All the Flowers in Shanghai

Author/Guide: Duncan Jepson

Why a Booktrail?

1930s: Be transported to a China on the brink of revolution,

ISBN: 978-0062081605
Genre: Fiction, Historical

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What you need to know before your trail

Set in 1930s Shanghai,the Paris of the East, but where following the path of duty still takes precedence over personal desires, a young Chinese woman named Feng finds herself in an arranged marriage to a wealthy businessman. In the enclosed world of her new household-a place of public ceremony and private cruelty-she learns that, above all else, she must bear a male heir. Ruthless and embittered by the life that has been forced on her, Feng seeks revenge by doing the unthinkable. Years later, she must come to a reckoning with the decisions she has made to assure her place in family and society, before the entire country is caught up in the fast-flowing tide of revolution

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Shanghai

This books shares the story of a very young, very naive girl in pre-revolution China, Feng. She is the second born and and it’s clear that her mother prefers and has poured all her energy into her elder sister. Her elder sister is to be the vehicle through which her mother enters society. When her sister dies Feng is sold into the marriage her mother needs in order to save face.

This sweet, naïve girl possesses a love of flowers and gardens”

The public gardens

The side of our house ran next to the wall surrounding them but Grandfather had made a passageway for us to enter directly. The gardens by the main gate were beautifully designed but our private entrance was towards the center where the landscape was more wild and uncultivated and fewer people ventured

Between was a wide expanse of grass and in the spring and summer gorgeous flowers would create a colorful mosaic across the wild pale green.

“The old Town had been constructed over several centuries as increasing numbers of peasants and immigrants settled there from the countryside. The buildings were mostly two-story, of rough, deep brown wood with tile roofs with narrow alleys running between them. People made their lives in these slivers of space -a hole in the floor with a fire beneath or a big oven, “a kang”, to heat the living area in the cold Shanghai winter evenings.”

This was a time of tremendous upheaval in China and marked the downfall of the ruling wealthy class. It was a time when Mao held the plight of all of China’s people in his hands, although this is only the backdrop to the novel and not its core