Puteri’s Musings 2

Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah was recommended to me by Nightwing. I managed to obtain the book at the local library and it took me several weeks to finish it.

The sub text for the title is The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter. A young book reviewer called the book an exercise of self pity. I couldn’t disagree more.

Adeline does mention the hardships she went through as a child but most of the descriptions are actually written in quite a detached manner. The time she was sent to a convent school, and no one came to visit her the whole time she was there, was especially poignant.

Despite her difficult life due to family divisions, jealousy, treachery, Adeline thrived and successfully got her medical degree. First in England, and later to work in Hong Kong, and then defying her family by leaving Hong Kong for America. I felt depressed that instead of a much better life in America she married a Taiwanese whom her parents thought was “cracked”. But after several years of living in a failed marriage she ended that marriage, as her parents had suggested she did.

The book gives some good insights of what China that became a Communist state was like during the initial upheaval of communism.

What struck me most about the book was how family members were able to treat one another with such treachery. Even the one she thought was closest to her, her youngest brother James, in the end behaved in a way one would not expect. There was so much poison in that family and yet every one of them, except for Adeline’s half sister, seemed unable to break off the bond of filial piety. The father’s will was totally ignored by the step-mother, and told every child there was nothing for them, and when she died, her will left money and property to four children, but not to her own flesh and blood, Susan, and none to Adeline either.

Despite some depressing reading about family treachery, overall the book was instructive in what a well to do Chinese family went through during the late 19th century up to almost the end of the 20th century.

I quite enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a biography written by someone who overcame her early challenges in life and made a success of it after that. Adeline had many disappointments but at no time was she ever bitter.