Through A Moon Gate

Through a Moon Gate (1949) – L. Z. Yuan
The Mercury Press, Shanghai – proudly pre-ISBN
Condition: Good (culturally enlightening, physically lightly battle-scarred)
Questionable importer of oddities: Crappy Old Books

If you’ve ever wanted a guided tour of mid-20th-century Chinese life without leaving your chair, Through a Moon Gate is basically your ticket – printed in Shanghai, no less, before it was cool, ironic, or full of rooftop cocktail bars. 

L. Z. Yuan was a column-writing machine for the Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury, turning out short, sharp pieces about everyday life, manners, customs, food, festivals, gods, devils, and all the ways human beings can be oddly themselves in one city. This book scoops up a selection of those pieces and binds them into one charming, slightly eccentric volume. Think:

• Street-level Shanghai anecdotes

• Cultural side-eye and affectionate satire

• A crash course in “what people actually do,” rather than what solemn historians say they do 

The chapter titles alone are worth the price of admission: “We Live to Eat,” “Men and Women,” “On to the Next World,” “Peeping into the Future,” “Kung Hsi Fah Tsai,” “The Gods and the Devil,” “Games and Pastimes: Chopsuey.” It’s like a buffet of cultural essays where every tray comes with a side of social observation and mild mischief.

This particular copy, as wrestled into stock by Crappy Old Books, is in Good condition, with one honest confession:

• The covers and binding: solid, presentable, doing that slightly worn “I was actually read” thing that all the best paperbacks eventually discover.

• The pages: all present, lightly age-toned, but perfectly legible – Shanghai via tea-stained paper rather than Instagram filter.

• The printing: proudly “Printed in Shanghai”, a genuine product of its time and place, not a later reprint pretending to know what 1940s China smelled like.

• And yes: one page has a tear. Not a missing chunk, not a crime scene – just a tear. Everything is still there and readable, like a thoughtful scar rather than an injury. Consider it your book’s built-in authenticity feature: this thing has lived.

No ISBN, obviously. This book comes from the era when its identity was “Mercury Press, Shanghai, 162 pages, please don’t drop it in the harbour”, not a barcode.

Perfect for:

• People who like social history with a sense of humour.

• Readers who think guidebooks should talk more about what people actually eat, bet on, gossip about and pray for.

• Anyone who enjoys the quietly smug thrill of saying, “Oh, it’s a 1949 Shanghai Mercury Press original,” while placing a slightly torn page down very carefully over their cup of tea.

The irony is neat: a lively, on-the-ground portrait of old Shanghai, written by a local columnist and printed in situ, has wandered across the decades to be sold by a place called Crappy Old Books, which specialises in exactly this sort of unexpected cultural time capsule.

Adopt this Good (with character) copy of Through a Moon Gate and enjoy:

• A walk through old Shanghai’s food, festivals, fortunes and foibles

• A style that’s part essay, part anecdote, part “you had to be there”

• And a single torn page that proves someone, sometime, really was there

Crappy Old Books: bringing you slightly battered portals to other times and cities, one moon gate at a time.

Keep browsing: See more Non-Fiction books Other books by LZ Yuan