TRACING IT HOME: A Chinese Family’s Journey...

TRACING IT HOME: A Chinese Family’s Journey From Shanghai by Lynn Pan (Kodansha: $14; 229 pp.). Lynn Pan’s mother was the descendant of an old, powerful banking family; her parvenu father became an important building contractor in pre-Revolutionary Shanghai. Decades later, she attempts to reconstruct their checkered lives. The traditional strengths and vices of her family members contrast sharply with the dignified fidelity that enabled a trusted servant to endure the cruelest excesses of the Maoist regime. Reflecting on the burdens imposed by ancestral deeds, Pan comments, “Nothing can ever be turned back, undone; no one ever escapes repetition, and those who try are the most trapped of all. The present is only today’s version of the past; and there is no one for whom today is not contaminated by yesterday.� Her subtle memoir presents a fascinating picture of life in one of the most intriguing cities of the 20th Century.