Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(123)

I’ve been to Shanghai several times, but the works of Hallet Abend, Stella Dong, Hanchao Lu, Pan Ling, Lynn Pan, and Harriet Sergeant also contributed greatly to this novel. In a series of e-mails Hanchao Lu also clarified some lingering questions I had about Shanghai’s geographic boundaries in the 1930s. The character of Sam, although he has a much different destiny and outlook on life, was influenced by Lao She’s proletarian novel Rickshaw. For the history of Shanghai advertising, poster girls, and dress, I’m indebted to the works of Ellen Johnston Laing, Anna Hestler, and Beverley Jackson. I also immersed myself in the works of Chinese writers active between 1920 and 1940, particularly those of Eileen Chang, Xiao Hong, Luo Shu, and Lu Xun.

I wish to acknowledge Cindy Bork, Vivian Craig, Laura Davis, Mary Healey Linda Huff, Pam Vaccaro, and Debbie Wright—who participated in a monthlong Barnes & Noble on line discussion with me—for their insights and thoughts; the 12th Street Book Group for reminding me that sisters are for life; and Jean Ann Balassi, Jill Hopkins, Scottie Senalik, and Denise Whitteaker—who won me in a silent auction and then flew to Los Angeles, where I gave them a tour of Los Angeles Chinatown and introduced them to various family members—for helping me find the emotional heart of the novel.

I am extraordinarily lucky to have Sandy Dijkstra as my agent. She and all the women in her office fight for me, encourage me, and push me into new worlds. Michael Cendejas has helped me navigate the movie world. Across the pond, Katie Bond, my editor at Bloomsbury, has been filled with bright good cheer. Bob Loomis, my editor at Random House, has been kindness itself. I love our conversations and his crazy dots. But I’d also like to thank everyone at Random House who has made these past few years so extraordinary, with special appreciation to Gina Centrello, Jane von Mehren, Tom Perry, Barbara Fillon, Amanda Ice, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Benjamin Dreyer, and Vincent La Scala.

A few final words of gratitude and thanks to Larry Sells, for help with all things Wikipedia, website content, and for running my Google Group; Sasha Stone, for managing my website so professionally; Susan M. S. Brown, for her astute copyediting; Suzy Moser at the Huntington Library, for arranging for me to have my photograph taken in the Chinese Scholar’s Garden; Patricia Williams, for taking that beautiful photograph; Tyrus Wong, now ninety-eight years old, for still making and flying Chinese kites; my cousin Leslee Leong, for living in the past with me; my mother, Carolyn See, for her keen eye and judgment; my sisters—Clara, Katharine, and Ariana—for all the reasons you can think of and so much more; my sons, Christopher and Alexander, for making me proud and supporting me in so many ways; and finally my husband, Richard Kendall, for giving me strength when I’m struggling, humor when I’m down, and boundless love every single day.





SHANGHAI

GIRLS





Lisa See





A Reader’s Guide





Even Then,

It Was a Step into the Past





From the Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2009, by Lisa See


ALMOST ALL WRITERS write about place. Los Angeles writers are no exception. Walter Mosley, Michael Jaime-Becerra, and Janet Fitch, to name a few, capture the intimate details of very specific neighborhoods. Sometimes the sense of place is so strong that the natural topography, the streets and what’s on them, become as fully realized as a living, breathing character. The neighborhood I write about is Chinatown. Yes, a lot of my novels take place in China, but those stories wouldn’t—couldn’t— have been written if not for Chinatown.

I lived with my mother, Carolyn See, when I was growing up. We moved eight times before I turned nine, so Chinatown, where my paternal grandparents and my grandfather’s brothers and sister worked in the family antiques store, became home base for me. To my eyes, Chinatown didn’t change. More than that, my Chinese American relatives didn’t move or change either. Rather, they were very much stuck in the past. It was a past that entranced me when I was a child; it’s a past I long for every day, and one I got to write about in Shanghai Girls.

Shanghai Girls is about two sisters who leave China and come to Los Angeles in arranged marriages in 1938. There were four Chinatowns in Los Angeles at that time: New Chinatown—with its neon lights and gaily painted buildings on Broadway; City Market Chinatown—for produce sellers and their families; Old Chinatown—comprised of the few buildings that survived the demolition required to build Union Station; and China City—a tourist attraction bordered by Ord, Spring, Main, and Macy streets. Pearl and May, my fictional sisters, live in the Garnier Building in Old Chinatown, where the Chinese American Museum is today, and they work in China City.

China City was supposed to be an “authentic” Chinese city, but was pure fantasy and stereotype. It was surrounded by a miniature Great Wall and built out of sets left over from the filming of The Good Earth. Visitors could ride rickshaws down the Passage of One Hundred Surprises, nibble on Chinaburgers, or drink pirate grog at the Chinese Junk Café (constructed from the old set for Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife). For all its wacky charm, China City was an ill-fated place, which is how I came to be connected to it. Much of it burned less than a year after it opened. It was rebuilt only to catch fire again ten years later. In 1949, China City closed. Within a few years, my family moved their antique store, the F. Suie One Co., into China City’s last remaining large building.