless Chinese slip behind the protective barbwire fence of the concessions to hide. Wealthy merchants whose wealth the warring parties seek to extort or political refugees, sure to lose their head the second their opponents get to them.
Even the steady stream of Russian Communists, still traveling between Moscow and the revolutionary headquarters in Hankow safely stay in Shanghai or flee to the city when they draw too much heat in China.
Despite the great disruption to the ordinary, legitimate trade due to the chaotic circumstances and the constant complaints from men of business, one would be wrong to assume that Shanghai is a ghost town at the moment. Not only do the thousands of soldiers and sailors stationed in the city spur commerce, it is also an open city that there is an eager sale of military supplies to the warring parties, despite all agreements between the great powers to not supply the Chinese.
Strange, new companies keep popping up, its owners and business shrouded in secrecy. A horde of adventurers and soldiers of fortune has descended on the city to exploit the chaos. Smuggling of weapons, cocaine and morphine has reached a massive scale and nothing seems to make a dent in it.
Shanghai has always been a city where you played hard and the tense situation has done nothing to dampen this. On the contrary, people dance and party as merrily as ever. People still gamble millions away at the race court and at the night time restaurants the champagne pops just as eagerly whether the northern or southern party wins. A steady stream of young Russians dance across the parquets to replace the ones who moved on to Tientsin or Hankow or whose dance ended.
It's these Russian dancing girls who above all mark the night time entertainment. Every year, a new generation blossoms from the impoverished Russian diaspora and many dance – whether by choice or necessity – into Shanghai's nightlife with its hard-earned pleasures.
But the merriment of the night doesn't erase the gravity of the day. Even though it is now certain that the mob of the Chinese city won't be allowed to wash over the foreign districts in a flood of destruction some day, the problems haven't been solved.
The formidable steel walls of armored cars and tanks, the aerial eskadrilles that make their daily rounds above the city, the British and Indian regiments that makes the heart of all foreign Shanghailanders swell as they serve as the very image of order and precision, strength and steely will in the middle of uncertain times – none of this answers the great question: ”What is the future of the white man in China?” For how many years will people back in the UK have the patience to support this great expedition into China and what policy will the great powers agree on in the days to come? Will a firm hand be applied or will events be allowed to run their course?
The Chinese population celebrated in the streets as the nationalists moved in during late March, relieved to be free of the undisciplined gangs of soldiers from Shantung and hoping that after the long, hard years they were at the brink of better times. But in the days since, the Nanking government has enacted so many taxes and used so much violence and threats to extort the Chinese merchant class of the city that they're now begging for the northern party to resume control of the city. Nor has the Nanking government found much support among the workers. When Chiang Kai-Shek turned on the Communists he didn't put too fine a point on it and executed a large number of the working class leaders, strike commanders and red agitators who had cominated the city and deprived the unions, all marked by Communism, of their power.
From Aage Krarup Nielsen: Dragen vaagner. Oplevelser fra en rejse gennem Kina [= The Dragon Stirs. Experiences of a Journey throught China]. C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1928, pp. 45-50.