Telling the Stories of Chinese-America:Lisa See on Her New Novel, Shanghai Girls

by Anna Clark
– USA –

Meet Lisa See—if you aren’t already among her millions of fans around the world. Born in Paris and raised in Los Angeles, where she lives today, See is the New York Times bestselling author of Peony in Love and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, two novels that elevate the stories of Chinese-American history. She was named National Woman of the Year in 2001 by the Organization of Chinese American Women, and was the recipient of the Chinese American Museum’s History Makers Award in 2003.

See’s new novel, Shanghai Girls, follows the lives of Pearl and May Chin—two sisters enjoying the glamorous life of “the Paris of Asia”—Shanghai in 1937. Their father owns a prosperous rickshaw business while the sisters, as “Beautiful Girls,” pose in silk dresses for paintings on cigarette and soap ads.

Pearl and May don’t know it yet, but their lives are on the brink. Japan will soon invade China, bringing a world war to their country, and they are about to set off on a terrifying journey that takes them through wartime China, across the Pacific Ocean, and through interrogation and detainment at Angel Island (called the Ellis Island of the West). They find Los Angeles’ China City, experience the odd relationship between Hollywood and Chinese actresses, and brave the Communist witch-hunts that targeted Chinese during the 1950s. Shanghai Girls focuses on the tense and loving relationship of sisters in an epic context of war, immigration, racism, wealth and marriage.

Currently on tour for her new book, See spoke with me about her life, her writing, and her hunger for Chinese-American stories in all their forms.

What was your upbringing like? How did you become a writer?

I lived with my mom, but I spent a lot of time with my father’s family in Chinatown. I also moved around a lot as a child, so Chinatown became a kind of home base for me. These were the people and places that had a huge influence on me as a woman and as a writer. I didn’t want to become a writer though. My mom and her father were writers. I didn’t want to compete with them, among other things.

Then, when I was in college, I took two years off to bum around Europe on $5 a day. One morning, when I was living in Greece, I woke up and it was like a light bulb went off. I thought, I could be a writer! When I returned to the States, my mom helped me get my first two magazine assignments. She has been a huge influence and inspiration to me.

In Shanghai Girls, what is the heart of the story you want to tell?

I’ve been collecting Shanghai advertising images from the 20s, 30s, and 40s for many years. The so-called Beautiful Girls – women who posed for commercial artists – were right in the heart of the excitement in Shanghai. The charming and captivating life illustrated in advertisements is one thing, but I was interested in seeing what real life was like for those women.

I also wanted to write about what it was like for Chinese women who came to America in arranged marriages. We had a lot of arranged marriages in my family. I know how hard life was for the women. They’d had servants in China, but they lived like servants in America. I [also] wanted to write about China City, a short-lived tourist attraction in Los Angeles. And finally, I wanted to write about sisters.

From the Confession Program to China City to Angel Island, Shanghai Girls explores the stories of Chinese-American culture that are hardly well known.

I hope people will learn and understand how hard it was for immigrants from China. It’s so interesting, really, because today people tend to look at Chinese as the model minority: Chinese Americans go to college, make money, and live anywhere they want.

But it wasn’t always like that. Many readers will be very surprised by the miscegenation laws and the land laws that affected Chinese Americans. And it always surprises me how few people have even heard of Angel Island, let alone what happened there.

I never know what readers will think, but I hope they’ll come away with a deeper understanding of the hardships the Chinese had to endure – just as so many other immigrants had to endure.

Shanghai Girls spends much time looking at Chinese-Americans who performed in Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. Can you tell us what kind of experience this was for the actors? How has the film industry changed—or not changed—in its relationship to Chinese-American actors?

There was one great movie star, Anna May Wong. She was one of my grandfather’s closest friends and I have some of her old clothes in my closet. She worked hard and yet she was never fully accepted in Hollywood. She could never kiss the male lead or have a happy ending. She finally had to go to Europe to get work. She was also put down by people in Chinatown and in China, who thought actresses were no better than prostitutes.

That was one kind of experience. But there were also a lot of people in Los Angeles Chinatown who worked as extras. They were paid about $5 a day. They had long hours, just as extras do today. They played all kinds of stereotypical roles: maids, houseboys, cooks, laundrymen.

During World War II, many Chinese men in Los Angeles played Japanese soldiers in war films, since actual Japanese were in internment camps. For some, there was bitter disappointment that they didn’t get speaking roles or larger roles. But for others, it was great fun – a way to hang out with friends, get out of the curio shop for a day, and make some extra money at a time when Chinese didn’t make much money. In other words, there was a wide range of experiences.

Now, how is that different from the experience of Chinese in Hollywood today? Well, most films with Chinese actors tend to be action films. You could say that Chinese in “mainstream” [American] films are almost non-existent. They still don’t get to kiss the lead and they still don’t get happy endings.

Your novels spend a great deal of time looking at how gender has limited the lives of women.

I’m always interested and surprised when women tell me that they’re glad that they didn’t live in China in the past and that they are so lucky to be Americans living today. I mean, yes, women don’t have bound feet, and yes, women can do more or less what they want, but women are still very much limited by their genders. Who takes care of the kids? Who has responsibility for the house? Who takes care of the parents when they become old and infirm? What’s the percentage of women in the Senate, in Fortune 500 companies, or as partners in law firms?

My son is getting married and his fiancée struggles with a lot of these questions. What career can she have and still become a good wife and mother? And we haven’t even gotten to what it’s like for women in other countries. Think of women in the Middle East under their veils. Think of women in Africa who endure female genital mutilation. Think of your women in this country who get breast implants. The number one age for that in this country is 17! Who is giving that gift? Mothers. And why? When you get to the core of it, breast implants make a girl more marriageable just as footbinding made a girl more marriageable in China in the past.

Your novels bring nuance to what’s considered emblematic of old-time Chinese culture by Western readers. In a time of such heightened relations between China and the U.S., are you hoping to influence American understanding of China?

I’m not on a mission from God or anything like that. And truthfully, I don’t think too much about readers. Nevertheless, I have really enjoyed taking things that could be considered stereotypical – footbinding and rickshaw pulling – and then writing about them in an honest and factual way. Do I think that influences American understanding of China today? Certainly not in a political sense. These things happened in the past; they have nothing to do with China today.

However, what I hope readers will get is that we are all human beings. We all share in certain types of relationships: mothers and daughters, father and sons, husbands and wives, friends, siblings. We also share in the emotions: happiness, sadness, regret, guilt, envy, jealousy. Perhaps that sound Pollyanna-ish, but that’s what I hope for.

Lisa See is on a national book tour for Shanghai Girls through July 30th.
Go to www.lisasee.com for updates.

About the Author
Anna Clark is a freelance journalist and fiction writer living in Detroit, MI. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Utne Reader, Women’s eNews, Bitch Magazine, Writers’ Journal, RH Reality Check, and other publications. She maintains the literary and social justice website, Isak.