I’ve been reading some Lisa See books… came across one in the library. “Shanghai Girls” which at first I was not too impressed with… it took a bit of time to get really into it… I found that with all the three Lisa See books I read, but once I got into it, it was very hard to put down.
So the first one I read was “Shanghai Girls”. It’s about sisters mainly and that funny frustrating relationship sisters have. It’s also about the American Chinese Pioneers, and it’s about some Chinese customs that is at the very root of what makes the chinese, Chinese. I guess the last bit was what absorbed me the most, and I guess she has explained to me to some extent about some deep held chinese beliefs that I have often found infuriating and backward.
Snowflower and the Secret Fan was my favourite book, it’s also about friendship between girls (almost sisters) and the kind of life that girls lead in China. What makes this story a little bit different to most stories about the Chinese is that it is actually about the Yao people, and not the predominant Han. Some of their culture is very interesting, like at a young age girls are given the opportunity to have sworn sisters who will become their closest companions until the girl is wed, and how a woman is always a part of her father’s house, even after she is married, she will still often be expected to return to her parent’s home and her position at her husband’s home is that of a guest/stranger. This is quite different from what I think the Han way is, for the Han’s once you are married you can expect never to see your parents again. The story also goes into great detail about footbinding, the most detail I have ever read. Also it speaks about NuShu, a written language made by women for women.
“Peony in Love ” is set at that time just after the Qing Dynasty became established. It is about the relationship between mother and daughter. It also goes into great lengths about what the Chinese believe happens in the afterlife.
I am half Chinese and half German. But I feel I’m much more Chinese/Asian than German because I grew up with my Chinese mom and in Asia. I lived in Germany until I was seven, until then German was my first language and I didn’t know much about Asia. After we left Germany, we settled in Indonesia and I learnt the language, including reading and writing and was fluent in it within a year. My German was very quickly forgotten… a real pity. But in those days I wanted to be as Chinese as possible. I hated it when people would say I looked Eurasian (even though they meant it as a compliment).
I wanted my hair to be darker, I wished I could speak chinese. I was fascinated on all things Chinese and lived on martial arts series . I would secretly reenact those martial arts scenes in my room, behind locked doors.
So I have always loved reading about the Chinese, even now, though I’m not quite as star struck as I used to be. I have also often… ok often may be an understatement, I have for a long time been angry and frustrated that the Chinese are so fixated on boys… and that no matter what they say when they’re expecting, secretly they wish for a boy, and that some go as far as pitying the woman who only has girls… saying that it is a waste! This has been especially so since I’ve married. My husband comes from a very traditional chinese family. His maternal grandfather had 2 wives… they had something like 17 siblings, that kind of old style family. With them, I have come face to face with a very different kind of filial piety. I mean, I also believe that we should respect our elders simply because they are older, and certainly that our parents deserve our respect. But while I believe that our level of respect to our parents can be tempered by the quality of our parents (e.g. a parent who’s sole purpose of raising a daughter is so that said daughter can work all her life to serve her parents financially, without taking into account that the daughter has a family of her own to support and that the parent’s expectations causes great fiction within the daughters marriage), they believe that no matter how badly the parent treats their child, it is still the child’s obligation to treat their parent with 100% respect and to give to their parents anything that may be demanded of them.
Wow that was really long and somewhat confusing… anyway, those books kinda made me see why they would think that way… I still don’t think it’s right though. I’m not that fond of Confucious… he had a lot of double standards.
