Shanghai Girls

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Shanghai Girls takes place between 1937 and 1957. Readers will find some of what today we would call politically incorrect terms, but they are accurate to the time. I have used the Wade-Giles system of transliteration for Chinese words-whether in Mandarin, Cantonese, or in the Sze Yup and Wu dialects-again in keeping with the era.

Regarding exchange rates: Silver dollars were used in Shanghai before November 1935; Chinese yuan were used after 1935. The two were roughly equivalent. I have chosen to stay with dollars and cents because some were still in circulation and they are a more familiar currency to Western readers. The copper-silver exchange rate ranged from 300 to 330 coppers for every silver dollar (or yuan).

“OUR DAUGHTER LOOKS like a South China peasant with those red cheeks,” my father complains, pointedly ignoring the soup before him. “Can’t you do something about them?”

Mama stares at Baba, but what can she say? My face is pretty enough-some might even say lovely-but not as luminescent as the pearl I’m named for. I tend to blush easily. Beyond that, my cheeks capture the sun. When I turned five, my mother began rubbing my face and arms with pearl creams, and mixing ground pearls into my morning jook-rice porridge-hoping the white essence would permeate my skin. It hasn’t worked. Now my cheeks burn red-exactly what my father hates. I shrink down into my chair. I always slump when I’m near him, but I slump even more on those occasions when Baba takes his eyes off my sister to look at me. I’m taller than my father, which he loathes. We live in Shanghai, where the tallest car, the tallest wall, or the tallest building sends a clear and unwavering message that the owner is a person of great importance. I am not a person of importance.

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