Reading Guide

At public addresses I have given and in messages from readers, people have mentioned that Gudao, Lone Islet, would be a wonderful book for book clubs. I realized the book had many points for discussion and that it raises topics for further study. In the West there is a burgeoning interest in the Far East in general and in Shanghai in particular.
Therefore I've prepared some book club discussion questions. If anyone from a book club would like to add to these questions, please feel free to e-mail me at the E-mail form provided below.

1.  In what way did the lives of Chinese and foreigners in the international concessions impinge upon each other?

2.  What effect did the many foreign areas and culture have on the development of Chinese political and literary culture?

3.  How did the Chinese cultural renaissance in Shanghai's Treaty Port vary from that in colonial territories such as India?

4.  Compare and contrast the characters of Margaret and Gordon. In what way did their different personalities affect the way in which they reacted to the changes in their lives after December 1941 to the end of the war?

5.  What, in your opinion, were the different motivations of individuals and groups who collaborated with the Japanese?

6.  The memoir starts just before the Japanese occupation, and yet the reader receives solid information about previous events. What techniques does the author use to achieve this?

7.  Gudao, Lone Islet is written from the point of view of a very young girl and yet again the text includes much that only an adult would know about. How has the author inserted the adult material?

8.  What effect does the seagull waving goodbye have on the reader and what is its meaning?


Areas for Further Study

• The multi-faceted life in cosmopolitan Old Shanghai and its underworld



• The rise up to 1937 of a modern literary and movie culture in China based primarily in Shanghai



• The course of World War II in the Pacific



• The implications of the San Francisco Treaty of 1951 - for the Far Eastern countries and the rest of the world.

Recommended:

Reference book: Captives of Empire, The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China 1941-1945 by Greg Leck

Memoir: Things That Must Not Be Forgotten, A Childhood in Wartime China by Michael David Kwan