Shanghai Girls

Lisa See completely transcends genre with her newest novel [Shanghai Girls].

Individual identity is a tricky thing. Are we the product of an ethnicity? A nation? A family? A sign of the Zodiac? A name? Can a collection of personal traits, from appearance to abilities, adequately define a person or direct their path in life?

From one angle, See’s novel is obviously a reduction of the Chinese experience, from the streets of Shanghai at its pinnacle as the Paris of Asia, to the Japanese invasion of China, to an immigration camp on Angel Island in Northern California, and, finally, to the spread of Communism and its shadow on Chinatown in 1950s Los Angeles. All of these places and events, as viewed by Pearl, the story’s narrator, are like show more prisms in a constantly shifting kaleidoscope, and with each twist she finds a new perspective on her place in the world.

With its colorful packaging and feminine title, some readers might pass over this novel, pigeonholing it as vapid chick lit. But [Shanghai Girls] is a rare novel, offering something for a wide range of readers. Like Margaret Atwood’s [The Handmaid’s Tale], [Shanghai Girls] manages true feminist values without overdosing on estrogen. See calmly tells Pearl’s story in the context of a broader, more complicated world, where women and men alike struggle to establish and maintain their identities.

5 bones!!!! show less

Shanghai Girls is the tale of two sisters, Pearl and May Chin, who work as beautiful girls in pre-war Shanghai. As beautiful girls, they pose for various paintings that become advertisements and calendars, and because of their career, they enjoy a good deal of prestige and freedom. Soon, though, their glory days come to an end as war begins to sweep through their beloved Shanghai at the same time as their father is forced to sell the girls as brides to the sons of a man to whom he owes a large gambling debt. Despite their wishes to remain independent, forces beyond their control demand that they flee Shanghai and embark on the dangerous trip to America to join their husbands who are virtual strangers to them. On arrival they will find show more both less and more than they could have expected and learn to live with their own secrets and heartbreaks in the process.

Despite owning several of See's much praised other novels, Shanghai Girls is the first of her works that I've actually read. I was not disappointed. See's Shanghai leaps off the page both in its glamour and modernity and its poverty and squalor. She captures its melting pot diversity that results from the many contries dividing the city amongst themsevles as well as the unfortunate underside of its rapid growth. At See's whim we can be either awed or disgusted by the city depending on what the situation demands.

Pearl and May are the most captivating of characters. Their sisterly relationship is excellently rendered in that sometimes they seem to actively dislike each other, but when the chips are down, they are utterly loving and loyal to each other. As they face the reality of life with their strict new in-laws and husbands who they've known for all of one day, it is their evident love for each other that strengthens them and keeps them afloat as they face the many challenges that rise up to meet them in Los Angeles.

See's writing is easy to read and has such an admirable flow that Shanghai Girls proves to be hard to put down. My only minor quibble would be with the ending. It was so abrupt and unexpected that I actually turned the last page totally ignorant that it was the last page. I was sure the story had plenty enough steam to go another few chapters at least and felt a bit left hanging by the unexpected ending. Other than that, however, I was really quite thrilled with Shanghai Girls and look forward to reading more of See's work. show less

Lisa See, author of the beautifully written [Snow Flower and the Secret Fan] has done it again with [Shanghai Girls] a captivating and emotionally charged novel concerning, among other things, "sister love", its strengths, its weaknesses and its limitations.
The story of Pearl and May Chin is told through older sister Pearl's first person recollections. She begins by taking the reader back to an Americanized Shanghai pre-WWII. They are modern girls, privileged, young and beautiful. Their days are filled with shopping, modeling for "beautiful girl" advertisements or, depending on the night before, sleeping the day away to nights complete with nightclubs, friends, glamour, music and dancing.
Everything changes quite suddenly for the show more "beautiful girls" when a bit of bad luck befalls their father which ultimately will change the course they had set for their lives.
Soon they find themselves in Los Angeles trying to live the American Dream in an America which is not quite ready to accept them. Or is it just Pearl's perception, fears and longing for China keep her a step behind May who slips right in to life in "Hailewu".
As the years go by, the reader finds that May and Pearl have forged too many secrets, lies and misperceptions which are bound to erupt with terribly tragic results.
Shanghai Girls is written beautifully; Ms. See's characters are crafted with vivid personalities and will be remembered, yes, even loved long after the back cover is closed.
Shanghai Girls mesmerized me, this moment in history intrigued me. Their story captured me and held me throughout. The ending leaves the reader hopeful and longing to learn more of what the future may hold for May and Pearl.
I give this novel 5 stars and my thanks to LibraryThing and Random House for the opportunity to read this ARC. show less

Shanghai Girls is addictive. I could not put it down. Where was this going? I just wanted to know. It’s the story of two sisters, Pearl and May. It starts in 1937 Shanghai. They are two “beautiful girls” having grown up as daughters in the household of a wealthy merchant with several servants. They are in open rebellion to their parent’s tradition bound ways. Their mother even has tightly bound feet. They are modeling for an artist, Z.G., who creates calendars featuring them together. The older sister, Pearl, has gone to college and speaks perfect English as well as the dialects of Shanghai and their family’s traditional region. The younger sister is just graduating High School. They have friends in the International show more Settlement. Shanghai is a British port but the region is already embroiled in the Civil war raging across China. They feel immune and carefree. It’s downhill from here.

One day they learn their father has lost his entire fortune gambling and has sold both of them into arranged marriages. They immediately contemplate running away even as they meet their husbands whose father, living in Los Angeles, has come to China to find wives for his sons. The girls are convinced by their mother that unless they obey they will bring ruin on their entire family. Even though they intend to escape, they briefly comply, hoping they will find a way out. Thus begins a several decade journey with them joined at the hip but going through several layers of degradation.

Unfortunately these include recurring instances of racism and immigration “events”. While we often think of racism impacting Blacks and the notorious Japanese internment there was also the Chinese exclusion act and the similar impacts such as holding cells and restricted covenants. The west coast had more of that than what I knew of. The anti-Communist nightmare of the fifties included China as well as Russia and focused on California’s movies as well as residents. Racism limited what jobs Chinese could aspire to, what schools they could go to, where they could live, where they could eat, who they could marry, what roles they could play, and even who would look at them. In this book we see how this impacted individuals, families, neighborhoods. While today we see the disastrous and inhumane impact of ICE this book shows how these techniques have a long history. Chinese people were picked out just by their looks and needed to carry their papers. When arriving from China they were often processed separately and detained for potentially months in squalid conditions.

Language plays a major role in their story. Besides living in a place where English is spoken it’s also China where different dialects are unintelligible to many of those who speak another dialect. Pearl knows all of the dialects but May hasn’t spent the time to learn anything other than English which she learned in school and the dialect that is spoken in Shanghai. And there’s the dialect that is spoken by the American who speaks a differently. This creates a dynamic where which language is spoken creates a way to include or exclude people, even the INS agents. It adds an interesting layer to the entire story. Like most cultures there are some subjects that can’t be spoken about directly. Here we learn of certain euphemisms that everyone seems to understand. These were used at several points within the story - doing “the husband-wife-thing”, being visited by “the little Red Sister”, and those women described as “three-hole-woman”. No one seems to need these translated.

Another constant feature of this story is references to traditions, white for death, overwhelming preference for male offspring, strict obedience, sayings appropriate to the occasion, elder brother or sister, younger brother or sister, naming conventions, and many more. They use phrases to indicate clans, government, others, and especially foreigners. The book has hundreds of Chinese words and phrases used without translation.

There is one section which is crucial to the entire story but requires substantial suspension of disbelief. While being detained by INS on Angel Island in a cramped room full of other women and children the sisters decide that they have to make everyone believe that Pearl is pregnant and has a child there while it was actually May’s. Yes everyone wanted to maintain their privacy at all costs I just have trouble believing these sisters could have pulled this off. Makes a great story and they work hard to pull it off. And this is not represented as a real story so I had to let it pass. It’s a secret the sisters will never share with anyone else.

The bulk of this book is told from the point of view of the older sister, Pearl. She’s the educated one and May, the younger one, is portrayed as a party girl who doesn’t invest the time to study or learn another dialect. She occasionally comes up with an important point but seeing her as the light weight seems consistent with how Pearl sees her. In a major flip flop May challenges Pearl with a different version of several critical events in their history which Pearl immediately rejects but as May persists she seems to be the one who was seeing clearly rather than Pearl. This makes you wonder, who’s right here? Did we buy the line Pearl? Were we convinced by Pearl when there was a better explanation all along? An excellent twist.

And then there’s Joy, the girl who has grown up believing Pearl is her mother and Sam is her father. She overhears May’s challenge to Pearl. Her entire history is now turned upside down. Joy is now a freshman at University of Chicago and believes that Mao may have the better way for China. She needs to figure all this out. But that’s where we are left.

I strongly recommend this book. show less

Pearl and her sister, May, live the good life in Shanghai, in 1935. They earn money posing for an artist friend, who puts their faces on commercial calendars, so they are known as “beautiful girls.” They get good tables at clubs and restaurants and party at all hours, hardly noticing the vast ocean of poor surrounding them.

Pearl, elder by three years, feels herself the less favored sister, though she’s gone to college, and May won’t ever. Their parents, traditional and strict, dote on the younger, prettier, daughter, to the point that Pearl doubts they even notice her, except to criticize, which her father does constantly. May’s not above using her favored position to twist him around her finger.

However, all that’s about to show more become irrelevant. To the sisters’ shock, their father says he’s had severe financial reversals. Not only does that mean the party’s over, he’s arranged marriages for them, to sons of his most important creditor, who lives in Los Angeles. After the wedding, a ceremony that pleases nobody, May and Pearl are to sail to Hong Kong, after which they’ll rejoin their new husbands in the United States. That’s it; no argument.

Needless to say, the sisters hate every part of this, and they tell each other they’ll do what no Chinese daughter ever does, disobey their father. They have no intention of leaving Shanghai. Their husbands are ridiculous matches for them, especially May’s groom, who’s only fourteen and seems not all there.

But their father hasn’t told them the hardest truth, which is that he’s flat broke and in debt to loan sharks, who’ll throw the family onto the street in a couple days. As if that weren’t enough, May and Pearl don’t even have time to plead, because the Japanese attack. Leaving Shanghai now becomes a necessity as well as a chore.

You may wonder, as I did, how traditional Chinese parents—the mother binds her feet—have raised two daughters most people of that time and place would have called libertine (and only if they were being polite). But never mind. See writes with the force of gravity, and when the worlds she creates collide, the shock waves are enormous. Not only that, duty and tradition versus modernity and independence poses a crucial conflict, embodied in the sisters, so if their relative freedom seems a trifle convenient, See keeps returning to that struggle. Pearl feels that May is impetuous, selfish, self-centered, and brazen; May believes that Pearl is staid, masochistic, and too accepting by half. They’re jealous as hell of each other, and they’re both right.

But there’s a cultural context to every action or feeling, whether having to do with being female in a society that worships sons and despises daughters; having to obey a male authority, no matter who or how weak; and what money means. See spares no detail, sanitizing nothing, excusing nothing, and the cruelties of life are ever-present:

Many horrors happen to the sister, involving violence, heartache, bigotry, and degradation, whether as women, as Chinese, or as the newly unfortunate. Throughout, See dwells on the sister bond in which love, jealousy, protectiveness, and resentment reside as uneasy partners. As such, the author explores, again with unflinching focus, what it means to be Chinese, and how Pearl and May struggle to reconcile what they want for themselves with what their culture demands, which in turn must be regulated because of public pressure and the threat of censure or disclosure. What a bold, searing depiction.

I have doubts about Pearl, particularly some of her doormat moments, which I’d think her experience might have led her to rise above, at least on occasion. That question arises most particularly because she’s astute enough to recognize how Chinese women know how to endure without falling apart, whereas men seem more fragile, having to spend so much energy shoring up their stoic facades. Why, then, doesn’t Pearl try to move beyond the role she’s accepted, at least outwardly?

But if that’s a weakness in Shanghai Girls, a necessity to maintain the sibling conflict throughout this narrative and the next—there’s a sequel—it’s a small price to pay. Shanghai Girls is a terrific novel, one that will stay with you. show less

I find that Lisa See's novels are both comforting and challenging, with their blending of historical events and fictional characters. In this one, sisters Pearl and May are living middle class lives in 1937 Shanghai and enjoying their notoriety as "beautiful girls", models for calendars and magazine covers, until their father gambles away the family's funds and status. He then sells the sisters to a Chinese family living in Los Angeles as wives for two sons. The girls ignore their circumstances until the Japanese invade the city, and they abandon their father and try to escape to Hong Kong with their mother, but they are discovered by Japanese soldiers and Pearl and her mother are brutally raped and their mother murdered. May manages to show more rescue them and they embark on their journey to the US, landing at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The second half of the novel has them becoming wives, sharing a beloved daughter, and becoming part of the Hollywood scene as extras - and most importantly, dealing with government agents who try to deport them back to what is now Communist China. It's a broad landscape with moments of tragic horrors and small triumphs. show less

Lisa See once again mines her family history and heritage to craft a compelling story of sisterhood, sibling rivalry, courage, fear, family loyalty and the immigrant experience. Sounds like a lot to cover in one book, and it is. But See is mostly up to the task.

Pearl and May are the two Chin sisters, living in comparative wealth in 1937 Shanghai, the Paris of Asia. They are attractive and dress very well, and have good “careers” as “Beautiful Girls” – modeling for advertising posters selling everything from tires to face cream. But their idyllic world is about to collapse. Their father has arranged marriages for them to two brothers from Los Angeles, and very soon they will leave the China they know and love for a foreign land show more where they are considered dirty and unwelcome infiltrators.

The novel covers two decades of time, encompassing the Japanese invasion/occupation of China, World War II, the glory years of Hollywood studios, the emerging power of Chairman Mao, and the McCarthy Era with its Communist witch hunts. The sisters survive horrific events, and emotional turmoil that is sometimes of their own making. But their loyalty to one another is unshakable … or is it?

While I have studied some Chinese history, and was aware of some of the issues brought up in the book, the novel really shines a light on this two-decade period in both China and the United States. The story completely captivated me and I could not read fast enough to learn what would happen. Most good books have some element of conflict, and this one is no exception. See gives Pearl the job of narrating the story, and a few times I wished to hear May’s point of view; I think the sibling rivalry might have been stronger if she had given both sisters a voice. But then again, having just one narrator makes the climax all the more interesting.

The major fault I see in this book is the cliff-hanger ending. It screams “sequel coming” and that irritates me. I’m not saying I need every plot to be wrapped up night and neatly in a pretty bow, but without giving anything away, I can only say that this ending was really dissatisfying for me. I like See’s writing and I’ll read a sequel (I believe there is one), but personally I would have preferred more of an ending to this novel. show less