46 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa SeeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
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.
By Lisa See
Dreams of Joy
Dreams of Joy
Lisa See
Lady Tan's Circle of Women
Lady Tan's Circle of Women
Lisa See
On Gold Mountain
On Gold Mountain
Lisa See
Peony In Love
Peony In Love
Lisa See
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See
The Island of Sea Women
The Island of Sea Women
Lisa See
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Lisa See