Peach Blossom Spring
This tale of three generations of a family starts in China in 1938 and ends in the U.S. in 2000. It traces the Chinese nationalist experience of WWII, the supporters of Chiang Kai-shek who ended up in Taiwan and what life was like there, the experience of a Taiwanese student in the U.S., and closes with the perspective of a first-generation Chinese American.
Covering that much history is an ambitious task. Although the book is engaging and well-written, there is so much to be told that the story feels shallow in some places. The transitions from one main protagonist to another sometimes feels as though the preceding protagonist’s story is incomplete, and it is occasionally unclear whose point of view in the narration is being represented. However, the long timeframe of the story helps illuminate the reasons an immigrant would be close-mouthed about the past, and the difficulty that a child raised as a middle-class American has in relating to or imagining the horrors of living through an era of so much upheaval. Fu masterfully demonstrates the inability of one traumatized generation to quite imagine the trauma of another.
Fu’s imagining of the difficulties of being a woman in China during the first half of the 20th century is lucid and compelling, and her exploration of the way that one emergency solution to a problem can lead to a new and sometimes bigger problem is fascinating. Her use of tales from an antique scroll as a way to link the protagonists is lovely. All in all, Peach Blossom Spring includes intense lyricism and tragedy, an introduction to the historical period covered, and insightful commentary on the gap between generations.
