"Shanghai Girls" by Lisa See Reviewed by Janice Nimura

Washington Post, July 11, 2009 STYLE section Page C1,C3:

Book World: "Shanghai Girls" is published by Random House 314 pp. $25

Lisa See, the author, might be the daughter , granddaughter and great-grand-daughter of Caucasian women, but the Chinese great-grandfather who arrived in California in 1871 has proved the most influential of her ancestors. "I am Chinese in my heart,"See wrote in her family memoir, "On Gold Mountain."

San Francisco's Chinese name is "Old Gold Mountain" since I came to San Francisco from Shanghai in 1947 as a graduate student from Shanghai at the University of San Francisco.

"We raised our children to be Americans, but what we wanted were proper Chinese sons and daughters."

Comment: The proper Chinese offspring would imply the influence of traditional Chinese culture of Confucianism to respect the ancestors in China with filial piety of the family. To be Americans would mean to respect the law and order in USA. Such is the implication of the best of two nations. I envision the cooperation and collaboration of USA and China in the 21st century for mutual benefit in every field of endeavor in the nuclear age.

China's 20th century upheavals afford as much color as its days of old;"Shanghai Girls" will not lose See any fans, and it bravely moved her oeuvre( i.e. the work of a writer as a whole in French) into the challenging terrain of more recent history.

Nimura reviews for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Francis Shieh a.k.a. Xie Shihao appreciates this novel as a refreshing piece of history to bring back memories in China, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 20th century. I feel like a Shanghai boy, a lifelong student to continue learning American English and American Culture of Economics with modifications in the 21st century.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 10 a.m.