Surviving the Chinese Communist Revolution: one family’s saga
When most Americans think of revolution, our minds leap to Russia a century ago and the chaotic events that gave rise to the Soviet Union. But a century from now our great-grandchildren will likely think first of another revolution that is proving to be equally consequential in historical terms — if not more so. At least ten million people died in the Chinese Communist Revolution (1921–49) from the protracted, on-and-off fighting between the Communists and the Nationalists. And seven decades later the product of that revolution, the People’s Republic of China, has emerged as a formidable world power. Yet neither we nor our descendants are likely to consider the horrific price paid by the Chinese people in the events leading up to October 1, 1949. That’s the underlying theme in Eve J. Chung’s tale of surviving the Chinese Revolution, Daughters of Shandong.
THREE SISTERS AND THEIR MOTHER FACE A MOB OF COMMUNIST CADRES
Thirteen-year-old Hai is the eldest of three daughters. With Di, who is two years younger, and one-year-old Lan, she and her mother, Chiang-Yue, are alone in the manor house as a mob of Communist cadres approaches. Their father, grandfather, uncle, and cousins have fled to the big city, Qingdao, forcing them to stay behind to protect the property for their return. It’s all as dictated by Chiang-Yue’s mother-in-law, Nai Nai, the tyrannical and sadistic old woman who has made Chiang-Yue’s life miserable, every day of her married life. Nai Nai rules the roost.
But the family will not return. It’s 1948, and Mao’s Red Army has swept the Nationalist forces from the north. They’re now on a rampage through the province, seeking out the landowners who have impoverished the peasants. And when they arrive at the family compound, enraged that the men have fled, they single out Hai to take the blame. In the local village they torture the girl in front of a screaming mob. But one of the workers from her family’s land saves her, remembering her mother’s unfailing kindness to the peasants. Reunited with her family and hidden for days in the worker’s humble home, Hai, her sisters, and her mother set out on the perilous journey across the breadth of China, from Shandong to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, and eventually to a new home in Taiwan.
DAUGHTERS OF SHANDONG BY EVE J. CHUNG (2024) 400 PAGES ★★★★★
“VALUE MEN, BELITTLE WOMEN.”
Another of the principal themes of this novel is the misogyny deeply embedded in traditional Chinese culture. Women and men alike heed the injunction, “Value men, belittle women.” Like many other older women everywhere in mid-century China, Nai Nai subjects her daughter-in-law to daily abuse, forcing her to kneel for hours on end in penance for imaginary faults. And Chiang-Yue’s husband says nothing. He will never contradict his mother.
But the old woman’s cruelty pales beside that of the cadres who invade the family’s land. When they seize Hai and drag her off to the village, they incite the peasants to throw rocks at her. Barely surviving the assault, it’s weeks before Hai is healthy enough to travel with her mother and sisters on their long trek to the south. First to Qingdao, where they discover their family has managed to ship out on a freighter for Taiwan. Then south to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, they suffer the indignities and pain of life on the margins. Months pass before they, too, will manage to make their way to the island where Chiang Kai-shek has established a military government.
Some two million people migrated to Taiwan in 1949, fleeing from the Communists. Although many fled early, based on closely=held insider knowledge that they’d lost the civil war, a great many others had stories to tell much like that of Hai and her family. Revolution is never pretty.
READ THE AUTHOR’S NOTE
At the conclusion of Daughters of Shandong, Eve J. Chung reveals that her own grandmother inspired the character of Hai. The story is based on “kitchen-table stories told by her grandmother,” as the reviewer for the New York Times observes. Chung’s other comments on the book in her author’s note are equally revealing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eve J. Chung writes on her author website that she “is a Taiwanese American lawyer and women’s human rights specialist. She has worked on a range of issues, including torture, sexual violence, contemporary forms of slavery, and discriminatory legislation. Her writing is inspired by social justice movements, and the continued struggle for equality and fundamental freedoms worldwide. She currently lives in New York with her husband, two children, and two dogs.”
FOR RELATED READING
The review of this novel in the New York Times by Alexander Chee emphasizes different aspects of the story. You can see it at “In the Midst of a Revolution, One Girl’s Perilous Escape” (May 7, 2024).
For an account of the daughters in a very different Chinese family that lived at the same time, see Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang (They shaped twentieth-century Chinese history).
You might also care to know about an excellent book that chronicles many of the events in this novel’s background: A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 by Kevin Peraino (Mao, Truman, and the birth of Modern China).
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And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page of Mal Warwick on Books.
