Shanghai Girls: Uncensored and Unsentimental

Last night, Garden Books hosted the book launch party of Shanghai Girls: Uncensored and Unsentimental, written by Mina Hanbury-Tenison. The book is a how-to guide offering tips and advice on how to “marry up”, from Hanbury-Tenison’s “friend”, a Shanghainese woman named Lan Lan. What better way to learn how to be a Shanghai girl than from a Shanghai girl herself? Lan Lan, a pseudonym, has been married three times, each time to a man richer than the last, and now she is the proprietress of a substantial real-estate holding and manages a boutique investment equity fund, and divides her time between Shanghai and New York.

The book launch included a long discussion about what it means to be a Shanghai girl. If this book is to be believed, Shanghai girls are a different breed to other girls in China, or the world for that matter. These women pilot their own lives by handling marriage as though they were starting a business enterprise; trading up and marrying up to keep up appearances.

Shanghai Girls sparked a great debate within the group at the book launch last night, where topics ranged from stereotypes to marriage, politics to sex and East versus West. The book clearly plays up to the stereotypes of Shanghai girl but it also promises shocking secrets about women and relationships that you won’t find in other self-help books.

It’s more suited to those on the lookout for Mr Moneybags, rather than Mr Right, and there is certainly no sentimentality wasted on these pages. I wonder what the wealthy men of Shanghai make of all this?

Shanghai Girls: Uncensored and Unsentimental is available from Garden Books. 325 Changle Lu, near Shaanxi Nan Lu. Tel: 5404 8728. Web: www.bookzines.com.

To find out more about Mina Hanbury-Tenison and the thinking behind the book, visit her website.

- Jessie Chen