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.
Themes
The Bond of Sisterhood
Pearl and May represent a strong contrast in temperament. Pearl’s caution contradicts May’s impulsiveness. Grudges based on sibling rivalry are nurtured for decades and erupt into major arguments are many points in the novel. However, the dramatic confrontations between the sisters do nothing to weaken their essential bond.
Their mutual love is frequently put to the test and reasserts itself throughout the story. When Pearl is on the point of death, May manages to get her to a hospital, pushing her in a wheelbarrow for days on end. When May becomes pregnant and knows that she can’t prove Vern is the father, Pearl takes on the task of faking a pregnancy and raising Joy as her own. She does this even though she once loved the man who fathered May’s child, and every day she will be reminded that he chose her sister over her. Even when May’s disastrous plan to get Sam his citizenship results in his suicide, Pearl forgives her sister’s actions and gains her support for Pearl’s trip to China.
This bond is all the more remarkable since the lives of the two sisters diverge sharply once they get to America. May immediately begins exploring Los Angeles while Pearl hides in Chinatown. Pearl toils every day in Old Man Louie’s various businesses while May finds work as a Hollywood movie extra. She then parlays this into a full-time job as a casting agent for Chinese actors while her sister continues caring for an aging family and working in a restaurant.
Despite their many rivalries and arguments, Pearl and May are bonded for life. A Western reader might not be aware of the uniqueness of this relationship. In traditional Chinese society, as in many patriarchal cultures, it was customary for a girl to sever all ties with her birth family when she married. Ongoing relationships between mothers and daughters or between female siblings do not exist. Fortunately, Pearl and May aren’t merely sisters. They are also sisters-in-law, having married two brothers, which is the only reason why their connection is not destroyed by a culture that only recognizes agnatic kinship bonds. Pearl says:
May and I are not only sisters but sisters-in-law as well. For thousands of years, daughters-in-law have complained about the hardship of life in their husbands’ homes, living under the iron fists of their fathers-in-law and under the calloused thumbs of their mothers-in-law. May and I are very lucky to have each other (144).
Cultural Identity Crisis
The struggle of Chinese immigrants attempting to fit into mainstream American life is a central theme of the novel. However, mimicking the customs of one’s adopted country is only a superficial indicator of what constitutes identity for new arrivals. Pearl frequently vacillates between longing for China and appreciating her life in America.
It might be argued that Pearl and May experienced a cultural identity crisis from birth. They were fortunate to be raised as wealthy inhabitants of Shanghai at a time when the city was at the peak of its prosperity. As a major port, Shanghai attracted a large foreign merchant population, so the Chin sisters were exposed to American and European customs and behavior. This allowed them to develop a level of sophistication that would have been impossible for Chinese women living in the country’s interior.
Both girls speak English fluently. Pearl has an American friend and attends classes at Christian schools. This exposure to foreign ways causes May and Pearl to rebel against the restrictions imposed on proper Chinese daughters. They go out partying at night and pose for calendar ads. Both sisters protest loudly when their father arranges marriages for them. As a result, Pearl and May are already trying to sort out which aspects of Chinese culture to embrace and which to discard.
This problem intensifies when they arrive in Los Angeles. Chinese immigrant notions of life in America are quickly contradicted by reality. The Chinese are forced to live in neighborhoods populated by their own kind because white Americans don’t want to sell them houses or have their children attend the same schools.
Although Chinatown is a popular tourist destination, this is only true because it is designed like a movie set. The architecture, food, and merchandise for sale all approximate an American notion of what China is like. Pearl is quick to note, “May’s the one who reports about the shops and stores and fun things that are being planned at China City. She tells me that a lot of it is being built from used movie sets” (137). Even Pearl’s supposedly authentic Chinese food at her restaurant is tailored to American tastes. “That sweet-and-sour pork is the worst kind of lo fan dish: too sweet and too breaded” (269).
As much as Pearl bemoans living in America, she eventually realizes that she romanticized the Shanghai of her youth. When her own status as a citizen is threatened, she reaches an epiphany about how much she values her new life in the States. “I may not have my papers, but after all these years, I am an American. I don’t want to give that up—not after everything I’ve gone through to have it. I’ve earned my citizenship the hard way” (309).
Trapped by Circumstance
Shanghai Girls describes sweeping historical events that seem to control the lives of its characters. Two of the book’s sections are entitled “Fate” and “Destiny.” The question of personal agency is particularly relevant to the lives of the Chin sisters since external circumstances seem to dictate their future. The siblings are forced into arranged marriages because their father has lost his fortune through gambling. Further, their new husbands intend to take them overseas to America.
Although Pearl and May demonstrate a rare moment of self-determination by throwing away their boat tickets, this action is quickly subverted by the arrival of the Green Gang. Thugs threaten Mr. Chin if his daughters don’t follow through on their marriage contracts. Although this turn of events is enough to intimidate the sisters into compliance, the Japanese attack on Shanghai sends them fleeing for their lives. Fate once again intervenes to deprive them of their mother, and May is forced to rescue Pearl when she is at death’s door herself.
By this point in the novel, the sisters are marching in lockstep to meet the fate that their families arranged for them until they arrive for immigration processing on Angel Island. Again, in a rare moment of defiance, May reveals that she carried on a romantic liaison without her parents’ knowledge. Pearl is then forced into passing off her sister’s baby as her own.
One might think the sisters’ problems would be over once they enter the land of liberty. However, they are soon confronted with new traps both within the Chinese American community and outside of it. Pearl is shocked to discover that her father-in-law isn’t the wealthy businessman he seemed to be. He is a minor player in Chinatown and is trapped in the immigrant community because white American society won’t let him rise any higher.
Once in America, it is Pearl rather than May who continues to be a victim of fate. She becomes an unpaid laborer in Old Man Louie’s various enterprises. Pearl learns that her husband is only a paper son and even the family patriarch is an unauthorized immigrant, which places Pearl’s citizenship in peril as the wife of an unauthorized immigrant.
While American culture was already apprehensive about the arrival of Chinese people, the level of government paranoia escalates after the Communists take over China. The McCarthy Era imposes another layer of constraint on Pearl’s freedom since everyone, white and Chinese, is afraid of being accused of being a Communist. Given Pearl’s lack of agency during her life, it’s little wonder that she has become so fearful and apprehensive. May’s insulting words, though just, are understandable in this light. Pearl admits:
Maybe May was right about me. I am weak. Maybe I’ve always been afraid, a victim, a fu yen. May and I grew up in the same home [...] and yet my sister has always been able to look out for herself. [...] I accepted the bad as merely my unlucky fate (302).
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