http://absorbedinwords.blogspot.com/2... ( )

I never heard of the Chinese painter Pan Yuliang (1899-1977) until I picked up Jennifer Cody Epstein's The Painter From Shanghai, but it's easy to see why Epstein would want to paint the story of a woman who shocked pre-Communist China with nude self-portraits reminiscent of Cezanne. Little is known about Yuliang, other than her status as a prostitute, concubine, and Parisian artist, and Epstein does a superb job showing what her life might have been like.

Epstein quickly draws the reader into the story of an innocent orphan girl sold to a brothel by her uncle to support his opium habit. She adopts the name Yuliang, or Good Jade, and learns the ropes from the brothel's "top girl" and Yuliang's first love, Jinling. Yuliang is told by Jinling to think of the body as just skin in order to survive. Later, after Pan Zanhua, the wealthy tax inspector, liberates her from the brothel and makes her his second wife, Yuliang begins putting her sketches ahead of the reading and writing lessons her husband prepares for her. Zanhua is a modern man (who also frees her from the confines of bound feet) and supports her desire to pursue art even when it takes her far from him. Yuliang's first instructor, Hong Ye, tells her to see the body as more than skin, and Epstein uses sensual language, her own flowing brushstrokes, to make Yuliang's art come to life.

more ( )

I am always fascinated by stories that are based on real people and The Painter From Shanghai is a very strong example. I feel like it would be harder to write a story where there are some facts involved, you can only know so many facts so you have to create the story in such a way that you can string the actual facts together to make sense. That takes talent.

It was really empowering to read the story of Pan Yuliang. From being sold into prostitution to attempting the close to impossible to achieve her dreams of being an artist and a "woman artist" at that. Pan Yuliang couldn't and doesn't give up. I loved seeing her evolve and turn into a strong and confident woman. She was so meek and innocent when her uncle sold her into prostitution and to see the woman she becomes is amazing.

It was insane to me to read what a struggle there was for Pan Yuliang to be an artist and create the art she wanted to create. Nowadays at least in America most people wouldn't bat an eyelash at a nude portrait but in Pan Yuliang's time it was beyond scandalous. It's just so crazy to me. If I had to face that kind of abuse to just create art I'm sure I would have given up. We are so lucky that we don't have to deal with that in 2009 in America.

While the art related parts were obviously my favorite I really enjoyed the book as a whole. All the people that come in and out of Pan Yuliang's life to either help or harm her, they were all a part of what shaped her in the end. Pan Zanhua, the man that becomes her husband and sort of guardian is an interesting character as well, watching him grow and change with the politics of the time. I also really liked the passages when Pan Yuliang went to live with Pan Zanhua and his first wife. Really interesting.

Overall a really interesting story based on a real life! ( )

"That the buyer, if she finds one, probably won't be able to read it means little. Yuliang doesn't sign it for him. She signs for herself, to bind her work to her. To tattoo it with a message: she has won." (Page 20)

Jennifer Cody Epstein's The Painter From Shanghai is a fictional account of Pan Yuliang's rise from the ashes of her life as Xiuqing, a young child sold into prostitution. Through careful brushstrokes of her own, Epstein deftly fills her canvas with the sights, sounds, and images of China--from the dark alleys and brothels to the crowded, chaotic streets of Shanghai--in the early 1920s. Yuliang is a complex character who numbly makes her way through the obstacles she faces as a new prostitute under the thumb of corrupted merchants and a harsh and battered old woman, known as Grandmother. Emerging from the dank and corrupted halls of the brothel, she jumps into her new life as the concubine/second wife to Pan Zanhua and embarks on her career as a student and painter at the height of the Communist uprising in China during the 1930s.

"'My husband,' she says, twisting her wedding band, 'writes that even more conservative Republicans will ally with the CCP now. For the nation's sake.'

'If anything, it's a marriage of convenience.' Now he looks straight into her eyes. 'And one I doubt will last.'" (Page 318)

Epstein has a style all her own in which she easily weaves in relevant historical information through character interaction and development, but she also captures even difficult emotions with deft description and poise.

In the brothel, readers will feel Yuliang's degradation as each man leers at her, touches her skin, and makes her kowtow to their desires. The one solace she has is the poetry of Li Qingzhao, which she recites from memory. Readers will enjoy the verse woven into the narrative as Yuliang examines herself at life-changing moments and seeks solace in the beauty of language.

Yuliang is molded by her mentors, but only truly blossoms when she becomes Zanhua's wife and starts painting. Through painting she learns to combat her demons, her past, and her future, coming into her own as a painter and individual. As China is pulled in two directions between the republic and the communists, Yuliang is caught between her rebellious nature and Chinese tradition.

"Tearing off the sheet, she tries again, this time with better results. Use each object as a road into the next. She proceeds to the easiest object on the table, the orange . . . And in the space of a moment that neither registers nor matters, she is no longer outside the still life but working within it, running her mind's hand over nubbly fruit skin. Pressing her face against the smooth tang of the bottle glass. Exploring a vase's crevices with both finger and pencil tip, each item part of a visual sentence she is translating." (Page 220)

The Painter From Shanghai has a lot to offer book clubs, readers interested in painting, historical fiction, the struggle of women in society, China, and political history, and is one of the best novels I've read this year. ( )

Pan Yuliang: The very name betrays the promise she made to never lie to Zanhua. She is not really Yuliang, and she is not really Pan Zanhua's wife. And every time she places the characters for Pan-Yu-Liang on a painting, she remembers what it cost her to become the Famous Western-Style Woman Painter of Shanghai.

Xiuqing was orphaned as a young child and sent to live with her opium-addicted uncle, Wu Ding. Little Xiu is happy helping with household chores and learning poetry. When she is fourteen, Wu Ding's debts become so great he starts to sell off his possessions, including his niece. It is then that Xiuqing begins to live in lies.

Known as Yuliang, the child serves the top girl at the Hall of Eternal Splendor and begins her training. She learns to deceive men and to pretend to herself that she is not a common whore. She buries Xiuqing deep inside and endures. When she is sent as a gift to Pan Zanhua, the new inspections officer, she has no reason to suspect that her destiny has changed.

Yuliang's transformation from pleasure girl to trained oil painter was possible only through her own stubbornness and talent as well as the love and support of Zanhua. It is often difficult to remember that Epstein's novel is based on the life of a real person. It is hardly believable that an orphan, a prostitute, a concubine could find the will and a way to escape absolutely everything. Yuliang's story is full of contrasts: who she really is versus who she is forced to be, bound feet and second wife played out against the communist revolution, woman as property becoming woman of independent means.

Epstein immerses us into Yuliang's universe, in which traditional culture tumbles into the modern world and we can find inspiration and role models in the most unlikely places.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in art, China, historical fiction, and women's issues. ( )