A memoir about an 18-year-old Austrian Jew who escaped to Shanghai, China by himself in 1938, Paul Hoffmann relates how he helped his family leave Europe and survive WWII in Shanghai. He describes how the Sephardic Jewish community came to the aid of the Jews fleeing Central Europe, the two years that he and his family were confined to the Hongkew Ghetto, and the decision to stay in China after the Communist takeover that led to a sequence of events that rivaled the perils of the war years.