Book Review: ‘Daughters of Shandong,’ by Eve J. Chung

DAUGHTERS OF SHANDONG, by Eve J. Chung

A dilemma came early in my reading of Eve J. Chung’s debut novel, “Daughters of Shandong.” One of my favorite characters at first was the foulmouthed grandmother, Nai Nai, easily a villain to her long-suffering daughter-in-law, Chiang-Yue, who in turn is the mother of the narrator, Hai.

The action begins with the opening chapter’s unforgettable first line: “Nai Nai said whores weren’t allowed in the house, so she kicked mom out, slamming the wooden door shut with a clatter that startled the birds.” She has deduced that Chiang-Yue is pregnant again, even after she instructed her son not to have another child until his wife is 36, or it would not be a boy — the verdict of her fortuneteller.

Her firstborn would not disobey her, she believes, and so Chiang-Yue must have had an affair. Thus, even as the Communists are forcing citizens to flee or be reeducated, are we introduced to the secret cabal they never thought to root out: that of the women who uphold a patriarchy, and routinely offer no solidarity to any other woman, not even family.

The hard-bitten and ruthless ways of Nai Nai have the cynical edge I have often enjoyed in women such as her, and it does not seem at the outset that Chiang-Yue will ever survive to become like her. As Nai Nai divides the household into those who will escape with her to Qingdao and those who will remain to face the coming Communists — angry hordes intent on putting landholders to death for the crime of impoverishing their tenants under the old system — Nai Nai and her son decide to leave Chiang-Yue and her daughters behind, with almost nothing on which to survive.

This is not the greatest of Chiang-Yue’s tests at her mother-in-law’s hands. It won’t be her last, either. She has her own resources, among them the diligent kindness she has shown the estate’s workers, her hands rough in ways they admire — in part from making food for them each morning. When the cadres appear, they show her mercy enough, but not so her oldest daughter. Hai is treated ruthlessly, punished as if she were a male heir despite being unable to inherit the land being taken from her family. And so at the outset she is failed by both the old system and the new.

This novel was born, Chung writes in a compelling author’s note, from kitchen-table stories told by her grandmother, who was herself the inspiration for Hai. The result is like a manual for surviving a revolution: The tales here include tips on everything from hiding jewelry while traveling to the right foods to serve someone suffering from tuberculosis.

Hai relates her story in the straightforward first-person style of a narrator who is not much given to cynicism or poetry but who can keep your attention with her wit, a knack for shrewd details and uncommon tenderness. She makes her way, with her mother and her younger sisters Di and Lan, following on her father and grandmother’s trail, and somehow finding enough community and sustenance along the way to survive. But eventually they must face what they have become after arriving at a shelter for refugees in Hong Kong, as they wait to find out whether their family in Taiwan will send for them.

By then, Hai and Di have developed a taste for a freedom previously unknown to them as the daughters of a respectable family. While China undergoes one revolution, Hai undergoes another private one, pushing herself to make a living writing letters with a calligraphy brush her sister finds her, and eventually getting an education. The two girls dream of escape, even as their mother struggles to draw them back into the circle of silent suffering that was life in their father’s household under Nai Nai. The novel’s subject is revealed to be whether a woman will choose to save herself, or the system that has said she is worthless unless she can bear a son. Hai, her mother and Di all make different choices.

If I fault Chung at all, it is that it struck me as incredible that a mother and her three daughters would be able to travel the length of China during a civil war and never once be subject to sexual harassment, assault or rape, much less even the offer of transactional sex. Di does seem to come close, but is rescued all the same, and in those moments I questioned my own expectations for these stories. What, I wondered, was never revealed to Hai, or to the real-life woman who inspired her? Was there a story the author’s muse could not or would not tell? Yet this came to seem like the last, most realistic touch: Even with a beloved grandchild, there might be one silence that would not be broken.

DAUGHTERS OF SHANDONG | By Eve J. Chung | Berkley | 400 pp. | $28