In Conversation: Patricia Luce Chapman – An American Girl in Wartime Shanghai

Patricia Luce Chapman, the author of Tea on the Great Wall: An American Girl in War-Torn China was born in Shanghai in 1926 to a journalist mother and businessman father, and grew up here during a time that was both glamorous and difficult. She lived on Columbia Circle in a house designed by Hudec, went to Victor Sassoon’s fancy dress parties, and summered in Weihaiwei ~ but, as she documents in her memoir, she also grew up with the fear and uncertainty of a changing world, as Nazi flags went up at school, Japanese warships crowded the harbor and emaciated opium addicts crowded the streets. Tea on the Great Wall is available in Shanghai from Earnshaw Books and on Amazon.

Historic Shanghai: You’ve described your girlhood as “Shirley Temple in Wonderland meets Nazis, Japanese bayonets and Chinese opium addicts”. Your Shanghai was a complicated one! Glamorous dinner parties on the one hand, threatening soldiers on the other. How did you process it all, as a child?