Shanghai, 2010

This novel is mostly set in contemporary Shanghai, specifically in the year 2010. Hints of Chinese history are woven into the story, and the reader comes to understand that this is post-revolutionary China, and the city has advanced so quickly over the last few years that it is more cosmopolitan, modern, and developed than anywhere in America, even New York. Now, business opportunities are in Shanghai, and the Zhen family have achieved the American Dream and are returning to a transformed China. Towering buildings continuously pop up, and “Shanghai’s skyline had become crowded with lights and spired, and each had been designed to look grander than the last” (15).

Lanson Suites

Lanson Suites is a luxurious serviced hotel in Pudong New District where Sunny works and where the Zhen family lives. This is not the sort of hotel that people stay at for a short vacation, but where expat...