Chinese-American author Icy Smith (Sui Bing Tang), who founded East West Discovery Press in order to publish multicultural and bilingual children's books, turns here to the story of Mei Ling Lee and her life in Los Angeles' China City during World War II. Built to be a tourist destination, China City - a sort of recreated faux-traditional Chinese village, partially built from movie sets - was the location of the restaurant run by Mei Ling's parents, where she helped out as a waitress. The story concerns her work there during the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, as she helps customers, aids in the effort to raise money for the United China Relief Fundraiser, and longs for her Japanese-American friend Yayeko Akiyama, imprisoned with all of her family at the Manzanar Internment Camp. She sees the celebrated Lion Dance parade, and meets famous movie star Anna May Wong. The book closes with a significant factual afterword, with more information about China City, Manzanar and United China Relief, and featuring copious black and white photographs from the period...

Although its main narrative seems to be fictionalized somewhat, the story in Mei Ling in China City is largely non-fiction, and is based upon the recollections of an eighty-year-old Chinese-American woman named Marian Leng, whom Smith thanked in her acknowledgements. Yayeko Akiyama was also a real person, and she and Mei Ling Lee (afterward Marian Leng) wrote to each other during the course of the war. According to the information in the afterword, they lost touch after the war, and Leng never heard from Akiyama again, after 1945. It wasn't clear to me, reading the book, if the letters that were included were actually written by Lee and Akiyama, or just based upon Lee/Leng's recollection of them. Whatever the case may be, this was a fascinating story, touching upon many powerful topics - the horrors of the war in Asia, the racism that allowed Japanese-Americans to be interned, friendship across cultural lines - as well as a setting - China City, which burned down in 1949 - that no longer exists today. There were times when I felt that the text would have been more powerful if it had contained a little less information, and focused more on Mei Ling's emotional state, but other than that I found this both informative and engaging, and am happy to have discovered it. Recommended to young readers who are interested in story about WWII on the American home front, and the experiences of Chinese-Americans in California. ( )