Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See

This month both my best friend and my mother in law went to China (different trips, obviously).
Both went to the same cities and saw the typical tourists attractions: the ancient china wall, Shanghai, Beijing, Pekin, and the city that used to be called Canton. My friend also went to the countryside and Hong Kong.
My friend told me how impressed she was with China, and how little we, in the occidental world, know about it. She also told me of the punishing working hours almost all chinese seem to follow. It seems that, though China went through a couple of revolutions and later opened its market to Occident, most of its people are still little better than slaves.
(This is my subjective opinion, I haven't been to China, haven't heard my mother in law's take on it, and I only know a little about China through the books of Pearl S. Buck, Anchee Min, Amy Tan and - of course - Lisa See).
It was purely coincidental that I read this book now, although I wanted to read it for a couple of months now. Like all the books of Lisa See that I've had the good luck to read, it's perfectly well researched and manages to discuss complicated issues while being entertaining and easy to read.

Here goes the story:
Pearl and May are 2 chinese sisters living in Shanghai in the 1930's. They were lucky enough to be born after the first revolution and had a quite modern upbringing at her parents house, a properous merchant. So, no footbinding for them. They even work as "beautiful girls" -models for posters- in the occidentalized Shanghai.
However, their destiny takes a turn for the worse when her father loses his fortune and sells them as wifes to chinese men living in America.
The girls manage to be left behind in Shanghai, but then war erups and they're forced to flee for their lifes. Their only escape is to go to America and to their husbands, but when they thought they had found a safe heaven, they only discover prejudice and captivity in the traditional chinatown. Each one would have to use her wits to survive and find happines in their constricted society, facing racism and witch hunts. And even though they're sisters and best friends, they're also rivals. A secret binds them, and if it is discovered, it will shatter their lifes.

I loved this book. It's fast paced and well ploted. Each sister has her own distinct personality - Pearl is a Dragon, May a Sheep - but none of them is a perfect heroine. Each one has her faults and her virtues, but they loved each other fiercely and it shows in the book.
The book also deals with a lot of complicated issues: starting with the occidentalization of Shanghai, the appaling way Immigration treated the chinese, and the communists witch hunts that were directed at the chinese community in America after Mao's rise to power, among other things.