Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher

Shanghai Takes it On the Chin

“I hate to see the rich kids in the cabarets, I hate to see the refugees, I hate to see the lousy foreigners in Packards and minks. Lots of money is being made now on the market and in business—but the Chinese peasant is taking it on the proverbial chin.”

In November, 1939, Melville Jacoby arrived in Shanghai, China. Having just earned his master's degree in journalism from Stanford, Mel returned to China two years after studying there as an exchange student. Mel arrived in Shanghai with no work, but a raft of letters of recommendation from newsmen and scholars who had been impressed by a presentation Mel made of his research into California newspapers' coverage of China and Japan in the run-up to a war that had been raging since the summer of 1937, just as Mel completed his exchange year. As Mel hunted for work in Shanghai, he discovered a city packed with thousands of Jewish refugees who'd been turned away by every other port on Earth. It was a city occupied by Japan, though still nominally internationally-controlled, as it had been for decades. Here are some selections of how the city looked to Mel:

Here's how I described Mel's impression of Shanghai in Eve of a Hundred Midnights:

“But if you aren’t British or French or American or if your country hasn’t got enough gunboats it isn’t so international,” Mel wrote, referring to the many foreigners who came to Shanghai butwere not nationals of countries that enjoyed extraterritorial powers. Paradoxically, among the most disenfranchised populations in Shanghai were Chinese nationals. And though Shanghai maintained much of its international identity when Mel arrived in 1939, in the two years since the Battle of Shanghai, Japan had consolidated power there and grown increasingly belligerent toward both the Chinese and Westerners.
“The Western world is being squeezed out of China,” Mel wrote. “Their last opening wedges—the foreign concessions—are fastly becoming subject to Japanese pressure.”
Even as the Japanese took over, Mel found Shanghai society distastefully out of touch. When he went to exchange money at the American Express office, the bright blue travel pamphlets inside always seemed disconcerting to him, especially when a stretch of cold nights hit Shanghai and he saw humanitarian workers piling the bodies of Chinese laborers who had frozen to death into their trucks. Shanghai, the people in it, and the way the local Chinese were treated strained Mel’s patience to the point of anger. He said as much in one form or another in most of his letters.
“I hate to see the beggars (I’ll see millions more),” he wrote. “I hate to see the rich kids in the cabarets, I hate to see the refugees, I hate to see the lousy foreigners in Packards and minks. Lots of money is being made now on the market and in business—but the Chinese peasant is taking it on the proverbial chin.”
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Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher

Bombing Season

Three quarters of a century ago, today, at the height of “bombing season,” World War II correspondent Melville Jacoby took a brief break from his radio broadcasts for NBC, his writing and photography for Time and Life magazines to write to his mother and stepfather about life in wartime Chungking, or Chongqing, then the capital of China.

Three quarters of a century ago, today, Melville Jacoby took a brief break from his radio broadcasts for NBC, his writing and photography for Time and Life magazines, and his chaotic search for a panda -- yes, a panda -- to write to his mother and stepfather about life in wartime Chungking, or Chongqing, then the capital of China.

Though the two-page letter was heavy with detail, Mel apologized for not writing more.

"Please say hello to the family for me," he wrote. "I just can't possibly write now. Perhaps a little later after bombing season."

Bombing season. Think about that for a second. A time of year when enemy bombers were such a regular sight overhead that you never fully unpacked from air raid evacuations. You became used to the idea that an air raid will regularly interrupt your day, as if it's an inconvenience like the 4 p.m. Southern Pacific train that slows your commute. You reach a point when you can't help but be reminded of bombs even when there aren't enemy planes overhead, as Mel did every time he fell asleep in Chungking's Press Hostel:

"I can see the sky from my bed quite clearly, but we call it home," Mel wrote of the compound where many foreign journalists lived and worked together. It was an uncomfortable home, one that a shift in Japanese tactics made less comfortable by the day, but it was still home.

For more about Melville Jacoby, wartime Chungking, and life in the Press Hostel, check out Eve of a Hundred Midnights.

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Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher

The Year that Changed Mel...And China

Melville Jacoby's interest in China can be traced back to 1936. That year and into 1937, during what would have been Mel's junior year at Stanford University, he went to China as an exchange student. There, he studied in the southern port city of Canton (that was the English transliteration of the time; it is now commonly transliterated as Guangzhou). He joined other American and Chinese students on the campus of Lingnan University (which still exists in another form in Hong Kong, while its original campus remains as part of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou).

Melville Jacoby's interest in China can be traced back to 1936. That year and into 1937, during what would have been Mel's junior year at Stanford University, he went to China as an exchange student. There, he studied in the southern port city of Canton (that was the English transliteration of the time; it is now commonly transliterated as Guangzhou). He joined other American and Chinese students on the campus of Lingnan University (which still exists in another form in Hong Kong, while its original campus remains as part of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou).

The year was as transformative for China as it was for Mel. That December, China's then leader, Chiang Kai-Shek (Jiang Jieshi) was kidnapped and held under house arrest near the city of Sian (Xi'an), leaving Chinese politics in a lurch. Though the crisis was resolved two weeks later with new (temporary) cooperation between Chinese communists and Chiang's Kuomintang (Guomindang) Party, by the summer of 1937 China went to war with Japan. Mel was there when the fighting began, and the conflict that became World War II would dominate the rest of his life and work.

But Mel was also a fairly typical 20-year-old student when he was at Lingnan, and the following pictures depict the life of a western student at Lingnan, as well as some of what Mel saw in surrounding regions of China. To see more pictures, click on the "Images of the Past" button in the menu and choose a portion of Mel's life.

Read more about Mel's story today in Eve of a Hundred Midnights, available now!

 

 

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Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher

Come for the Book Cover and Release Date, Stay for the Food Poisoning

So, I could tell you a story about food poisoning and crazy rides across the Philippines, but I suspect you want to know what the cover of my book looks like, or what its final title and release date will be, or how you can pre-order it, or read about some fascinating characters from Portland who played both heroic and sinister roles in World War II.

So, I could tell you a story about food poisoning and crazy rides across the Philippines, but I suspect you want to know what the cover of my book looks like, or what its final title and release date will be, or how you can pre-order it, or read about some fascinating characters from Portland who played both heroic and sinister roles in World War II. So let's get to it!

Coming June 21, 2016 from William Morrow & Co:


It was QUITE a long road to get here, but I'm thrilled to say that outside of one last proofread for style and clarity, the manuscript of my book, Eve of a Hundred Midnights, is complete. You can expect to pick it up from your favorite bookseller on June 21, 2016. I'll send out proper pre-order links once a few more booksellers' websites have bene updated, but the intrepid among you may find some on my publisher's web site. 

Meanwhile, while you're waiting to read the book, take a glance at this month's edition of Portland Monthly, which explored the heroes, villains and rogues from Portland's history. I looked at two of these characters. One was Japan's foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, who yanked his country out of the League of Nations and into the arms of the Axis with Germany and Italy, and was also raised by a Portland family and a graduate of the University of Oregon School of Law. The other was Hazel Ying Lee, a heroic pilot born in Portland and the first American woman of Chinese descent to fly for the U.S. military. Lee was one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, though she died just before finishing her service with the program. 

Both stories were fascinating subjects that I only learned about in working on this book; I've discovered so many in this long process and hope to share more as time and resources allow.

Lapu-Lapu's Revenge

But, hey, you don't care about covers and book titles and magazine articles, right? I bet what you really want to read about is intestinal infortitude. Well, I give readers what they want, so read on!

As I was sprawled on my bathroom floor early this morning after an entirely unwelcome repeat encounter with last night's dinner, it occurred to me that last time I had food poisoning I was in Shanghai. High above the South China Sea, my stomach felt as tumultuous as relations between the country I was leaving, the Philippines, and the one to which I was returning, China. 

This was a rapid turnaround from a few hours earlier, when I'd bought myself lechon to celebrate finding a key location in my book -- an abandoned beach club that was once used as a hideout by Mel, Annalee and their friends as they escaped the Philippines. It was on the island of Cebu, a skinny sliver a few hundred miles southeast of Manila, in a town just outside Cebu City, the island's capital. Aside from its role in my story, Cebu is known for lechon, and I was eager to try it. But because roasting a pig to make lechon, it's only available for a brief window every evening. Given how compressed my time on Cebu was, I had to make book research my priority.

It had been all I could do not to just give it up, get some lechon, skip the research and park myself on some sterile resort beach on the nearby island of Mactan. The night before I reached Cebu, I'd arrived by ferry to the port of Caticlan on the northwest tip of the island of Panay. A gazillion tour operators convinced I was confused, didn't want to go south, but instead wished to visit nearby resort-heavy Boracay descended upon me. I shook them off, insisted I was headed south, and squeezed myself into a packed van bound immediately -- I was assured -- for Iloilo, on the other side of the island.

Two hours after I was told we would leave, I began a frightening ride wedged on a front bench, seatbelt-less, between the driver and another passenger, with my backpack at my feet. We finally left just as it began raining, a condition that paired swimmingly with my driver's speed down the winding, two-lane highway that hugged the edge of Panay. Texting the entire way and apparently quite frustrated by the person on the other end of the line, he weaved around construction sites, slowing only to cross himself whenever we passed a churchyard. All the while he crooned along with to the 80s power-rock ballads burned on CDs that he flipped in and out of the stereo. My only sanity came from joining the driver for renditions of familiar Journey and Bon Jovi tunes I'd absorbed as a child in 1980s America; when you're far from halfway anywhere and it's clear the man behind the wheel is driving on a prayer, belting out "Wh-oa, we're half way there" takes on new significance. When we finally stopped three hours later so my driver could take a pit stop (and call the friend he'd been texting), I decided  not to prolong the ordeal on another ride across Negros, then Cebu, and used the sliver of cell phone reception I had to blow my budget and spend $40 on the next plane ticket I could get from Iloilo to Cebu (yes, by that point, forty unexpected dollars were a big budget excess). Five hours after leaving caticlan, I found the one decrepit hotel in Iloilo still accepting new guests at that late hour, slept in my clothes for two more, took a cold shower, then left for the airport as soon as it was open.

This is all to say that when I reached Cebu, a beach day sounded really nice. But I was determined to find the reporters' temporary hideout. Fortunately, locating it -- a story, perhaps, for another time -- also meant finding a beach, albeit not one with glimmering white sands or an endless supply of cocktails at the ready (though one with stunning views that Annalee and Mel would have shared, and one with amazing, hospitable locals who invited me onto their porches). After sticking through to find the club, lechon seemed like a good reward, and I enlisted a group of boys in the nearby village to help me find the best stand around. Despite their dogged efforts, every place the boys took me was closed (as were other eateries). So I decided instead to save myself some hassle and grab a cab back to Cebu City and the airport on Mactan. On the way, I was happy to see that one of Cebu's most highly-touted lechon restaurants had a location near the airport. I was early for my flight, so I told my driver to stop there so I could get my long-anticipated award.

To be honest, the the smoothie I had there was better than the lechon, though I know understand the error of ordering a smoothie in a place where one is urged not to drink the water. While I'm not sure which dish led to the bacterial infection I'd discover in a few hours on my flight to Shanghai, my lechon stop came with another bonus. I'd already spent my remaining pesos on the cab and didn't want to withdraw more before leaving the Philippines, so I used a credit card to pay. I hadn't been worried about security as the place I was eating was a widely-known, well-appointed business on Cebu. But a week later, after I was back in the United States, the bank that issued that card called me to ask if I'd indeed spent $12,000 on sporting goods from Under Armor. Besides not knowing HOW one spends twelve grand on sporting goods, given how frequently I've hit my head on credit limits this year I couldn't help but be amused by the absurdity of the matter; fortunately my laughing credit card rep could see how absurd the situation was and immediately understood that I hadn't authorized the purchase.

This is all to say that when I woke up at 3:30 this morning with my stomach reeling, I realized that the last time I spent seven hours half-awake and crouched over a toilet was in the stall of a Shanghai hostel's co-ed bathroom, where I voided the last of that lechon. Thankfully, I maintained my composure just long enough to avoid doing so across a Chinese customs inspector's desk. Dodging the international incident that was sure to come just long enough, I instead ejected my meal in an airport bathroom, then gathered my faculties enough to repeatedly shout "búyào" (don't want) at the taxi-scammers who even at 1:30 a.m. swarmed around lǎowài (foreigners) like me, rode to the city, and began my uncomfortable introduction to Shanghai. I took the next three days to recover, but I finally did, and with just enough time to grab one more Chinese meal before I left for my long flight back to the United States. 

I recount all this because I'm also reminded of another fact; as uncomfortable as my food-poisoning was and as harrowing as I may have found my journey across Panay, I experienced it fully aware that Mel and Annalee's own journey to Cebu had been on a boat that had to travel by night, that it they had taken it panicked by Japanese reconnaissance planes that circled over their heads on idyllic Philippines beaches, and that they'd fled again just before an enemy cruiser reached Cebu and shelled the city, only to sail into an ocean filled with threats hoping one day to tell their story. 

I hope I've done justice to that story. You'll be able to decide whether I have done so on June 21.

P.S. If you'd like to help me acquire my own sporting goods, Pepto-Bismol or seatbelt, I'd truly appreciate your contribution.

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Melville Jacoby, Current Events Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, Current Events Bill Lascher

When We Recognize Yesterday In Today

"Chaos has made wanderers out of 15,000,000 people. These people, not only Jews, torn from their homes will soon command the world's attention. For unless an intelligent situation is found, the dire effects of mass migrations will be felt over and over again during the coming centuries. It is hardly up to the refugees themselves. They are so completely befuddled that only happenstance guides their course."

"Chaos has made wanderers out of 15,000,000 people. These people, not only Jews, torn from their homes will soon command the world's attention. For unless an intelligent situation is found, the dire effects of mass migrations will be felt over and over again during the coming centuries. It is hardly up to the refugees themselves. They are so completely befuddled that only happenstance guides their course."

From "Jews in Exile" by Melville Jacoby, writing as Mel Jack, for the Los Angeles Times on January 14, 1940. As 1939 began, about 70 Jewish people lived in Shanghai, China. As war broke out across Europe, Jews forced to flee the conflict and the Holocaust were turned around by nations all over the world, including the United States. Because of its unique status as an international city, Shanghai was one of the few places to allow refugees to enter, and the city's Jewish population swelled to around 17,000 by the time Mel was there, though, as Mel wrote, the city and its leaders would soon clamp down on this population.

Sound familiar?

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Travel, Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher Travel, Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher

Accounting for Modalities

Given that many people in the United States are thinking about accounting today, I thought I'd share some of the raw numbers from my recent trip to China and the Philippines, but rather than detail how much money I spent (speaking of which, you are welcome to complicate my 2015 taxes by donating here), I thought I'd share the following summary of the many journeys within a journey I took while traveling through China, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Canada and the United States:

Feet shredded while walking miles through eleven cities, many small villages, one former military stronghold and atop, along and around ruined portions of a gigantic wall: 2

Subway systems used more frequently than can be tallied: 6

Personal cars ridden with a buddhist who would later host an elaborate tea ceremony, an atheist tour guide raised in a cave, and two precocious children: 1

Bridges crossed at which the largest conflict in the history of the world began: 1

Last minute rickshaw rides organized by a guide squeezing in one more sightseeing visit before a thirty-hour train ride: 1

A thirty-hour train ride between China's current capital and the city that served as its capital during World War II: 1 

Given that many people in the United States are thinking about accounting today, I thought I'd share some of the raw numbers from my recent trip to China and the Philippines, but rather than detail how much money I spent (speaking of which, you are welcome to complicate my 2015 taxes by donating here), I thought I'd share the following summary of the many journeys within a journey I took while traveling through China, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Canada and the United States:

Feet shredded while walking miles through eleven cities, many small villages, one former military stronghold and atop, along and around ruined portions of a gigantic wall: 2

Subway systems used more frequently than can be tallied: 6

Personal cars ridden with a buddhist who would later host an elaborate tea ceremony, an atheist tour guide raised in a cave, and two precocious children: 1

Bridges crossed at which the largest conflict in the history of the world began: 1

Last minute rickshaw rides organized by a guide squeezing in one more sightseeing visit before a thirty-hour train ride: 1

A thirty-hour train ride between China's current capital and the city that served as its capital during World War II: 1 

Taxi trips: 17

Flights: 11

Airport tramways and buses: 2

City bus systems: 3

Trains at normal speed: 2

Sleeper cars upgraded to after riding in crowded coaches: 1

Monorails not in Brockway, Ogdenville or North Haverbrook because by gum it put them on the map: 1

Light rail systems: 4

Subway rides cut off by construction: 1

Alleyway stairs climbed and descended: ∞

Walks through the rubble of destroyed ancient neighborhoods: ≥ 4

Paths cut through crowds of cruise-hawking street vendors in search of urban planning museums that turn out closed and impossible to find despite their focus on planning: 1

Ropeway trams crossing China's longest river:1

Cabs packed with an old calligrapher/musician, an absent-minded poet and a former magazine publisher bringing you to the calligrapher's underground studio filled with beautiful artifacts: 1

Trips on high speed railways so new they don't yet show up in online rail guides: 4

Train stations visited so recently constructed that they are miles away from any construction and surrounded by dirt parking lots: 1

High speed train café cars ridden in because railway conductors snuck me through heavy police state security despite incorrect ticket date: 1

Provincial minibuses blasting techno: 1

Dirt streets walked in a town that was the birthplace of the leader of a 19th century rebellion that led to 20 million deaths: ≥3

Spontaneous scooter rides to a destination found despite language barriers by showing digitized stills of eight-decade-old 16mm film to strangers in a streetside dentist's garage exam room:1

Makeshift three-wheel vans shared with a Chinese man who wants to show off his English language skills to an American: 1

Wood-paneled minibuses: 1

Pedestrian border crossings surrounded by hard-selling counterfeit clothing retailers: 1

Alleyways packed with citizens of seemingly every country in the world drinking and dancing outside of generic bars: 3

Double-decker buses precariously perched on a beautiful island road in a former British colony: 1

Double decker street trolleys: 2

Street performances led to by a retired American chiropractor swigging a glass of red wine aboard one such trolley: 1

Inexpensive night ferries filled with tourists gazing at the neon skyline of a bustling global city: 1

Ferries between Chinese special administrative regions: 2

Casino buses used as transport to or from the historic core of a former Portuguese colony: 2

Municipal airport shuttle buses ridden while seated backwards: 1

Buses boarded by women who preach in Tagalog for the last phase of a trip to a ridgetop resort above a volcanic lake: 1

Inexpensive and colorful, if crowded, jeepneys: 3

Inter-city buses playing weird, staticy melodramatic sci-fi: 1

Taxis whose drivers unsuccessfully try to claim broken meters or broker special “deals” that are twice as much as a normal fare: ∞

Claustrophobically overcrowded metro rail lines in overly congested island nation capitals: 1

Ferries to or from former World War II fortresses: 2

Park concessionaire tour vans ridden as the only member of the tour and rushed through even though the rider would have been happy tagging along with the tour following his: 1

Island jeeps whose drivers invite pedestrians on sun-blasted landscapes to hitch up a hill: 2

Lengths swum across a pool improbably placed on the site of aforementioned island fortress: 20

Jungle paths blindly wandered down as monkeys and geckos screech in surrounding trees: 3

Gigantic underground wartime tunnels explored: 1

Stretches of dry field chased across by monkeys: 1

Wifi-enabled buses playing Zero Dark Thirty as they crossed beautiful, rain-drenched tropical scenery: 1

Ferries ridden across darkened waters as lightning flashes all around during the dead of night: 1

Motor-tricycle sidecars ridden to crummy hotels: 1

Tricycle back seats: 1

Intercity vans accompanied by stuffed crabs: 1

Tricycle sidecars ridden to remote beach villages the rider knows from viewing the same town in photographs taken by wartime journalists fleeing pursuit by enemy forces: 1

Uneventful island van rides while staring lazily at the scenery: 1

Six-hour long ferry rides that were two hours longer than advertised and spent barefoot in the sun, staring at the sea and an island that once sheltered journalists on the run: 1

Terrifying late night rides across Philippine islands without seatbelts in the center front seat of a van driven by a guy texting half the time as he speeds wildly, despite rain, windy roads, roadwork and oncoming traffic, all of which is accompanied by his crooning to 70s and 80s power ballads and his crossing of himself each time his vehicle passes a church: 1

International flights taken while coming down with crippling food poisoning: 1

Passport control and customs lines waited in while convinced vomiting will commence immediately: 1

Epically long taxi rides with said food poisoning lingering, but driven by a man who compliments the rider on his Mandarin, even though in reality it is quite poorly spoken: 1

Passport controls where the traveler's home country's border officials give far more trouble than those of other nations: 1

What were  your favorite journeys within a journey? How many different modalities do you tend to use when you travel? Where do you hope to transit between next? Let me know in the comments!

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Melville Jacoby, Travel Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, Travel Bill Lascher

Chongqing Aflame

Beyond the fireworks, you hear Chongqing in honking horns, sizzling streetside frying pans and screams of Sichuanese from every direction. At night, before your eyes, Chongqing's bright lights dance up skyscrapers, the same towers that shoot from fields of strewn rubble and half-buried buildings, far past the smog-smudged apartment blocks they're replacing. Chongqing's scent wafts from grilling meats and fetid alleys.

Chongqing Alley At Night.jpg

I woke to bursts of fireworks this morning. The New Year began only a short time before I arrived in China and the country's Spring Festival has yet to end, so I've learned such a sound doesn't merit particular note.

But this is Chongqing. Here, when I turn down an ancient alley and hear the blasts and pops I can't help but imagine the sounds Mel heard while he was here. The sound is so common that it surrounds, that it seems a part of the landscape. In fact, experienced one way, Chongqing is the most sensual city I've ever visited.

Beyond the fireworks, you hear Chongqing in honking horns, sizzling streetside frying pans and screams of Sichuan from every direction. At night, before your eyes, Chongqing's bright lights dance up skyscrapers, the same towers that shoot from fields of strewn rubble and half-buried buildings, far past the smog-smudged apartment blocks they're replacing. Chongqing's scent wafts from grilling meats and fetid alleys. The taste of Sichuan peppers and the tingle of Má Là numbs your lips while you seek respite for calves strained from climbing interminable stairs and feet sore from wandering meandering alleys.

Though this sensation permeates, so too does its absence. Chongqing flows between tidal extremes, from noise to silence, movement to stillness, energy to calm.

And, as I write, so return the fireworks, as they have done and will again. I wonder: do they mean something more here, where they pepper and blast the sky in ways far longer and more varied than they have elsewhere? I wonder:  Am I hearing the past?

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Melville Jacoby, The Scenic Route Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, The Scenic Route Bill Lascher

Hitting the (Silk) Road

Chongqing was hot. It was loud. It was squalid. It was crowded.

It was home. Chongqing was home.

"You get to like it,” Mel wrote.

Will I like it? Five weeks from today I will wake to my first morning in Beijing on the first leg of a trip through China and the Philippines. In the weeks to follow I hope to visit Guangzhou and Manila, to see Shanghai and Cebu, to ride trains through Guangxi, and to sail through the Visayas. Most importantly, perhaps, I hope to climb from the Yangtze through the exploding megalopolis of Chongqing and, I hope, to find this place Mel and Annalee and so many others once called home. 

Humidity suffocated Chongqing. Mosquitos infested Chongqing. Exhaust from charcoal-burning-buses choked Chongqing. At Chongqing parties flowing with roast duck, scallion pancakes and rice wine, Japanese rebels, German communists and American military attachés mingled with adventure-seekers, mercenaries and bohemians from the world's farthest corners. Outside these bacchanals, Chongqing's cacophonous streets crawled with beggars peddling broken tools and decrepit clothing and stinking of unwashed mothers trying to feed children defecating in the gutters. 

Even in the middle of the night the heat enveloped Chongqing. The city's stink hung across every inhabitant's skin, a blanket as sticky as the countless steps from the shore of the Yangtze were slimy. Noise was as ever-present as the leaden air. Silence was a concept so foreign in this pop-up capital that the word could be cut from dictionary pages and never missed. Clear days meant wailing sirens, and that distant drone that climbed into a roar, a brief, eerie, quiet, then a deceptively distant thud of blasts heard beneath hundreds of feet of stone, "like suction cups plopping against water."

Any other moment meant the noise of teeming masses, conversations and lovemaking unhidden by paper-thin walls, the chatter of work and the constant rattle of typewriters. Countless dialects pooled from China's four corners to this polyglot bastion, as Cantonese and Mandarin and Sichuanese swirled from storefront to storefront. Measured voices of news announcers read morning briefings in the headquarters of XGOY. 

Chongqing was hot. It was loud. It was squalid. It was crowded.

It was home. Chongqing was home.

"You get to like it,” Mel wrote.

***

Will I like it? Five weeks from today I will wake to my first morning in Beijing on the first leg of a trip through China and the Philippines. In the weeks to follow I hope to visit Guangzhou and Manila, to see Shanghai and Cebu, to ride trains through Guangxi, and to sail through the Visayas. Most importantly, perhaps, I hope to climb from the Yangtze through the exploding megalopolis of Chongqing and, I hope, to find this place Mel and Annalee and so many others once called home. 

But I'm nervous. As I mentioned in a postscript on New Year's Day, I've never been to either place. As I prepare, my excitement is beginning to overwhelm me. I feel awakened by the possibilities this trip will present, yet I know I will have hardly enough time to truly discover the place that Mel and Annalee came to love over many years.

And, might I find something else? A new perspective on Melville and Annalee Jacoby and the world that brought them together? Some understanding of two lands whose present selves would be as foreign to the China and the Philippines the Jacobys knew as they will be to my American eyes? Some unquantifiable understanding of myself? What will I find beneath the surface?

Whatever I might find and however limited my time to find it, I must go. How could I not? But I could use your help.

I've asked for money before, so instead I'm asking whether you have non-monetary support in any form you can offer (though I continue to welcome donations or purchases from my store new Amazon wishlist if they're more your style). Do you have words of encouragement? Or might you offer something more concrete? Perhaps you have networks in Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Manila and Cebu or some of the other Chinese and Filipino cities I plan to visit. What about recommendations of places to stay, suggestions for meals, offers of couches, extra frequent flier miles or hotel credits, or thoughts on travel equipment or services? Maybe you can't help me in Asia, but you can on trips late this spring for last-minute archival research in the U.S. I'd certainly welcome any leads or help in New York, Washington, New Haven, Boston, and Columbia, South Carolina.

Again, maybe you just have a nice thing to say. I could really use a random hello or two and an update on your life. The effort I put into this book comes at the cost of a stable job with a predictable routine and consistent income, let alone the community that forms at workplaces. Jobs and schedules can be constrictive, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not nervous and I don't want to be ashamed for seeking some sense of comfort, security and camaraderie. It's not an understatement to say that I've ground my way just to even be here. But I also know I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to travel when so many people don't. I have the flexibility to travel. I get to set my own hours. I have a book deal, and, most importantly, I know this book — and I — will succeed. 

Yes, working on this book is a suffocating, cacophonous and chaotic affair. It is vibrant and joyful. It is disgusting and frightful. It is thriving and it is the confluence of many threads and many thoughts. It is all of these things and it is also home. Now, as an identifiable form emerges from something that seemed so mercurial, I'm getting to like it. 

It's now late in the Portland night, almost exactly one a.m., and as I finish this letter I'm thinking about Mel during his own first trip to China, when he attended school in Canton, the city now known as Guangzhou. Sitting in a dorm room window late one night, he finished a letter to his mother and step-father, which he opened as follows:

"The clatter of wooden shoes and the high pitched jabber of foreign voices has finally ceased. Even the village drums have quit their mighty rattle — in a word, it is now exactly one a.m. and the most glorious Oriental moon imaginable is rising. Its light makes visible the aged salt junks and square rigged whalers on the sluggish river. All this I can see from the window as I sit and write you tonight."

Mel Jacoby, December, 1936, Canton [Guangzhou]

I want to find that window — or whatever has taken its place — and write you words like this, telling you what I see and what I hear.

-Bill

P.S. Do you have a treasured travel trip? Have you ever been to China or the Philippines? What would you want to see if you went there? 

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Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher

The Last Night

A new year looms. As it has since I began unfurling this story, New Year's Eve carries a special meaning. As much as I'm thinking about Mel and Annalee, I'm also thinking about the people who left similar impressions upon them, and upon whom they left their own impressions. They are on my mind as I consider how, 73 years ago tonight, Mel and Annalee made the heartbreaking decision to leave their friends at a Manila hotel, run to the city's burning docks and leap aboard the last boat sailing into a dark, mine-strewn harbor before the Japanese entered the Philippines' capital. It was not an easy decision; the people they left behind were their colleagues, their friends, their fellow "soldiers of the press." They were, as I've addressed before, their tribe.

"This wasn't just Manila's last night of freedom. This was the last night the thirty-two reporters packed into the Bay View would spend together. A group bonded as tightly as any army platoon in the heat of battle -- many of whom had served alongside one another for years in the heat and stink and drama of China's wartime capital, Chongqing (then known as Chungking), where they were once so young, so eager and so ready to take on the world -- would soon fracture.”

Dear friends,

It's been a while. Long enough that I wish I had written many more letters to each of you individually. The other week I received a call from a man who stumbled upon a tweet I'd written about a journalist who crossed Mel Jacoby's path in the Philippines. That man was the caller's godfather. The caller told me about the stories his godfather told, what a wonderful man he had been and all the possessions he left the caller with clues to the fantastic life he lived. We struck an instant rapport and I identified immediately with the caller's fascination with his godfather. This whole process of composing this story has been replete with similar connections.

Just this afternoon I set aside a draft of this letter to chat with a barista at the coffee shop I typically haunt. After I brought up something unrelated to my book I learned that the barista's husband is Filipino. His family, the barista told me, experienced some of the war's most horrific experiences, some of which overlapped with what Mel witnessed or reported. As the barista and I spoke, the woman sitting next to me at the counter took interest. In the ensuing conversation I learned a bit about her own family's history. Though a separate story, the introduction opened a deep, meandering discussion that left me feeling inspired about how crucial spontaneous interpersonal interaction remains in this day of channelized media and "social" media.

Now a new year looms. As it has since I began unfurling this story, New Year's Eve carries a special meaning. As much as I'm thinking about Mel and Annalee, I'm also thinking about the people who left similar impressions upon them, and upon whom they left their own impressions. Just this November, I met one of the families of Mel and Annalee's closest friends and colleagues. As the family provided me with intimate glimpses of their parents and the Jacobys' experiences, we struck up our own friendship, one of a few I've been fortunate enough to begin through my work on this book.

All of these people are on my mind as I consider how, 73 years ago tonight, friends and family were on Mel and Annalee's minds. It was that night when Mel and Annalee made the heartbreaking decision to leave their friends at a Manila hotel, run to the city's burning docks and leap aboard the last boat sailing into a dark, mine-strewn harbor before the Japanese entered the Philippines' capital. It was not an easy decision; the people they left behind were their colleagues, their friends, their fellow "soldiers of the press." They were, as I've addressed before, their tribe.

The passage at the beginning of this email is a small sample of what I've written in my book's opening chapter, and I hope it whets your appetite for what is to come. Later the same night Mel, Annalee, and their friend Clark Lee toasted the new year with a bottle of applejack on the darkened deck of the boat they'd escaped upon. As we celebrate the New Year, I thought I'd share a little bit more from my first chapter, particularly, what I wrote about that toast as 1941 blazed into 1942:

"On New Year's Eve, treacherous waters roiled around a burning city and a nation at war. But the three reporters had finally escaped, and for a moment, for one quiet moment in the darkness of Manila harbor, they were just a newlywed couple celebrating the new year with one of their friends.

"In the 21st Century, we plan for New Year's parties like they mean something. Like they'll change our lives. Like where we decide to go determines the sort of year we'll have. Our decision points will be bars, clubs, house parties, restaurants or quiet nights at home. We wonder whether we will spend the holiday with friends or dates, or if we'll spend it alone.

"We toast with Champagne. We toast with beer. We toast with sparkling cider or we toast with nothing at all. The renewal swept in by the calendar's turn leaves us longing for drama and adventure, so we will brave the cold and try new neighborhoods, new bars, new habits and new loves.

"But as 1942 approached Manila, New Year's Eve meant braving the future and a new war. Nineteen-forty-two might not have been a year to welcome with Champagne, but the simple fact of the reporters' survival so far merited celebration. This would be a year for escapes and near misses. It would be a year for tragedy and loss. With 1942 arriving the way it did, a bottle of applejack passed around the deck of a blacked-out freighter made for as good a toast as anything. All the last minute sabotage and looting throughout Manila provided the fireworks.

"'A ninety-million-dollar send-off,' Mel said of the Hollywood-esque theatrics, before the reporters drifted off to sleep."

I can't wait to share what happened when they woke up, and what led them there. Meanwhile, let's all stay in touch in 2015. Write back to this email. Share this project with your friends. Send me a note some time. Give me a call. Knock on my door. I'll try to do the same.

Happy New Year,
Bill

P.S. I have tickets booked to retrace Mel's steps in China and the Philippines this spring. I'll write more about my trip soon, but I'll welcome any suggestions any of you have for these places, and I welcome any introductions you have to people there (and I'd love to see you if by chance you'll be in either place).

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Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher

Happy Holidays From Mel

Here's how Melville Jacoby celebrated the holidays when he was in China as an exchange student in 1936-37: with custom-made holiday cards from Canton, where he studied at Lingnan University.

Here's how Melville Jacoby celebrated the holidays when he was in China as an exchange student in 1936-37: with custom-made holiday cards from Canton, where he studied at Lingnan University.

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