Impressive.
Between three generations this family saw China go from warlords to communism and dealt had to try playing by sets of rules which were constantly changing. The family's ambitions were strikingly similar to any family in the world's: happiness, security, a better life for their children, peace, justice, food and shelter. What's amazing is how few of these things they were able to obtain through no real fault of their own.
The shifting rules are the real draw to the book as the people are not nearly as exceptional as their circumstances. The grandmother belonged to the last generations to bind their feet then became a concubine and dealt with all of the social restrictions imposed on her status. Then she is moved to Manchuria, whose culture seems to be excessively tradition-laden even to the Chinese. These traditions seem to make winners of no one: those who do well by them are jealously opposed by those who do not. There is a constant struggle of one side imposing authority and the other trying to undermine their superiors. It's relentless and exhausting for the people in the book and makes the reader constantly wonder how they would do at cultural navigation if they found themselves in these circumstances.
Then the Japanese take over, then the Kuomintang and then Mao's forces. Each time the rules change and any connections made with the previous authorities in order to survive can offend the next group that takes over. Each time the powers-that-be interfere with people living their lives and threaten their subsistence.
The mother and her husband start off as members of the Communist party and do quite well for a time. Then Mao's purges after the Great Leap Forward and especially during the Cultural Revolution throw everyone's lives into uncertainty. People rise and fall, are hailed and then punished often with little rhyme, reason or predictability. The father of the family is more loyal to the concept of communism than Mao and gains respect, resentment and humiliating penalties for these convictions. Much is made of the fear and turmoil during that time and the façade that normal people had to create in order to avoid destroying themselves and their families.
The author has done much research and you can see why she subsequently published a book on the life of Mao. Also, for someone who only started studying English intensely at university, her writing is excellent. She definitely takes some artistic license as she articulates specific feelings of relatives long deceased or political figures' motivations; neither of which which can ever be known for certain. She makes no effort to hide her opinions of political leaders for the sake of supposed impartiality.
These things, however, do not deter from the pleasure of reading a well-written book about a fascinating time and place in history. Her perspective of people effected but powerless by the politics of their time is compelling. The duality of what people said and did versus what they actually thought during the Cultural Revolution really comes across and being a very complex and human situation. We are lucky that someone with literary talent lived through these times, researched their history and took the years necessary to write about this intelligently and compellingly.
Highly recommended!