PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Tsu largely steers clear of politics in her book. And she doesn’t break enough new ground to attract readers familiar with China’s modern history. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable light read and may be useful for parents sending their children to learn Mandarin. If nothing else, it will give them an appreciation of the complexity and beauty of the language.
Jonathan Kaufman
MixedThe Wall Street JournalIf the author had dug a little deeper, he might have exposed the falsehoods that the Communist Party succeeded in turning into conventional wisdom ... Few histories have been written about the Sassoons and Kadoories in part because the families didn’t welcome the attention. But the Kadoories in 2007 created a library in Hong Kong for the family papers. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem has catalogued, but not translated, some 7,000 Sassoon letters written in Judeo-Arabic. Mr. Kaufman took advantage of these developments and visited an impressive roster of other archives to uncover some new details ... However, the book fails to put the story of old Shanghai and its Jewish tycoons into a fresh context that would make it compelling to most readers. It repeats clichés instead of reappraising the views of past observers. The definitive book on these families remains to be written.
