Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Shanghai, 1937. Pearl and May are two sisters from a bourgeois family. Though their personalities are very different – Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid – they are inseparable best friends. Both are beautiful, modern and living a carefree life … until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away the family’s wealth, and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to two ‘Gold Mountain’ men: Americans.
As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, the two sisters set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the villages of southern China, in and out of the clutches of brutal soldiers, and even across the ocean, through the humiliation of an anti-Chinese detention centre to a new, married life in Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Here they begin a fresh chapter, despite the racial discrimination and anti-Communist paranoia, because now they have something to strive for: a young, American-born daughter, Joy.
Along the way there are terrible sacrifices, impossible choices and one devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel by Lisa See hold fast to who they are – Shanghai girls.
Review
Lisa See never fails to impress me and I was quickly drawn into the story of these two sisters, each so different from the other. While Pearl loves her sister and is very protective of her, she can’t help feeling jealous of May’s vibrant nature and the attention she gets without even trying. Pearl seems stuck in the shadow of her sister for much of the novel but this story is very much about Pearl’s journey of self discovery and just when she seems to have reached her goals, it is all cruelly ripped away.
The contrast between the kind of life the sisters led in Shanghai before the occupation and the life they have to endure in the United States is a striking one. Although the girls are still very much bound by tradition, they have far more freedom in Shanghai than I would’ve expected where they earned a living as calendar models. As the more vivacious sister, May is a natural at posing for these pictures and she uses her beauty to her advantage to seduce the photographer with whom her sister has fallen in love. I had no idea these types of adverts had ever been done in China but I’ve seen a few of them on the internet and they are absolutely beautiful so it is hardly surprising these girls became stars of the day.
The arrival of the Japanese is devastating to Shanghai and See conveys the terror convincingly, particularly when the girls and their mother are brutally attacked by soldiers. The attack causes the death of their mother, however Pearl protects May from harm and must suffer the consequences as a result. Pearl is always putting her sister’s welfare before her own but I’m afraid May takes it all for granted.
The sisters have to get used to a whole new way of life in San Francisco within a family that is far poorer and far more strict than their own. However, nothing is what it appears to be and the sisters soon learn the shocking truth about why their passage to the States was paid. See also evokes the atmosphere of the time exceptionally well as the Chinese were viewed with mistrust by the Americans, particularly in the period when Mao converted China to communism. The prejudice is often explored subtly but is nevertheless powerful.
