Author Lynn Pan poses in her home in Shanghai. Photo: Cai Xianmin

By Qiu Chen

Listening to Lynn Pan's fluent Shanghainese, few would expect that the 65-year-old woman left her native Shanghai before she turned 10 years old and has spent most of her life living abroad, in Malaysia, the UK, Finland, Switzerland and Singapore. Pan's passport may say that she is a British citizen, but she knows, and has always known, she is nothing but Shanghainese.

Although the diminutive writer, who speaks in a near whisper, has spent the majority of her life living outside of Shanghai, she has maintained a connection to the city that has inspired her to write about it with success that few overseas Chinese have enjoyed.

Since writing In Search of Old Shanghai after a visit to the city in 1981, Pan has written 12 books about China and Shanghai. Her best-known book is Sons of the Yellow Emperor, which Publishers Weekly said was written with "exceptional skill and clarity about a vast, complex subject."

Due to her contribution to the study of overseas Chinese, she was chosen to be the director of the Chinese Heritage Center in Singapore in 1995. "Without the city, I would not have written my books. Shanghai gives me the topics and the inspiration. It gives me a lifestyle that suits me," said Pan, who has been living in the city since 1998.

On March 19, Pan is scheduled to interview Chinese literature scholar David Der-wei Wang about Eileen Chang, known in China as Zhang Ailing, a famous Shanghainese author, at the Shanghai International Literary Festival. Zhang is Pan's favorite Chinese author, whose writing, in her view, represents the Shanghai style by which Pan defines herself. "Zhang is so extraordinary to me because she is the only Chinese writer I know who could express a westernized sensibility in the prose of classical Chinese fiction," Pan said. "The most important characteristic of Shanghai style is combining the East and West. I think I am that. I am Shanghainese in that way."

Shanghai in Malaysia

Born in Shanghai in 1945, Pan left the city with her parents in the mid-1950s. They moved to Hong Kong for a year before settling in Kota Kinabalu in eastern Malaysia, where, there in the jungle, her parents tried to recreate the Shanghai they had known.

During that time, Pan said she lived in an insulated Chinese-Shanghainese world, ignorant of the Malaysian culture around her. "Although we lived abroad, my parents never left Shanghai psychologically. In the jungle, they re-created Shanghai in its heyday. I left when I was very young, and I had no memories of it. But I grew up in a very Shanghainese way," Pan said.

Her family spoke Shanghainese. They ate Shanghainese food for every meal. Her parents were part of a clique that had left Shanghai. They didn't mix with the local Chinese population in Malaysia, Pan said. In fact, she didn't get to know anything about local culture until she was an adult, even though she attended Malaysian schools. She didn't even try Malaysian food. "In the old days, Shanghai cuisine did not use garlic, though Malaysian cuisine did. I didn't taste garlic until I was 21," she said.

Her family went out of their way to distinguish themselves from the locals, Pan said. Because Malaysia is a tropical country, the local people, including the Chinese, would take off their shoes when they went inside. But Pan's mother wouldn't allow it. "We had to wear shoes – not even slippers. My mother thought not wearing shoes was slovenly. Because she is Shanghainese – you know – she had to maintain certain standards," Pan said.

Returning to Shanghai

Growing up in "the world of Shanghai" that her parents created, Pan never felt the loss of identity that some overseas Chinese suffer.

It was not an issue she wrote about as an author, even though she didn't return to China until her mid-30s. At 15, she moved to the UK to study and stayed there for more than 20 years. Still, her connection to China, and Shanghai especially, would end up playing a huge role in the latter part of her life.
In 1981, when Pan heard she could return to China, she came up with the idea of writing a book about Shanghai. She was working as a journalist at the time, but had never made a career as an author. 

Her trip to China in 1981 gave her all the inspiration she needed. When she saw Shanghai, she noticed that it had not changed very much. It was still dominated by old buildings, which inspired her to write her 1982 book In Search of Old Shanghai.

On that trip, she also met the son of Du Yuesheng, a legendary figure of 1920s' Shanghai, who led the city's biggest gang at the time. The meeting inspired her to write Old Shanghai: Gangsters in Paradise. These books launched her career as an author.

Pan acknowledged that all but four of her books were commissioned. Her most well-known book, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, was her publisher's idea. However, the four that were not commissioned were all about Shanghai. "I wrote them because I have a thing about Shanghai," she said. "In the course of writing about China and Shanghai, I found connections to myself. The more I wrote about it, the more I learned about myself."

Pan moved to Shanghai in 1998. She had only planned to stay for two years, but ended up living in the city for the next 13 years. Although Pan doesn't know exactly why she chose to spend the rest of her life in Shanghai, she said the city suits her at this stage of her life – as well as her way of life.

"I must have it in the back of my mind that this is the city where I want to be because this is the city I want to write about," she said. "The idea of writing about the city has never left my mind."