Double Luck: Memoirs of a Chinese Orphan by Lu Chi Fa & Becky White

My grandma lent me Double Luck, the story of a young Chinese boy and the struggles he encountered before fulfilling his dream of coming to America. Beginning with his parents' death, the book follows his journey from relative to relative as he is always cast out eventually due to lack of food or lack of love. He stays with a kind old woman he calls Grandma and an invalid man in the throes of poverty. He is sold to a Communist family. He moves from his native village to Shanghai to Hong Kong to Taiwan before fulfilling his ultimate goal. His journeys are interesting and varied, but what stood out to me most was the person that emerged from those journeys.

Chi Fa is disowned, left hungry, forced to beg in the streets to feed his brother's family, and sold into slavery. He escapes beatings and the starvation conditions of Communist China. He endures unbelievable privations, yet his voice is so positive and hopeful throughout the book. He always treats others with kindness and respect, from the invalid whose seizures frighten him to the family that he supports by working essentially as their slave. He never gives up hope, and he never caves into the circumstances around him. I found it so inspiring. I've never had to deal with even a fraction of the struggles that Chi Fa faced, but traffic or a bad night's sleep can leave me shaking my fist at the world.

In short, through my ramblings, Double Luck is an amazing story that also speaks to the power of the human spirit. It is a short but highly enjoyable and readable story that I recommend to anyone who needs a lift.

4 stars

Warnings: None

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Title: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Author: Lisa See
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Random House, 2006
Source: Borrowed from my mom
Read for: Fun

Lily's family is average, without high prospects or much money. However, Lily's feet are such that they can be bound perfectly, meaning that she will gain higher status than her family has previously been able to attain and that she is destined for a good marriage. Because of this, the matchmaker pairs her with a laotong, or "old-same," a lifelong relationship of friendship and support with a girl whose life and destiny matches with hers. Lily's relationship with her laotong is fulfilling and happy, but as they grow older their lives begin to diverge.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is an interesting story, one that does not fit my normal ideas of narrative. The language is slow and formal, and the plot unfolds slowly and delicately. At times this made Snow Flower and the Secret Fan a difficult read for me, but as a whole I enjoyed the story and the unique look at a culture with which I am less familiar.

I experienced similar roadblocks with the other Lisa See novel I've read, Peony in Love. Something about her style doesn't always mesh well with me. While the words are beautiful and descriptive, giving life to vivid images, the tone is more stiff and formal than what I am used to. However, this isn't always negative; the culture is different, so it makes sense that the style, too, is different. While the difference was at times not as comfortable or enjoyable for me, I don't think that it was always a bad thing. One element of the style that I don't think would work for me regardless of the cultural tone, however, was that See tended to "tell" rather than "show." Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is very introspective, and while I enjoyed it, sometimes I wanted less of Lily's inner commentary and more events displaying what was taking place.

The story itself was beautiful, although also completely foreign to me. Some of the core concepts of Lily and Snow Flower's lives, such as the need for daughters' feet to be bound and the way it signifies a mother's love, does not mesh with my Western ideas. The idea too that women must be utterly at the mercy of their husbands' whims (and those of their mother-in-law), and that a woman would submit to brutal beating because it is her place in the household, was hard for me and I'm sure many other readers as well. I also wondered at the tradition of the sworn sisterhoods and laotongs -- it was strange in my mind to have your friends chosen for you, arranged through your supposed destinies and birth dates. However, while dealing with these concepts so foreign to my life, I also found beauty and symmetry in the layers of duty and commitment to family and loved ones. I found fascination and grace in the various festivals and traditions of the characters. And as for the lives of the characters themselves, I found the convolutions and misunderstandings of Snow Flower and Lily's lives to be heartbreaking and the path they take to forgiveness to be beautiful.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a unique book that illustrates a society that differs greatly from the one I live in. For this reason, at times it was hard for me to understand or relate to the book. However, I found the story to be moving and powerful despite the differences.

3.75 stars

Warnings: Talk of "bed business," detailed nudity

Peony in Love by Lisa See

Title: Peony in Love
Author: Lisa See
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Random House, 2007
Source: Library
Read for: R.I.P. Challenge

Peony is a young girl in a traditional Chinese household. She doesn't leave the house. Her feet are bound and delicate. She is betrothed to a man she has never met. However, on her sixteenth birthday, she is allowed to view (behind a screen, of course) a showing of The Peony Pavilion, an opera she loves, and one that has been accused of causing young girls' deaths from "lovesickness." In the course of the performance, Peony meets a young poet and begins a journey that will affect not only their lives but their afterlives as well.

I wasn't expecting Peony in Love to be a ghost story. However, amid the beautiful descriptions of gardens, the anguish of love, and the rigidity of Chinese culture, ghosts played a strong and occasionally spooky part of the story. In fact, this book had many elements that I was not expecting. I started reading it because one of my grandmothers kept asking me if I had read anything by Lisa See. When I saw this as a potential library book for Kindle, I jumped at the chance. However, I found myself with mixed feelings throughout the story.

At the beginning, everything was very pleasant. The descriptions were lovely. I found myself quickly absorbed by the descriptions of the culture, a culture that I know very little about despite the fact that I have a family member who was born in China. The meetings between Peony and her poet were romantic in that love-at-first-sight way.

Then things started getting disjointed as Peony drove her life into the ground. I became frustrated with her character, with her obvious happiness and pride at being diagnosed with "lovesickness," and later with her vengeful, controlling nature. I kept asking myself, what is the point of this story? Why are we dwelling on misery and revenge and manipulation for pages on end? I am not afraid of sad or dark books, but I like there to be something that redeems all the carnage of negative emotion and I wasn't seeing anything for chapters on end.

Then, Peony finally started experiencing some personal growth and doing some good in the world, and I started to feel more comfortable with the story again. By the end, I was satisfied and left the story with a feeling of enjoyment. The third part of the story had much more insight into the topography and scope of human love and the way it is possible to forgive, grow, and change.

Despite my disjointed experience with the book, overall it was a unique and enjoyable reading experience. Learning about Chinese culture and history fascinated me, and I am looking forward to reading more books set in Asia. I also found Peony's personal growth and experiences after death to be interesting and very different from books I have usually read. Even in fantasy books, I haven't often encountered any life-after-death scenarios, and exploring this culture's beliefs and Peony's experience was engaging and eye-opening. I especially loved that Peony experienced a great deal of personal development even though she was no longer living. In the beginning of the book, she has certain perceptions about love and about her family, as well as the play The Peony Pavilion, which is in many ways a catalyst for Peony's emotional growth throughout the novel. As the years pass with Peony observing the living, she learns new things about romantic love and about her family's devastating history, which in turn leads her to have new insights about the play. By the end of the book, she is a complete and generous woman, despite her foolish decisions in life (and several in death, too).

I'm not sure how I feel about Lisa See's writing style yet. The book was told from Peony's perspective, and something about the writing seemed a little sterile and held back to me. I'm not sure if this is a cultural element that is a result of Peony's voice -- she certainly has a repressed mortal life, not being allowed to leave her family's home and being trained in every way to be the perfect, subservient wife. It wasn't enough to dissuade me from finishing the book and I plan on reading more of See's work, but it was an element that bothered me a little.

However, overall, this was a new and interesting type of novel for me, and I am glad I read it.

3 stars

Warnings: Sensuality