Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
Chasing Hepburn is the story of the Lee family—a saga spanning four generations, two continents, and a century and a half of Chinese history. In the masterful hands of acclaimed author Gus Lee, his ancestors’ stories spring vividly to life in a memoir with all the richness of great fiction.

From the time of her birth in 1906 it was expected that Gus Lee’s mother, Tzu Da-tsien, would become an elegant bride for a wealthy provincial man. But she was shunted onto a less certain path by age three, when her warmhearted father rescued her from her foot-binding ceremony in response to her terrified screams. This dramatic rejection of tradition was the first of many clashes that would lock the family in a constant struggle between Chinese customs and modern ways.

Later, with the Chinese countryside in the grip of civil war, the Tzu family moved to Shanghai, seeking financial stability. There Da-tsien met Lee Zee Zee, the dashing son of the Tzus’ landlord, who lived across the street. With their patriarch succumbing to opium addiction, Zee Zee’s family was on the brink of ruin, and Da-tsien’s mother was working hard to secure her big-footed daughter’s marriage to a wealthy older man. But not even the protests of both families could keep the lovers apart, and these two socially displaced clans were reluctantly united.

Over the course of their courtship and marriage, Zee Zee and Da-tsien would encounter the most important movements and figures of the times, including underworld gangsters, Communist students and workers, revolutionary armies, Christian missionaries, and legions of invading Japanese soldiers. Zee Zee became an ardent anti-Maoist and an ally of the highest-ranking leaders in the Chinese Nationalist movement. But his flights from tradition took him away from his young family—first into Chiang Kai-shek’s air force and later to America in search of his idol, Katharine Hepburn. Faced with this abandonment and with the chaos of the Japanese occupation, Da-tsien would rely on all of her resources, traditional and modern—faith, superstition, tremendous courage, and her strong feet—in an attempt to preserve her family.

Gus Lee takes us straight into the heart of twentieth-century Chinese society, offering a clear-eyed yet compassionate view of the forces that repeatedly tore apart and reconfigured the lives of his parents and their contemporaries. He moves deftly from recounting intimate household conversations to discussing major historical events, and the resulting story is by turns comic, harrowing, heroic, and tragic. For most of her life, Da-tsien prayed for a son who would honor his family and respect his Chinese heritage. In this enthralling tribute, Gus Lee lovingly accomplishes both.


From the Hardcover edition.

Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom by Gus Lee

From reader reviews:

Violet Shook:

This Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom book is not really ordinary book, you have after that it the world is in your hands. The benefit you have by reading this book is actually information inside this e-book incredible fresh, you will get facts which is getting deeper anyone read a lot of information you will get. That Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom without we understand teach the one who examining it become critical in pondering and analyzing. Don't be worry Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom can bring if you are and not make your carrier space or bookshelves' turn out to be full because you can have it inside your lovely laptop even phone. This Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom having good arrangement in word as well as layout, so you will not experience uninterested in reading.

Laura Grier:

This book untitled Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom to be one of several books in which best seller in this year, honestly, that is because when you read this publication you can get a lot of benefit in it. You will easily to buy this specific book in the book shop or you can order it by means of online. The publisher on this book sells the e-book too. It makes you easier to read this book, since you can read this book in your Touch screen phone. So there is no reason to you personally to past this guide from your list.

Victor Havens:

This Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom is great publication for you because the content which is full of information for you who all always deal with world and have to make decision every minute. This book reveal it information accurately using great manage word or we can point out no rambling sentences inside. So if you are read that hurriedly you can have whole data in it. Doesn't mean it only offers you straight forward sentences but difficult core information with attractive delivering sentences. Having Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom in your hand like getting the world in your arm, details in it is not ridiculous a single. We can say that no reserve that offer you world throughout ten or fifteen minute right but this e-book already do that. So , this really is good reading book. Hey there Mr. and Mrs. hectic do you still doubt in which?

Darlene Gutierrez:

Beside this kind of Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom in your phone, it could give you a way to get closer to the new knowledge or facts. The information and the knowledge you are going to got here is fresh from the oven so don't end up being worry if you feel like an outdated people live in narrow community. It is good thing to have Chasing Hepburn: A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom because this book offers for you readable information. Do you often have book but you seldom get what it's exactly about. Oh come on, that wil happen if you have this within your hand. The Enjoyable set up here cannot be questionable, like treasuring beautiful island. Use you still want to miss the item? Find this book in addition to read it from right now!