After a couple of posts dealing with European perspectives on Shanghai, I thought it was about time for another Chinese viewpoint.

The full title of this one is Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels. It was written by Isabel Sun Chao (who was born in 1931, is still going strong, and is the main source of the Shanghai recollections) and Claire Chao, her daughter. It was published in 2018, and the audio-version is nicely read by Rachel Yong and Claire Chao, with a little contribution by Isabel herself at the end.

There are three strands to the book. The major one is Isabel's memories of Shanghai from early childhood to the day she left to go to Hong Kong in 1950. Woven in and out of these personal recollections are the often dramatic stories of the family's previous generations, and accounts of the other family members, who would eventually face the trials of the cultural revolution.

Isabel's evocation of Shanghai is notable for its sunniness. In 2008, accompanied by her daughter, she visits the home she left almost 60 years before: "On our ride back to our hotel, Claire asks me about Japanese gendarmes, opium and food shortages. I prefer to tell her about Shanghai's vibrancy in the 1930s and '40s: the intimate nightclubs where jazz bands trumpeted their tunes and we waltzed and fox-trotted the night away; the grand boulevards teeming with fashion boutiques, cake shops and wonton peddlers; the entertainment palaces and opera stages and movie theaters. I remember Muma dashing off with her mink stole draped over a stylish outfit, leaving Father behind in his study, clutching an ink brush and filling a scroll with his bold calligraphy."


Shanghai, 2016 and 2018



These were the times when rich families like Isabel's had live-in tailors, all the children had their own nanny, little girls reared silkworms, and strict grannies could coopt grandchildren to be brought up under their auspices... Such an extraordinarily different world. Isabel recalls how her mother explained the genesis of a new dress: "I wanted a qipao of my favorite spring flowers, peony and plum. I sketched them in watercolors, and Mr Yang [the tailor] sent the picture to the Suzhou silk makers." It took a year to embroider it, and each flower had at least 1,000 stitches...

There's a PDF that is available for download from the book's website, and we can see from the photos that Isabel was a stunningly beautiful young woman. The book is indeed her narrative -- the story of someone growing up "during Shanghai’s first golden age". She attends McTyeire School for Girls and St. Mary’s Hall (where she was preceded by Eileen Chang), goes on to St. John’s University, "gets her hairclips from Wing On, dates a dashing young man who rides a Harley, and has her own song at her favorite nightclub... Isabel can still reel off the names of the bandleaders at her favorite nightclubs...  And we see, too, how similar the lives of wealthy Chinese and westerners were: tailored dresses by Madame Garnett, chestnut cake at Kiessling, banking at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, dancing at Ciro’s."

Isabel comes from a line of indomitable women. Her grandmother made such a fuss about foot-binding that she was allowed to remove the torturous pieces of cloth at the age of 10 (although by then sufficient damage had been done to leave her with foot problems for the rest of her life). Later, fed up with her husband's concubines and other extra-marital relationships, she leaves him to his own devices, and goes to live with her son (Isabel's father) in Shanghai.



Isabel's mother, Fei Baoshu, also refused to accept her husband's deviations from monogamy, and divorced him (at a time when that was a highly unusual course of action). When life gets too dangerous for a single woman in Shanghai during the war, she embarks on a perilous journey to Chongqing (the Chinese war-time capital), where she has friends. On the way, her unscrupulous companion attempts to sell her to someone looking for a wife, and she is able to escape only by invoking the help of her high-placed Kuomintang contacts in Chongqing.


Chongqing, 2016





Isabel's ancestors from previous generations are also colourful characters. Patriarch Sun Zhutang (her great-grandfather, whom she knows as Taiyeye) works his way up from poverty to an official position awarded by Empress Dowager Cixi. He invests in property in Shanghai, and establishes a shipping line and a bank. Then two of his sons rob him blind. Isabel's father (Sun Bosheng, whom she calls Diedie) is the son of the younger of these characters.


Shanghai, 2016 and 2018



Diedie (1894-1969) is the book's sad hero. A scholar, calligrapher, and art collector by inclination, he soldiers on with his day job, looking after the family property. His wife hates his liaisons, but in other areas he comes across as a fair and protective father, and a generous and forgiving man.

With the Chinese Communist Party in power as of 1949, Diedie decides that Isabel should follow her mother to Hong Kong. When she leaves in 1950, she thinks she is going on holiday. Why me, she wonders, when she learns that she won't be going back. She's the right age, says her mother, not too old, not too young. The others will have to stay, and roll with the punches.

The tide was soon to turn decisively against Diedie's class, and his subsequent story is well summarized here: "By 1956, the Sun properties are formally confiscated by the state. Landlords top the list of Mao’s despicables. Sun Bosheng is granted a monthly allowance of US$530 to maintain his 14-member household staff and family... [During the cultural revolution] Mr Sun, at 72 years, is fitted with a dunce cap and forced to kneel for ritual abuse, humiliation and beatings by frenzied Red Guards. He is doubly guilty of being a landlord and an intellectual. Because the prisons are full, he is incarcerated at the Public Security Bureau. Sun reads the daily newspapers to his illiterate wardens."

He is eventually returned to his home, which is now occupied by a number of other families, and is assigned duties as a sweeper of the grounds. The resident that Isabel and Claire meet when they return to Isabel's former home in 2008 remembers the polite "old gentleman" (even while he marvels at the amount of property he owned in his heyday).

Sun’s art collection was confiscated. But Isabel and Claire succeed in tracing one of the pieces when it comes up for auction in 2011. Of interest (aside from the astronomic price the work sold for) is its creator: 17th-century artist Wang Hui. Curiously, this was the figure that Claire, completely unaware of her grandfather's interest and background, had chosen to research for her thesis. One of those spooky little coincidences that sometimes bring different generations surprisingly close...

Life during the cultural revolution was pretty tough for Isabel's siblings, too. But one of them, Shufen, later emerged as a well-known and popular chronicler of old Shanghai, publishing 55 books over a span of 27 years.



I started off thinking I wasn't going to like this book. When Isabel and her daughter make that 2008 visit to the erstwhile family home, there seemed a little too much emphasis on contrasting the gorgeous, gilded past with the dirty disrepair of the evil present. But that tone subsides after the first chapter, and the account is well balanced, not skirting over dark spots, but not over-dramatizing them either.

The book perhaps goes a little overboard on elucidating the various references to Chinese culture (there are explanatory sections, footnotes, and an extensive glossary, as well as the explanations that crop up in the text). Zen Cho discusses the challenges of familiarizing readers with a culture they might not know, and identifies three approaches: footnotes, glossaries, and in-text explanations (which is the approach she likes least, and pillories as the "nasi lemak, ie rice cooked in coconut milk and kill me now" style). Influenced by her spare approach, I found the explicatory paraphernalia here a little much. But I guess the authors know their market.

It's certainly a moving and remarkable story. And Isabel has remained a remarkable woman. As Asia Sentinel reports in 2019: "At 88 years, Isabel Sun-Chao steers her walker like a go-kart as her daughter and co-author Claire briskly keeps pace on high heels. We meet for dim sum at the Hong Kong Country Club, Deep Water Bay. What is her secret? Isabel confesses an aversion to workouts, avoids walking, loves fatty ham and enjoys home movies in laid-back comfort. Her most vigorous exercise is swimming mahjong tiles. She disses all keep-fit advice. The lady brims with vim and ready laughter..."

Go Isabel.