Shanghai Girls

Although a reader might assume that Shanghai Girls is primarily concerned with events in 1937 Shanghai, the bulk of the narrative focuses on the lives of the central characters after they arrive as Chinese immigrants to America. A large part of Pearl Chin’s story revolves around her obsession with citizenship and the need to conceal her undocumented entry into the country for two decades.

The controversy surrounding Chinese immigration to the United States began as early as the 1850s. While a small number of Chinese nationals had established themselves in North America centuries earlier, the largest immigration wave was spurred by three events during the 1850s and 1860s. The California Gold Rush of 1849 prompted many Chinese men to seek their fortunes in the gold fields with the intention of returning home rich afterward. Around this same time, the construction of a transcontinental railroad to connect the east and west coasts of the United States began. Railroad companies routinely advertised for workers in China seeking cheap foreign labor starting in 1863. During this same period, the Taiping Revolution in China cost 20 million lives between 1850 and 1864. Many Chinese immigrants who weren’t seeking their fortune in America were eager to flee political unrest.

Once the transcontinental railroad was completed, many Chinese immigrants found themselves out of work and facing the hostility of the native workforce. The source of this tension was as much economically as it was racially biased. American workers complained that Chinese immigrants would work for extremely low wages; as a result, American men felt they were being prevented from earning a livelihood in their own country. Many Chinese workers also saved their income to send back to their families in China, thus stimulating the economy of a foreign country. Shanghai Girls references this custom in Old Man Louie’s habit of sending money back to his home village.

By the 1870s, Americans became increasingly concerned about the number of Chinese immigrants in their midst, and the government’s initial response was to enforce stricter limits on immigration. To prevent a population increase among Chinese Americans, the Page Act was passed in 1875, preventing Chinese women specifically from migrating to America. This not only included the wives of migrants already in the country but sex workers from China as well. At the same time, Chinese men were forbidden to marry white women. As a further restriction, the government instituted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prevented all Chinese immigration for 10 years. The only exceptions were merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats. This law wasn’t rescinded until 1943. Shanghai Girls uses the loophole in the Exclusion Act to allow Pearl and May Chin to come to America as the merchants’ wives.

American hostility toward Chinese immigrants diminished when China became America’s ally during World War II. However, this brief period of amicability ended abruptly after Chairman Mao founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949. American anxiety about Communism in Russia and China peaked with McCarthyism and the Cold War Era of the 1950s. Shanghai Girls ends during this historical period with another government crackdown aimed at Chinese immigrants who had entered America without documents. In the novel, Pearl and Sam experience this harassment. The last remaining restrictions on Chinese immigration weren’t lifted until 1965.