Not Your China Doll

Queen Wong

Not Your China Doll
The Wild And Shimmering 
Life Of Anna May Wong
By Katie Gee Salisbury
Faber
ISBN 9780571388677

I’ve seen just a few movies with Anna May Wong in them over the years but never really knew much about her. So sometime around a year and a half ago I bought this beautiful looking, new hardback of Not Your China Doll, subtitled The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury. Well, because of the usual book accumulation problem, I only got around to cracking those attractive covers late 2025 but, alas, when I got to around about three quarters of the way through, a long drawn out personal tragedy hit my life, culminating in the passing of my father. As regular readers will know I shut down the blog for just over a month but I also stopped reading this tome at the same time, because I didn’t think a book this well written and illuminating was something I could fully concentrate on after his passing.

But, both the blog and my somewhat eclectic ‘book life’ are both back in action and so, it was time to finish what I started. Which proved to be an absolutely charming book about the Asian-American actress, born in Los Angeles in 1905 under the name Wong Liu Tsong... which apparently, translated from Chinese, means Frosted Yellow Willows.

And, I have to say, this book was teaching me new things from the start. I mean, beginning with the arrival of D. W. Griffith in LA in 1910, it’s the first time that I was made aware that the reason that the film people who flocked to what would become Hollywoodland in California decided to go there in the first place was because the area has a way more consistent light source to be able to make movies in. I’d never even thought of it before. And in a time when ‘No Jews, Actors or Dogs Allowed’ was a familiar sign hanging on doors, we have a young Anna May Wong who was obsessed by the movies and sneaking off to visit the sets/locations and also spend hours in her local nickelodeon shows.

Without going into all the details, she finally got some acting jobs in films (while working at her father’s laundry each day after wrapping on set) and her fourth role in The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) proved to be her big break because it was the film in which Douglas Fairbanks saw her and offered her the role in his silent version of The Thief Of Bagdad (as it’s spelled on the titles of that particular movie... review will hopefully be forthcoming at some time during this next year on this blog, it’s already written).

The book then charts her career on screen in such classics as Piccadilly (as part of her European tour to help give her career a boost and reviewed in my second ever post for this blog here) and Shanghai Express for Von Sternberg, opposite Marlene Dietrich (review coming soon) whom she posed with, along with Leni Riefenstahl, for a photo at a party in Paris years before (and yes, that photo is one of the pictures which dot the book as a start to each chapter). The book talks about an important playwright lover from London as well as her hanging out with famous friends such as Paul Robeson and Emil Jannings (and wife Gussy Holl). And even a brief romantic dalliance with her leading man in a stage show at one point, a young Vincent Price.

It also covers her reception in China and details her tour of that land in 1936 (also talking about the documentary on the Chinese people she filmed as one of her projects while she was there), noting such incidents as a native cantonese speaker asking her to go back to English because of her atrocious American accent.

If I had one small criticism of the book it’s that her later years of ill health are not covered in as lengthy a fashion as I might have wanted but, then again, I don’t blame the author as the book is so well researched that one assumes that not a lot of information was as forthcoming about this period of her life as others. Or, indeed, it just may have been a shade duller than what makes for good reading. And this is a good book, make no mistake. The writer’s words flow into the mind easily and even wax quite poetic at times. 

And I was there for it... I really enjoyed this one and want to read more about the subject matter if possible (I bought another tome on the lady towards the end of last year, while attending a film at the BFI’s Anna May Wong season). 

Also, thanks to Katie Gee Salisbury, I now know what a cheongsam is and realise that this is what the Anna May Wong Barbie doll I recently purchased is probably wearing (not my China doll perhaps but, maybe my plastic effigy). And, yes, I even bought a couple of Anna May Wong quarters from the US, which is just a small reminder of the cultural impact that the lady in question has had over many generations of cinema lovers over the years. I’m not sure what the other, perhaps more sensationalist, portrayals of Wong are like but, this one is certainly a great piece of biographical writing. So, if this particular Asian star of yesteryear, who was at one time receiving over 500 fan letters a week, is your thing, then I would wholeheartedly recommend you pick up a copy of Katie Gee Salisbury’s Not Your China Doll - The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong. It’s an absolute banger of a book and I wish I’d read it sooner.