|
|
Book Map: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
|
|
Reading Maps bring together a myriad of information related to a book, information such as
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Proclamation from City of Los Angeles and Long Beach Literary Hall of Fame Award, both 1983, both for Lotus Land. WITH MOTHER, CAROLYN SEE, AND JOHN ESPEY UNDER JOINT PSEUDONYM MONICA HIGHLAND
UNDER PSEUDONYM LISA SEE
Suggested Further Reading (* titles in the Sherborn Library Collection) Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan* Empress Orchid by Anchee Min Dream of the Walled City by Lisa Huang Fleischman Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck* Breach in the Wall: a Memoir of Old China by Enid Saunders Candlin* Four Sisters of Hofei by Annping Chin* Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang* A Mother’s Ordeal One Woman's Fight Against China's One-Child Policy by Stephen W. Mosher* Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden*
August 15, 2005 2 Women Cling in a Culture of Bound Feet By JANET MASLIN The exotica, fetishism and soap opera in Lisa See's novel of 19th-century China, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," make for a fragrant mix. Or at least they make a learning experience out of what might otherwise be more frankly perverse. The book describes a very intense friendship between two women, Lily and Snow Flower, who are linked together more closely than lovers. The only bonds tighter than the ones uniting these two souls are the agonizing ties applied to their precious young feet. A little background: Ms. See was inspired to write this book after she read and reviewed "Aching for Beauty" (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), an account of Chinese foot binding and fetishism by Wang Ping. Ms. See was also intrigued by the relatively unknown existence of a private written language, nu shu, used by women of the Yao ethnic minority. The secret fan of the title is embroidered with messages in nu shu describing the major events in Lily and Snow Flower's sudsy lives. Apparently nu shu brings a decorative formality to describing even the most basic experiences. When Snow Flower says "My husband and I are like two mandarin ducks," for instance, and "We find mutual felicity in soaring together," she means that their sexual bond is a whole lot more torrid than Lily - who finds herself unaccountably possessive about Snow Flower, with whom she often shares a bed - would like. The book has a conventionally melodramatic structure. So it begins when Lily is old, rueful and near death. It then flashes back to an account of her long, eventful life. By her own description, Lily was "a so-so girl who lived with a so-so family in a so-so village." Two things distinguished her: especially sweet little feet, and the Chinese equivalent of a ruthless stage mother. "I had always known she had been born in the year of the monkey, but I'd never realized that its traits of deceit and cunning ran so strongly in her," Lily confides. "I would say that something like male ambition glowed right through her skin." But because Ms. See never allows her genteel characters to be truly angry - or terribly perceptive - the mother's drive is chalked up to the helplessness of her lot. In this place and time, a Chinese woman must be subservient to the nearest man, whether he is her father, in-law, husband or even son. Only later in life will Lily meet a woman (her mother-in-law) with a more useful outlook: "Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want." Anyway, Lily's mother knows a potential bonanza when she sees one. So the little girl's feet are gruesomely tied and stunted in hopes that they will come to resemble the lotus buds that might help her make a socially advantageous marriage. A well-bound set of feet is evocatively described as a pair of golden lilies, and they are said to have the sexual appeal of, well, there are two things here that it may be better not to know about. One is the oozing monstrousness of the actual crippling process. The other is what happens when a wife with perfectly reconfigured feet is ready to, as the book's characters put it, "do bed business." Ms. See is graphic about the first matter. As for the sex, like Lily, she is close-your-eyes-and-think-of-England prim. Besides, the book's foremost kinks lie elsewhere: in the agreement between their two families that make laotongs, or "old sames," out of Lily and Snow Flower. Thanks to the efforts of a matchmaker, they are formally committed to being best friends for life - or, as Snow Flower puts it, "for ten thousand years, we will be like two flowers in the same garden." Anyone who thinks those two flowers will not move from the sunshine of unity into the rainstorms of bitchery is unfamiliar with this novel's underlying genre. While Ms. See punctuates the novel with evocative references to customs and rituals ("The Expel Birds Festival," the "Day of Sorrow and Worry" preceding a wedding), she also illustrates how Lily's and Snow Flower's destinies take tragically different directions. Lily marries grandly thanks to the perfection of her feet. She becomes Lady Lu. But Snow Flower gets hitched to a butcher, and she lives in a household where "flaming pig intestines" and "pig penis sautéed with garlic and chili" are on the menu. Snow Flower becomes a vegetarian. Snow Flower loses children and gives birth to girls, circumstances that are considered equivalently pitiable. The butcher beats her. And it becomes apparent that she has deceived Lily about something important. Eventually, the friendship hits the rocks and the recriminations begin to fly. "You had nothing but a pretty pair of feet," Lily is told. And "Now you have abundance in your life, Lady Lu - an abundance of malice, ingratitude and forgetfulness." Read on if you wonder whether Lily will eventually rue the error of her ways. "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" is written with a stately but unremarkable prettiness; it is not a book that will make its mark for reasons of style. But Ms. See has worked enough joy, pain and dramatic weepiness ("Oh, how I wanted to dip a cloth into that water and wipe away the cares that played across my laotong's features") to give it a quiet staying power. It's liable to be read by women's groups and valued for its quaintness. ("All people cherish the hair on their moles, but Uncle Lu's were splendid.") But what will work best for this book is its own secret message: cultures vary, but old sames and same-olds don't change. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC Lisa See Kendall, who has published under the pseudonym Lisa See, and with mother, Carolyn See, and John Espey under the joint pseudonym Monica Highland, once told CA: "I've been around journalism and letters all my life. My mother, Carolyn See, is a journalist, novelist, and critic. She has taught me everything I know about what might be called the popular, contemporary West Coast literary scene. I've known my other collaborator, John Espey, for over twenty-five years. He has taught me about the scholarly life. It is a pleasure to work with them as `Monica Highland.' I know I speak for all of us when I say that it gives us a feeling of strength in numbers--something all writers need in the West." Kendall, one eighth Chinese, presents more than her own life story in her autobiography On Gold Mountain Mountains: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family. The narrative is "a comprehensive and exhaustively researched account of a Chinese-American family as it deals with their rise and fall of several Los Angeles `Chinatowns,' with the exigencies of discrimination, fire, flood, earthquake, the Great Depression and two world wars," summarized Zilpha Keatley Snyder in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "Intricate genealogy, bravura entrepreneurship, bitter adulteries and perdurable rivalries. . . . business in rambunctious frontier California; ferreting out the heirlooms of abruptly bankrupt Chinese families and buying them up; dealing in art, antiques and furniture; marrying, divorcing and carrying on--the See family's adventures would be incredible if On Gold Mountain were fiction," proclaimed Elizabeth Tallent in the New York Times Book Review. The "diversity" in "deal[ing] with a great number of individuals and a time span of over 100 years . . . [and a] unique crosscurrents of cultural and ethnic diversity. . . . sets [Kendall]'s saga apart from other excellent family histories of Asian immigrants. . . . Throughout the lengthy and complicated account the reader is carried along effortlessly by the author's skillful and absolutely convincing invocation of the fears, joys, loves, hatreds, strengths and weaknesses of her remarkable progenitors," praised Snyder, who superficially faulted the book for not editing some "duplications of information" and for a lack of "family photographs." Tallant cautioned, however: "[Kendall]'s handling of her characters' emotional lives on occasion [Kendall] seems downright fatigued." Regardless, Kendall, a "clear-eyed biographer" did "a gallant and fair-minded job of fashioning anecdote, fable and fact into an engaging account," recognized Tallant. On Gold Mountain is a "lovingly rendered dynastic saga," applauded Pam Lambert in People Weekly, concluding: "Deeply felt, [Kendall's] story of culture and assimilation would likely make her ancestors proud." "The complexity of [Kendall's] own background" is credited by Paula Friedman in the Los Angeles Times Book Review for "the graceful rendering of two different and complex cultures, within [the] highly intricate plot" of Flower Net, a "novel of political conspiracy and family betrayal." Kendall's debut mystery, presents "a workman-like job with . . . plot and paints a vivid portrait of a vast Communist nation in the painful throes of a sea change," stated a People Weekly review. Critics applauded Kendall's portrayal of Beijing and characterization of Liu Halan, a female detective with the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. Halan is paired with her love interest of a decade earlier, David Starke, an assistant U.S. Attorney. The team bridges countries, and rekindles romance, when investigating an apparent serial killer whose latest two victims were recently discovered. The body of a powerful Chinese businessman's son was found in U.S. territory and the body of a U.S. ambassador's son was found frozen in a Beijing lake. "True to [Kendall]'s predilection for doubling throughout this novel, when Hulan and David do reach the end of their investigation, they find two interdependent solutions. One is so sensationally evil, its hart to swallow; the other is quietly appalling," declared Washington Post Book World contributor Maureen Corrigan. "All and all," recognized Krist, "[ Flower Net has] an inviting premise for a thriller . . . capitalizes on its inherent novelty and exoticism. . . [and has] delight[ful] . . . local descriptions [of Beijing]. . . . but when it comes to plotting, [Kendall] unfortunately adopts the old policy of letting a hundred improbabilities bloom. . . . [and there is] a nagging aura of inauthenticity hang[ing] over the novel's investigative mechanics." In the novel, "paradox and contradiction are enmeshed in increasingly ambiguous scenarios that are about as tough to sort out as any 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Following the crisscrossing narrative that moves from China to Los Angeles and back again, the reader quickly begins to feel trapped in a hall of mirrors," contended Friedman. Of the detective pair, Gary Krist wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "Although Stark is constructed largely from crime-novel boiler plate . . . Hulan is a provocative mixture of vulnerability, bitterness and hardheaded practicality." Calling Hulan an "intriguing, if not fully fleshed out, character," Corrigan asserted: "David may have the muscle, but Hulan has the moxie." With Hulan, declared USA Today reviewer Deirdre Donahue, Kendall has "[successfully and] compellingly" created a "woman far more tough-minded than the man." Praising the novel, Corrigan contended that "if . . . you have a strong stomach and an appreciation for atmospheric, tightly plotted suspense stories, Flower Net is a treat." This "nifty tale of suspense" presents "colorful observations of Chinese life . . . seemlessly combined with basic suspense elements," lauded Chicago Tribune contributor Chris Petrako, calling Kendall "a writer comfortable with imaginative storytelling and the sweep of history." Kendall once told CA: "It's a rare day when I don't ponder that the West Coast (especially Southern California, the second-largest book market) isn't adequately represented in the media or seriously considered by the power brokers in the East. There is power, talent, and money out here, and except for the movie business, little connection is made between the East Coast publishing business and the extraordinary cache of West Coast energy."
Footbinding
NPR: Painful memories of Chinese Footbinding Survivors
Nu shu writing: Washington Post The secret language of Chinese women(02-29) 04:00 PDT Pumei Village, Hunan Province, C -- Nowadays, it would be called empowering women. But back then, centuries ago, it was just a way for the sworn sisters of this rugged and tradition-laden Chinese countryside to share their hopes, their joys and their many sorrows. Only men learned to read and write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures confined women to their husband's homes. So somehow -- scholars are unsure how, or exactly when -- the women of this fertile valley in the southwestern corner of Hunan province developed their own way to communicate. It was a delicate, graceful script handed down from grandmother to granddaughter, from elderly aunt to adolescent niece, from girlfriend to girlfriend -- and never, ever shared with the men and boys. So was born nushu, or women's script, a single-sex writing system that Chinese scholars believe is the only one of its kind. "The girls used to get together and sing and talk, and that's when we learned from one another," said Yang Huanyi, 98, a wrinkled farmer's widow whom scholars consider the most accomplished reader and writer among a fast- dwindling number of nushu practitioners. "It made our lives better, because we could express ourselves that way." Renewed interest Scholars and local authorities have taken renewed interest in the exclusive language, trying to preserve it as the last women who are fluent reach the end of their lives. Generations of women in the region once penned their diaries in nushu, and the few journals that survived offer a unique chronicle of these private lives long ago. Today, girls learn Chinese along with the boys, so learning nushu has less appeal. Nushu in some ways resembles Chinese, if some of the characters were stretched and altered. But it also differs in many respects. For example, according to researchers, the letters represent sound -- the sounds of this region's Cheng Guan Tuhua dialect -- and not ideas, as in the Chinese ideograms that men studied and wrote. Nushu was written from top to bottom in wispy, elongated letters in columns that read from right to left. Much remains unknown about nushu. Its origins, reaching perhaps as far back as the third century, have been the subject of scholarly exchanges among a handful of researchers in China and elsewhere. They know it was used in Hunan's Jiangyong County, in south central China about 200 miles northwest of Guangzhou, and believe it was limited to what is now Jiangyong's Shungjian Xu Township, which includes Pumei and these days has a population of around 19, 000 people. But even that is not certain. What seems clear is that nushu was fostered by the region's ancient custom of "sworn sisters," whereby village girls would pledge one another fealty and friendship forever. The tight sorority, which included growing up together in cobbled village lanes and gathering with adult women to weave and embroider, inevitably was shattered when the time for marriage came. Tradition dictated that a bride go away to her groom's home -- and that is where nushu came in. Three days after the wedding, the adolescent bride would receive a "Third Day Book," a clothbound volume in which her sworn sisters and her mother would record their sorrow at losing a friend and daughter and express best wishes for happiness in the married life ahead. The first half-dozen pages contained these laments and hopes, written in nushu that the groom couldn't read. The rest were left blank for the bride to record her own feelings and experiences -- in nushu -- for what would become a treasured diary. The sworn sisterhood tradition has led some scholars to speculate that nushu developed as a secret language for lesbians, according to Zhao Liming, a literature professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who helped bring nushu to researchers' attention in the 1980s and is one of the foremost authorities on it. Way to express themselves "But that is not true," she said in an interview. "They just wanted a way to express themselves." She added: "Women needed a spiritual life. They could not write Chinese, but they wanted to express their feelings." Most important to the women who learned it, sometimes memorizing letters written on the palms of their hands because of a lack of paper, nushu liberated them from illiteracy. The way nushu came to light some 20 years ago also has been clouded in competing theories. Lin Lee Lee at the University of Minnesota has written that a Jiangyong County woman visiting relatives in Beijing in 1982 astounded them by singing and then writing a language and script they could not understand. The relatives passed along their amazement to scholars, she said in a conference presentation, and research into the strange female writing system began. But Zhou Shuoyi, 78, a self-described countryside intellectual who lives in nearby Yongzhou city, said he knows better, and he explained why. One of his ancestors, a grandmother six generations back, wrote a poem titled "Educate the Girls." The poem, handed down from generation to generation, was translated into nushu by local village women, he said, and his aunt brought the nushu version to his father's house sometime in the 1920s as a subject of curiosity. Zhou's father, a schoolteacher, was impressed by the strange writing he couldn't understand and urged the young Zhou to investigate. Later, working for the Jiangyong County cultural department in the 1950s, Zhou said he discovered a number of elderly peasant women still mastered nushu. A speaker of the Tuhua dialect, he was also able to get a whiff of what nushu was about -- and what a cultural discovery there was to make. "At that time, many grandmothers could sing it, write it and read it," he said in an interview. "In society at that time, there was injustice between men and women, and women needed this language as a way to express themselves." Zhou reported his findings to authorities in Beijing, but by then the Cultural Revolution had convulsed China. As an intellectual, Zhou said, he was branded a rightist and forced to halt his work. Red Guard zealots destroyed the nushu documents he had painstakingly accumulated. "But the stuff in here could not be burned," he smiled, pointing at his head and its tufts of white hair. So in 1979, when calm had returned, Zhou said, he went back to work at a local museum and resumed his interest in nushu, eventually learning to read and write. In 1982, he said, he wrote a book about the region's culture, including a section on nushu. Scholars from relatively nearby Wuhan, from faraway Beijing and eventually even from abroad started dropping by. Nushu had been discovered. "Now a lot of people are studying it, and a lot of people come here to ask about it," he said. 1,500-word vocabulary Zhao said that over the last 20 years she has guided a number of graduate students, Chinese and foreign, in studying nushu at Tsinghua. Estimates of its contemporary vocabulary range from 670 to 1,500 words. A dozen of Zhao's students recently started compiling them in a dictionary. The students include three young men, she specified with a smile. But aside from scholars, Zhao and Zhou said, fewer than 10 people can fluently read and write nushu. Yang, the 98-year-old, has little time left. Several other women in Jiangyong County who can read and write, or at least read, also have neared the end of their lives. Local authorities nevertheless have seized on nushu's cultural value, and on its tourism potential. An $80,000 school and museum went up last year here in Pumei, where Hu Mei Yue, 42, visits every Saturday to teach nushu to any village girls who show up. Hu, who learned from her grandmother, the late Gao Yinxin, also embroiders bags and handkerchiefs with nushu writings to sell to tourists, who people here hope will start coming soon to see what they have baptized "Pumei, Nushu Cultural Village." "It's very interesting, and Gao Yinxin left this valuable thing for our village," said Hu Linyin, 10, a Pumei girl attending Hu's session Saturday. "I don't know how people can write like this," remarked classmate Hu Cui Cui, 12, who said she can read about 200 words. "Each word is like a flower."
|
 |
Donna Bryant, Webmaster. Please direct questions or comments about this website to referencelibrarian@comcast.net Last updated: June, 2010 http://library.sherbornma.org/ |