Daughter of Shanghai is a memoir by Tsai Chin, published in 1988 by St. Martin's Press in the United States and by Chatto and Windus in the United Kingdom.
Jean Fritz in the Washington Post wrote that "The heart of this book lies in Tsai Chin's conflicts as she tried to feel at home in two cultures on opposite sides of the world." [1]
The initial part of the book discusses Shanghai during World War II, and later it discusses post 1949 Shanghai. [2] After she arrives in the West, she describes how she had made slights towards her Chinese background while trying to achieve in her career. The book also discusses how the Cultural Revolution resulted in her parents' deaths. [3]
Reviewer Richard Harris described the work as an "authentic record" of the time periods the actress lived in. [4]
Polly Toynbee of The Guardian said, "The world of Tsai Chin has been a good deal more interesting than The World of Suzie Wong , the play that made her into a star." [5] Richard West of The Sunday Telegraph wrote, "An extraordinary and occasionally tragic life story." [6]
Beth Duff in New York Times Book Review wrote, "Captivating account" that is "skillfully interwoven the glamour and despair." [7]
Fritz described the writing as showing the author's genuine self, rather than trying to "manipulate" the readership. [1]
In 1989, Daughter of Shanghai was voted "One of the Ten Best Books of the Year (十本好书)" by Hong Kong TV Cultural Group. [8]
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former married name, A. S. Byatt, was an English critic, novelist, poet and short-story writer. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages.
Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998.
Constance Clara Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to render numerous volumes of Anton Chekhov's work into English and the first to translate almost all of Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction into English. She also rendered works by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Alexander Herzen into English. Altogether, she translated 71 volumes of Russian literature, many of which are still in print today.
Nancy Kwan Ka-shen is a Chinese-American actress. In addition to her personality and looks, her career benefited from Hollywood's casting of more Asian roles in the 1960s, especially in comedies. She was considered an Eastern sex symbol in the 1960s.
The World of Suzie Wong is a 1957 novel by British writer Richard Mason. The main characters are Robert Lomax, a young British artist living in Hong Kong, and Suzie Wong, the title character, a Chinese woman who works as a prostitute. The novel has been adapted into a play and spawned two unofficial sequels, a film, and a ballet.
Herbert Richard Hoggart was an English academic whose career covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with emphasis on British popular culture.
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.
Dame Susan Elizabeth Hill, Lady Wells is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include The Woman in Black, which has been adapted for stage and screen, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle, for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971. She also won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1972 for The Bird of Night, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Tsai Chin is a Chinese-British actress, singer, director, and teacher. Her career spans more than six decades and three continents.
Sunset at Blandings is an unfinished novel by P. G. Wodehouse published in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, London, on 17 November 1977 and in the United States by Simon & Schuster, New York, 19 September 1978. Wodehouse was working on the novel when he died in 1975. The book's first edition publisher, Chatto & Windus, gave the book its title.
The Camomile Lawn is a 1984 novel by Mary Wesley beginning with a family holiday in Cornwall in the last summer of peace before the Second World War. When the family is reunited for a funeral nearly fifty years later, it brings home to them how much the war acted as a catalyst for their emotional liberation. The title refers to a fragrant camomile lawn stretching down to the cliffs in the garden of their aunt's house.
Beth Chatto was an English plantswoman, garden designer and author known for creating and describing the gardens named after her near Elmstead Market, Essex. She wrote several books about gardening under specific conditions and lectured on this in Britain, North America, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Her principle of placing the right plant in the right place drew on her husband Andrew Chatto's lifelong research into garden-plant origins.
Dr Ruth Scurr FRSL, aka Lady Stothard, is a British writer, historian and literary critic. She is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
The World of Suzie Wong is a 1960 British-American romantic drama film directed by Richard Quine and starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. The screenplay by John Patrick was adapted from the 1958 stage play by Paul Osborn, which was based on the 1957 novel of the same title by Richard Mason.
Sarah Bakewell is a British author and professor. She lives in London. She received the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction.
The Honourable Jane Ridley FRSL is an English historian, biographer, author and broadcaster, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Buckingham.
Mollie Harris was an English actress and author, known for her appearances as village shopkeeper Martha Woodford in the BBC Radio soap opera The Archers.
McTyeire School was a private girls' school in Shanghai.
Barbara Lee, who used the stage name Barbara Yu Ling, was a Singapore-born actress of stage, screen, and television who was based in Britain from the 1950s. One of the first Singaporean Chinese actresses to gain attention in Europe, she appeared in productions of Madame Butterfly and The World of Suzie Wong. Among the films she appeared in were The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), Ping Pong (1986), and Peggy Su! (1997).
The World of Suzie Wong is a 1958-premiered stage play, adapted from the eponymous 1957 novel by Richard Mason, The World of Suzie Wong. The play was in turn adapted into the 1960 Hollywood British-American feature film The World of Suzie Wong. The novel was adapted into a play by playwright Paul Osborn. It is one of the major elements of the Suzie Wong franchise.