Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels

We’ve lost one of the last voices of Old Shanghai with the passing of Isabel Sun Chao on March 13 2023, just a day after her 92nd birthday. Luckily for us, Isabel shared her story with us in her memoir, Remembering Shanghai.

Spend a little time in Shanghai and it becomes clear that the history of the city can best be understood as a multilayered phenomenon: anthropologist Jie Li, in Shanghai Homes, uses the very apt term palimpsest: A manuscript on which earlier writing has been effaced but is still discernible. Shanghai’s strata is complex: there are the time periods, of course, but also nationality, be it Shanghainese, migrants from the countryside, or foreigners-French, American, British, Russian; political affiliation, whether Communist or Nationalist, Axis or Allies; place of residence – Concession, International Settlement, Chinese city?; monied or poor. Add a layer of amnesia post-1949, induced by politics and to anaesthetize pain, and you see why this city’s history is simultaneously so fascinating, and so hard to grasp. Twenty-five years of living in Shanghai has convinced me that you can best understand it one story at a time.

Which is why memoirs are so valuable.

The Shanghai memoir is not a new genre, but all too often, memoirs illuminate limited terrain. Then, as now, people stayed in their own bubbles. But memoirs like Isabel Sun Chao and Claire Chao’s new Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels peel back multiple layers with a story that is the stuff of novels.