I’m ashamed to say it, but it took me a while to read The New York Times bestseller Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. In fact, I read it after I saw a preview screening of the upcoming Wayne Wang film of the same name, due out July 15. (On a side note, check out our summer cover with the star of the film, Li Bing Bing, on the cover here!)
Well, I made up for lost time because I immediately gobbled up author Lisa See‘s 2010 follow-up, Shanghai Girls, which gives us a fascinating look not just into the glory days of 1940s Shanghai, but also mid-century L.A. Chinatown (yes, the one on Broadway!) and what life was like for the earliest Asian American immigrants. And thanks to the belated reading, I didn’t have to wait long to find out what happened to the beautiful Shanghai sisters Pearl and May — a few weeks after I finished Shanghai Girls, I received word that the sequel to Shanghai Girls, Dreams of Joy, was coming out at the end of May.
