Shanghai Girls

Lisa See wrote the novel Shanghai Girls.  I was entranced from the start.  Two sisters, May and Pearl, grow up in Shanghai.  They are spoiled children sheltered from the reality of life by indulgent parents. In their later teens, they pose as models for artists.  Pearl and Joy are jealous of each other as children and they never loose that green eyed monster even as adults.  The author makes this evident by having Pearl describe their dining room as a child.  Pearl describes their square table and writes that her parents love May best because they seat her between them.  Pearl never understands that because it is a square table, she also is seated between her parents until May tells her so when they have a big fight forty years later.  Pearl and May fight about petty things but also love each other enough to make huge sacrifices.  This story really took me away into China and later into Los Angeles prior to World War II.  At that time Chinese people were considered to be a "Yellow Peril."  Discrimination was open and rampant.  May and Pearl barely survived the bombing of Shanghai and the subsequent invasion of the Japanese soldiers.  They arrive on American shores as illegal immigrants arranged to be married to other immigrants.  They make a life for themselves in California.  Their story illustrates the harsh treatment of Chinese-Americans by our government.  Lisa See wrote Peony In Love and I really loved that book too.  I'll look for more of her books to read.  I'd like to go to Shanghai some day.