‘Shanghai Girls’ a worthy best-seller
Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are naive girls living in Shanghai in 1937. They care about fashion and fun more than family and tradition, posing for artists who paint portraits for the beautiful girls calendars popular during the time.
When the girls’ father, Baba, gambles away all the family’s fortune, everything changes for the sisters. Baba settles his debt to Old Man Louie by agreeing to sell his daughters to him so they can marry Louie's sons. May is rocked by the news.
I thought I was modern. I thought I had choice. I thought I was nothing like my mother. But my father’s gambling has swept all that away. I’m to be sold — traded like so many girls before me — to help my family. I feel so trapped and so helpless that I can hardly breathe.
Pearl has different ideas about their future, and as the Japanese bomb Shanghai, the sisters set out on a dangerous journey that will ultimately take them to America. Pearl’s mother puts her in charge of her younger sibling’s safety, telling Pearl of the courage she has inside herself, as her Chinese zodiac sign represents.
“You’re a Dragon, and of all the signs only a Dragon can tame the fates. Only a Dragon can wear the horns of destiny, duty, and power. Your sister is merely a Sheep. You have always been a better mother to her than I have.” I stir, but Mama holds me still. ... “You have to take care of your sister,” Mama says. “Promise me, Pearl. Promise me right now.”
During their flight from Shanghai through the Chinese countryside, the girls see no other option but to join Old Man Louie and his sons in America. They arrive at Angel’s Island only to be interrogated for months, and when they finally settle in Los Angeles they face discrimination, poverty and the same old Chinese customs they hoped to escape. Their maturity seems to come at the cost of their dreams.
May and I have changed from beautiful girls buffeted by fate and looking for escape to young wives not completely happy with our lots — but what young wives are? ... We have accepted and adapted to what’s safe, and we do our best to find pleasure where we can. ... As one poet wrote, Even the best of moons will be tinged with sadness.
Lisa See’s “Shanghai Girls” has been on the best-sellers lists for weeks, and this finely written novel deserves every bit of praise it has received. The sisters’ relationship feels authentic, from their jealousy to their friendship. The historic aspects are wonderfully, and at the same time horrifically, detailed, capturing how it must have been to be living in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion and then to be Chinese in America during World War II.
Lee’s powerful story of two sisters craving to be modern who ultimately realize the value of tradition will resonate with readers in many ways. “Shanghai Girls,” a book not to be missed especially by lovers of historical fiction, is a story of war, survival, family, life and love, sisters and the strength of women.
So often we’re told that women’s stories are unimportant. After all, what does it matter what happens in the main room, in the kitchen, or in the bedroom? Who cares about the relationships between mother, daughter, and sister? A baby’s illness, the sorrows and pains of childbirth, keeping the family together during war, poverty, or even in the best of days are considered small and insignificant compared with the stories of men, who fight against nature to grow their crops, who wage battles to secure their homelands, who struggle to look inward in search of the perfect man. We’re told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men. The men in my life ... faced, to one degree or another, those great male battles, but their hearts — so fragile — wilted, buckled, crippled, corrupted, broke, or shattered when confronted with the losses women face every day.
