Shanghai Girls characters

Appears from the start

The elder of two closely bonded sisters in 1937 Shanghai and the novel's narrator. Pearl is practical, observant, and conscious that May is usually treated as the prettier and more favored daughter. The sisters earn money posing as modern Chinese beauties for advertising art while enjoying the city's fashionable life, unaware of how precarious their family's position has become.

Appears from the start

Pearl's younger sister and fellow advertising model. May is charming, stylish, and accustomed to attention, but she is also bound to Pearl by years of shared work and private confidence. Their different temperaments shape how each responds when family decisions abruptly close off the futures they imagined.

Appears from the start

A gifted commercial artist who paints Pearl and May for calendar advertisements. Z.G. moves in Shanghai's cosmopolitan art world and treats the sisters as embodiments of a new, glamorous China. His closeness to May extends beyond their professional work.

Also known as Baba

First appears in chapter 2

Pearl and May's father, whose prosperous household has concealed serious financial trouble. His gambling debts leave him vulnerable to powerful creditors, and he responds by arranging American marriages for his daughters as part of a bargain meant to save the family.

Also known as Mama

First appears in chapter 2

Pearl and May's mother, a restrained woman shaped by traditional expectations. When war reaches Shanghai and the family's plans collapse, she travels with her daughters and tries to protect them during their dangerous flight from the city.

Also known as Old Man Louie

First appears in chapter 2

The Chinese American patriarch who negotiates marriages between his sons and the Chin sisters. He presents the matches as a path to safety and prosperity in Los Angeles, but his authority rests on family obligations, immigration papers, and secrets that everyone entering his household must help preserve.

First appears in chapter 8

Old Man Louie's elder son and Pearl's arranged husband. Sam was born in China but has built an American life under the identity supplied by his family's immigration history. Quiet and dutiful, he works steadily and receives Pearl with more patience than she expects from a marriage neither chose.

First appears in chapter 8

Old Man Louie's younger son and May's arranged husband. Vern is physically frail and dependent on his family, making the marriage very different from the independent American future May had imagined.

Also known as Yen-yen

First appears in chapter 8

The senior woman of the Louie household and mother of Sam and Vern. Yen-yen guards Chinese domestic customs within the family's Los Angeles home and expects her new daughters-in-law to work, obey family hierarchy, and contribute to collective survival.

First appears in chapter 11

The daughter raised in the Louie household as Pearl and Sam's child. Joy grows up American, surrounded by adults whose immigration histories and family relationships depend on guarded stories. Intelligent and idealistic, she increasingly questions both the prejudice around her and what her family has withheld.