New Release: Street of Eternal Happiness

This is another book I reviewed early in my NetGalley "career," and one of my favorites. I've read a couple books on modern China, and this is the best. It's a great example of non-fiction storytelling.

Title: Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road
Author: Rob Schmitz
Publisher: Crown
Release Date: 5/17/16
Version Reviewed: digital ARC courtesy of NetGalley
Rating: ★★★★★

The focus of this book is one single road in Shanghai and its eclectic mix of inhabitants. For years, author Rob Schmitz, an American journalist, lived on the Street of Eternal Happiness with his family. He spent hours wandering up and down the avenue, eating at cafes and ordering off snack carts, visiting local businesses and chatting up his neighbors. Their stories are Shanghai's story.

Schmitz starts by introducing us to a young, optimistic entrepreneur who splits his time selling accordions and running a sandwich shop with an ever-changing menu that does not always include sandwiches. He represents the millions of Chinese who grew up in a post-Mao era and who embrace capitalism with no fear of reprisal. Then there's the owner of the local flower shop, who was part of the 1990s migration from farm to factory. Even though this florist lives in Shanghai, she straddles two worlds between old and new China, obsessed with marrying her sons off to girls from her hometown-- if only bride prices weren't so high these days. There's the elderly woman whose husband runs a pancake shop, and who falls victim to the many ponzi schemes that prey on China's seniors. Through old letters, Schmitz constructs the story of a businessman who was sent to a desolate work camp during the cultural revolution, and how his family chose to embrace the new system rather than mourn his suffering.

Schmitz is an excellent writer and it's impossible not to get sucked into his neighbors' life tales. It's amazing how the Chinese can view their country and their history so differently depending on the lottery of birth. Even husband and wives can't agree whether the remote province where they met was a hell on earth or a paradise overflowing with milk and honey. Every person Schmitz encounters is perusing the "Chinese dream," but none of them agree on just what that is. In modern China, it seems there are as many different realities are there are opportunities.