Shanghai Girl

the long version

"In the post-Cultural Revolution Shanghai of 1984, university senior Sha-fei Hong longs to study in America for graduate school in New York, ostensibly to pursue the American Dream, but partly to escape her sexually-harassing Communist cadre stepfather. She meets the visiting Chinese-American businessman Gordon Lou, who has political ambitions and ties to the New York Chinatown underworld. He takes Sha-fei to the American Consulate in Shanghai to look into studying in America. There, Sha-fei meets the intern Edward Cook, a young, Caucasian American lawyer who has a strong preference for all things Asian. Within a year, these three people of entirely different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds cross paths in Manhattan. Value systems and self-interests clash. The curtain falls on a dramatic stage of ambition, sex, intrigue, and murder"--Page 4 of cover.