MingMei Yip writes a beautiful tale about a 30 yr old woman, Meng Ning who is torn between her love to be a Buddhist nun and Michael. Meng Ning joins a retreat to " test her karma to be a nun". When she pays her fee for the retreat, she is told that her $500 dollar bill is a fake. When she was in Paris, she had asked a friend to exchange her Hong Kong money in the black market. How could she have known it was fake? As she was trying to talk to the registration lady about her situation, a man asked if he could help. Meng Ning explains to him what happened and he pulls out his wallet and pays the lady the money. Meng Ning thanks him repeatedly and tells him she'll pay him back. His name is Michael Fuller and this is the starting of Meng Nings confusion.
The story doesn't slow down, it keeps moving with beautiful descriptions of China and the exotic life of Buddhist nuns. I loved every minute of it and am looking forward to reading her other books.
From Amazon:
When twenty-year-old Meng Ning declares that she wants to be a Buddhist nun, her mother is aghast. In her eyes, a nun's life means only deprivation - 'no freedom, no love, no meat'. But to Meng Ning, it means the chance to control her own destiny, and to live in an oasis of music, art, and poetry far from her parents' unhappy union. With an enigmatic nun known as Yi Kong, 'Depending on Emptiness', as her mentor, Meng Ning spends the next ten years studying abroad, disdaining men, and preparing to enter the nunnery. Then, a fire breaks out at her Buddhist retreat, and Meng Ning is carried to safety by Michael Fuller, a young American doctor. The unprecedented physical contact stirs her curiosity. And as their tentative friendship grows intimate, Meng Ning realizes she must choose between the sensual and the spiritual life.
A beautifully written love story. Sixteen year old Peony, arranged to be married soon , relishes in reading her collection of The Peony Pavilion. Her father has directed a performance of The Peony Pavilion opera and has invited the family and friends to to attend, with the women sittingbehind a screen as not to be seen by the men. Peony is so excited , she actually gets to see the opera she so loves. As she is watching the scene, she closes her eyes to relish the soundsand to absorb the atmosphere, she has waited her whole life to see. She glances over to a man sitting in audience and wonders if he is feelingwhat she is feeling? As she takes a break from the opera , she wonders the garden and meets a man . He is the man she saw in the audience and she was scared yet excited. She meets him again, knowing that if she gets caught it would be the worse thing in her life for her and her family. She falls in love with the stranger and cannot do anything else except dream of him and write her poetry . Peony eventually dies from lovesickness. Since her tablet was not dotted by her father, her ghost remains on the viewing terrace and she tries to think of a way to get her tablet dotted so she can finally be free. I hope i didn't say to much, it was a beautiful love story, according to Lisa See based on at true story. At the beginning of the story, i really enjoyed it but i started getting bored with it and hurried with the rest of it. Just not my cup of tea but for someone else it might be awesome.
I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.
For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, the lyrics from ThePeony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amidst the scents of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing choice scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few girls, even women, have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony too is cloistered and from a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own.
Peony's mother is against the production: “Unmarried girls should not be seen in public.” But Peony's father prevails, assuring his wife that proprieties will be maintained. Women will watch the opera from behind a screen to hide them from view. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave -- and is immediately overcome with too many emotions.
So begins Peony's unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow -- as Lisa See's haunting new novel takes readers back to 17th century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place -- even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence . . . a vividly imagined place where one’s soul is divided into three, ancestors are worshiped, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth.
Based on a true story, Peony in Love uses the richness and magic of the Chinese afterlife to transcend death and explore the many manifestations of love. Ultimately, it’s about universal themes: the bonds of female friendship, the power of words, the desire all women have to be heard, and finally those emotions that are so strong that they transcend time, place, and perhaps even death.
I'm not a writer, eloquently describing a beautiful passage or story. I don't think i would do justice in my review of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.
The story is set in the 19th century China, during the reign of Emperor Daoguang. Lily talks about her growing up during this time. The beginning she starts by saying she is a widow, 80 years old and in the "Sitting Quietly" part of her life. The Chinese during this time was all about traditions. They live each day with a routine in every minute and hour of their life. Lily starts her story as a 6 year old child who must go thru the agonizing tradition of feet binding . From there she tells of learning nu-shu, meeting her Laotong, preparing and marrying her husband and goes on to tell about her life after marriage. The author Lisa See states that after doing a review about Nu Shu, doing some research, chatting with a fan she decided she needed to go to Jianguong to further her research and to learn more. She did awesome in her book, describing the details of the Chinese history and the Nu Shu writing.
Like i said i'm not a writer and i wouldn't be able to write a review thats worthy of this book.
Review from Amazon:
Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well.
From Lisa See's website: A language kept a secret for a thousand years forms the backdrop for an unforgettable novel of two Chinese women whose friendship and love sustains them through their lives.
This absorbing novel – with a storyline unlike anything Lisa See has written before – takes place in 19th century China when girls had their feet bound, then spent the rest of their lives in seclusion with only a single window from which to see. Illiterate and isolated, they were not expected to think, be creative, or have emotions. But in one remote county, women developed their own secret code, nu shu – "women's writing" – the only gender-based written language to have been found in the world. Some girls were paired as "old-sames" in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their windows to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.
An old woman tells of her relationship with her "old-same," their arranged marriages, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood—until a terrible misunderstanding written on their secret fan threatens to tear them apart. With the detail and emotional resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha , Snow Flower and the Secret Fan delves into one of the most mysterious and treasured relationships of all time—female friendship.
