The lost and forgotten languages of Shanghai

By Ruiyan Xu

Subjects: Shanghai (china), fiction, Patients, Brain damage, Aphasic persons, Manners and customs, Spouses, Fiction, Social life and customs, Neurologists, Fiction, romance, general, Americans, Married people, fiction, China, fiction, Triangles (Interpersonal relations), Physician and patient

Description: A happy and successful businessman, dining in a Shanghai hotel, is badly injured by a gas explosion in the building. In the aftermath, the formerly bilingual Li Jin is only able to speak the faltering phrases of the English that he spoke as a child growing up in the United States, and is unable to communicate in Chinese with his wife. The family turns to an American neurologist, and she and Li Jing form a bond that does not need a translator to understand.