Click Here To Purchase The Painter From Shanghai

Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein

ISBN:  978-0-393-06528-2

The painter from Shanghai is a compelling read and a witness to political changes in China in the years 1913 to 1957.  Although the book is a work of imagination, the painter, (Xiuqing) Pan Yuliang did in fact exist. Cody Epstein effectively shows her vast weight of erudition and expertise pertaining to this Chinese era.

This impressionistic saga begins in 1957 in Montparnasse Paris where we find Pan Yuliang, a successful artist, struggling to make ends meet. Cody Epstein prefaces this section with a saying by John Sloan: “Though a living cannot be made at art, art makes life worth living. It makes starving, living. It makes worry, it makes trouble, it makes a life that would be barren of everything – living. It brings life to life.” 

The book’s preface summarizes (Xiuqing) Pan Yuliang’s strong will who against all odds was unwavering in her quest to succeed as an artist.

Epstein reconstructs Pan Yuliang’s past with an authentic Chinese brush wherein we can actually feel, smell and taste the kind of a life Pan Yuliang’s experienced in China during these turbulent years. 

In 1913 at the tender age of fourteen Xiuqing was an orphan who was taken in by her opium dependent uncle or Jiujiu. Both voyaged to the big city where Xiuqing assumed she would be able to be employed as an embroiderer as was her mom. Sadly, her uncle’s dependency on opium forced him to sell Xiuqing to a brothel, complete with an actual deed of sale, wherein even her name is changed to Pan Yuliang.

We follow with shock her sordid descent into the hell of whoredom. She even loses her only friend, Jinling, the top girl of the “flower” house whom she eventually replaces as the top “flower.” 

During one of her trysts, she meets a civilized customs inspector, Pan Zanhua, or Yi Gan, who is handsome, young and who initially is not very much interested in having sex with her. Eventually, this gentleman succumbs and falls in love with her.

In 1916, the couple move to Zuhu where to her surprise Pan Zanhua becomes her tender lover.  Taking her under his protective wing, Pan Zanhua commences to instruct her in writing and reading. However, she finds herself doodling more and more, as she is attracted to art like a butterfly to a flame. 

Shy at first, because of her troubled past, she vacillates in applying to Shanghai’s Art Academy. However, in the end she becomes an exceptional student and wins a scholarship to Paris, notwithstanding that her self-portrait drawn in the nude was very controversial. Reluctantly, Pan Zanhua agrees to permit her to go and pays for her stay while he remains behind.

Pan Yuliang proved her art teacher right who once told her that: “our wounds are what drives us to create. … After all, loss in one arena compels us to compensate in others… what if it is true of the creative process?”

In Paris, initially she is a success with her freshness and originality, but gradually poverty overtakes her. As her scholarship dwindles, Pan Zanhua cuts down his financial support. However, she is reunited with one of her schoolmates, Xudun, who has become an anarchist. They become lovers but politics looms and threaten their newfound love. 

Will she ever be accepted in China with her western style nudes? Read on….

The painter from Shanghai is a real page-turner, a compelling read and a witness to bigotry and prejudice in China. Jennifer Cody Epstein has imbued this saga with authentic scenes, sights, smells, language and paintings. She has brought forth the harrowing life of this much maligned painter from Shanghai.  

To appreciate Pan Yuliang’s art you may wish to refer to her web site.

The above review was contributed by: Lily Azerad-Goldman, B.F.A, Artist: Click Here to view Lily’s Reviews and Here to view her art work.

Click Here To Purchase The Painter From Shanghai