Remembering Shanghai

A title bestowed by a Qing-era empress dowager lifted the Sun family into wealth and influence in China. Isabel grows up in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, where her scholarly father and stylish mother keep her comfortable and away from the civil war and the Japanese occupation. Their protection cannot last. At eighteen, after Mao takes power, Isabel leaves for Hong Kong without knowing she will build her life there, or that she will never see her father again. Back in Shanghai, the relatives she left behind struggle to get by until the Cultural Revolution upends everything.

Fifty years later, Isabel goes back to Shanghai with her daughter Claire to examine the family's history. What they uncover includes love and betrayal, kidnapping and concubines, opulent entertainment palaces, and crime bosses of the city's underworld. The book traces five generations, moving from a poor village to the energy of Shanghai and then to Hong Kong's bright streets. It is illustrated throughout and grounded in careful research.

Alternately painful and tender, this memoir considers identity, loss, and how unpredictable a life can be, set against the sweeping upheaval of China and its people.