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Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution by Helen Zia
generalheff's review against another edition
4.0
Last Boat out of Shanghai is a cleverly-worked account of four Chinese men and women who variously fled the Communist takeover of China in 1949. Helen Zia interviewed 100s of individuals, whittled these stories down to just four and interleaves these across 400-odd pages, with each person's story broken up chronologically.
The stand outs are Benny, son of a corrupt official in league with the Japanese, who must hide his past once the Nationalists and then Communists take over - his life dramatically shifting from lap of luxury to ascetic solitude as a librarian then a worker for the YMCA. And Bing, who as a girl during the Japanese invasion is repeatedly handed off to more or less benevolent 'owners' who take in the girl to work for them. What's so shocking about this story of child trafficking is how commonplace it seems and how integrated these abducted children become into their families. Bing eventually moves to America with a 'sister' in one of these families - her incredible story of disruption and abandonment seemingly no barrier to forming lasting bonds with her ersatz captors.
These stories overlap geographically - with Shanghai seen from the viewpoint of rich Benny and poor Bing. All four eventually make it overseas - the lucky to America, the less lucky to much poorer Taiwan. All pull you in - with moments of genuine shock interspersed with humanity and care. The overall picture is one of incredible turmoil - from the Japanese take over, to the Nationalist period of dominance to the final Communist onslaught leading to their eventual victory. It's a period about which too little is known in the West despite surely being one of the most disruptive and destructive spells in modern history, affecting a continent-sized country and costing the lives of millions.
The uncovering of this giant tragedy through the lens of individual stories is novel and well wrought. Minor gripes prevent this book quite hitting the heights of five-stardom. For one, though novel - the chronological ordering of stories results in some very short chapters, designed to fill gaps in, say, Ho's story, in a particular moment in time. It ends up being quite challenging to keep a grip on who was last where and to follow the threads throughout. If the foursome's stories had any meaningful interaction it would have been a reasonable price to pay to see the overlaps over time. But these are really just four different stories. I think longer chapters - helping the reader get to grips with one storyline before moving onto another - would have been the smarter choice. This would involve covering more time per chapter, losing the chronological dimension - but each rolling back of the clock to a new story would have let the reader revisit the same events from a new angle and would have offered its own structural benefits.
A second issue is how rapidly the book ends; we get deep in the weeds of all events in Shanghai and surroundings - but zip through later in the 1950s. I think a firmer decision to either reduce all post-1951-ish stories to an epilogue, or else explore these events more, was needed. As it is - we get a bit of a random assortment of some events in the later 1950s but it is not clear why some stories are told well beyond the ascent of communism - straying into events like the Great Leap Forward - while others do no.
A final comment concerns the slightly awkward reality of writing from individual's recollections. Several times we'll be reading about some incredible performance in class or other positive event. It's hard not to feel a little bit like events are being massaged to ensure maximum positivity (who wouldn't remember themselves well in such dire events decades after the fact). While hearing an 80 year old's fond recollections about being top of the class is perhaps ignorable - it's hard not to shake the fact that some facts events have been much more carefully told. Benny's story is particularly fraught with this tension - given his father was a corrupt, mass-murdering tyrant. Benny's pleas of total ignorance may well be genuine, he was young after all; but it does feel like Zia wasn't particularly keen to apply a more critical-journalistic lens to her subjects.
Yet these are small critiques. I throughly enjoyed the book and I would strongly recommend reading it to anyone with even a passing interest in Chinese history.
The stand outs are Benny, son of a corrupt official in league with the Japanese, who must hide his past once the Nationalists and then Communists take over - his life dramatically shifting from lap of luxury to ascetic solitude as a librarian then a worker for the YMCA. And Bing, who as a girl during the Japanese invasion is repeatedly handed off to more or less benevolent 'owners' who take in the girl to work for them. What's so shocking about this story of child trafficking is how commonplace it seems and how integrated these abducted children become into their families. Bing eventually moves to America with a 'sister' in one of these families - her incredible story of disruption and abandonment seemingly no barrier to forming lasting bonds with her ersatz captors.
These stories overlap geographically - with Shanghai seen from the viewpoint of rich Benny and poor Bing. All four eventually make it overseas - the lucky to America, the less lucky to much poorer Taiwan. All pull you in - with moments of genuine shock interspersed with humanity and care. The overall picture is one of incredible turmoil - from the Japanese take over, to the Nationalist period of dominance to the final Communist onslaught leading to their eventual victory. It's a period about which too little is known in the West despite surely being one of the most disruptive and destructive spells in modern history, affecting a continent-sized country and costing the lives of millions.
The uncovering of this giant tragedy through the lens of individual stories is novel and well wrought. Minor gripes prevent this book quite hitting the heights of five-stardom. For one, though novel - the chronological ordering of stories results in some very short chapters, designed to fill gaps in, say, Ho's story, in a particular moment in time. It ends up being quite challenging to keep a grip on who was last where and to follow the threads throughout. If the foursome's stories had any meaningful interaction it would have been a reasonable price to pay to see the overlaps over time. But these are really just four different stories. I think longer chapters - helping the reader get to grips with one storyline before moving onto another - would have been the smarter choice. This would involve covering more time per chapter, losing the chronological dimension - but each rolling back of the clock to a new story would have let the reader revisit the same events from a new angle and would have offered its own structural benefits.
A second issue is how rapidly the book ends; we get deep in the weeds of all events in Shanghai and surroundings - but zip through later in the 1950s. I think a firmer decision to either reduce all post-1951-ish stories to an epilogue, or else explore these events more, was needed. As it is - we get a bit of a random assortment of some events in the later 1950s but it is not clear why some stories are told well beyond the ascent of communism - straying into events like the Great Leap Forward - while others do no.
A final comment concerns the slightly awkward reality of writing from individual's recollections. Several times we'll be reading about some incredible performance in class or other positive event. It's hard not to feel a little bit like events are being massaged to ensure maximum positivity (who wouldn't remember themselves well in such dire events decades after the fact). While hearing an 80 year old's fond recollections about being top of the class is perhaps ignorable - it's hard not to shake the fact that some facts events have been much more carefully told. Benny's story is particularly fraught with this tension - given his father was a corrupt, mass-murdering tyrant. Benny's pleas of total ignorance may well be genuine, he was young after all; but it does feel like Zia wasn't particularly keen to apply a more critical-journalistic lens to her subjects
Spoiler
given her close personal connection to the topic.Yet these are small critiques. I throughly enjoyed the book and I would strongly recommend reading it to anyone with even a passing interest in Chinese history.
kerryfriesen's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
lifeonbooks's review against another edition
5.0
A fantastic page turner that keeps the reader engaged by following four unique stories of Chinese youths who all struggle to find their way in a rapidly changing post WWII China.
Not only is this book hard to put down, it also offers stunning insight into Chinese culture and the oppression of the Chinese people that's often overlooked in American educational institutions.
Not only is this book hard to put down, it also offers stunning insight into Chinese culture and the oppression of the Chinese people that's often overlooked in American educational institutions.
woolfy_vita's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
celenac's review against another edition
4.0
Last Boat Out of Shanghai was an interesting and informative read. I really enjoyed reading about the lives of different Chinese people (the son and daughter of a "Japanese puppet," an international student studying in the U.S., a refugee who fled to Taiwan, and a refugee who found her way to the U.S.) during a turbulent time in history -- during the Japanese invasion of China and the Communist Revolution. It was very interesting to learn about how each character experienced highs and lows at different points of their lives during this time period based off of their family, educational, financial, and political status.
Last Boat Out of Shanghai does a good job in showing how each character's story fits into history. The book is organized in a way that aims to tell the chronological story of each character simultaneously. The book is separated into parts, each part encapsulating a period of years. Within each part is a chapter for each character, and so throughout the book, the narrative of each character would alternate (i.e. I would go from reading about Bing, then about Ho, then about Annuo, then about Benny, then about Bing again, and so on). The parts and chapters were clearly labeled and organized, but while reading the book, I quickly lost track of the names and mixed up the characters' narratives with one another. When starting a chapter about one character, it was hard for me to recall what had happened to that character previously. I think it would be helpful to reread the book several times, each time focusing on reading just the chapters of one character, to get a cohesive picture of each character's story.
I really appreciate author Helen Zia for putting an enormous amount of work into writing this book. Her acknowledgements at the end of the book made me realize that it must have been extremely difficult to organize a compelling historical narrative from the amount of information she got from researching and interviewing. Considering that it must have been hard to pick and choose what to include and exclude in the book, I think Last Boat Out of Shanghai is well-written and overall is a worthwhile read.
Last Boat Out of Shanghai does a good job in showing how each character's story fits into history. The book is organized in a way that aims to tell the chronological story of each character simultaneously. The book is separated into parts, each part encapsulating a period of years. Within each part is a chapter for each character, and so throughout the book, the narrative of each character would alternate (i.e. I would go from reading about Bing, then about Ho, then about Annuo, then about Benny, then about Bing again, and so on). The parts and chapters were clearly labeled and organized, but while reading the book, I quickly lost track of the names and mixed up the characters' narratives with one another. When starting a chapter about one character, it was hard for me to recall what had happened to that character previously. I think it would be helpful to reread the book several times, each time focusing on reading just the chapters of one character, to get a cohesive picture of each character's story.
I really appreciate author Helen Zia for putting an enormous amount of work into writing this book. Her acknowledgements at the end of the book made me realize that it must have been extremely difficult to organize a compelling historical narrative from the amount of information she got from researching and interviewing. Considering that it must have been hard to pick and choose what to include and exclude in the book, I think Last Boat Out of Shanghai is well-written and overall is a worthwhile read.
lindasdarby's review against another edition
4.0
I know almost nothing about Chinese history so this was very eye opening. There is a lot to unload from this book - the Japanese occupation and war years which were totally brutal, the nationalists and the communists fighting for control of china(one corrupt government or another), the ups and downs of the different families depending on your financial or government connections. This book focused on 4 different children and their experiences - one girl who was abandoned as a child and never really felt like she belonged or was loved, one boy whose father was corrupt, one boy whose family sacrificed so he could get schooling and one girl who suffered from many relocations and the brutal emotional abuse of her father. They way each person's life played out was fascinating but so so difficult. Trying to get out of China and then what happened when they reached Taiwan or Hong Kong or America or the one who got stuck in China and suffered immensely under communist rule. I can't believe how difficult life was for each of these people and I know this is only four people so the many many people who suffered and had horrible experiences is mind boggling. I also had a hard time with the way some of the different parents treated their children - I understand we have different culture from the Chinese but this was especially difficult for me. Also shocking was the fact that Australia would only allow white people to enter the country and the US only allowed 105 Chinese people a year. I highly recommend this book.