Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

By the time I get to our room, May has already pulled off her dress, leaving it in a limp heap on the floor. I shut the door behind me, enclosing us in our beautiful-girl world. We have matching four-poster twin beds with white linen canopies edged in blue and embroidered in a wisteria design. Most bedrooms in Shanghai have a beautiful-girl poster or calendar, but we have several. We model for beautiful-girl artists, and we’ve chosen our favorite images to hang on our walls: May seated on a sofa in a lime green silk jacket, holding a Hatamen cigarette in an ivory cigarette holder; me wrapped in ermine, my knees tucked up under my chin, staring at the viewer from a framed colonnade before a mythical lake selling Dr. Williams’s pink pills for pale people (who better to sell those pills than someone who has a naturally pink complexion?); and the two of us perched together in a stylish boudoir, each holding a fat baby son—the symbol of wealth and prosperity—and selling powdered baby milk to show we are modern mothers who use the best modern inventions for our modern offspring.

I cross the room and join May at the closet. This is when our day actually begins. Tonight we’ll sit for Z.G. Li, the best of the artists who specialize in beautiful-girl calendars, posters, and advertisements. Most families would be scandalized to have daughters who pose for artists and often stay out all night, and at first my parents were. But once we started making money, they didn’t mind. Baba took our earnings and invested them, saying that, when we meet our husbands, fall in love, and decide to get married, we’ll go to our husbands’ homes with money of our own.

We select complementary cheongsams to show harmony and style, while sending the message of freshness and ease that promises to bring spring happiness to all who use whatever product we’ll be selling. I choose a cheongsam of peach-colored silk with red piping. The dress is tailored so close to my body that the dressmaker cut the side slit daringly high to allow me to walk. Frogs fashioned from the same red piping fasten the dress at my neck, across my breasts, under my armpit, and down my right side. May pours herself into a cheongsam of pale yellow silk patterned in subtle white blossoms with red centers. Her piping and frogs are the same deep red as mine. Her stiff mandarin collar rises so high it touches her ears; short sleeves accentuate the slimness of her arms. While May draws her eyebrows into the shape of young willow leaves—long, thin, and sleek—I dab white rice powder on my face to hide my rosy cheeks. Then we slip on red high heels and paint our lips red to match.

Recently we cut our long hair and got permanents. May now parts my hair down the middle and then slicks the curls behind my ears, where they puff out like black-petaled peonies. Then I comb her hair, letting the curls frame her face. We add pink crystal drop earrings, jade rings, and gold bracelets to complete our outfits. Our eyes meet in the mirror. From the posters on the walls, multiple images of us join May and me in the reflection. We hold that for a moment, taking in how pretty we look.

We are twenty-one and eighteen. We are young, we are beautiful, and we live in the Paris of Asia.

We clatter back downstairs, call out hasty good-byes, and step into the Shanghai night. Our home is in the Hongkew district, just across Soochow Creek. We aren’t part of the official International Settlement, but we’re close enough to believe we’ll be protected from possible foreign invaders. We aren’t terribly rich, but then isn’t that always a matter of comparison? We’re just getting by, according to British, American, or Japanese measures, but we have a fortune by Chinese standards, although some of our countrymen in the city are wealthier than many foreigners combined. We are kaoteng Huajen—superior Chinese—who follow the religion of ch’ung yang: worshipping all things foreign, from the Westernization of our names to the love of movies, bacon, and cheese. As members of the bu-er-ch’iao-ya—bourgeois class—our family is prosperous enough that our seven servants take turns eating their meals on the front steps, letting the rickshaw pullers and beggars who pass know that those who work for the Chins have regular food to eat and a reliable roof over their heads.

We walk to the corner and bargain with several shirtless and shoeless rickshaw boys before settling on a good price. We climb in and sit side by side.

“Take us to the French Concession,” May orders.

The boy’s muscles contract with the effort of getting the rickshaw rolling. Soon he hits a comfortable trot and the momentum of the rickshaw eases the strain on his shoulders and back. There he is, pulling us like a beast of burden, but all I feel is freedom. During the day I use a parasol when I go shopping, visiting, or to tutor English. But at night I don’t have to worry about my skin. I sit up tall and take a deep breath. I glance at May. She’s so carefree that she recklessly lets her cheongsam flap in the breeze and open all the way up her thigh. She’s flirtatious, and she simply couldn’t live in a better city than Shanghai to exercise her skills, her laughter, her beautiful skin, her charming conversation.

We cross a bridge over Soochow Creek and then turn right, away from the Whangpoo River and its dank odors of oil, seaweed, coal, and sewage. I love Shanghai. It isn’t like other places in China. Instead of swallowtail roofs and glazed tiles, we have mo t’ien talou—magical big buildings—that reach into the sky. Instead of moon gates, spirit screens, intricate latticework windows, and red lacquer pillars, we have neoclassical edifices in granite decorated with art deco ironwork, geometric designs, and etched glass. Instead of bamboo groves gracing streams or willows draping their tendrils into ponds, we have European villas with clean façades, elegant balconies, rows of cypress, and cleanly cut lawns lined with immaculate flower beds. The Old Chinese City still has temples and gardens, but the rest of Shanghai kneels before the gods of trade, wealth, industry, and sin. The city has godowns where goods are loaded and unloaded, courses for greyhound and horse racing, countless movie palaces, and clubs for dancing, drinking, and having sex. Shanghai is home to millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords, and the Chin family.

Our puller takes us down alleys just wide enough for pedestrians, rickshaws, and wheelbarrows outfitted with benches for transporting paying customers, before turning onto Bubbling Well Road. He trots onto the elegant boulevard, unafraid of the purring Chevrolets, Daimlers, and Isotta-Fraschinis that hurtle past. At a stoplight, beggar children shoot into the traffic to surround our rickshaw and pull at our clothes. Each block brings us the smells of death and decay, ginger and roast duck, French perfume and incense. The loud voices of native Shanghainese, the steady click-click of the abacus, and the rattle of rickshaws rolling through the streets are the background sounds that tell me this is home.

At the border between the International Settlement and the French Concession, the rickshaw boy stops. We pay him, cross the street, step around a dead baby left on the sidewalk, find another rickshaw puller who has a license for the French Concession, and tell him Z.G.’s address off the Avenue Lafayette.

This puller is even dirtier and sweatier than the last. His tattered shirt barely hides the skeletal protuberances that have become his body. He hesitates before daring his way onto Avenue Joffre. It’s a French name, but the street is the center of life for White Russians. Signs in Cyrillic hang overhead. We breathe in the smells of fresh bread and cakes from the Russian bakeries. Already the sounds of music and dancing pour from clubs. As we near Z.G.’s apartment, the neighborhood changes yet again. We pass Seeking Happiness Lane, home to more than 150 brothels. From this street many of Shanghai’s Famous Flowers—the city’s most talented prostitutes—are elected and featured on the covers of magazines each year.

Our puller lets us out, and we pay him. As we walk up the rickety stairs to the third floor of Z.G.’s apartment building, I pouf the curls around my ears with my fingertips, run my lips together to smooth my lipstick, and adjust my cheongsam so that the bias-cut silk falls perfectly over my hips. When he opens the door, I’m struck again by how handsome Z.G. is: a thick mop of unruly black hair, a slight frame, big, round wire-rimmed glasses, and an intensity t

o his gaze and demeanor that speaks of late nights, artistic temperament, and political fervor. I may be tall, but he’s taller still. It’s one of the many things I love about him.

“What you’re wearing is perfect,” he enthuses. “Come! Come!”

We never know exactly what he has planned for our sitting. Young women getting ready to dive into a pool, play mini golf, or pull back a bow to send an arrow across the sky have been extremely popular lately. Being fit and healthy is an ideal. Who best to raise China’s sons? The answer: a woman who can play tennis, drive a car, smoke a cigarette, and still look as approachable, sophisticated, and beddable as possible. Will Z.G. ask us to pretend we’re about to go out for an afternoon of tea dancing? Or will he compose something entirely fictional, requiring us to change into rented costumes? Will May be Mulan, the great woman warrior, brought back to life to promote Parrot wine? Will I be painted as the fictional maiden Du Liniang from The Peony Pavilion to extol the merits of Lux toilet soap?

He leads us to a scene he’s set up: a cozy corner with an overstuffed chair, an intricately carved Chinese screen, and a ceramic pot decorated in a never-ending knot pattern from which some sprigs of blooming plum give the illusion of outdoor freshness.

“Today we’re selling My Dear cigarettes,” Z.G. announces. “May, I’d like you in the chair.” Once she sits down, he stands back and stares at her intently. I love Z.G. for the gentleness and sensitivity he shows my sister. She’s young after all, and what we’re doing isn’t exactly something most well-bred girls do. “More relaxed,” he directs, “like you’ve been out all night and want to share a secret with your friend.”

After positioning May, he calls me over. He puts his hands on my hips and twists my body until I perch on the backrest of May’s chair.

“I love your long lines and the length of your limbs,” he says, as he brings my arm forward so that my weight rests on my hand while I balance over May. His fingers spread mine, separating the pinkie from the rest. His hand lingers for a moment, and then he edges back to look at his composition. Satisfied, he gives us cigarettes. “Now, Pearl, lean toward May as though you just lit your cigarette from the tip of hers.”

I do as I’m told. He steps forward one last time to move a tendril of hair from May’s cheek and tilt her chin so that the light will dance on her cheekbones. I may be the one Z.G. likes to paint and touch—and how forbidden that feels—but May’s face sells everything from matches to carburetors.

Z.G. moves behind his easel. He doesn’t like us to speak or move when he paints, but he keeps us entertained by playing music on the phonograph and talking to us about this and that.

“Pearl, are we here to make money or have fun?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. He doesn’t want one. “Is it to tarnish or burnish our reputations? I say neither. We’re doing something else. Shanghai is the center of beauty and modernity. A wealthy Chinese can buy whatever he or she sees on one of our calendars. Those who have less money can aspire to have these things. The poor? They can only dream.”

“Lu Hsün thinks differently,” May says.

I sigh impatiently. Everyone admires Lu Hsün, the great writer who died last year, but that doesn’t mean May should be talking about him during our sitting. I keep quiet and hold my pose.

“He wanted China to be modern,” May continues. “He wanted us to get rid of the lo fan and their influence. He was critical of beautiful girls.”

“I know, I know,” Z.G. responds evenly, but I’m surprised by my sister’s knowledge. She’s not a reader; she never has been. She must be trying to impress Z.G., and it’s working. “I was there the night he gave that speech. You would have laughed, May. You too, Pearl. He held up a calendar that just happened to be of the two of you.”

“Which one?” I ask, breaking my silence.

“I didn’t paint it, but it showed the two of you dancing the tango together. Pearl, you were dipping May back. It was very—”