More Gypsies in Old Shanghai

I have written about the small Roma (gypsy) community in 1930s Shanghai previously (if you’d like a copy of that paper it’s on Academia.edu or just email me via this blog) and so it’s good to come across another reference to them. This time from the journalist and writer Ilin Natalia Losifovna (1914-1944), a White Russian from Harbin (born in Russia but left as a small child) who moved to Shanghai in the 1930s and wrote for various Russian emigre journals (sometimes under the pen name “Miss Peng”). She was apparently close to the great singer and sometime Shanghai nightclub owner Alexander Vertinsky and, like him, returned to the USSR around 1943. In her autobiography Roads and Destiny she describes a gypsy dance troupe in 1930s Shanghai:

Men in sequined vests, women in multicolored skirts and shawls, their necklaces jangling… The famous Shurik is dancing; he is dark-skinned, aged nine. Beautiful Masha is dancing too, she is about fifteen. Both of them are snatching one-dollar and five dollar banknotes the customers give them.

Of course, as was often the case, this could be regular White Russians done up like gypsies to capitalise on the popularity of gypsy entertainers in the city, but it’s still interesting.