Dimensions
129 x 198 x 22mm
The magical tale of a young orphan's adventures after she flees rural China for turn-of-the-century Shanghai.
Beautiful, charismatic, and destructive May escapes an arranged marriage in rural China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where, in 1899, she meets Arthur, an Australian whose philanthropic pursuits lead him into one scrape after another. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur calls on May not for his pleasure but for her rehabilitation, only to find himself immediately and helplessly seduced by the sight of her bound feet.
Reforming May is out of the question, so Arthur marries her instead, and brings her home to live with his sister Dolly, her husband Dick and their two girls Alice and Cecily. In Alice, May sees the possibility of redemption: a surrogate for the child she has lost. And it is to May that Alice turns for the love her own mother withholds. But when the 12-year-old is caught preparing her aunt's opium pipe, Alice is enrolled in a London boarding school, far from the dangerous influence of the woman who will come to reclaim her, and to control the whole family.
