Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
By Claire Chao and Isabel Chao
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Winner of 26 literary and design awards including:
Rubery Prize BOOK OF THE YEAR
Independent Author Network OUTSTANDING MEMOIR
Indie Reader Discovery Awards FIRST PLACE NON-FICTION
IPPY Independent Publisher Book Awards BEST FIRST BOOK
Reader Views GLOBAL AWARD
A high position bestowed by China’s empress dowager grants power and wealth to the Sun family. For Isabel, growing up in glamorous 1930s and ’40s Shanghai, it is a life of utmost privilege. But while her scholar father and fashionable mother shelter her from civil war and Japanese occupation, they cannot shield the family forever.
When Mao comes to power, eighteen-year-old Isabel journeys to Hong Kong, not realizing that she will make it her home—and that she will never see her father again. Meanwhile, the family she has left behind struggles to survive, only to have their world shattered by the Cultural Revolution. Isabel returns to Shanghai fifty years later with her daughter, Claire, to confront their family’s past—one they discover is filled with love and betrayal, kidnappers and concubines, glittering pleasure palaces and underworld crime bosses.
Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations from a hardscrabble village to vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity, loss and the unpredictable nature of life against the epic backdrop of a nation and a people in turmoil.
Claire Chao
Isabel’s daughter, Claire Chao, spent much of her youth seeking connections to her parents’ homeland. After thirty years in management with companies such as Tiffany & Co., Harry Winston and Hill & Knowlton, she spent a decade creating Remembering Shanghai, uncovering an uncanny link with the grandfather she never met. She has been designated one of Avenue magazine’s “500 Most Influential Asian Americans” and Tatler Hong Kong’s “Who’s Who in Hong Kong.” She graduated with highest honors from Princeton University and lives in Honolulu with her husband and two dogs.
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Reviews for Remembering Shanghai
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If it were possible, I think I'd give this book more than five stars. It's definitely deserving. "Remembering Shanghai" has got to be one of the most (if not THE most) beautifully written memoirs I've ever read. Isabel Sun Chao is like a storyteller, weaving the tale of her time in Shanghai in such a way that you begin to feel transported, that the old feel of the city is right outside your own window. Claire Chao punctuates her mother's memories with historical context and background that help the reader fully understand the time period.The book is very visual in its prose. The illustrations and photographs throughout never fail to enhance the excellence of this treasure of a book. Everyone should read this.