Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden

Two Sisters Separated by China's Civil War

Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
Zhuqing Li
RRP:
NZ$ 52.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 45.04
Hardback
h229 x 152mm - 368pg
22 Jul 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780393541779
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Jun and Hong were scions of a once great southern Chinese family. Each other' s best friend, they grew up in the 1930s during the final days of Old China before the tumult of the twentieth century brought political revolution, violence, and a fractured national identity. By a quirk of timing, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Jun ended up on an island under Nationalist control, and then settled in Taiwan, married a Nationalist general, and lived among fellow exiles at odds with everything the new Communist regime stood for on the mainland. Hong found herself an ocean away on the mainland, forced to publicly disavow both her own family background and her sister' s decision to abandon the party. A doctor by training, to overcome the suspicion created by her family circumstances, Hong endured two waves of ? re-education? and internal exile, forced to work in some of the most desperately poor, remote areas of the country. Ambitious, determined, and resourceful, both women faced morally fraught decisions as they forged careers and families in the midst of political and social upheaval. Jun established one of U. S. -allied Taiwan' s most important trading companies. Hong became one of the most celebrated doctors in China, appearing on national media and honored for her dedication to medicine. Niece to both sisters, linguist and East Asian scholar Zhuqing Li tells her aunts' story for the first time, honoring her family' s history with sympathy and grace. Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden is a window into the lives of women in twentieth-century China, a time of traumatic change and unparalleled resilience. In this riveting and deeply personal account, Li confronts the bitter political rivals of mainland China and Taiwan with elegance and unique insight, while celebrating her aunts' remarkable legacies.
"With sensitivity and sincerity, Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden takes readers through the most complicated, difficult, sorrowful, and indecipherable years in China' s modern history. Zhuqing Li' s beautifully narrated family stories are tightly entangled with the wider historical context, unfolding on a magnificent scale, and evoke unique feelings of pain and helplessness that belong to that era. " -- Ai Wei Wei, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows "Li Zhuqing has captured the agonizing struggle of late-20th-century Chinese history within the microcosm of her own extraordinary family, split by chance in the tumultuous summer of 1949. This is a tale of accidental exile, capitalism and communism, medicine and mercantilism, lifelong nostalgia and wilful forgetting, and the breathtaking resilience of two sisters, Li' s indomitable aunts. How lucky we are that their niece has the skill and devotion to tell their story so well. " -- Janice Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell "A heartrending story, beautifully told, about the struggles and triumphs of two sisters separated by the Taiwan Strait, but united in their determination to pursue meaningful lives amid political upheaval. I couldn' t stop reading it. " -- Amy Stanley, author of Stranger in the Shogun' s City "In gorgeous prose, Zhuqing Li tells a story that is at once distinctive and familiar, of Chinese families of a certain generation that lived through wars, revolutions, separations, and reunions. I couldn' t put it down. A lovely book. " -- Mae Ngai, author of The Chinese Question "At last, a profoundly human story that illuminates the staggering personal consequences of China and Taiwan' s historic split-from both sides. Rare is the author who can portray war and its aftermath so evenhandedly. This powerful page-turner of a family torn apart-and surviving-is as unforgettable as it is important. " -- Nicole Mones, author of The Last Chinese Chef "Beginning in war-torn China, Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden tells a compelling story about diaspora, root-seeking, and the triumph of familial love and human perseverance. " -- David Wang, author of The Lyrical in Epic Tim
Zhuqing Li is a professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University and the author of four scholarly books on Chinese linguistics. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780393541779
Published: 22 Jul 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Format: Hardback
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Pages: 368

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