Lung Ying-tai (traditional Chinese: 龍應台; simplified Chinese: 龙应台; pinyin: Lóng Yìngtái) (born February 13, 1952 in Kaohsiung) is a Taiwanese essayist and cultural critic. She occasionally writes under the pen name 'Hu Meili' (胡美麗). Lung's poignant and critical essays contributed to the democratization of Taiwan and as the only Taiwanese writer with a column in major mainland Chinese newspapers, she is an influential writer in Mainland China.
Lung was the Minister of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China in 2012-2014.
*Sobbing* I'll never ever snap at my parents again just because I'm being stupid. This book told me everything there is about the deep pain of parents watching their children growing up and growing distant, children watching their parents growing old and untouchable.
I was super irritated throughout the book and finally figured out that it was for three main reasons:
1. The author wasn’t really writing for her mother. She was writing in expense of her - using her as a prop, using her stories to stretch some type of pretend-philosophical and historical sensibility. Not just the mother, but also the father, the sons, her 80 year old polish and German “girlfriends,” the older “European women” etc. their stories became hers to manipulate
2. None of her literary or philosophical insights were particularly deep or original. Just rehashing commonplace western middle class liberalism and feminism - I’m sure her education and bicultural marriage endowed her with such perspectives, and like she admitted this was nothing but a newspaper column so a lot of work was just transporting common western sensibilities to Taiwan - so no need to pretend to be so deep about it. A lot of the thoughts could have just been an NYT article translate
3. This last bit is a petty observation but it really rubs me the wrong way - her possessiveness of her sons. The fact she called their girlfriends “the other woman”, that she wanted to poison them (said this for 5 years), that she could call them at midnight and insist they talk to her because of her insomnia, that she insists they spent a week solo traveling with her each week, that she wants her ashes on their bookshelves after she passes...gives me shudders
Anyways, it’s a nice casual read and touches on some themes about aging and death, but overall nothing too impressive for me