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Mar 14, 2014uncommonreader rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
This is a novel about the migration of people to Shanghai, the London of Victorian England in the present day - a time of great change, urban migration, and raw capitalism. Five characters - a factory girl, a pop star, a real estate developer, a businesswoman and the elusive five star billionaire who links all of the characters. Like other Asian books (e.g., "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia"), the chapter headings are from self-help books, which play a role in everyone's lives. It is Dickensian in terms of the unexplained coincidences experienced by the characters in a bewildering world and it portrays a hard, impersonal, materialistic new China. Quite good.