Gangs of Old Shanghai: The Lojnikoff Gang
By Paul French
Paul French, New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Peking, is back in China in March presenting City of Devils in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. The book sees him delve into the murky underworld of Old Shanghai. There were plenty of wrong'uns about, and a whole lot of bad blood between them. In this 'Gangs of Old Shanghai' series, French presents us with a who's who of old time organized crime, and quite the rogues gallery it is too.
The Lojnikoff Gang
Boss: Paul Lojnikoff
Base: The Yar Restaurant, Rue Cardinal Mercier (Maoming Nan Lu)
Paul Lojnikoff started out working for Eugene Pick in his Hovans Gang
as Pick’s 'thug-in-chief'. A handy boxer, he was known as 'pretty boy,'
and eventually formed his own crew made up mostly of Polish and Russian
boxers: his brother Peter, a fighter called Battling Fester, and Kid
Teddy, a Polish merchant seaman.
They openly worked with the
Japanese as collaborators, and it was generally assumed that all their
fights held during the Japanese occupation were rigged. Lojnikoff worked
out of the Yar Russian restaurant, where the stable of beautiful white
women who worked there were known as 'Lojnikoff’s Harem.' During the war
he smuggled silver from Manila to Shanghai and had a beautiful Filipino
nightclub singer as his mistress.
After the war, after a brief
spell being held by US Army Intelligence, Lojnikoff was one of the only
Old Shanghai criminals to restart his gang. He became a blackmarketeer.
Some say he eventually went to America and continued boxing, but by then
a physical wreck due to hard living, he was killed in the ring.
Paul French will be one of the featured
authors at Shanghai Literary Festival 2018 at M Glam on March 15 at 6pm
and March 17 at 12pm.
He will be at the Bookworm in Suzhou on March 19.
He
will be at the Bookworm in Beijing on March 21 and March 22, and
hosting a pair of walking tours in Beijing on March 24 and March 31.
To read about more Gangs of Old Shanghai, click "Read more"（阅读原文）below.