Amy Tan was 200 pages into a new novel when she attended a large exhibition on Shanghai life in the early 1900s. While there, she bought a book she thought might help her as she researched details on life in the Old City. She stopped turning pages when she came upon a group portrait.
"It's called the '10 Beauties in Shanghai,'" she says. These were the winners of a citywide beauty contest for courtesans.