This novel chronicles the experiences of a small foreign community living in Shanghai in the 1980s, when memories of the Cultural Revolution were still fresh. This period was the heyday of China’s state-run Friendship Stores, which sold Western goods and souvenirs to tourists, foreign residents, and diplomats. Nowadays, only a few of these stores remain. ...
Friends All Over the World, from Susan Ruel’s novel Shanghai Friendship Store, portrays the claustrophobic social lives of a small, insular “foreign expert“ community in the 1980s. Shanghai had long been known as China’s most Westernized city. Yet, during this period following the normalization of Sino-U.S. relations, the city’s few foreign residents were discouraged from ...
The following is an excerpt from the novel The Shanghai Friendship Store* by Susan Ruel. It chronicles the experiences of a small foreign community living in Shanghai in the 1980s (the heyday of Friendship Stores). These state-owned stores used to be quite an exotic thing in China — one of the only places where foreigners traveling ...
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