Jennie Wang

(License Plate Number One) Jennie Wang

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A Real Estate Barron in Old Shanghai, Pure Gentleman Zhou, inherited an automobile with a license plate "001" from a Denmark physician, leaving Shanghai on the eve of WWI. A British colonist's ambition to own that car met with his resistance. The legend became a local pride in Old Shanghai, revived recently. Beginning with a bride in that car, horses and tricycles behind, guards and police aside, slowly moving from the British Concession to the French Concession, Zhou saved his car from destruction. A granddaughter born from that wedlock tells the stories of unhappy marriages inside exquisite gardens and grand mansionsi. She is searching for roots as well as values--a spiritual heritage. Her contemporary mind is juxtaposed with childhood memories, folklores and classical opera, family parties and photos, ruins of ruined buildings and blocks. Yet she claims she has "no nostalgia." This transnational memoir, made in USA, covers 150 years of social history of Shanghai from 1860s to the present. Well researched, its historical vision makes a difference from official discourses left and right, revealing many impossible contradictions between East and West, wealth and power, tradition and gender, establishment and inheritance, legacy and laws, socialism and thought reform... a wealth of cultural resources for film makers and producers. Recommended for library collection and academic institutions.