46 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa SeeShanghai Girls
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Fate”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Beautiful Girls”
Twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin lives with her affluent family in 1937 Shanghai. Pearl is intelligent and level-headed, but she isn’t the favorite of Baba and Mama Chin. Instead, they dote on 18-year-old May. The family’s fortunes have taken a downturn lately, but the girls don’t pay much attention. They go out for the evening to pose at an artist’s studio, appearing on what are known as beautiful-girl calendars to advertise products ranging from face soap to cod liver oil. On this particular night, they go to the studio of an artist named Z.G. Pearl is secretly in love with him and dreams that they will marry one day.
After their modeling session is over, the girls and Z.G. go out to a nightclub in the French Concession of the city. Foreigners and Chinese mingle freely in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Shanghai, the Paris of Asia. For the most part, the well-to-do residents ignore the filth and squalor in the old Chinese section. When the girls arrive back home at five o’clock in the morning, their father abruptly announces that he has arranged marriages for both of them.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Gold Mountain Men”
Pearl and May are flabbergasted at the old-fashioned notion, but their father explains that his business has taken a downturn. He owes a debt to an associate named Old Man Louie, who now resides in California with his two sons. Baba says these are the “Gold Mountain Men” who will marry the girls. Even though it is against tradition, Baba arranges a meeting for Pearl and May with their prospective grooms.
When May and Pearl arrive at the rendezvous, they discover that May’s future husband is only 14. His American name is Vernon. The other brother is Pearl’s age, and he is named Sam. Unfortunately, May doesn’t speak the same dialect as her future husband, so they have nothing to say to each other. After the meeting, Pearl goes to tell Z.G. what has happened. He pragmatically advises her to go through with the marriage, which infuriates her.
The next day, July 24, 1937, the couples go to the courthouse for a civil wedding ceremony. They also get immigration visas so the girls can travel to America. After the ceremony, the couples spend the night at a hotel. Pearl consummates her marriage to Sam, but neither is comfortable with the arrangement. The following morning, they learn that May and Vern didn’t have sex. This fact is discovered when Old Man Louie examines the couples’ used bedsheets.
The patriarch forgives the incident because Vern is so young and says he and his sons must travel to Hong Kong on business. He demands that the girls meet them there on August 7, so they can all travel to America together. As security, Old Man Louie takes all the girls’ clothes. Fortunately, he only packs the Chinese clothing and leaves the girls’ Western attire, which they usually wear anyway. Pearl secretly decides that she and May will find a way to escape before they are due to leave.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “A Cicada in a Tree”
It takes the girls a few days to adjust to their changed circumstances. Pearl throws away their boat tickets, and the sisters resume their socialite ways. In the meantime, their home has been subdivided to take in boarders, and only two servants remain. May and Pearl continue to pose for artists, and Pearl forgives Z.G. for his cold behavior regarding her marriage. Pearl says, “We’re like lobsters slowly boiling to death in a pot of water. We sit for Z.G., attend parties, and drink absinthe frappés. […] We simply don’t understand what’s happening to us” (45). The date for their departure comes and goes, but the girls remain in Shanghai despite their father’s anger at their rebellion. Meanwhile, the first shots are exchanged between the Japanese and Chinese armies.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “White Plum Blossoms”
On August 14, the girls awaken to the sight of refugees flooding the streets. May and Pearl barely register the crisis brewing in the city as they go out for a shopping expedition in the International Settlement. They assume the Japanese won’t bother this sector, which is populated by Europeans and Americans. May meets up with a childhood friend named Tommy while Pearl strolls toward the Palace Hotel. A Chinese military plane flies overhead but is struck by guns from a Japanese ship in the harbor. The plane releases its two bombs before crashing, and these strike civilians in the street. May’s friend Tommy is killed, and May is grazed but not seriously injured.
Pearl gets her sister back home safely, only to face another crisis. Three members of the infamous Green Gang arrive. Their boss, Pockmarked Huang, sent them to collect a debt owed by Baba Chin. Apparently, Old Man Louie’s deal with Chin was only part of the transaction. The thugs threaten to take May and Pearl, but Mrs. Chin says that they will honor their agreement instead. She claims that she found the discarded boat tickets and will exchange them for passage to Hong Kong. The thugs give them three days to make the arrangements or else. After they leave, Mrs. Chin says that the entire family will flee to Hong Kong until it’s safe to return to Baba Chin’s home village. The Green Gang will never find them there.
Part 1, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first segment of the novel establishes the affluent lifestyle enjoyed by Pearl and May in their early years. This baseline description serves to set up a striking contrast to the disasters that follow in subsequent sections of the story. These chapters also offer a useful history lesson to readers unfamiliar with the atmosphere of Shanghai before the Japanese attack. The city is cosmopolitan and sophisticated, and its repeated exposure to foreign influence has given the residents a taste for Western luxuries. The lifestyle enjoyed by the Chins is described in counterpoint to the wretchedness of the inhabitants in the old Chinese quarter.
For the most part, Pearl and May live in a cocoon of luxury as the stars of the beautiful-girl calendars. As the narrator, Pearl has the benefit of hindsight in describing her early years. She says of herself and May, “We are twenty-one and eighteen. We are young, we are beautiful, and we live in the Paris of Asia” (11). The motif of Calendar Girls, which is so prominent in this segment, introduces the theme of the Bond of Sisterhood. Although Pearl almost immediately leads the reader to an understanding of the petty jealousies between the siblings, she also emphasizes the close tie that the two girls share:
May is the one person who’ll stand by me no matter what. I never wonder if we’re good friends or not. We just are. During this time of adversity—as it is for all sisters—our petty jealousies and the question of which one of us is loved more dissolve. We have to rely on each other (37).
The need to rely on one another becomes paramount when Baba Chin announces that he has arranged marriages for his daughters. This is the first instance in which Pearl and May are Trapped by Circumstance, but it won’t be the last. In exploring traditional Chinese culture and arranged marriages in particular, the author highlights the inequities that are the special burden of women. Pearl says:
I can’t believe Mama is willing to ship us to America to cure my father’s and her problems. But then isn’t that the kind of thing Chinese parents have done with worthless daughters for thousands of years—abandoned them, sold them, used them? (59).
Aside from the cultural entrapment the Chin sisters feel at the prospect of an arranged marriage, these chapters also briefly explore the degree to which external political circumstances are about to change the sisters’ lives forever. While they continue their usual round of modeling and partying, Pearl and May become vaguely aware of an influx of refugees who are fleeing the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Pearl dismisses these ominous signs as irrelevant to her own life. She says, “In Shanghai, we also assume that what happens elsewhere in China will never touch us. After all, the rest of the country is big and backward” (50). A Japanese ship in Shanghai harbor soon proves that the country isn’t big enough to keep disaster from the Chins’ doorstep.
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