After the fall of Russia's last Tsar, the White Russian nobles, former military officers of pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as some intellectuals and artists, fled one after another to Northeast China, settling in cities such as Harbin and Changchun. Some of them then headed south and made Shanghai their new home.

The Shanghai-based media Sixth Tones once wrote: "This journey was often paved with danger and turmoil. For instance, the "Stark" fleet of 30 refugee boats brought more than 1,900 White Russian émigrés to Shanghai — more than the total number of foreign nationals in the city's concessions at that time. Two years later, the Okhotsk, a naval cargo ship belonging to the Cossacks' Far Eastern Army, arrived in the city port with hundreds more on board. In this way, a succession of refugees fleeing southward joined the White Russians who had long been living in Shanghai to form a lively Russian community in the French concession."

The White Countess is a 2005 drama film directed by James Ivory​ and starring Ralph Fiennes​ and Natasha Richardson​. The screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro​ focuses on a disparate group of displaced Russians attempting to survive in Shanghai in the late 1930s, on the eve of the Japanese invasion.

Countess Sofia Belinskaya works as a taxi dancer and prostitute at a seedy bar in Shanghai. She meets Todd Jackson, a former US diplomat one night and convinces him to leave with her and pretend to be a client to avoid gangsters' attack. Jackson reveals that he dreams of owning a little bar, a place of elegance that finds the delicate balance, as he thinks a woman should be, "between the erotic and the tragic." He envisions Sofia as the central scene in his bar and offers her an employment opportunity. He names his bar "The White Countess".

Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the thumb-up to this film and commented "... it is good to better, poignant, patient, moving". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "Richardson ... finds the story's grieving heart. Fiennes is her match in soulful artistry. ... The White Countess is a stirring tribute to (Ismail) Merchant, a true builder of dreams ... of his unique spirit."

Film

The White Countess

Directed by

James Ivory

Written by

Kazuo Ishiguro

Produced by

Ismail Merchant​

Cinematography

Christopher Doyle​ 杜可风

Starring

Ralph Fiennes

Natasha Richardson

Vanessa Redgrave​

Hiroyuki Sanada​