5/9/2023 0 Comments Pearl of China by Anchee Min![]() Looking at a picture of a heavily bearded Jesus, Willow's father objects that "no Chinese would worship a god that looked like a monkey".Īfter about 10 years of this, though, the book becomes a rather breathless sprint through 20th-century China. The first third of the book – which trots along at a respectable pace through Willow's and Pearl's picaresque early childhoods – has plenty of charm, with mutual incomprehension between earnest missionaries and bemused Chinese villagers providing nice flashes of humour. ![]() Finally, after the deaths of both Mao and Pearl, a nonagenarian Willow makes a pilgrimage to America to scatter Chinese earth over Pearl's grave. Pearl leaves China before the communist victory in 1949, while Willow remains to endure the political horrors of Maoism. ![]() After the man with whom they have both fallen in love (the celebrated modern poet Hsu Chih-mo) chooses Pearl, Willow consoles herself by marrying a tough communist apparatchik called Dick. ![]() In time, Pearl and Willow migrate to the nearby cities of Shanghai and Nanjing to begin new lives as modern, educated women. ![]()
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