Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
    Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
    Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
    Audiobook7 hours

    Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels

    Written by Isabel Sun Chao and Claire Chao

    Narrated by Isabel Sun Chao, Claire Chao and Rachel Yong

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Winner of 26 book awards including the 2019 Rubery Award BOOK OF THE YEAR

    True stories of glamour, drama and tragedy told through five generations of a Shanghai family, from the last days of imperial rule to the Cultural Revolution

    Audiobook narrated by two-time Asian American Film Lab Best Actress Rachel Yong and authors Isabel Sun Chao and Claire Chao

    www.rememberingshanghai.com

    “An engaging and entertaining saga.” South China Morning Post

    "A volume that demands to be held." Los Angeles Review of Books

    “Jaw-dropping, exciting, touching, tragic and insightful.” Historic Shanghai

    A high position bestowed by China’s empress dowager grants power and wealth to the Sun family. For Isabel, growing up in glamorous 1930s and ’40s Shanghai, it is a life of utmost privilege. But while her scholar father and fashionable mother shelter her from civil war and Japanese occupation, they cannot shield the family forever.

    When Mao comes to power, eighteen-year-old Isabel journeys to Hong Kong, not realizing that she will make it her home—and that she will never see her father again. Meanwhile, the family she has left behind struggles to survive, only to have their world shattered by the Cultural Revolution. Isabel returns to Shanghai fifty years later with her daughter, Claire, to confront their family’s past—one they discover is filled with love and betrayal, kidnappers and concubines, glittering pleasure palaces and underworld crime bosses.

    Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPLUM BROOK, LLC
    Release dateJan 1, 2021
    ISBN9781662149382
    Author

    Isabel Sun Chao

    Isabel Sun Chao was one of the last of her generation to experience the legendary “Old Shanghai” of the 1930s. She left China on a spring holiday in 1950, not realizing that she would never see her father again, nor that three decades would pass before she returned. Making Hong Kong her permanent home, she worked as a cultural affairs specialist in the US Consulate General while raising three children with her husband, Raymond. Isabel passed away in 2023 after a happy retirement spent mostly at the mahjong table.

    Related authors

    Related to Remembering Shanghai

    Related audiobooks

    Art For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Coates, Jamison, Patchett, Krasznahorkai, Ware, Smith, and More

      Sep 24, 2019

      In case you've been living under a rock, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new book out (and so do Patti Smith, Ann Patchett, Leslie Jamison, and Chris Ware. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Coates, Jamison, Patchett, Krasznahorkai, Ware, Smith, and M

      7 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Rooney, Tóibín, Groff, and More

      Sep 7, 2021

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín, Lauren Groff, and whole lot more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Rooney, Tóibín, Groff, and More appeared first on The Mill

      9 min read

    • Article

      Adult Fiction

      Apr 10, 2024

      By Abraham Chang. May 2024. 400p. Flatiron, $29.99 (9781250910783). In November 1995, Young Zheng Wang—he of endless nicknames: Young Sun, Young Gun, Young Hun, as if he would always be so mutable—is a commuting NYU freshman, still living at home in

      51 min read

    • Article

      'How To Say Babylon' Centers On Resisting Patriarchy And Colonialization

      Oct 11, 2023

      Safiya Sinclair's memoir follows her journey from a scared and sheltered Rasta girl in Jamaica to a strong and self-assertive woman — exploring just how poetry became her savior.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Graphic Novels

      Jun 5, 2024

      Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey to His Musical Language. By Joonas Sildre. Art by the author. Tr. by Adam Cullen. Sept. 2024. 224p. Plough, $26 (9781636081342). 741.5. When he was a young boy, twentieth-century minimalist composer Arvo Pärt’s

      20 min read

    • Article

      Red Dragon Rising

      Mar 28, 2022

      Seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994. She knows no word of English, but she knows that the Chinese word for America is “Mei Guo,” which means “beautiful country.” However, the America she sees is far from the imagined idea: her parent

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dreaming Up Her Own Salvation

      Oct 11, 2023

      Dreaming Up Her Own Salvation
      14 min read

    • Article

      Forgotten Authors

      Jun 29, 2022

      Lesley Blanch is probably best known now for her 1954 book The Wilder Shores of Love, which told the stories of four European women who left home in variously adventurous ways to live in the Middle East. As an assiduous self-mythologiser habitually c

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Chung, Brodesser-Akner, Habila, Steinke, and More

      Jun 18, 2019

      This week's releases include ambitious debuts, the memoir of an amateur boxer, and novels called both 'Travelers' and 'The Travelers.' WHAT ARE THE ODDS? The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Chung, Brodesser-Akner, Habila, Steinke, and More ap

      6 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Fung, Anam, Bell, and More

      Jul 13, 2021

      Here’s a quick look at some new books from the likes of Pik-Shuen Fung, Tahmima Anam, and Matt Bell. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Fung, Anam, Bell, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Woman Behind theWords

      Sep 1, 2020

      The Woman Behind theWords
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Bookshelf

      Jul 9, 2019

      In this book, the journalist Angela Saini reveals the recent upsurge of race science in political and academic discourse. She also goes back to the origins of race science, looking at the Victorian move towards categorisation as well as at how some o

      2 min read

    • Article

      Acts Of War

      Jan 22, 2024

      by Vanessa Chan (Hodder &Stoughton, $37.99) Malaysian author Vanessa Chan draws on her family history for this gripping story about a family in Kuala Lumpur over two time periods – in 1935 in the run-up to World War II and in the final throes of it

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Woman Behind the Words

      Sep 1, 2020

      The Woman Behind the Words
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Carey, Doshi, Lyon, and More

      Jan 26, 2021

      Here's a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Edward Carey, Annabel Lyon, Avni Doshi, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Carey, Doshi, Lyon, and More appeared first on The Milli

      5 min read

    • Article

      People

      Dec 17, 2021

      People
      2 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Luiselli, Morrison, Williams, Newman, and More

      Feb 12, 2019

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Valeria Luiselli, Toni Morrison, John Williams, Sandra Newman and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book p

      8 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Hemon, Guns, Harding, and More

      Jan 24, 2023

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new release titles from Aleksandar Hemon, Priya Guns, Paul Harding, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help Th

      5 min read

    • Article

      Kate Quinn

      Aug 1, 2024

      My latest book The Briar Club came together out of a pandemic-year mishmash of inspirations: a Laurie Colwin essay, an Instagram photo, a Japanese Netflix series, and a random historical factoid. In ‘Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant’ from the bo

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Remembering Shanghai

    4.5/5

    25 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Beautifully written tugging at the heart
      I am a Chinese and it resonates with what I feel about tradition and change
    • 5/5
      If it were possible, I think I'd give this book more than five stars. It's definitely deserving. "Remembering Shanghai" has got to be one of the most (if not THE most) beautifully written memoirs I've ever read. Isabel Sun Chao is like a storyteller, weaving the tale of her time in Shanghai in such a way that you begin to feel transported, that the old feel of the city is right outside your own window. Claire Chao punctuates her mother's memories with historical context and background that help the reader fully understand the time period.The book is very visual in its prose. The illustrations and photographs throughout never fail to enhance the excellence of this treasure of a book. Everyone should read this.
    • 5/5
      On a return memory trip to Shanghai & Souchow I immensely enjoyed this great treasure of descriptions of Life in Shanghai.& HongKong from the 40s - 90’s.A great listen for anyone interested in abundant life.