by Chloe Gong
Thank you to the lovely people in the publishing industry who are kind to me for no reason other than to be kind. Thank you to Tasha Suri for answering the many, many questions in my e-mails. Thank you to Morgan Al-Moor for reading this book and making me the coolest aesthetic I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Thank you to Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, for being a wonderful person in general, and for assembling the Avengers of Colour mentorship program, which filled me with such joy. Thank you to everyone in the Roaring Twenties Debut group, the most wonderful community. Here’s to us pushing through one of the most difficult debut years, y’all.
Thank you to the bloggers who were hyping me up before there was even anything publicly available about this book other than a one-line pitch. Thank you to the people I adore on Twitter who send me eye emojis in excitement. Thank you to those who go out of their way to include me. Thank you to CW and all the friends at The Quiet Pond, Shealea, Danielle Cueco, Lily @ Sprinkles of Dreams, Noémie @ Tempest of Books, Karina @ Afire Pages, Tiffany @ Read by Tiffany, Laura @ Green Tea and Paperbacks, Kate @ Your Tita Kate, Fadwa @ Word Wonders, and so, so many more that I know I must be forgetting. And because I can, thank you to Halsey’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom album, which played on repeat while I drafted this book.
Thank you to my earliest, earliest readers, who read this book (and technically, its sequel!) when it was all one big manuscript posted online in installments. It’s almost unrecognizable now except for the character names, but your feedback was critical to molding it into what it is now. To Kelly Ge—you were the very, very first person to hear about the conception of this book as an idea, and encouraged me forward. To Paige Kubenka—your regular comments kept me going and meant the world to me. To Gabrielle, Kamilia, Clairene, Hala, Aubry, Ejay, Tanvi—I don’t know your last names and I don’t know if you know that the story you read got published, but if you’re out there, and you happen to pick up this book again, thank you. The reason why I kept writing all these years was because I knew there was someone out there treasuring my words. Growing up, no matter how shaky my craft was when I first started, I never once doubted the value of my stories because I had readers who spoke up about what they enjoyed. For as long as I have my readers, I can never stop being a writer. Without my readers, I am no writer at all.
So thank you, reader. Thank you for picking up this book.
Author’s Note
Shanghai in the 1920s was a vibrant, divided place, and though much has been made up in These Violent Delights, the atmosphere is as true to history as I could possibly capture. This was a time of political turmoil and factionalism, Nationalist against Communist, and the whole city on a tight string that was only moments away from snapping. Though there was no blood feud, Shanghai really was split: among foreigners, who gained control through unfair treaty terms after China’s loss in the Opium Wars; the French had ahold of the French Concession; the British, Japanese, and Americans were in the International Settlement; and all the injustices that Juliette mentions are pulled right from the history books. Foreigners built parks and demanded the Chinese keep out. They poured funds into the city, and though China was never formally a colony, that was precisely what was going on in Shanghai: segment after segment being colonized.
So Shanghai grew lawless in this climate, and yes—it really was ruled by gangsters! Because each foreign territory was controlled by the country in charge, there were different laws operating in different parts of Shanghai. Add in the rules of extraterritoriality for non-Chinese citizens—meaning foreign citizens could not be persecuted by Chinese law, only the law of their home territory—and it was almost impossible to govern Shanghai as one city. While the Scarlet Gang did not exist, the Scarlets are based on the very real Green Gang (; Qīng Bāng), who were said to have involvement with any crime that occurred in the city. They were unofficially a governing force, and one of the major gangsters—think someone of Lord Cai’s stature—was also working as a detective in the French Concession police. The White Flowers did not exist either, but in this decade, the Russian population in Shanghai had grown large enough to constitute a huge portion of civilians. Shanghai was a free port, so those fleeing the Russian Civil War could easily enter the city, not needing visas or work permits. They were treated terribly by the Western Europeans, and worked the smaller jobs like garbagemen, or poorly paid jobs like club dancers. In my reimagining, there is a reason why the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers are the ones on an equal playing field, grappling for what was left of the city while the foreigners ate it up in big, casual gulps.
Suffice to say, the characters that appear in These Violent Delights are figments of my imagination. Real Nationalists and gangsters collaborated often, true, but all specific names and personalities have been made up. There was indeed a Secretary-General of the Communist Party, but Zhang Gutai was not a real person. That being said, because of later civil warfare, there are huge gaps in the records regarding who held the position of Secretary-General and other various roles, so who’s to say what really went on at this time? Even true history is not entirely sure about itself sometimes: memories are lost, evidence destroyed, logs purposely erased.
What is certain is that there was no monster spreading a contagious throat-tearing epidemic through Shanghai. However, there was hunger and wage depreciation and terrible working conditions, and in real history that was enough to incite hundreds of strikes involving hundreds of thousands of workers in 1926 alone. If I had adhered to a true historical time line and included them all instead of just the one that unfolds at the very end of this book, there would be disruption in every chapter. In the world of These Violent Delights, it was people dropping dead because of madness that intensified the anger and incited revolt. In truth? Even without a rampaging monster, it was bad enough that the labor unions were rising up against foreigners and gangsters alike in an attempt to change the workers’ way of life. As for how it all went down from there, I’ll leave the rest for the author’s note at the back of the sequel.…
About the Author
Author photo © 2019 by Jon Studio
CHLOE GONG is a student at the University of Pennsylvania, studying English and International Relations. During her breaks, she’s either at home in New Zealand or visiting her many relatives in Shanghai. Chloe has been known to mysteriously appear when “Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s best plays and doesn’t deserve its slander in pop culture” is chanted into a mirror three times. You can find her on Twitter @thechloegong or check out her website at thechloegong.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text © 2020 by Chloe Gong
Jacket illustration © 2020 by Billelis
Jacket design by Sarah Creech © 2020 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gong, Chloe, author.
Title: These violent delights / by Chloe Gong.
Description: New York : Simon Pulse, 2020. | Series: These violent delights ; 1 | Audience: Ages 14 up. | Summary: In 1926 Shanghai, eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, heir of the Scarlet Gang, and her first love-turned-rival Roma Montagov, leader of the White Flowers, must work together when mysterious deaths threaten their city.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019055326 (print) | LCCN 2019055327 (ebook) | ISBN 9781534457690 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534457713 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Monsters—Fiction. | Death—Fiction. | Gangs—Fiction. |
Shanghai (China)—History—20th century—Fiction. | China—History—1912-1928—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G65218 The 220 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.G65218 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055326
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055327