Isabel Sun Chao Remembers Li Xianglan

 One of the last generation to have experienced the legendary “Old Shanghai” firsthand, Isabel Sun Chao co-authored a family memoir with her daughter Claire, Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels. 

Winner of 20 literary and design awards, including the Rubery Prize BOOK OF THE YEAR and Independent Author Network OUTSTANDING MEMOIR

In this excerpt, Isabel reminisces about dancing at her favorite late-1940s nightclubs:

Once I turned eighteen and was attending St. John’s, I began to visit nightclubs with friends. Although Shanghai’s largest ballroom, the Paramount, was only half a mile from our home, it had always been off-limits. As children, Virginia and I had been fascinated by how its curvy neon façade pulsated to the beat of the big bands playing inside. We also observed the gendarmes and bodyguards manning the club entrance on Bubbling Well Road, and grown-ups warned us that Japanese officers and gangsters patronized it.

That was in part why my university friends and I preferred smaller, lesser-known venues. By this time, the Communists were in power and most foreigners had fled Shanghai, but plenty of gangster types were still around.

For us, it was the music that mattered the most: when a favorite band moved from one nightclub to another, we followed. Indeed, we usually referred to the place by the name of its bandleader rather than the name of the club. The Paramount had Tino, the Metropole had Remedios, Ciro’s had Lobing. From 1949 on, most of the musicians were from the Philippines.

I found nothing more exciting than live music—songs I’d heard on the radio and in movies, as well as those of local musicians. Mostly, we listened to jazz, popular Chinese songs and jazzed-up Western tunes, some with Chinese lyrics. I liked to think of it as “jazz with a Shanghai accent.”

But we didn’t simply listen. We danced! People knew how to dance in those days—the waltz, tango, rhumba, samba, cha-cha. I foxtrotted to “September Song,” swung to “In the Mood,” and waltzed to “One Day When We Were Young.” One male friend was adept at tossing and flipping me to Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo”—not that I had any idea where or what Chattanooga was. The beat was infectious, and it felt so light and breezy when my partner pulled me through his legs and popped me up again. And later, when the band struck up another tune, it truly did feel like heaven dancing cheek to cheek with a handsome date.

At the Great World one afternoon, Qinpo and I passed a couple on stage performing a flamboyant tango. She shrugged and said, “Quite bizarre what young people do in public these days,” never imagining her own granddaughter often jitterbugged the night away.

Isabel and her university friends preferred smaller, lesser-known nightclubs like the Airline Club, where the six-piece ensemble of bandleader Moro (first from left) strummed and tooted the night away. Photographs courtesy of Isabel Sun Chao, Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels.

Isabel reminisced about Li Xianglan as a special contribution to this blog:

Nearly eight decades after I first saw her perform in “Glory to Eternity萬世流芳” at Shanghai’s Grand Theatre in 1943, I remember Li Xianglan very well indeed. So mesmerized was I by her looks and charisma that I immediately learned to sing the movie’s signature “Candy-peddling Song 賣糖歌.” Like many schoolgirls at the time, during Shanghai’s long steamy summer holidays I loved to collect her black-and-white photos and hand-paint them with watercolors.

Li Xianglan stood out in an era when glamorous stars abounded. Nightclub bands and local radio stations frequently played her songs. In part it was the sweet clarity of her voice and her ability to sing in different languages, but I believe what made her truly special was that she could express an endless range of emotions that resonated with old and young, rich and poor.

Among my favorite songs of hers—in addition to the ubiquitous and elegant “Night-blooming Jasmine 夜來香”—are the wistful “Manchurian Girl 滿洲姑娘” yearning for a suitor, the uplifting love song “Suzhou Nocturne 蘇州夜曲,” and the reflective “If Only恨不相逢未嫁時,” which translates to “regret that we didn’t meet before I was wed.” Li Xianglan’s talent etched such a deep impression on this long-ago teenager that I can still sing many of her songs word for word.

As an adult I read that she was prosecuted and nearly executed for treason in Shanghai in 1945. It made me realize that her real life had been even more dramatic, and she had been even more tenacious than what we’d imagined of this exceptional screen idol.

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John M. book review:
Highly recommended to readers interested in the history of ‘Golden Age’ Shanghai and the generations since.  

“Remembering Shanghai” is yet another piece of the giant jig-saw puzzle that China represents to the curious mind, and what an elegant piece it is! This fascinating (and very candid) memoir spans five generations of the Sun family, beginning in 1842 with the birth of their Taiyeye (great-grandfather) forebear. His sons (#4 and #7) actually absconded with the family fortune (and they are only two of the many scoundrels you will meet in this book). 

Interspersed throughout the book are interesting details about Chinese culture and language as well as the candor, humor and wisdom of writers Isabel and her faithful daughter Claire. Even when describing the tragedies endured by their family, the authors have such equanimity to say “China’s cruel history broke our family, yet the sublime beauty of its culture endures.”

It was a great pleasure (and education) to read the book and due to the amount and richness of detail, you’ll probably want to go back and savor it all again as I did. The authors (like skillful mystery writers) inserted ‘items of interest’ early in the book which come back around later in their multi-generational saga. I enjoyed how Isabel and Claire skillfully told their story so it was not just linear from beginning to end, but circled back, revealing itself gradually. Their writing quality is superb!

The book itself has such a high physical quality in its heft, thickness of page, number of photographs and color-plates, different type-faces, and print colors of the illustrations. It also has a comprehensive Glossary of Chinese words.