Shanghai Boy Shanghai Girl: Lives In Parallel

Shanghai Boy Shanghai Girl: Lives In Parallel

I started reading this book a couple of weeks ago. This book is coauthored by Betty Barr and her husband George Wang. Betty Barr happened to be an alumnus of Shanghai American School -- the school I go to -- way back in the 1940s. She came and spoke to our class and I found her life to be very intriguing. As a high-schooler, she spent some time at a Japanese interment camp, and she later taught English in college during the Cultural Revolution. She mentions how she got in trouble with the Communist Party by allowing her students to read an English news article that was perceived as offensive to the Party.

Anyways, that's what she told our class. The book actually starts with George Wang's story in Shanghai. He mentions how the city was partitioned into different concessions, and how each concession was like its own country. You couldn't use the same light bulb in each concession: the French concession had its bulbs running on 110V while the British concession had its running on 220V.

What a crazy and interesting time!