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A powerful new novel about an ordinary family facing extraordinary times at the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
China, 1957. Chairman Mao has declared a new openness in society: "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend." Many intellectuals fear it is only a trick, and Kai Ying's husband, Sheng, a teacher, has promised not to jeopardize their safety or that of their young son, Tao. But one July morning, just before his sixth birthday, Tao watches helplessly as Sheng is dragged away for writing a letter criticizing the Communist Party and sent to a labor camp for "reeducation."
A year later, still missing his father desperately, Tao climbs to the top of the hundred-year-old kapok tree in front of their home, wanting to see the mountain peaks in the distance. But Tao slips and tumbles thirty feet to the courtyard below, badly breaking his leg.
As Kai Ying struggles to hold her small family together in the face of this shattering reminder of her husband's absence, other members of the household must face their own guilty secrets and strive to find peace in a world where the old sense of order is falling. Once again, Tsukiyama brings us a powerfully moving story of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with grace and courage.
- Sales Rank: #481098 in Books
- Published on: 2012-08-07
- Released on: 2012-08-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.55" h x 1.16" w x 5.95" l, .86 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Review
“I was following this family almost as though it were my own and stayed all the way to the end of their story.” ―All Things Considered, NPR
“The tenderness [Tsukiyama] shows for her characters creates a sympathetic portrait of intellectuals trying to live honestly in the shadow of oppression.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Tsukiyama's close attention to detail and descriptive language paint a vivid picture of the daily life of Kai Ying and her family. Tsukiyama gently envelops the reader into the quiet sadness that permeates the entire household while weaving in the multiple hardships the family faces under communism. Strength of community; support and love of family, both natural and adopted; and the ability to heal and overcome loss are major themes within the moving novel.” ―Booklist
“Best-selling author Gail Tsukiyama, recipient of PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, takes us back to those times not by painting a panorama but in her thoughtful and forthright way by showing the consequences for one family.” ―Library Journal
About the Author
Gail Tsukiyama is the bestselling author of six previous novels, including The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, Women of the Silk and The Samurai's Garden, as well as the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She lives in El Cerrito, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Tao
The courtyard was still quiet so early in the morning, the neighborhood just waking as Neighbor Lau’s rooster began to crow. The air was already warm, a taste of the heat and humidity that would be unbearable by midday. Seven-year-old Tao knew he had little time to climb the kapok tree before he’d be discovered. He glanced down at the gnarled roots of the tree and felt strangely comforted, a reminder of the crooked ginger roots his ma ma sliced and boiled into strong teas for her headaches, or when his ba ba complained of indigestion.
Tao wasn’t afraid as he shimmied up the kapok tree’s slender trunk toward the broad branches, avoiding thorns on the spiny offshoots of the same tree his father had climbed as a boy, his heart thumping in excitement at the idea of seeing White Cloud Mountain from up so high. From the time he was two, his father would lift him up to look out his bedroom window, or from the second-floor balcony, as they searched for the mountain in the far distance. His ba ba always told him that if he looked hard enough, he could see all of Guangzhou and as far away as White Cloud Mountain on a clear day. With its thirty peaks, the mountain was a magical place for him, and his eyes watered with an effort to glimpse just a shadow of an elusive peak.
Tao could still feel the rough stubble of his father’s cheek against his, like the scratchy military blankets they used at school during naptime when he was younger. But last July, just before his sixth birthday, everything changed. Angry voices filled the courtyard early one morning, his father’s voice rising above them all, followed by the sound of scuffling. He looked out the window to see his ba ba’s hands bound behind his back as he was dragged away by two unsmiling policemen in drab green uniforms. He saw his grandfather trying to push closer to his father, only to be roughly shoved back by one of the policemen. “Where are you taking him?” his mother’s lone voice cried out from the gate. But all he heard was a roar of the Jeep, and then they were gone.
After his father was taken away, when his mother and grandfather thought he was still asleep, Tao heard their low whispers, but when he made his way downstairs, the whispering had stopped. He saw his mother crying and his grandfather sitting in the shadows as still as stone. He wanted them to answer all his questions. “Where did ba ba go? Why did those men take him away? When will he come home again?”
Before he could say a word, his mother pulled him toward her and hugged him. “Ba ba had to go away for a little while,” she told him. He smelled the mix of sweat and the scent of boiled herbs in her hair and on her clothes and he blurted out, “Why didn’t ba ba tell me he had to go away?” But she held tightly on to him and a strange sound came from her throat. Only then did he understand his father was really gone and his questions would remain unanswered. He squeezed his eyes shut so he couldn’t see her crying.
From that day on, his father was no longer there to tell him about White Cloud Mountain. At first Tao was scared and confused, wanting only to feel his ba ba’s warmth beside him and to hear his laughter coming from the courtyard. Tao searched for his father in all the places they had gone together: down by the tree-lined canal, through the alleyways that separated the redbrick apartment buildings, in and out of the crowded, narrow streets lined with restaurants, and in the small shop where his father always bought him sweets filled with red bean and rolled in sesame seeds on their way to Dongshan Park. It was as if they were playing a game of hide-and-seek; he thought his ba ba would have to come out of hiding sooner or later. But he never did.
Mr. Lam, the shopkeeper, brought Tao safely back home, but not before he reached up to the shelves and took down a glass jar and slipped him a piece of candy, the same sugar candy that his mother’s patients often sucked on after drinking an especially bitter tea.
“Don’t worry, your ba ba will be back soon,” he said reassuringly.
Tao nodded, but all he tasted as he sucked on the hard candy was grief.
* * *
For a whole year, his ba ba returned to him only in dreams. Tao felt his presence in the shadows, the calm of his voice, the safe, solid grasp as he lifted him up and into the air, and the sweet scent of his cologne. The idea of climbing the tree had come to him in a dream just that morning: he was perched at the top of the kapok tree and could finally see all the way to White Cloud Mountain and there on one of the peaks stood his father waiting for him.
Tao suddenly heard the slow whine of a door opening and peered anxiously at the balcony. He held his breath and waited, but no one emerged as the air seeped slowly back out from between his lips. Sometimes his mother stepped out in the mornings to check the weather, or to see if she had any patients waiting. On this particular morning, he was relieved to see that the neighborhood was slow to wake.
His mother, Kai Ying, was something of a well-known herbalist and healer in their Dongshan neighborhood, where the quiet streets were lined with once-stately red and gray brick villas that surrounded their courtyard. She was known for her restorative teas and soups that cured many of the neighbors’ ailments. People came and went through the courtyard all day long, wanting her advice to treat some pressing malady. On any given morning there would likely be a patient or two already waiting anxiously at the gate to see her. But only after his mother fed him and his grandfather breakfast did she walk out to unlock the gate and let the first patient in. And it wasn’t until she ministered to the last person waiting that she locked the gate again at night.
According to Tao’s grandfather, it was his great-grandfather, a wealthy businessman, who built one of the first villas in the Dongshan area, once a remote and isolated part of Guangzhou where mostly military families lived. By the 1920s, there were hundreds of villas in the area. Most were two or three stories, designed in the European style with high ceilings and columned balconies. Tao’s family still lived in the same brick villa that was built by his great-grandfather, whose portrait hung on their living room wall. And though his great-grandfather had died long before Tao was born, he felt as if he knew the white-haired, stern-looking man wearing a dark blue silk changshan, standing tall in his long mandarin gown as he gazed down at him. He always thought of his great-grandfather as an intrinsic part of the house, just like the faded redbrick walls, the sweeping stairway and square-paned windows, the second-story balcony, and the wide-open courtyard that was specifically built around the kapok tree. Dongshan was the only district in Guangzhou that had houses with large, open courtyards.
After the Communists came into power in 1949, the two-story redbrick villa had been divided among three families. Tao’s now lived on the top floor that opened up to the second-floor balcony. Auntie Song lived in a smaller apartment facing the backyard, and Mr. and Mrs. Chang, an older couple who were currently away visiting their daughter in Nanjing, lived in the rooms downstairs. They all shared the kitchen, though the Changs kept to themselves and usually took their meals in their room. Auntie Song occasionally ate with them, but preferred to cook the vegetables she grew in her backyard garden on a small hot plate in her apartment. Tao’s grandfather often told him that when he was a boy, the entire house belonged exclusively to his family. Tao couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have so many rooms to run through.
Lately, he noticed his grandfather was repeating the same old boyhood stories, many of which took place in the courtyard, where the tall, spiny-armed kapok tree stood guard. He knew his grandfather was an only son, though he had five much older half sisters. Tao imagined the kapok tree had provided his grandfather with company, just as it did for him. “The tree has been here for a very long time,” his ye ye repeated, just yesterday. “Think of all it has seen over the years, all that it has heard,” he added. His grandfather gazed up at the tree as if he could see the past in each of its limbs.
“A tree can’t see or hear,” Tao said.
His grandfather looked down at him and smiled. “How do you know? It’s a living thing. Just because it doesn’t have eyes and ears the way we do, how can we know it doesn’t feel things in other ways?”
Tao thought about it for a moment. “Just like we can’t see how water and sunlight make it grow?” he asked. His grandfather, Wei, and his father, Sheng, were both teachers. Ever since Tao was a very little boy, he felt their joy every time he asked questions and was eager to learn something new.
“Yes,” his grandfather said, and clapped his hands once. “Exactly like that! So many things happen around us without our seeing or knowing.”
“How old is the tree?”
His ye ye stroked the gray hairs on his chin. “Let’s see,” he said, “I would say it was planted during the Ch’ing Dynasty, the last great Chinese dynasty, so well over a hundred years ago.”
Tao nodded and counted in his head. His grandfather was seventy-one and he was going to be seven. The tree was older than both of their ages combined.
His ye ye and his parents constantly reminded him of how thankful he should be to be surrounded by nature, and how lucky they were to share it with their neighbors. Just four months earlier in the heart of March, his grandfather had marveled at the kapok’s red blossoms that were in full bloom, bold and unafraid. Known as ...
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
This is a great story of Japan's people living during the war
By frances b ray
This is a great story of Japan's people living during the war. The war is destructive for all involved and I enjoyed (but sad) the story. This is one of my favorite books and Gail Tssukiyama is one of my favorite writers'. Post Traumatic Syndrome is a topic that I am interested in. This story was a perfect example of PTS . PTS does not just happen to soldiers but also any one traumatized by violent events.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Amazon Customer
Excellent Story!!
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Even so, the world intrudes....
By deeper waters
This book reveals less about the specifics of living in China during the time of Chairman Mao than it does about the way people maintain their sense of self in the midst of social and familial upheaval. Tsukiyama writes gently about feelings and experiences that are neither gentle or positive. Stories and their telling are important ways of solidifying our own values and knowledge as well as passing them on to others and it is through shared stories that much of the core of this book is revealed. The plot and characters were somewhat stereotyped and predictable ~ love, betrayal, secrecy, redemption, forgiveness and resilience. The chapters were very short glimpses into the mind and hearts of the people involved which for me broke up the flow. The relationship between Wei and Tian was perhaps the most honest and well written of them all. As is pretty much the norm today, this was an enjoyable book but not a great one.
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