Where Waters Meet
This is Zhang Ling’s first novel in English, following her earlier successes written in Chinese and translated. Like her protagonist Yuan Feng, Zhang was born in China and now lives in Toronto. Yuan—Phoenix in English—was indeed a firebird of rebirth to her mother Chunyu, whose name means Spring Rain. From the beginning of Phoenix’s marriage to George in 2004, Rain lived with them, moving to a nursing home only when her dementia became severe. She dies at the age of 83, leaving Phoenix her grief and a battered old suitcase, the ‘memory box’ Chunyu brought from China. Phoenix’s inability to talk with her mother in her final days and two photos she finds in the suitcase arouse her curiosity. Flying to China with her mother’s ashes, she pieces together the mysteries of Rain’s life.
Thus, this novel is an epic about storytelling with layers gradually revealed from Chunyu’s girlhood on, augmented by her sister Mei’s memories. Phoenix wants to tell the truth of her mother by writing it—in essence this novel—but secrets continue to appear almost to the end. Calamities of war haunted Chunyu’s life. Phoenix’s trip to China opens her eyes to the realities of the Chinese Civil War between Nationalists and Communists and the brutal Japanese occupation of China, both in the 1940s, which profoundly affected Chunyu, her sister, and her war-wounded husband Erwa, calling on Chunyu’s “quiet reserve of endurance.”
Zhang’s strengths in Where Waters Meet are her intriguing interwoven plot; vivid, surprising characters; and evocation of the political crises during Chunyu’s lifetime. However, her style can be clunky at times with colloquialisms that do not work in context. But, the story itself keeps us reading.
