Last month I recommended a journey through the hellish landscapes of Lilith but this time we’re off to a very different version of Hell – a Chinese one modelled on Shanghai in its 1930s heyday. Shanghai Immortal is the first novel by Chinese Canadian author A.Y.Chao who currently lives in London. Published in 2023, Shanghai Immortal is available in all the usual formats. The charming cover with its dragon and pagoda makes the novel look more traditional than it turns out to be. A sequel, called Paris Celestial, is due in January 2025.

The story is narrated by the straight-talking but highly emotional Lady Jing, an Immortal who at nearly 100 is just reaching maturity. Jing’s late mother was a hulijing (a fox-spirit) and the father she has never met is a European vampire. Some Immortals despise Jing for being mixed race, especially her cruel grandmother Lady Niang Niang and her ladies of the Hulijing Court. Jing is bitter that her own mother pawned her and a stolen Dragon Pearl to the King of Hell in return for his paying the debts she’d accumulated because of her obsession with jewels. So Jing has been brought up in the eternal night of the capital of Hell, which is just across the veil from the human city of Shanghai. The King of Hell, popularly known as Big Wang, calls Jing his ward but she feels more like his slave.

Jing’s life begins to change when Wang sends her down to the harbour, where the ships carrying the souls of the dead arrive, in order to collect a package. She is surprised to discover that the package contains a handsome young human male called Tony Lee. As a live mortal, Lee is in grave danger of having the essence sucked out of him by various types of Immortal, not to mention that Jing’s vampire side would like to snack on his blood. Lee is carrying a silver talisman which is supposed to protect him during his stay in Hell but Jing can immediately tell that it’s a fake. Since Jing is supposed to deliver the package to Wang’s private quarters in the penthouse of Hell’s version of the Cathay Hotel, she decides to carry him there.

As she climbs up the outside of the building, she overhears an old enemy, the fox-spirit Lady Soo, talking contemptuously about her and Big Wang and plotting to steal the Dragon Pearl. When she tells Wang about this he dismisses her concerns and warns her not to make trouble while the Mahjong Council, of which Lady Soo is a member, is in session. Wang is absorbed in his plan to set up a Bank of Hell, so that Immortals don’t have to rely on human offerings, and he has summoned American-trained Chinese banker Tony Lee to advise him. Given a simple task to take care of Jing quickly gets into trouble again and, in spite of some unexpected support from a Dragon Lord and the Goddess of the Moon, into another quarrel with spiteful Lady Soo. Jing is deeply humiliated when Wang forces her to apologize to Lady Soo and resentful when he orders her to baby-sit the human during his stay in Hell.

Protecting Lee from predatory deities proves harder than expected – even a clothes shopping visit to the Weaver Goddess, Lady Gi, nearly proves fatal. Jing is frustrated at having to help Lee with his research on the economy of Hell when she has plans of her own. She has decided to thwart the Hulijing Court’s plot by retrieving the Dragon Pearl from the Treasury where it is guarded by two pixiu monsters, known to Jing as Cutie and Puffy. When Jing sneaks into the Treasury she discovers that the pearl is no longer there but helps to thwart an attack on the building and its guardians. Jing is sure that Lady Soo was responsible but the fox-spirit claims to have an alibi. To avoid another confrontation while the Council is in session Wang sends Jing to stay in human Shanghai for a few days.

Jing is escorted to Shanghai by Tony Lee and Lady Gi with the addition of Ah Lang, the lover Gi is separated from most of the time by decree of her father, The Jade Emperor. All three of them have to help Jing with the trauma of being out in daylight amongst crowds of humans and Lee has to find her a supply of blood to drink. As Jing warms to Lee she starts to wonder why a human has bound himself to serve the King of Hell. Jing is soon enjoying the delights of eating French patisserie and dancing in nightclubs but she is also set on investigating how Lee ended up with a fake talismen, even though she’s been warned not to do so. This leads to Jing being kidnapped. During a most unwelcome family reunion, Jing starts to recover dark forgotten memories of her childhood and learns things that change everything she thought she knew about her own history.

The blurb for Shanghai Immortal describes it as a richly told Adult Fantasy. I’d say that this novel was equally suitable for Adult and Young Adult readers but richly told is spot on. Chao has a wonderfully vivid imagination and the literary talent to immerse readers in her new and distinctive world. Prepare for sensory overload. This is a twelve-course banquet of a book full of quirky characters and luscious descriptions of food, clothes, flowers, buildings and a wide range of supernatural beings. I’d expected an impressive dragon but not the charming pixiu or the pesky ghost roosters. The food in this book, whether it is Asian dumplings or European chocolate-glazed profiteroles, will make your mouth water and never before have cocktails been so well deployed in Fantasy fiction from the Flaming Bitch that Jing throws at Lady Soo to Hell’s signature cocktail the bright green Suffering Bastard and the three-day old blood in a cocktail glass, complete with striped straw and pink umbrella, which is Jing’s favoured tipple.

The plot of Shanghai Immortal isn’t a complex one. The outstanding aspects are the extraordinary places we get to visit and the lively company of the central character, Jing, or to give her the full title which she finds ridiculous, Grand Princess Overflowing with Sagacity, Noble Lady Hu Xian Jing of the Turquoise Hills and Mount Kunlun. Since Jing narrates the entire story the novel can only succeed if its central character is both credible and captivating. From an Immortal viewpoint, Jing is not yet mature enough to have manifested all her powers. Instead she is a typically stroppy teenager with little respect for tradition or authority. Shanghai Immortal is one of the most convincing accounts I’ve read of what it might be like to be a vampire. Chao makes us feel Jing’s cravings for blood and share in her innocent delight at the smell and taste of it. Be warned that the unfortunate side-effects of eating garlic are also graphically portrayed.

So, no credibility problem but I have to admit that at first I didn’t take to Lady Jing. Chao is understandably determined not to let her heroine fit the stereotype of the dainty and demure Oriental maiden. Jing tells us that she is neither pretty nor charming and that she hates wearing the constraining traditional dress and despises flowery formal language which she rudely refers to as courtly piss-fart. Jing spits and swears, gives her noble mentors disrespectful nicknames and tells beings of all ranks exactly what she thinks of them when she loses her fiery temper. There are funny scenes in which Jing scandalizes Hell by racing around in her underwear or masculine dress waving her big sword but it all seems rather too close to the current Western stereotype of the feisty superheroine. Gradually though a more nuanced character emerges – a Jing who is forced to endure racist abuse and lacks self-confidence beneath the bravado; a Jing who paints beautiful sunrises to remind her of the lost skies of her childhood; a Jing whose deep-rooted fear of water makes her vulnerable; a Jing who shyly enjoys her first dance and the stirrings of first love; and a Jing who has never recovered from what she sees as her mother’s betrayal. By the middle of the novel I was completely won over and passionately on Jing’s side.

In Shanghai Immortal Chao also makes clever use of the literary convention of the unreliable narrator. Not everything that Jing tells us turns out to be true. She doesn’t remember all of her history and she has misunderstood her relationships with many of the Immortals in her life. Until it is pointed out to her, Jing hadn’t even realized that she has a best friend in the volatile Lady Gi rather than just a regular card partner. (I think kanhoo is a card game but a glossary of Chinese terms would have been handy). New acquaintances and circumstances make Jing ask questions that she should have asked before, such as why does it never rain in Hell? The answer to that question will make you see one of the main characters in a completely different light.

The most useful character from the reader’s point of view is human Tony Lee since he has to have the Infernal and Celestial realms explained to him. Lee is that very rare thing in fiction – a good banker – though his family history does turn out to have dark aspects which makes him hate being lied to. Lee’s growing admiration for Jing transforms our view of her. She is not the unattractive and unloveable person she believes herself to be. Chao contrasts this slowly developing romance with her own humorous take on one of the most famous love stories in Asian mythology – the legend of the Herd Boy and the Weaver Goddess. In traditional versions a human herdboy falls in love with a goddess but they are separated by the Celestial Emperor and only allowed to meet once a year. In Shanghai Immortal Lady Gi has been banished to Hell where she occupies herself creating clothing and acting as a divine fashion advisor. The wonderful cocktail dress she chooses for Jing made me wish that Lady Gi was my stylist too. When Ah-Lang and Gi are reunited in Shanghai, Jing is contemptuous of the pair’s soppy behaviour but there is bickering too when Gi discovers that her lover has been spending some of his exile hanging out in nightclubs.

The episodes set in the Art Deco, ultra Capitalist, European enclave of Shanghai are a reminder that Shanghai Immortal also counts as Historical Fantasy. The hectic gaiety of Shanghai’s nightlife is contrasted with the grimness of life just beyond this privileged zone. China is suffering under a brutal occupying regime and in Hell whole shiploads of the ghosts of starved children are constantly arriving. The King of Hell knows that a terrible era of human conflict is coming and this casts a shadow over the whole novel. Spoiler alert – Big Wang’s plan to set up a Bank of Hell must have succeeded because I am the proud possessor of some Bank of Hell notes given to me by a friend in Singapore who kindly explained the custom of burning paper offerings during the Festival of Hungry Ghosts. Wang’s updating of Hell’s architecture and financial basis is consistent with one of the great strengths of Chinese culture – an ability to combine the best of ancient traditions with modern innovations. Chao’s next novel will apparently take us on a visit to Europe and its Immortals and I can’t wait to see them from Jing’s irreverent point of view. I’m sure the results will be eye-opening. Until next month…

Geraldine