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headlong retreat everywhere, though Chiang still hoped to make a stand in the South, in Canton, the last major city and port in his hands.
    Ma Li looked her old self again when she woke, and I offered to see her home. Along the Avenue Joffre, a whole army of Communist soldiers were resting, lying, or sitting in rows on the pavements. Most of them were young peasants hardly older than myself. They wore much-washed khaki uniforms with sneakers or straw sandals on their feet. They looked back at us with as much curiosity as we looked at them. When their commanders gave the order,they jumped to their feet, the onlookers forgotten. Falling into line, they straightened ranks and marched off.
    Cars, buses, and trolleys were not yet operating, so Ma Li and I shared a pedicab. The bolder merchants were already opening their shops, and the streets were coming alive. We soon left the old French Concession behind and entered the former British Concession, the financial and commercial hub of Shanghai. Many patrols of armed workers’ militia and the Liberation Army men kept order, and here too the life of the city was returning. Only the big department stores remained closed.
    As we drove, Ma Li told me how she had left her parents’ home because of their objection to her political activities. Now she shared a room with a factory girl in the cheaper part of the former Japanese Concession beyond Suzhou Creek where the boat people lived in their overcrowded sampan homes. I knew the Garden Bridge over Suzhou Creek, but beyond was unknown territory to me. My uncle and aunt had never allowed me to go across the Garden Bridge by myself, and certainly not by pedicab. Close by the bridge was the towering and expensive Broadway Mansions, but just beyond it was the port area nearer the sea—a warren of gambling, drinking, and drug dens, cabarets, brothels, and massage parlors frequented by seamen, gangsters, and other tough characters. If Shanghai was a Paradise of Adventurers, this was a Paradise of Vice. I turned to Ma Li in astonishment as we entered this area. “Why in the world do you live here?”
    â€œNot quite here, but not too far from it. I live where the factory hands, laborers, and other poor people live. That’s why I dress the way I do. When I went to meet you at that cafe, I changed my shabby clothes in the dressing room of the theater. The police themselves are scared of coming in here and our people have a deal with the locals. We’re working for them, so they are glad to protect us. You see, this is an industrial area. It has textile mills and metal foundries. The girl I share my room with works in a cotton mill—that one on the left.”
    Our pedicab driver turned sharply left along the tall wall of the mill. We were in a slum area of low, rickety woodenhouses with grey tiled roofs. They were packed tightly together, and the narrow alleys between them formed a maze. There was no room even for the pedicab to turn, so we left it and continued on foot. The walls seemed never to have been painted. There were no drains, and pools of stagnant water, black and oily, mired the middle of the lanes. We took a shortcut to her back door. Nearby was a large, evil smelling garbage can filled with ashes, decayed bits of vegetables, old crocks, and rotten wood. There was nothing so useful in it as a single scrap of paper or a tin can.
    The place was deserted; everyone was out watching the city change hands. Inside, a grimy kitchen with its clutter of small stoves served several tenants. What had once been a junk closet was now occupied by a family of four glad to have even this airless space for their home. The stairwell was a black hole. I stumbled up the steps and at Ma Li’s warning held my head low. The space above the stairs had been filled in to form a bunk for a single person; a small bundle of indistinguishable rags, the occupant’s total household goods, marked the home. Ma Li said she had never