1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/painter2.jpg]] |
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3 | ''The Painter from Shanghai,'' published in 2008, is Jennifer Cody Epstein's debut novel. It is a fictionalized biography of the RealLife Chinese painter Pan Yuliang. Orphaned at a young age, she was taken in by her uncle who, in order to sustain his opium habit, sold her into prostitution at age 13. |
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5 | After a a few years as a teenage prostitute, she was rescued from a predictably grim fate by a city official named Pan Zanhua who bought her from her madam and took her up as a concubine. She signed up for arts classes in UsefulNotes/{{Shanghai}}, and eventually developed enough talent to start out as a painter. However, she courted scandal by painting nudes, something even more offensive in interwar China than in Europe; with nobody volunteering to model for her, she would sneak in the public baths to draw sketches of women bathers, and eventually settled for nude self portraits. |
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7 | She won a coveted prize that enabled her to study further in [[GayParee Paris,]] then Rome, and she won several awards in both cities. Returning to UsefulNotes/{{China}} after several years, she found herself targeted by the Blue Shirts, a right wing paramilitary organization with ties to the Nationalist regime. She left again for good just before the beginning of the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar and lived out her days in UsefulNotes/{{France}}. |
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10 | !! Contains examples of: |
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12 | * ArrangedMarriage: Pan Zanhua's first marriage was arranged by his family, hence his taking up Yuliang as his concubine. |
13 | * BandOfBrothels: Yuliang spends her teenage years as a brothel whore. |
14 | * BittersweetEnding |
15 | * BreakTheCutie |
16 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: Polygamy was not only acceptable in pre-Communist China, it offered Yuliang a way out of prostitution. |
17 | * GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted. Yuliang has one, arranged by her husband. |
18 | * HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Jinling, who initiates Yuliang to the world of prostitution and becomes her lover. |
19 | * {{Paparazzi}}: Yuliang is slandered by the gutter press on several occasions, and an indiscreet photograph taken of her with Zhou Enlai ends up costing her husband his job. |
20 | * PlatonicProstitution: How the relationship between Yuliang and Pan Zanhua starts out. |
21 | * UnconfessedUnemployment: Pan Zanhua loses his job because of his wife's association with Communists, but never tells her. She finds out by complete chance. |
22 | * WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue |
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