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The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel

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Jennifer Cody Epstein steps into the pantheon of fine contemporary writers with her first book THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI, a work of 'historical fiction' so polished in research, so rich in detail not only of the turbulent period in China during the first half of the 20th century, but also in the mysterious social customs of that country, and a source of insight into the changes in the manner in which the visual world was captured by artists as East and West met and married in the art capital of the world - Paris. Yet overriding all of this fascinating information is Epstein's gift for delivering a story of passion and love with a poetic prose style that comes together in this novel in a manner not unlike creating the painting technique that this novel's heroine describes her world. It is a grand feat and a work worth repeated readings.

Westerners may not be familiar with the name Pan Yuliang, one of the more important Chinese artists who influenced the Post-Impressionist art movement, but in Epstein's eloquent novel we grow to know this gifted artist from her birth as Xiuqing in 1895, and her early years as an orphan protected by her opium-addicted uncle who sold her into a brothel at age fourteen. Enough space is allotted in this tale to allow us to learn the traditions of the 'flower houses' and the brutalities and consequences of life as a prostitute, but Epstein is careful to balance the sad with the radiant in the relationship between the newly renamed Yuliang and her beautiful 'teacher' Jinling with whom she has her first love affair, and Yuliang's subsequent rescue from the brothel through the kindness and concern showered upon her by a handsome gentleman Pan Zanhua - the man with whom she not only enters into the relationship of being his concubine, but also benefits from his support of her position as a woman and as an artist.

The story spans Pan Yuliang's life from these early beginnings to her death in 1977, a life that brought her exposure to the West, with awards from the schools of art in China, Italy and France resulting in renown as a gifted artist who just happened to be a woman with a past, the many private and public pains she endured as her native country moved from the reign of the Emperors through the rise and fall of Chiang Kai-shek, the invasion by the Japanese, and the new order of Communism, and the influence of the world perception of art that included defeat of some of the finest artists as the battle of the sexes altered the perception of painting the nude figure as an acceptable subject matter in a climate of global turmoil.

Epstein manages to write as intricately about history and Chinese tradition as well as luminously about the act of creativity. Few writers can match the descriptive language of the emergence of the visual: 'But true art must contain an emotional range that speaks to the viewer. Speaks...not by lulling them into a false sense of complacency, but by probing. Challenging. Even hurting, if need be. Anything to force us beyond life's easier thoughts.' 'Has it ever occurred to you that our wounds are what drive us to create?...What if those who've lost something compensate for it in their work? In that case the damage helps them. It's what compels them to create...And it might explain why the best artists tend to be the poorest.'

THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI begs to become a film. But until that happens, this elegant and passionate book is one to treasure repeatedly. It is a work of art. Grady Harp, July 08

Pan Yuliang has lived and taken care of her uncle, ever since her mother died when she was young. At fourteen years Pan Yuliang was sold to The Hall of Eternal Splendour to become a prostitute. Her uncle did it to play off some loans he had accrued for his habit of opium. After two years of working at The Halls of Eternal Splendour, Pan Yuliang was saved. A young man by the name of Pan Zanhua, who is an inspector. He is so fascinated by Pan that he offers to take her away from Eternal Splendour and make her his wife. For once Pan Yuliang sees Shanghai through a different light. Pan Zanhua recognizes Pan Yuliang interest and talent for painting. He encourages her to become a professional painter but is Pan Yuliang to free spirited for the school and will they even accept a woman.


The Painter from Shanghai is based on true events of Pan Yuliang life. I have to admit that I had never heard of Pan Yuliang. After reading The Painter from Shanghai, I found Pan Yuliang to be a very remarkable woman. She could find beauty in everything around her. This included even during the two years Yuliang was at The Halls of Eternal Splendour. Pan Zanhua was a good husband to Yuliang. He helped Pan Yuliang pursue her dreams no matter what people thought. For this fact Pan Yuliang was able to stand up for what she wanted to paint and not just what sold. I feel Jennifer Cody Epstein did Pan Yuliang justice in this creative masterpiece of a book titled The Painter from Shanghai.

Upon finishing Jennifer Epstein's luminous tale of a courageous, passionate woman's personal and artistic triumph over circumstance, I wept, so much had Yuliang inspired and moved me. She lingers still, thanks to Epstein's lyrical, keenly observed writing, from the smallest detail to the overall epic story arc. Brava.

I picked this book up during my recent infatuation with early 20th century China, expecting something exciting and probably over-the-top romantic (especially with a sticker on the cover boasting "If you liked Memoirs of a Geisha, you'll love this!"). The reality, however, leaves something to be desired.

Perhaps the most disconcerting part of the book is that it is written entirely in the present tense. I'm sure the author was aiming to give the reader a sort of first-hand impression of the events, but it's actually quite difficult to read. More than that, it is used incorrectly; rather than building suspense, it ends up killing it, and the resulting story is flat and lifeless.

The author chooses to either spell out letter-by-letter every event so that the reader doesn't ever have to think, or to skip the event entirely. The latter was an interesting plot device the first two or so times it happened, leaving the reader with a sense of anticipation about the eventual return to and conclusion of these events. It becomes apparent early on, however, that even when there are conclusions, they usually occur as an afterthought and so briefly one might wonder why they were mentioned at all. Even some of the book's most "important" characters are swept under the rug, out of sight, out of mind. When the reader comes to realize that almost EVERY major plot point is going to be built up and then skipped (to be mentioned again, possibly, in a brief flashback), it becomes tiresome. The story is gutted of any emotional bonds between characters because they might vanish at any time, never to be mentioned again. The reader ends up caring as little about the secondary characters as the emotionally vacant main character does.

Amazingly, a story that should be extremely interesting-- set in one of the most turbulent periods of China's history and focusing on a talented and driven young woman who defies the odds-- is in this book incredibly dull. I could barely get myself through to the last page, and by the time I arrived I was just glad to be finished with the book.

"The Painter from Shanghai" is a strong fictionalized, but apparently accurate, biography of Pan Yuliang, the best-known Chinese woman artist of the earlier 20th century. Yuliang was a woman who began her life in 1895, in what, I guess, would have been considered a middle-class Chinese home - as a child, her feet were bound, that excruciatingly brutal, painful process by which the bones in a woman's feet were broken, so that she could virtually not walk, and would be entirely dependent upon men all her life, as she tottered around on tiny, throbbing, 2-inch excuses for feet. She would, as a teenager, endure an economic and social fall as the result of her parents' death, be deprived of any education - not unusual for a Chinese girl, and, at fourteen, be sold into sex slavery as a prostitute by her opium addicted uncle: a fate also, apparently, not unusual for a pretty Chinese girl.

Luckily for Yuliang, she caught the interest of a successful young customs Mandarin named Pan Zanhua, who loved her, bought her out of the brothel, and married her, though he already had a wife, and Yuliang was therefore considered a concubine, who had no real rights within pre-revolutionary China. But he taught her to read and write Chinese, a difficult language for sure, and encouraged her nascent interest in art; helped her get scholarships to local art schools, then to Paris, and Rome: she became a well-known Post-Impressionist, with frequent gallery and museum shows. All this, mind you, while living through a time of extraordinary upheaval in China, World Wars I and II, the Japanese invasions, the regimes of Sun Yat-Sen, Chiang Kai-Shek, and the Communists, who finally forced her to leave her husband and spend the rest of her days in European exile, until her death in 1977 ---but in freedom. It's a little-known story, but a true one, enthralling and empowering.

The book is a debut novel from Jennifer Cody Epstein, a New Yorker who evidently knows her way around the art world. Epstein has written for "Self," the "Wall Street Journal," and the "Chicago Tribune." She has clearly spent time in China, as well as doing a great deal of thorough research to produce this book. I liked it very much.

BUT. Yuliang, as I've said above, was the best-known woman artist of her time in China, and known the world over, too: she had gallery and museum shows. Her husband, as a high-ranking official, was known in China. Pictures of them surely exist, so where are they? Not here. And photos of her paintings surely exist, but neither are they here. Never was there a book that called out so strongly for photos. Now, mind you, I was beginning to feel a bit self-conscious about having demanded photos in so many books recently. However, I am now reading an informative new book,Setting the Desert on Fire: T. E. Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia, 1916-1918, by James Barr, a history of the Mid East before and during World War I. It's very well done, though on a subject, despite the fact that I was a history student that I know very little about. Only what I read in Barry Unsworth's excellent Land of Marvels: A Novel; and saw in David Lean's famous Lawrence of Arabia . And though the latter movie is undoubtedly beautiful, and is considered one of Lean's greatest, aside from the beautiful Maurice Jarre score, it bored me to tears, camels riding riding riding in the desert, then the desert riding, riding riding the camels. Anyway, several of the reviewers of "Setting the Desert on Fire" have specifically praised the fact that the author went to the Mid East, and took contemporary pictures of the places he discussed. So they could visualize them. Note to Editors: Pictures almost always help.

From the moment I opened the book, I could not put it down. The writers description of rural China, Shanghai and Paris in the 1920s, was fascinating and mesmerizing. I became so involved with the character of Pan Yuliang, that I had to remind myself she was a fictional character and that I would not find any of her paintings in the Museums of Shanghai or Paris. I consider this a double eye drop book, at night I had to keep on reading regardless of burning eyes and vampire hours. I hated this one to end.

This fictionalized retelling of the turbulent life of painter Pan Yuliang (1895-1977) is remarkable for the period in which this woman finds her voice as an artist, forges a distinct identity in the art world as a painter of nudes and nude self-portraits and braves the chaos of pre-revolutionary China and the unfolding political landscape that so defined the People's Revolution. Braving the outrage of Chinese sentiment, Yuliang remains committed to her art against significant odds, enduring the rage and notoriety heaped upon her, continuing her work. As an artist, she comes eventually to the most painful choice of all, that between work and family, vision and love, stepping bravely away from convention at great personal cost and public humiliation at the hands of her government. Indeed, this woman's life in a patriarchal society is a testament to the strength of her extraordinary character.

Orphaned and in the care of her beloved uncle, Xiuqing is sold to a brothel when he can no longer support a growing opium habit by selling household items. Delivered to the various cruelties and terrible indignities of The Hall of Eternal Splendor, the girl, now called Yuliang, is trained by the only friend she is to know at this seminal point of her life, the only sustaining relationship available where she is bartered daily until her contract is purchased by a government official, Pan Zanhua, who makes Yuliang his second wife. It is this fortuitous event that leads the fledgling artist to her craft and the training her husband arranges; later she travels to Paris for more extensive tutoring. The inspiration of her younger life remains a theme of her work, the very nudes so praised becoming the cause of shame and destruction after her return to a changed China.

Once she has embraced her chosen path and enjoyed the benefits of excellent teachers, Yuliang suffers the predictable conflicts of the female artist's existence, separation from loved ones, a decision not to have children and the yearning for freedom of expression that defines the creative urge. This artist is significant because of the times in which she lived and the pressures of society to conform and silence her voice, even though her subjects fly in the face of convention, the core of Yuliang's search for identity and self-expression. Blooming in the sophisticated atmosphere of Paris, a return to China brings a harsh dose of reality and a reminder of where she came from, the stigma of the prostitution that was forced upon an unwitting girl.

I wanted to like this character more than I did- her story is certainly compelling- but I was frustrated by my inability to tap into the passion that compels this woman to paint at any cost. Yet Pan Yuliang's significance is clear, a profound testament to the strength of the human spirit. Her chosen path studded with compromise and humiliation, Yuliang has the soul of a survivor and the truest instincts of an artist: "The goal is not making art. It is living life through art." Luan Gaines/ 2008.

"The Painter from Shanghai" is an amazing book of historical fiction that chronicles the life of Chinese painter Pan Yuliang. Sold into prostitution by her uncle at a very young age, Yuliang endures unspeakable horrors until she wins the affection of Pan Zanhua, a customs inspector who arranges for Yuliang to leave the brothel and become his concubine. Yuliang eventually decides to explore her lifelong interest in art and enrolls as one of the very few female students at the Shanghai Art Academy. It doesn't take long for Yuliang's colored past and modern way of thinking to cause an uproar in the art world. Yuliang eventually wins a scholarship to study in Europe, where she constantly struggles to find balance in her life and make something of herself.

I was completely mesmerized by this book from beginning to end. Jennifer Cody Epstein is an incredible storyteller, and Yuliang is one of the most intriguing female literary characters I've come across in a long time. I really, really, REALLY hope this book is made into a movie...Hollywood, take notice!

In the same genre, more or less, as Phillipa Gregory's beloved books, The Painter From Shanghai does an even better job then Gregory in creating a world that upon opening the book, you are thrust into. It could be that China in the early 1900's is more or less a world away from the west circa 2009 that makes it so intoxicating, but Epstein really makes it easy to imagine the world that Yuliang lives in, and the horrors she endures. One reviewer used the word "lush" and I cannot think of a better adjective to use. This book isnt a 5 because I did feel it dragged a tiny bit in some places, and could have moved slightly faster, but all in all a fantastic book, especially for a debut!

Jennifer Cody Epstein's The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel is a fictional account of Pan Yuliang's rise from the ashes of her life as Xiuqing, a young child sold into prostitution. Through careful brushstrokes of her own, Epstein deftly fills her canvas with the sights, sounds, and images of China--from the dark alleys and brothels to the crowded, chaotic streets of Shanghai--in the early 1920s. Yuliang is a complex character who numbly makes her way through the obstacles she faces as a new prostitute under the thumb of corrupted merchants and a harsh and battered old woman, known as Grandmother. Emerging from the dank and corrupted halls of the brothel, she jumps into her new life as the concubine/second wife to Pan Zanhua and embarks on her career as a student and painter at the height of the Communist uprising in China during the 1930s.

Epstein has a style all her own in which she easily weaves in relevant historical information through character interaction and development, but she also captures even difficult emotions with deft description and poise.

In the brothel, readers will feel Yuliang's degradation as each man leers at her, touches her skin, and makes her kowtow to their desires. The one solace she has is the poetry of Li Qingzhao, which she recites from memory. Readers will enjoy the verse woven into the narrative as Yuliang examines herself at life-changing moments and seeks solace in the beauty of language.

Yuliang is molded by her mentors, but only truly blossoms when she becomes Zanhua's wife and starts painting. Through painting she learns to combat her demons, her past, and her future, coming into her own as a painter and individual. As China is pulled in two directions between the republic and the communists, Yuliang is caught between her rebellious nature and Chinese tradition.

The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel has a lot to offer book clubs, readers interested in painting, historical fiction, the struggle of women in society, China, and political history, and is one of the best novels I've read this year.