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Jiangnan Trilogy #1
Peach Blossom Paradise
An enthralling story of revolution, idealism, and a savage struggle for utopia by one of China's greatest living novelists
In 1898 reformist intellectuals in China persuaded the young emperor that it was time to transform his sclerotic empire into a prosperous modern state. The Hundred Days' Reform that followed was a moment of unprecedented change and extraordinary hope--brought to an abrupt end by a bloody military coup. Dashed expectations would contribute to the revolutionary turn that Chinese history would soon take, leading in time to the deaths of millions.
Peach Blossom Paradise, set at the time of the reform, is the story of Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who falls prey to insanity and disappears. Days later, a man with a gold cicada in his pocket turns up at their family estate and is inexplicably welcomed as a relative. This mysterious man has a great vision of reforging China as an egalitarian utopia, and he will stop at nothing to make it real. It is his own plans, however, which come to nothing, and his little sister Xiumi is left to take up arms against a Confucian world in which women are chattel. Her campaign for change and her struggle to seize control over her own body are continually threatened by the violent whims of men who claim to be building paradise.
In 1898 reformist intellectuals in China persuaded the young emperor that it was time to transform his sclerotic empire into a prosperous modern state. The Hundred Days' Reform that followed was a moment of unprecedented change and extraordinary hope--brought to an abrupt end by a bloody military coup. Dashed expectations would contribute to the revolutionary turn that Chinese history would soon take, leading in time to the deaths of millions.
Peach Blossom Paradise, set at the time of the reform, is the story of Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who falls prey to insanity and disappears. Days later, a man with a gold cicada in his pocket turns up at their family estate and is inexplicably welcomed as a relative. This mysterious man has a great vision of reforging China as an egalitarian utopia, and he will stop at nothing to make it real. It is his own plans, however, which come to nothing, and his little sister Xiumi is left to take up arms against a Confucian world in which women are chattel. Her campaign for change and her struggle to seize control over her own body are continually threatened by the violent whims of men who claim to be building paradise.
377 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2004
71 people are currently reading
2865 people want to read
About the author
Ge Fei
58 books70 followersGe Fei (Chinese: 格非; pinyin: Gé Fēi; Wade–Giles: Ke Fei, born 1964) is the pen name of novelist Liu Yong (刘勇), considered by many scholars and critics to be one of the most significant of the Chinese avant-garde writers that rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ge Fei was born in Dantu, Jiangsu, in 1964. He studied Chinese literature at East China Normal University and, after graduating in 1985, began to teach there and publish short stories and novellas. He read widely during his studies, but has since noted that he was particularly influenced by Borges, Faulkner and Robbe-Grillet. Some of his early, more experimental works were translated into English in the 1990s, such as "The Lost Boat", "Remembering Mr. Wu You" and "Green Yellow".
One of Ge Fei's most celebrated works is the "Jiangnan Trilogy", which explores the concept of utopia and contains many allusions to Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber.
In 2016, The Invisibility Cloak (which had won both the Lu Xun Literary Prize and the Lao She Literary Award in 2014) was the first of his longer works to be translated into English.
(from Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_Fei_...
Ge Fei was born in Dantu, Jiangsu, in 1964. He studied Chinese literature at East China Normal University and, after graduating in 1985, began to teach there and publish short stories and novellas. He read widely during his studies, but has since noted that he was particularly influenced by Borges, Faulkner and Robbe-Grillet. Some of his early, more experimental works were translated into English in the 1990s, such as "The Lost Boat", "Remembering Mr. Wu You" and "Green Yellow".
One of Ge Fei's most celebrated works is the "Jiangnan Trilogy", which explores the concept of utopia and contains many allusions to Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber.
In 2016, The Invisibility Cloak (which had won both the Lu Xun Literary Prize and the Lao She Literary Award in 2014) was the first of his longer works to be translated into English.
(from Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_Fei_...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
May 22, 2021
“Every person’s heart is an island, trapped by water, sequestered from the world.”
Chinese village, turn of the 20th century. One day Xiumi’s mad father disappears and some time later a very strange man arrives to live with them and calls himself an uncle and her mother’s relation. Naked body of a local village prostitute is found strangled in the field and Xiumi has strange dreams. There's a mysterious six fingered man and a golden cicada in a box.
This is a fast-paced historical fiction. I’m positive that I missed a lot of references to Chinese literature (although I was very proud of myself when he referenced a scene from the The Story of the Stone that I understood!) but it was always engaging and a page-turner. A lot happens, we have kidnappings, murders, revolts, revolutions, betrayals. Story is full of incredible women and beautiful and unique friendships between them.
Just unputdownable.
This is a new (and first?) english translation of a contemporary Chinese writer’s most famous work. And recommendation from me!
Chinese village, turn of the 20th century. One day Xiumi’s mad father disappears and some time later a very strange man arrives to live with them and calls himself an uncle and her mother’s relation. Naked body of a local village prostitute is found strangled in the field and Xiumi has strange dreams. There's a mysterious six fingered man and a golden cicada in a box.
This is a fast-paced historical fiction. I’m positive that I missed a lot of references to Chinese literature (although I was very proud of myself when he referenced a scene from the The Story of the Stone that I understood!) but it was always engaging and a page-turner. A lot happens, we have kidnappings, murders, revolts, revolutions, betrayals. Story is full of incredible women and beautiful and unique friendships between them.
Just unputdownable.
This is a new (and first?) english translation of a contemporary Chinese writer’s most famous work. And recommendation from me!
May 11, 2021
This gorgeous peach-colored volume from NYRB classics is a beautiful addition to my Chinese literature collection. A startling and wonderful story centering on an interesting and atypical female protagonist.
It concocts a poignant tragedy from the personal life lessons endured by one girl who laments her fate within an unstable society. It also is the first book in a trilogy. While the themes are not as heavy-handed as in Mo Yan, they are clearly defined, and never cloud the storytelling. Women's roles, and cultural revolution are discussed in the book through satire and allegory. The reading experience is not subsumed by politics, but this is not a tame novel. It follows Xiumi, whose body and life do not belong to her. With great insight and resolve she figures out how to get by in a family who does not place any value in her. This is later proven when her circumstances change and she is dispossessed. The imagery, and the violence incited by lust, treachery, greed, hate, and revenge, combine to paint a memorable portrait of a time and place and its people. Add to this a murder mystery and a drama of desperate emotions.
Led by dreams of paradise, with indirect suggestion of subliminal propaganda, within the search for utopia, Xiumi's and later, Little Thing's ideals are disenfranchised. Among their survival instincts is the struggle for female independence. Upon her eventual captivity, starvation, and return, she witnesses miracles and carries symbols of her life. I can only presume that these lives left dangling will be taken up in the next book.
This quirky and unpredictable family chronicle is rich in detail, suffused with luscious atmosphere, folkloric charm, and masterful storytelling. Its scope is epic, but its tone is intimate, engrossing, and comic, combining naturalism with historical flavor.
As Xiumi grows from 'bumpkin' roots, the subtle and overt violence leaking into her peaceful existence infringes on her innocence and freedom. The horrors lying in wait for her determine how she will respond to later rapid changes in fortune. In a worldview comprised of china alone, where other countries are as mysterious as fantasy planets, the product of modernization comes at the expense of leaving old traditions to die, trampling on 5000 years of history, while being the only option for the nation to progress. The flavors and scents and ephemeral pleasures, the nostalgic tone, within a country with growing pains, the fear and paralysis due to injustice and uncertainty, amid stunted quibblers losing hope in their backwater, who long for a better life, is tremendously moving.
Her life changes in Huajiashe midway through the tale are fascinating as well, as is Xiumi's gradual metamorphosis into The Principle. She acquires more influence. Yet the novel never expands beyond the small settings of each narrative part. It deals in the microcosmic scale, while tackling grand topics. A triumph.
It concocts a poignant tragedy from the personal life lessons endured by one girl who laments her fate within an unstable society. It also is the first book in a trilogy. While the themes are not as heavy-handed as in Mo Yan, they are clearly defined, and never cloud the storytelling. Women's roles, and cultural revolution are discussed in the book through satire and allegory. The reading experience is not subsumed by politics, but this is not a tame novel. It follows Xiumi, whose body and life do not belong to her. With great insight and resolve she figures out how to get by in a family who does not place any value in her. This is later proven when her circumstances change and she is dispossessed. The imagery, and the violence incited by lust, treachery, greed, hate, and revenge, combine to paint a memorable portrait of a time and place and its people. Add to this a murder mystery and a drama of desperate emotions.
Led by dreams of paradise, with indirect suggestion of subliminal propaganda, within the search for utopia, Xiumi's and later, Little Thing's ideals are disenfranchised. Among their survival instincts is the struggle for female independence. Upon her eventual captivity, starvation, and return, she witnesses miracles and carries symbols of her life. I can only presume that these lives left dangling will be taken up in the next book.
This quirky and unpredictable family chronicle is rich in detail, suffused with luscious atmosphere, folkloric charm, and masterful storytelling. Its scope is epic, but its tone is intimate, engrossing, and comic, combining naturalism with historical flavor.
As Xiumi grows from 'bumpkin' roots, the subtle and overt violence leaking into her peaceful existence infringes on her innocence and freedom. The horrors lying in wait for her determine how she will respond to later rapid changes in fortune. In a worldview comprised of china alone, where other countries are as mysterious as fantasy planets, the product of modernization comes at the expense of leaving old traditions to die, trampling on 5000 years of history, while being the only option for the nation to progress. The flavors and scents and ephemeral pleasures, the nostalgic tone, within a country with growing pains, the fear and paralysis due to injustice and uncertainty, amid stunted quibblers losing hope in their backwater, who long for a better life, is tremendously moving.
Her life changes in Huajiashe midway through the tale are fascinating as well, as is Xiumi's gradual metamorphosis into The Principle. She acquires more influence. Yet the novel never expands beyond the small settings of each narrative part. It deals in the microcosmic scale, while tackling grand topics. A triumph.
September 13, 2023
I urge anyone who is reading this in translation to read The Peach Colony( or The Peach Blossom Spring ) by Tao Yuan Ming （桃花源记, 陶渊明）.
Link with translation:
https://www.translators.com.cn/archiv...
There are numerous references to Classical Chinese literature ( especially poetry) in the book, many of which I have probably missed. However the most important reference that’s central to the theme of the novel is Tao’s fable.
It takes a minute or two to read.
( or maybe this is included in the introduction in the English translation? If I was publishing this book, I would include it)
This is an ambitious and complex work of literature, a hard one to review, and I have been sick, so I will have to keep it short.
I love how Ge explores the theme of Utopia, and how the pursuit of such Utopia can lead to violence and atrocities.
I also love Ge Fei’s prose in this one, it’s simply stunning. Its style is extremely different from The Invisibility Cloak, however, the readers can still tell its Ge from the humour that’s distinctively his in the early chapters.
However, I still don’t entirely get why Xiu Mi becomes a revolutionary.
( spoiler alert)
It’s tied to her infatuation with Zhang, and her sexual awakening.
But I just don’t buy it. She barely knows the man ( yes there is the diary but still…)
I also really dislike the descriptions of sex in this book.
( also trigger warning: sexual assault)
I plan to finish the rest of the series.
Probably not right away, but soon.
3.75 ⭐️
Quotes:
人的心思最不好捉摸。就像黄梅时的天，为云为雨，一日三变，有时就连你自己也捉摸不透。要是在太平盛世，这人心因着礼法的约束，受着教化的熏染，仿佛人人都可致身尧舜；可一逢乱世，还是这些人，心里的所有的脏东西都像是疮疔丹毒一般发作出来，尧舜也可以变作畜生，行那鬼魅禽兽之事。史书上那些惨绝人伦的大恶，大都由变乱而生，眼前的花家舍也是一样。你是读过书的人，这事不消我来说的。
她想把普济的人都变成同一个人，穿同样的颜色、样式的衣裳；村里每户人家的房子都一样，大小、格式都一样。村里所有的地不归任何人所有，但同时又属于每一个人。全村的人一起下地干活，一起吃饭，一起熄灯睡觉，每个人的财产都一样多，照到屋子里的阳光一样多，落到每户人家屋顶上的雨雪一样多，每个人笑容都一样多，甚至就连做的梦都是一样的。”
“她为什么要这样做呢？”
“因为她以为这样一来，世上什么烦恼就都没有了。”
她听见韩六在她耳边说：其实，我们每个人的心，都是一个被围困的小岛。
Link with translation:
https://www.translators.com.cn/archiv...
There are numerous references to Classical Chinese literature ( especially poetry) in the book, many of which I have probably missed. However the most important reference that’s central to the theme of the novel is Tao’s fable.
It takes a minute or two to read.
( or maybe this is included in the introduction in the English translation? If I was publishing this book, I would include it)
This is an ambitious and complex work of literature, a hard one to review, and I have been sick, so I will have to keep it short.
I love how Ge explores the theme of Utopia, and how the pursuit of such Utopia can lead to violence and atrocities.
I also love Ge Fei’s prose in this one, it’s simply stunning. Its style is extremely different from The Invisibility Cloak, however, the readers can still tell its Ge from the humour that’s distinctively his in the early chapters.
However, I still don’t entirely get why Xiu Mi becomes a revolutionary.
( spoiler alert)
It’s tied to her infatuation with Zhang, and her sexual awakening.
But I just don’t buy it. She barely knows the man ( yes there is the diary but still…)
I also really dislike the descriptions of sex in this book.
( also trigger warning: sexual assault)
I plan to finish the rest of the series.
Probably not right away, but soon.
3.75 ⭐️
Quotes:
人的心思最不好捉摸。就像黄梅时的天，为云为雨，一日三变，有时就连你自己也捉摸不透。要是在太平盛世，这人心因着礼法的约束，受着教化的熏染，仿佛人人都可致身尧舜；可一逢乱世，还是这些人，心里的所有的脏东西都像是疮疔丹毒一般发作出来，尧舜也可以变作畜生，行那鬼魅禽兽之事。史书上那些惨绝人伦的大恶，大都由变乱而生，眼前的花家舍也是一样。你是读过书的人，这事不消我来说的。
她想把普济的人都变成同一个人，穿同样的颜色、样式的衣裳；村里每户人家的房子都一样，大小、格式都一样。村里所有的地不归任何人所有，但同时又属于每一个人。全村的人一起下地干活，一起吃饭，一起熄灯睡觉，每个人的财产都一样多，照到屋子里的阳光一样多，落到每户人家屋顶上的雨雪一样多，每个人笑容都一样多，甚至就连做的梦都是一样的。”
“她为什么要这样做呢？”
“因为她以为这样一来，世上什么烦恼就都没有了。”
她听见韩六在她耳边说：其实，我们每个人的心，都是一个被围困的小岛。
October 17, 2021
This book feels epic yet intimate in scope. The action moves along at a good clip &, in a way, seems like a soap opera with each chapter having new action or some event. I enjoyed it, the mix of fiction/allegory/history. I think my only (very minor) quibble was that you had a male author writing a female main character & I sometimes had an indistinct & fleeting impression of noticing that.
April 9, 2022
I absolutely loved Ge Fei's "The Invisibility Cloak" and was expecting a lot from this book. Unfortunately, I can't say it fully lived up to my expectations. Yes, it was an interesting read but overall it felt disjointed and some parts seemed pointless. Also, I did not find any of the chuckle-inducing dry humour that made The Invisibility Cloak special. [Final Rating: 3.5*]
April 7, 2021
This is a really tough one to rate. It took me a long time to finish, at times it felt like it was 800 pages long and that I'll never get to the end. It's in no way a reflection on the novel itself because I thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part. I was probably gonna go through this prolonged rut and it just happened that this was going to be the book that will be blamed for it. Oh well, hopefully I'm back on track for this year.
On a side note, I really loved both of the Ge Fei books I've read so far, but this one couldn't be more different than The Invisibility Cloak. I do think I will read the rest of the Jiangnan trilogy if and when it becomes available in English.
On a side note, I really loved both of the Ge Fei books I've read so far, but this one couldn't be more different than The Invisibility Cloak. I do think I will read the rest of the Jiangnan trilogy if and when it becomes available in English.
Read
May 24, 2025A difficult book to parse. I tried to read this in the best of all possible environments – by the shores of the West Lake in Hangzhou, for instance – but the lack of historical context and the rather stop-and-go narrative (seemingly a feature of Chinese fiction) made it hard for me to appreciate fully. That being said, the ending was a real wowser. It all came together. This one will take some patience, but I think it’s worth it.
gave-up-on
July 2, 2021I read a review of this that made me interested in it--that, and the time period, and the fact that I liked The Red Detachment of Women so much.
But I stalled out on this right away, as it starts with the main character getting her period for the first time. I don't know. I just ... think I'm not interested in stories whose entrance to the issue of being a woman starts with that. If I'm honest, it feels cliched to me. It doesn't help for me that Ge Fei is a man. I understand that writing is (or can/should be) an act of radical empathy, of putting yourself in different shoes and skin, but ... well, here I am. Not caring for it.
I may try again another time.
But I stalled out on this right away, as it starts with the main character getting her period for the first time. I don't know. I just ... think I'm not interested in stories whose entrance to the issue of being a woman starts with that. If I'm honest, it feels cliched to me. It doesn't help for me that Ge Fei is a man. I understand that writing is (or can/should be) an act of radical empathy, of putting yourself in different shoes and skin, but ... well, here I am. Not caring for it.
I may try again another time.
January 8, 2022
"She was no revolutionary, nor was she her father's successor on his hunt for a Peach Blossom Paradise or a young woman staring out at the sea from a wooden house in Yokohama; she was a baby, dozing in a cradle that rocked its way down a rural avenue in the early morning. It was painful for her to think that by the time she realized she could begin her life anew from within the depths of her memory, that life had already concluded."
Peach Blossom Paradise is the first book in Ge Fei's Jiangnan Trilogy, translated from Chinese by Canaan Morse. It's a modern retelling of the eponymous myth, set in rural China in the first half of the 20th Century, although most of the action is set between the failed Hundred Days' Reform of 1898 and the Republican Revolution of 1911, which Morse calls a calm before the storm. Ge Fei blurs fiction and history by using infrequent footnotes that imply factuality, building a novel of surprising depth and acuity.
It is divided into four sections, the first three of equal length form the main arc while the last is a shorter section that deals with the aftermath. As such, there is a change in tone and this part seems unnecessary and drawn out. There are also time jumps between sections that work to move the story but also leave gaps, the one between 2nd and 3rd especially. Ge Fei's prose is serene and subtly lush, his characters deeply realized, the pacing even. He explores utopian ideals and the violent cracks in their execution.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
September 11, 2025
Belong in conversation with "Mating" by Norman Rush I think, but instead of a study of a single utopia, a study of several (polytopia? isn't that a Steam game?). Manages to break out of the ordinary historical family saga mold (family of characters impinged on by historical forces etc.) with some incredible borderline-Manchettian violence, earthy/vulgar humor, and a profoundly melancholy ending. We start with the a well-off family in the Qing dynasty, and as that dynasty decays we see the world in sexual and gender chaos: the prostitute who regulated the life of the village is killed early on, and several men are described as suspiciously woman-like. (This is inverted by the end.) The main character, the daughter of an exiled Hundred Days' reformer, meets her mother's lover, a violent revolutionary. Later on she encounters a utopian bandit lair, before creating a couple utopias of her own, one major and one minor. It's maybe tempting to read a despair at all utopia in the dystopias but I think making it a less singular phenomenon is a way of rescuing it from darker historical instances.
My favorite aspects were the footnotes detailing the future histories of the various (invented) characters, as though they were real and had only been inserted in the novel for verisimilitude. (This trick reminded me of A Tomb For Boris D.) Lots of classical literary allusions that I did not fully parse; kind of makes me want to read everything this author has written and then everything his favorite authors have written, etc.
My favorite aspects were the footnotes detailing the future histories of the various (invented) characters, as though they were real and had only been inserted in the novel for verisimilitude. (This trick reminded me of A Tomb For Boris D.) Lots of classical literary allusions that I did not fully parse; kind of makes me want to read everything this author has written and then everything his favorite authors have written, etc.
December 16, 2024
I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten how good it feels to fall in love with a book — and here it is, my reminder. Hopefully, the remaining two parts of the Jiangnan Trilogy will be made available in English soon.
June 4, 2021
What an incredible book. A new favorite, easy. A historical novel (part 1 of a historical trilogy) that transcends mere plot intrigue, though there's plenty (and that's coming from a reader who rarely finds plot intriguing), making itself remarkably comfortable in the deepest fogs of revolutionary fervor and, importantly, beyond that emotional moment, around the corner where the real work of changing minds and culture is done slowly over many brutal years. At one point, Ge Fei describes revolution as a “magical tower,” where its adherents, as we see in the novel, might toil thanklessly for years, within its walls, ever just outside its gaze, alienating friends, family, community members, gone “crazy,” as in the case of both Xiumi and her father, who disappears in the novel’s opening scene never to return. I'm tiptoeing around plot because I can't bear to start a synopsis, so much happens here and it's all perfectly carried out. I beg: please do not let the particularities of the moment in Chinese history put you off. There is nothing you can't approach here. The whole thing is an absolute joy to read, this vaporous, fleeting epic fountain of well-meaning and best-made plans. Mist on your skin. Canaan Morse has done an excellent job translating a book that, despite taking place in the late 19th century and early 20th century feels contemporary, bright and modern, the language and style itself looking forward and more-than-hoping for the best.
November 24, 2021
Thisssssssss book! *insert crying face emoji*
April 20, 2024
I had no clue what I was getting into, but trusted the nyrb label. This was unlike anything I ever read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. At its heart, it’s a fable about paradise, and how messy revolution can be — how the (obsessive) search for utopia can impact people/communities on a personal level. Yet the plot itself was fast-paced, the characters alive, and the prose beautiful.
I was also surprised about how well Ge Fei explored the struggles and almost constant brutality faced by women during this time. Despite some cringey moments, the female characters were overall strong and felt real. I especially loved the portrayals of deep and meaningful female friendships, which stood out as some of the happiest and most beautiful moments in Xiumi’s life.
I know there were lots of allusions to Chinese myth and literature, most of which went over my head, but I was still able to enjoy this story with my limited knowledge of Chinese history and culture. I’m hoping the other books in this trilogy get translated to English soon.
May change to 5 stars, we’ll see.
I was also surprised about how well Ge Fei explored the struggles and almost constant brutality faced by women during this time. Despite some cringey moments, the female characters were overall strong and felt real. I especially loved the portrayals of deep and meaningful female friendships, which stood out as some of the happiest and most beautiful moments in Xiumi’s life.
I know there were lots of allusions to Chinese myth and literature, most of which went over my head, but I was still able to enjoy this story with my limited knowledge of Chinese history and culture. I’m hoping the other books in this trilogy get translated to English soon.
May change to 5 stars, we’ll see.
April 12, 2025
Wow, wow. Incredibly special
August 14, 2025
a spooky sad dream
August 28, 2022
Ge Fei is a master.
April 24, 2022
If only I did not nearly lose this book then I would have read it much faster. Beautiful book. Depressing but beautiful.The writing is lovely and the non-fiction-esque footnotes really complimented it. I liked how the author would focused on characters before expanding out and telling their stories in a wider scope of history. The book really captures that saying of people being just tiny dots in the universe. I love the futility this book explores, how very little life and legacy would matter and become in the end of the day and how it seems better to just accept that. I come from a country where romantic talks of revolution and change is common. This book really helped me communicate my pessimism towards such declarations. If it is a good thing or bad thing idk. Overall, if Chinese literature is like this then I might start reading more.
October 17, 2021
This is historical fiction concerning China set in very early years of the 1900's. I suspect I would have liked it even more if I had some familiarity with the history and culture of China. Even still, I enjoyed it.
The main character of the book is Xiumi, daughter of a scholar who goes crazy and a mother (Madam Lu) who is the mistress of a revolutionary (Zhang Jiyuan). There are four parts in the book, each concerning a period of Xiumi's life. In Part One, Xiumi is undergoing the physical changes of adolescence, about which no one had told her anything. Her mentally ill father disappears - she sees him go. Her mother's lover comes to stay. He is losing interest in Madam Lu but finds Xiumi very intrigue. He promises Madam Lu that he will not do anything about his attraction (and while there is much tension in this area, he does not). But Zhang Jiyuan is much more than Madam Lu's lover. He is also up to his ears in plots of revolutions, for which he pays dearly. In Part One we meet the household servants -- Baoshen, who runs the estate, Lilypad, a former prostitute who cleans and cooks and probably was also the mistress of Xiumi's father, and Magpie, a young woman brought in to assist Lilypad with cooking and cleaning.
In Part Two, Xiumi's marriage is brokered but she is kidnapped on the way to her new home and taken to a little island off the shore of a rural town called Hualeashe that is in cohoots with the kidnappers. The husband-to-be won't pay the ransom and neither will Madame Lu, so Xiumi has rape and a sale to a brothel to look forward to. But then the leaders of the kidnappers start being killed and Xiumi is in Japan.
In Part Three, Xiumi returns to her birth home with a child, called Little Thing. Baoshen's son Tiger, about 10 years old, and Little Thing become close. Xiumi tries to bring socialism to the area and attracts many to her cause. She establishes a school that fails but retains the title The Principal. She is busy buying guns to forment the revolution Zhang Jiyuan strived for, with one of the tenants being a rejection of foot binding. Then Lilypad mistakenly spills the beans to a "cotton shuffler" who is really a rich man from the capital who wants to own the estate. When Little Thing is five years old, the soldiers come and Xiumi is arrested and imprisoned.
In Part Four, Xiumi is released from prison and returns to the estate house where only Magpie remains. She does not speak and Magpie believes she is mute. Magpie learns to read and write so they can communicate and learns to write poetry. Flowers are grown, drought and storms take place. And the it is over.
This is the first volume of a trilogy and the only one translated to English. The book is on the short list for the 2021 National Book Award for translated literature. While not my favorite on the short list, I'd have no problem with it winning.
The main character of the book is Xiumi, daughter of a scholar who goes crazy and a mother (Madam Lu) who is the mistress of a revolutionary (Zhang Jiyuan). There are four parts in the book, each concerning a period of Xiumi's life. In Part One, Xiumi is undergoing the physical changes of adolescence, about which no one had told her anything. Her mentally ill father disappears - she sees him go. Her mother's lover comes to stay. He is losing interest in Madam Lu but finds Xiumi very intrigue. He promises Madam Lu that he will not do anything about his attraction (and while there is much tension in this area, he does not). But Zhang Jiyuan is much more than Madam Lu's lover. He is also up to his ears in plots of revolutions, for which he pays dearly. In Part One we meet the household servants -- Baoshen, who runs the estate, Lilypad, a former prostitute who cleans and cooks and probably was also the mistress of Xiumi's father, and Magpie, a young woman brought in to assist Lilypad with cooking and cleaning.
In Part Two, Xiumi's marriage is brokered but she is kidnapped on the way to her new home and taken to a little island off the shore of a rural town called Hualeashe that is in cohoots with the kidnappers. The husband-to-be won't pay the ransom and neither will Madame Lu, so Xiumi has rape and a sale to a brothel to look forward to. But then the leaders of the kidnappers start being killed and Xiumi is in Japan.
In Part Three, Xiumi returns to her birth home with a child, called Little Thing. Baoshen's son Tiger, about 10 years old, and Little Thing become close. Xiumi tries to bring socialism to the area and attracts many to her cause. She establishes a school that fails but retains the title The Principal. She is busy buying guns to forment the revolution Zhang Jiyuan strived for, with one of the tenants being a rejection of foot binding. Then Lilypad mistakenly spills the beans to a "cotton shuffler" who is really a rich man from the capital who wants to own the estate. When Little Thing is five years old, the soldiers come and Xiumi is arrested and imprisoned.
In Part Four, Xiumi is released from prison and returns to the estate house where only Magpie remains. She does not speak and Magpie believes she is mute. Magpie learns to read and write so they can communicate and learns to write poetry. Flowers are grown, drought and storms take place. And the it is over.
This is the first volume of a trilogy and the only one translated to English. The book is on the short list for the 2021 National Book Award for translated literature. While not my favorite on the short list, I'd have no problem with it winning.
September 12, 2025
In Peach Blossom Paradise, the educated Lu family of Puji village gets embroiled in the underground reformist movement that was challenging the late Qing dynasty. Also a sort of coming-of-age story, it mostly follows Xiumi, the teenaged Lu daughter, as she discovers her love for the revolutionary Zhang Jiyuan, is abducted and abused by bandits, and becomes a major player in the movement herself.
Ge Fei's storytelling does something intriguing in the first two sections of the book because his writing is richly detailed in characterization and daily life but it also uses coincidences, dreams, footnotes, diary entries and allusions to create an uncanny distance and collapsed historical perspective that even the characters themselves seem to respond to -- many of them, and particularly Xiumi, wonder whether they are living in a dream. In this respect, I think Ge Fei skillfully makes use of classical literary expressions of Taoism as well as the techniques of postmodernism to create a feeling of estrangement from the world of appearance.
That perspective helps along some of the incongruities that otherwise would sink the book such as puzzling character motivations and an overly contemporary handling of various ideas (especially sexuality and gender). The major shifts in time and character arcs that start in part three and continue in part four, however, deflated the story considerably. Xiumi becomes a revolutionary for no particular reason, we are given new main characters, and in the last chapters, Xiumi and her family servant Magpie are living quiet, directionless lives gardening. The quality and force of the narrative really splinters apart.
The final entry was dated the last day of the lunar year 1878. In very small characters, Father wrote:
Heavy snows tonight. Time thrown into tangled knots, like spiderwebs or hemp strands. Nothing, nothing to be done.
Ge Fei's storytelling does something intriguing in the first two sections of the book because his writing is richly detailed in characterization and daily life but it also uses coincidences, dreams, footnotes, diary entries and allusions to create an uncanny distance and collapsed historical perspective that even the characters themselves seem to respond to -- many of them, and particularly Xiumi, wonder whether they are living in a dream. In this respect, I think Ge Fei skillfully makes use of classical literary expressions of Taoism as well as the techniques of postmodernism to create a feeling of estrangement from the world of appearance.
That perspective helps along some of the incongruities that otherwise would sink the book such as puzzling character motivations and an overly contemporary handling of various ideas (especially sexuality and gender). The major shifts in time and character arcs that start in part three and continue in part four, however, deflated the story considerably. Xiumi becomes a revolutionary for no particular reason, we are given new main characters, and in the last chapters, Xiumi and her family servant Magpie are living quiet, directionless lives gardening. The quality and force of the narrative really splinters apart.
The final entry was dated the last day of the lunar year 1878. In very small characters, Father wrote:
Heavy snows tonight. Time thrown into tangled knots, like spiderwebs or hemp strands. Nothing, nothing to be done.
June 26, 2022
"What an idiot! Who gets excited over a couple of lotuses blooming?"
You'd be excused for thinking Paradise to be one of those lively novels of the early 20th century that China and Japan produced with such vigor and beauty. 人面桃花 was published in 2004, but it reads like one of those most excellent novels before Western cultural and political burst onto the scene and maybe kind of ruined everything?
Paradise takes place right at one of those junctures, the decades after 1898, Sun Yat-Sen and republicanism. The main character is the feisty Xiumi, the teenaged daughter of a local official who goes insane and vanishes into monkhood. There's a wide cast of characters around Xiumi who evolves quickly from sassy, bitchy teenager to a prisoner of bandits, held on an island and threatened with rape, to the cold and sinister Principal, who leads local Revolutionary efforts out of her hometown's local school. This is a deep, funny, and moving book which is actually pretty light on the politics and social crap and focusing, thankfully, on how these wider currents affect lives on the individual level. There is a nice, understated current of wistful morality, too, which manages to be lyrical and not preachy at all.
If you read Ge Fei's other NYRB translation The Invisibility Cloak, be prepared, for this novel is nothing like that grim, more experimental work. I like this one a lot better!
You'd be excused for thinking Paradise to be one of those lively novels of the early 20th century that China and Japan produced with such vigor and beauty. 人面桃花 was published in 2004, but it reads like one of those most excellent novels before Western cultural and political burst onto the scene and maybe kind of ruined everything?
Paradise takes place right at one of those junctures, the decades after 1898, Sun Yat-Sen and republicanism. The main character is the feisty Xiumi, the teenaged daughter of a local official who goes insane and vanishes into monkhood. There's a wide cast of characters around Xiumi who evolves quickly from sassy, bitchy teenager to a prisoner of bandits, held on an island and threatened with rape, to the cold and sinister Principal, who leads local Revolutionary efforts out of her hometown's local school. This is a deep, funny, and moving book which is actually pretty light on the politics and social crap and focusing, thankfully, on how these wider currents affect lives on the individual level. There is a nice, understated current of wistful morality, too, which manages to be lyrical and not preachy at all.
If you read Ge Fei's other NYRB translation The Invisibility Cloak, be prepared, for this novel is nothing like that grim, more experimental work. I like this one a lot better!
August 2, 2023
without you, what good is revolution?
Read
May 26, 2025I just don’t think I know enough about the hundred days reform to fully appreciate this book but I’m obsessed with the cover so that’s something
November 15, 2022
I maybe understood 20% of the allusions in this book. Nevertheless its narrative prowess had me reading for hours on end
February 6, 2025
A raw story about impermanence discovered via opposites -- fragility and strength, potential and realization, isolation and community, loss and gain. Often one is looked for and the other is accidentally discovered. Ultimately they are all transient as life moves along.
September 6, 2024
It's been sufficiently long since I've walked into a bookstore and picked up a book based off a compelling back cover summary. The process, engaging with the highly self-praising selection of reading a book, proceeds as such:
- See a familiar author, look up the title on GoodReads.
- Find a compelling cover art, look up the author's canon on GoodReads.
- Suggested a book by a well-meaning family member or podcast; research convincing affectations for the book on GoodReads.
If I sniff, the slightest off-brand literature within those intimately carved out pages, I put the book down. Or at the very least, in respect to the author's achievements, or the historical impact of the title, I place it in my want-to-read folder.
Well, I must have done a great job with the above process, because for the past year or so, I've read exactly what I've wanted to read. That was the goal right? I picked a rewarding time to leave the research of historical relevance (Arizona is #48 in the nation for education), authorial intent, and cultural context from the book, as was my compulsory prelude.
I didn't know about the Peach Blossom Paradise Myth. Did this enhance my reading? Did it just leave me with the peripheral side-quest to a "well-trodden narrative" (as per the back of the book's acclaim) didn't find the space for?
Spoiler's ahead. This is more of a discussion than a review. Because here's the short and sweet: It was enchanting. It was a great book. The prose was tidy and efficacious in almost every reach. Simple tellings, yet intelligent descriptions. At no point did the writing ever indulge for too long. The pace is perfectly suited for the author's meditations. Inert waving's of a branch, and the transporting reverberations of a copper basin light the pages with misted valleys. It's really a beautiful read. Inviting already a reread.
Here the writing proposed some healthy modernist touches that I think was the idea for the whole book. I never did have a sense of plot as I was reading. Hidden in connotations, the driving majority of words on the page were reactions to the larger-than-life elements at play around the characters by way of interpersonal dynamics. The Peach Blossom Paradise, the disappearance of the father, the removed dealings of a ruling government, never overshadowed the languid immediate happenings around Puji's residents. Pacing took priority over plot. Details on the underpinnings of each chapter were intimately intuited. While wading for breath in the book's engrossing symmetry of aesthetics, I was experiencing this myth as a child would chase after a butterfly during a soccer match.
The world feels, massive. Inconsequentially heart-breaking. Xiumi strained. She tried all manner of reflexive behaviors to reconstitute her identity, and yet even in suffering, she was demanded grace. The system was insurmountable and the best of her actions seemed to be snuffed out by all sorts of shadowy figures waiting in the midst. Revolutionaries had their shady work, but so also did the government. Journey's that should have taken three days, ended up taking eight. Nights seemed endless and the complexity of circumstance seemed too knotted for undoing in one lifetime. Past and future violated the space of our cursory present to courier sensation. I never let out hope for Xiumi. Though, I never did believe in her. She seemed doomed from the start. Many filial motifs; fate, undead wishes, ancestral piety, never played so cogently as they did for me here. That is not to say I understood these themes, but rather that I believed in their presence. I held out expectation, with trust that if I read with humility, whatever is to be borne from an unfamiliar story, will not be lost onto me. With this patient vision, the peripheral was enough for me. And the ending really tied the book together as any great classical book should.
- Madame Lu was the gumming agent.
Madame Lu understood her place in the chaos. She prayed and exercised all manner of spiritual devices, but only strained as so far as to not lose her livelihood. Letting fate abandon her from her love affair. Respecting the wishes of her teenage daughter to be wedded off and interminably lost to the family. There was only so much Madame Lu could do, and when that end was met, this was a result of uncharacteristic attempt to bargain the house and business to beg for Xiumi's inclusivity.
Lucid, she maintained the business's dealings with the shrewdness of a modern day CEO. The house was tidy, and she never knew a lack of gifts for her visitors. The reader is struck by the extraordinary perception Madame Lu is able to voice while juggling her harvest's misdealing's, caring for Little Thing, nursing for her illness, and reconciling her relationship with her daughter's tumultuous return. A trait Xiumi is later recognized for by her capturers when she deduces the conspiracy for the sale of her family's land during the government's raid. Unlike Zhang Jiyuan who was equally intelligent, Madame Lu didn't turn her nose up from all manner of spiritual experts; In attempting a cure to her husband's diluted psychopathy; acupuncturists, Buddhist monks, Taoist priests, or yin-yang geomancers when organizing her own funeral. While the revolutionaries believed their struggles to be rooted solely in this life, and this government, they were ignorant to the obvious spectral wanderings of the soul and sought to ban them from daily cultural existence. She was the perfect balance to her husband and Zhang Jiyuan. The story's credibility centered around the reasonable being of Madame Lu's decisions. To live with the certainty of physicality, and to respect the dimensions unseen. So when she died, it truly felt like an irreversible loss to Puji. Her death dizzied me more than the failure of the revolution, the whereabouts of Xiumi's father, the health of the Manchurian Dynasty, the remaining eight golden cicadas.
- We always see the world from the point of view of a vulnerable subject.
Usually it's a child--self-evident in their age--other times it's of the enslaved and dead. From Xiumi's perspective, we then listen to Zhang Jiyuan's diary, then back to Xiumi, and only after she has gathered enough revolutionary esteem returning to Puji from Japan, does she drop into the background of the observed. We are told later in the book of her strength of spirit during those educational years abroad. Where the potentiality of her will seemed endless. Those are the pages omitted from this book. From Huajiashe's Xiumi, we are given to young Tiger, watching Xiumi come home. The winter that followed Madame Lu's death was early and cold. The disruption of the estate's lord and the naked vulnerability of Baoshen and Magpie spread to Tiger and Little Thing. Baoshen is mired in organizing Madame Lu's funeral, barely recognizing obvious signs of Tiger's deceits with a hand covering his forehead at the abacus, Tiger escapes in the night. We get a sense that an alive Madame Lu would have sensed his escape and kept him from The Black Dragon Temple. Tiger sleeps with Lilypad and loses his child-like innocence. It's clear now, all manner of hedonistic agendas are able to run rampant without Madame Lu's watch. A cold chill snaps over Puji. Our last narrative perspective lies mostly with Magpie, the least equipped of subjects left in the story to understand the history surrounding Puji. Illiterate for one, unable to read the simple requests of her mute mistress, she is also left stranded by Baoshen and confused as to why anyone revolted against the government in the first place, where the rice came from that saved the village from the famine, and what to do if Xiumi leaves her, as a mistress and as a loving companion.
When the subject of the narration asks "Why?", they are admonished. But we know, by way of literary focus, they intuitively knew. Often we are asked to be invited, rather than understood. Why is Xiumi crying? Why do the farmer's give us money for growing their crops? Effectively we are reading through a 'third-person, first-person reflexivity', telling us plenty of their precocious conscience. We are only waiting, as the vulnerable subject, for the others to show us what they truly know, by what they hold from us. With this, we can feel as if we are reading from the perspective of the vulnerable subjects, but also with the clairvoyance of a patient historian. Often I was lost in the problems of the story, but I never felt reprimanded by a sneering narrator.
- Flowers
Here we are. Imbued with metaphor and symbolism by the academics, poem by the beholders of their beauty, and intimations of virtue by their effected. Everything in this book is bigger than itself. I'm sure the better part of these subtilties are lost on me. There is too much I am missing from the flower motif propagated in almost every chapter. Here I was only able to image the colors, flattened and preserved between glass, see them for their dusted stamens, growing from over the fences. It was enough for me.
It seems fitting to me that the big ideas of the myth passed through a forgettable town like Puji. Opaque tidings were related to us through analogous life cycles of different flowers. All of the world's psychological breadth pervades in this sample village. Along with the narration serving the subject most vulnerable, the resolution matches it's subject. Often major events are already resolved, simplified, and we are left to deal with the pieces that lay scattered. This forced presentation is the will of some grown-up somewhere else who has decided ignorantly on your behalf. We have glimmers of understanding, where we feel seen by this big other, but often times what passes before us is granulated, retrospective, compromising. While the dealing of this world are infinite in their specifications, the machinations are present in all the townspeople. They bear the burden of understanding the tragedy that has befallen them, and also filling in the blanks as to what comes next. They are the empirical data politicians coldly surmise and manipulate.
A quarter of the world lives without hot water. A non-negligible majority of those people live without showers, climate controlled environments, or private living quarters. The yoke of optimizing the modern world is far from their daily musings. Does this mean they are incapable of depression? Does levity fly over their simple heads? Does not corruption, ill-mannered self-sabotage, societal introspection, ambition, hubris, scalding passions, and addiction live in a forgettable agricultural village? It is easy to be fooled living with the idea of modernity, that somehow we have transcended from our agricultural psyche. As was the presence of Ding Shuze in Puji, or the ramshackle libraries containing books like, 'On Plums', there too in those dirt roads live disciplined and highly acute thought taking rarified breaths in study. Villages are the progenitors to the municipalities spackled with infidelity, godly worship, and private creeds. Xiumi not only could see the vision, she brought it's operations to Puji. Her turn from being lost in a grievingly-expansive world, to manipulating it's behavior, did not feel out of place. She contrived to route the rivers of unceasing thought and rich tumult, to run through, and almost destroy Puji. By way of revolution and by way of an actual river.
Placing 'Peach Blossom Paradise' within some literary context, the book would sit in companionship with '100 years of Solitude'. Generational knowledge, fief expansion then loss, sexuality, genetic misgivings, and all fascinating parallels of the sort are present here. The theme that rung clear as a bell for both books was in the omission of rationality for events. Magical, surreal, mundane events divorced from explanation of whether they could happen, but rather that they did happen, and it was of course because of another thing, and here were the other things that this event affected, and so on and so forth. These intersecting highways of empty space fevered a curiosity that faithfully pinged in my head with out loss of resolution until the next time I got to finally resuming the book.
Even with all the praise I could give this book, up until Part Four, I was unsure if I liked the books events/plot? A girl, misunderstood, is thrown into the turmoil of unchaperoned life and ate a raw ugly part of it. And now, she has decided to cast the world that failed her upside down? She picked up the scribbling rabble of an incomplete philosophy that drove her father father mad and her first love murdered? Totally aware of her own hubris, she contorted her life, hometown, and family into the shape of her inchoate intellectual revenge? The narrator seemed to be beating a dead horse over how fruitless communism is through this poor little girl. To me the brutality and sexuality of the book took license of emotion to drive home a presumptive aphorism. Here, the subtlety faded. The book felt pretty, but light because of it.
The last 15% is the incontrovertible, accidental, happenstance, routine, obscurity of reason, tangential passing of time, required to bring this story to it's full hefty beauty. Puji is managing. Key figures are lost. Scandals have passed through the town. Natural and Non-natural disaster ripped the land in two. Pressure to continue cheeriness, festival, ambition and ceremonial wisdom feel like caricatures of the real thing we first experienced in the beginning of the book. Part four passed the history of events through a Higg's Field of significance. The lost subtlety in the progression of the first three parts is fully redeemed in the last two pages when the author reveals a glimmer of historical locality in the spiritual plane of this myth's wide landscape. The author maintains all the karmic solemnity while betraying no fundamental illusions of the character's limitations. Watching islands, quite gurgling mountain creeks, and blooming flowers materialize in the foreground as the layers of time fold back in on themselves.
- See a familiar author, look up the title on GoodReads.
- Find a compelling cover art, look up the author's canon on GoodReads.
- Suggested a book by a well-meaning family member or podcast; research convincing affectations for the book on GoodReads.
If I sniff, the slightest off-brand literature within those intimately carved out pages, I put the book down. Or at the very least, in respect to the author's achievements, or the historical impact of the title, I place it in my want-to-read folder.
Well, I must have done a great job with the above process, because for the past year or so, I've read exactly what I've wanted to read. That was the goal right? I picked a rewarding time to leave the research of historical relevance (Arizona is #48 in the nation for education), authorial intent, and cultural context from the book, as was my compulsory prelude.
I didn't know about the Peach Blossom Paradise Myth. Did this enhance my reading? Did it just leave me with the peripheral side-quest to a "well-trodden narrative" (as per the back of the book's acclaim) didn't find the space for?
Spoiler's ahead. This is more of a discussion than a review. Because here's the short and sweet: It was enchanting. It was a great book. The prose was tidy and efficacious in almost every reach. Simple tellings, yet intelligent descriptions. At no point did the writing ever indulge for too long. The pace is perfectly suited for the author's meditations. Inert waving's of a branch, and the transporting reverberations of a copper basin light the pages with misted valleys. It's really a beautiful read. Inviting already a reread.
Here the writing proposed some healthy modernist touches that I think was the idea for the whole book. I never did have a sense of plot as I was reading. Hidden in connotations, the driving majority of words on the page were reactions to the larger-than-life elements at play around the characters by way of interpersonal dynamics. The Peach Blossom Paradise, the disappearance of the father, the removed dealings of a ruling government, never overshadowed the languid immediate happenings around Puji's residents. Pacing took priority over plot. Details on the underpinnings of each chapter were intimately intuited. While wading for breath in the book's engrossing symmetry of aesthetics, I was experiencing this myth as a child would chase after a butterfly during a soccer match.
The world feels, massive. Inconsequentially heart-breaking. Xiumi strained. She tried all manner of reflexive behaviors to reconstitute her identity, and yet even in suffering, she was demanded grace. The system was insurmountable and the best of her actions seemed to be snuffed out by all sorts of shadowy figures waiting in the midst. Revolutionaries had their shady work, but so also did the government. Journey's that should have taken three days, ended up taking eight. Nights seemed endless and the complexity of circumstance seemed too knotted for undoing in one lifetime. Past and future violated the space of our cursory present to courier sensation. I never let out hope for Xiumi. Though, I never did believe in her. She seemed doomed from the start. Many filial motifs; fate, undead wishes, ancestral piety, never played so cogently as they did for me here. That is not to say I understood these themes, but rather that I believed in their presence. I held out expectation, with trust that if I read with humility, whatever is to be borne from an unfamiliar story, will not be lost onto me. With this patient vision, the peripheral was enough for me. And the ending really tied the book together as any great classical book should.
- Madame Lu was the gumming agent.
Madame Lu understood her place in the chaos. She prayed and exercised all manner of spiritual devices, but only strained as so far as to not lose her livelihood. Letting fate abandon her from her love affair. Respecting the wishes of her teenage daughter to be wedded off and interminably lost to the family. There was only so much Madame Lu could do, and when that end was met, this was a result of uncharacteristic attempt to bargain the house and business to beg for Xiumi's inclusivity.
Lucid, she maintained the business's dealings with the shrewdness of a modern day CEO. The house was tidy, and she never knew a lack of gifts for her visitors. The reader is struck by the extraordinary perception Madame Lu is able to voice while juggling her harvest's misdealing's, caring for Little Thing, nursing for her illness, and reconciling her relationship with her daughter's tumultuous return. A trait Xiumi is later recognized for by her capturers when she deduces the conspiracy for the sale of her family's land during the government's raid. Unlike Zhang Jiyuan who was equally intelligent, Madame Lu didn't turn her nose up from all manner of spiritual experts; In attempting a cure to her husband's diluted psychopathy; acupuncturists, Buddhist monks, Taoist priests, or yin-yang geomancers when organizing her own funeral. While the revolutionaries believed their struggles to be rooted solely in this life, and this government, they were ignorant to the obvious spectral wanderings of the soul and sought to ban them from daily cultural existence. She was the perfect balance to her husband and Zhang Jiyuan. The story's credibility centered around the reasonable being of Madame Lu's decisions. To live with the certainty of physicality, and to respect the dimensions unseen. So when she died, it truly felt like an irreversible loss to Puji. Her death dizzied me more than the failure of the revolution, the whereabouts of Xiumi's father, the health of the Manchurian Dynasty, the remaining eight golden cicadas.
- We always see the world from the point of view of a vulnerable subject.
Usually it's a child--self-evident in their age--other times it's of the enslaved and dead. From Xiumi's perspective, we then listen to Zhang Jiyuan's diary, then back to Xiumi, and only after she has gathered enough revolutionary esteem returning to Puji from Japan, does she drop into the background of the observed. We are told later in the book of her strength of spirit during those educational years abroad. Where the potentiality of her will seemed endless. Those are the pages omitted from this book. From Huajiashe's Xiumi, we are given to young Tiger, watching Xiumi come home. The winter that followed Madame Lu's death was early and cold. The disruption of the estate's lord and the naked vulnerability of Baoshen and Magpie spread to Tiger and Little Thing. Baoshen is mired in organizing Madame Lu's funeral, barely recognizing obvious signs of Tiger's deceits with a hand covering his forehead at the abacus, Tiger escapes in the night. We get a sense that an alive Madame Lu would have sensed his escape and kept him from The Black Dragon Temple. Tiger sleeps with Lilypad and loses his child-like innocence. It's clear now, all manner of hedonistic agendas are able to run rampant without Madame Lu's watch. A cold chill snaps over Puji. Our last narrative perspective lies mostly with Magpie, the least equipped of subjects left in the story to understand the history surrounding Puji. Illiterate for one, unable to read the simple requests of her mute mistress, she is also left stranded by Baoshen and confused as to why anyone revolted against the government in the first place, where the rice came from that saved the village from the famine, and what to do if Xiumi leaves her, as a mistress and as a loving companion.
When the subject of the narration asks "Why?", they are admonished. But we know, by way of literary focus, they intuitively knew. Often we are asked to be invited, rather than understood. Why is Xiumi crying? Why do the farmer's give us money for growing their crops? Effectively we are reading through a 'third-person, first-person reflexivity', telling us plenty of their precocious conscience. We are only waiting, as the vulnerable subject, for the others to show us what they truly know, by what they hold from us. With this, we can feel as if we are reading from the perspective of the vulnerable subjects, but also with the clairvoyance of a patient historian. Often I was lost in the problems of the story, but I never felt reprimanded by a sneering narrator.
- Flowers
Here we are. Imbued with metaphor and symbolism by the academics, poem by the beholders of their beauty, and intimations of virtue by their effected. Everything in this book is bigger than itself. I'm sure the better part of these subtilties are lost on me. There is too much I am missing from the flower motif propagated in almost every chapter. Here I was only able to image the colors, flattened and preserved between glass, see them for their dusted stamens, growing from over the fences. It was enough for me.
It seems fitting to me that the big ideas of the myth passed through a forgettable town like Puji. Opaque tidings were related to us through analogous life cycles of different flowers. All of the world's psychological breadth pervades in this sample village. Along with the narration serving the subject most vulnerable, the resolution matches it's subject. Often major events are already resolved, simplified, and we are left to deal with the pieces that lay scattered. This forced presentation is the will of some grown-up somewhere else who has decided ignorantly on your behalf. We have glimmers of understanding, where we feel seen by this big other, but often times what passes before us is granulated, retrospective, compromising. While the dealing of this world are infinite in their specifications, the machinations are present in all the townspeople. They bear the burden of understanding the tragedy that has befallen them, and also filling in the blanks as to what comes next. They are the empirical data politicians coldly surmise and manipulate.
A quarter of the world lives without hot water. A non-negligible majority of those people live without showers, climate controlled environments, or private living quarters. The yoke of optimizing the modern world is far from their daily musings. Does this mean they are incapable of depression? Does levity fly over their simple heads? Does not corruption, ill-mannered self-sabotage, societal introspection, ambition, hubris, scalding passions, and addiction live in a forgettable agricultural village? It is easy to be fooled living with the idea of modernity, that somehow we have transcended from our agricultural psyche. As was the presence of Ding Shuze in Puji, or the ramshackle libraries containing books like, 'On Plums', there too in those dirt roads live disciplined and highly acute thought taking rarified breaths in study. Villages are the progenitors to the municipalities spackled with infidelity, godly worship, and private creeds. Xiumi not only could see the vision, she brought it's operations to Puji. Her turn from being lost in a grievingly-expansive world, to manipulating it's behavior, did not feel out of place. She contrived to route the rivers of unceasing thought and rich tumult, to run through, and almost destroy Puji. By way of revolution and by way of an actual river.
Placing 'Peach Blossom Paradise' within some literary context, the book would sit in companionship with '100 years of Solitude'. Generational knowledge, fief expansion then loss, sexuality, genetic misgivings, and all fascinating parallels of the sort are present here. The theme that rung clear as a bell for both books was in the omission of rationality for events. Magical, surreal, mundane events divorced from explanation of whether they could happen, but rather that they did happen, and it was of course because of another thing, and here were the other things that this event affected, and so on and so forth. These intersecting highways of empty space fevered a curiosity that faithfully pinged in my head with out loss of resolution until the next time I got to finally resuming the book.
Even with all the praise I could give this book, up until Part Four, I was unsure if I liked the books events/plot? A girl, misunderstood, is thrown into the turmoil of unchaperoned life and ate a raw ugly part of it. And now, she has decided to cast the world that failed her upside down? She picked up the scribbling rabble of an incomplete philosophy that drove her father father mad and her first love murdered? Totally aware of her own hubris, she contorted her life, hometown, and family into the shape of her inchoate intellectual revenge? The narrator seemed to be beating a dead horse over how fruitless communism is through this poor little girl. To me the brutality and sexuality of the book took license of emotion to drive home a presumptive aphorism. Here, the subtlety faded. The book felt pretty, but light because of it.
The last 15% is the incontrovertible, accidental, happenstance, routine, obscurity of reason, tangential passing of time, required to bring this story to it's full hefty beauty. Puji is managing. Key figures are lost. Scandals have passed through the town. Natural and Non-natural disaster ripped the land in two. Pressure to continue cheeriness, festival, ambition and ceremonial wisdom feel like caricatures of the real thing we first experienced in the beginning of the book. Part four passed the history of events through a Higg's Field of significance. The lost subtlety in the progression of the first three parts is fully redeemed in the last two pages when the author reveals a glimmer of historical locality in the spiritual plane of this myth's wide landscape. The author maintains all the karmic solemnity while betraying no fundamental illusions of the character's limitations. Watching islands, quite gurgling mountain creeks, and blooming flowers materialize in the foreground as the layers of time fold back in on themselves.
July 2, 2021
“Let a thousand flowers bloom.” —Mao
Magpie brought the cicada to the pawnshop, but the pawnbroker wouldn’t take it. In fact, he
wouldn’t even look at it twice. He stuffed his hands in his sleeves and said dully, “I know it’s gold.
But gold isn’t worth anything when people are starving.”
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.” —Joseph Stalin
The hermit’s hedgerow is like the Peach Blossom Paradise:
After these flowers blossom, no others will bloom.
An old Chinese tale describes a remote spot stumbled upon by an outsider, who discovers a perfect place where all people and creatures are in harmony with each other, Peach Blossom Paradise. After his stay, he returns home, describing the paradise he discovered. Some dismiss his stories; others try but cannot again find the place described. Ge Fei weaves this tale with another search for Paradise on Earth, a pre-Maoist Communist Revolution that in part promises to liberate women from the tyranny of arranged marriages—so that any man can fuck any woman he wants at any time.
Xiumi, the novel’s protagonist, is around 12 years old when the book starts. Her father is a government functionary, and thus part of the upper class—an estate with land plowed by others and a house with live-in maids. He apparently goes mad, and just walks away from home one day, never to return. One doesn’t need to know about the violent tumult across China as a result of the late-19th century Hundred Days’ Reform to appreciate the shock and confusion among isolated rural communities far from any hub of reactionary or revolutionary turmoil, whose only source of information about the outside world is rumor.
By age 15, Xiumi’s mother is almost out of money to run the household, and sells her daughter into an arranged marriage. En route to travelling to her fiancé’s home for the marriage, Xiumi is kidnapped and taken to an island while awaiting ransom. Neither Xiumi’s mother nor her fiancé is willing to pay her ransom, and thus the kidnappers rape her and sell her off to another man. From government officials to criminal kingpins, Xiumi learns ruthlessness and gains revenge. Perhaps worse, she also gains an ideology that she imagines is in everybody’s best interest, no matter the cost: Talk of revolution permeates the air, but the only working definition of “revolution” seems to be “the ability to do whatever I want.”
While I was reading about the nightmare Xiumi had become, and understanding the forces that shaped her, I came across a review of Alex Kotlowitz's An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago ("How Can We Stop Gun Violence?" by Francesca Mari (NYRB, June 10 2021)), that focused on Kotlowitz’s descriptions of a young man, Thomas, with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the many murders Thomas had witnessed since he was 11 years old—friends, family, strangers. He is in a constant state of high-tension anger and anxiety. The only thing that quells it is violent release, which allows him to finally sleep.
Xiumi’s ideological vengeance comes to an end with the death of her six-year-old son, whom she had never even bothered to name, consumed as she was by her revolutionary furor. The last quarter of the book regards Xiumi’s atonement and repentance, largely by heeding Voltaire’s advice to tend her own garden. A sense of redemption and grace concludes the book.
Ge Fei is an excellent author, with a talent for empathy, depth, and subtlety only writers of the first rank have. This is only the second book by him to recently be translated into English, and it’s the best novel I’ve read so far this year. Translator Canaan Morse has a keen eye for key words and phrases deployed and developed throughout the novel, echoing its themes: the dangers of ideologies, the fact that ideologies are rarely women-friendly (even in the hands of women), and the need and ability to recover from ideological delusions—“recovery” including humility and selflessness.
Magpie brought the cicada to the pawnshop, but the pawnbroker wouldn’t take it. In fact, he
wouldn’t even look at it twice. He stuffed his hands in his sleeves and said dully, “I know it’s gold.
But gold isn’t worth anything when people are starving.”
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.” —Joseph Stalin
The hermit’s hedgerow is like the Peach Blossom Paradise:
After these flowers blossom, no others will bloom.
An old Chinese tale describes a remote spot stumbled upon by an outsider, who discovers a perfect place where all people and creatures are in harmony with each other, Peach Blossom Paradise. After his stay, he returns home, describing the paradise he discovered. Some dismiss his stories; others try but cannot again find the place described. Ge Fei weaves this tale with another search for Paradise on Earth, a pre-Maoist Communist Revolution that in part promises to liberate women from the tyranny of arranged marriages—so that any man can fuck any woman he wants at any time.
Xiumi, the novel’s protagonist, is around 12 years old when the book starts. Her father is a government functionary, and thus part of the upper class—an estate with land plowed by others and a house with live-in maids. He apparently goes mad, and just walks away from home one day, never to return. One doesn’t need to know about the violent tumult across China as a result of the late-19th century Hundred Days’ Reform to appreciate the shock and confusion among isolated rural communities far from any hub of reactionary or revolutionary turmoil, whose only source of information about the outside world is rumor.
By age 15, Xiumi’s mother is almost out of money to run the household, and sells her daughter into an arranged marriage. En route to travelling to her fiancé’s home for the marriage, Xiumi is kidnapped and taken to an island while awaiting ransom. Neither Xiumi’s mother nor her fiancé is willing to pay her ransom, and thus the kidnappers rape her and sell her off to another man. From government officials to criminal kingpins, Xiumi learns ruthlessness and gains revenge. Perhaps worse, she also gains an ideology that she imagines is in everybody’s best interest, no matter the cost: Talk of revolution permeates the air, but the only working definition of “revolution” seems to be “the ability to do whatever I want.”
While I was reading about the nightmare Xiumi had become, and understanding the forces that shaped her, I came across a review of Alex Kotlowitz's An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago ("How Can We Stop Gun Violence?" by Francesca Mari (NYRB, June 10 2021)), that focused on Kotlowitz’s descriptions of a young man, Thomas, with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the many murders Thomas had witnessed since he was 11 years old—friends, family, strangers. He is in a constant state of high-tension anger and anxiety. The only thing that quells it is violent release, which allows him to finally sleep.
Xiumi’s ideological vengeance comes to an end with the death of her six-year-old son, whom she had never even bothered to name, consumed as she was by her revolutionary furor. The last quarter of the book regards Xiumi’s atonement and repentance, largely by heeding Voltaire’s advice to tend her own garden. A sense of redemption and grace concludes the book.
Ge Fei is an excellent author, with a talent for empathy, depth, and subtlety only writers of the first rank have. This is only the second book by him to recently be translated into English, and it’s the best novel I’ve read so far this year. Translator Canaan Morse has a keen eye for key words and phrases deployed and developed throughout the novel, echoing its themes: the dangers of ideologies, the fact that ideologies are rarely women-friendly (even in the hands of women), and the need and ability to recover from ideological delusions—“recovery” including humility and selflessness.
March 2, 2022
If you're not reading the NYRB translations, you're missing out...
This was an enchanting and deeply resonant tale about the heartbreak that comes with political and moral desire. I always find female protagonists written by male authors to be fascinating, and this as no exception. Highly recommend as a light read!
This was an enchanting and deeply resonant tale about the heartbreak that comes with political and moral desire. I always find female protagonists written by male authors to be fascinating, and this as no exception. Highly recommend as a light read!
October 20, 2021
4.5 stars (may change to 5 stars later? Must think about it)
This novel is a retelling of the Peach Blossom Spring myth/fable, but placing the events in the late 19th/early 20th century, around the rebellions and fall of the last Chinese dynasty. I did a fair amount of googling and found a short translation of the myth. I would love to discuss how this is a retelling (I have thoughts but could be totally wrong)--also, how does The Peach Blossom Fan fit into this tradition?
————
But this book. I loved it. It is the first in a trilogy and I want to read the rest but they are not out in English. This is a family/town saga, a look at revolutionaries and revolutions, a look at women of different classes. It is modern, but the storytelling (or maybe it's the translations?) have echoes of the storytelling in the Chinese classics The Water Margin and Monkey: The Journey to the West.
Here, though, the main character is a woman. Around 14 when the story begins, Lu Xiumi is the only child of landowners. She has a tutor (she is the only girl in class), her best friend is her household's youngest servant. We meet her neighbors, parents, servants, and other residents of Puji. On the way to her wedding, the caravan in attacked and she is kidnapped by bandits--setting her life on a very different trajectory.
The author also has asides in the story (here presented as footnotes) that imply the characters were real people. They were not--at least per google. But I wonder how many of those asides will come to play in the next 2 novels in the trilogy?
This novel is a retelling of the Peach Blossom Spring myth/fable, but placing the events in the late 19th/early 20th century, around the rebellions and fall of the last Chinese dynasty. I did a fair amount of googling and found a short translation of the myth. I would love to discuss how this is a retelling (I have thoughts but could be totally wrong)--also, how does The Peach Blossom Fan fit into this tradition?
————
But this book. I loved it. It is the first in a trilogy and I want to read the rest but they are not out in English. This is a family/town saga, a look at revolutionaries and revolutions, a look at women of different classes. It is modern, but the storytelling (or maybe it's the translations?) have echoes of the storytelling in the Chinese classics The Water Margin and Monkey: The Journey to the West.
Here, though, the main character is a woman. Around 14 when the story begins, Lu Xiumi is the only child of landowners. She has a tutor (she is the only girl in class), her best friend is her household's youngest servant. We meet her neighbors, parents, servants, and other residents of Puji. On the way to her wedding, the caravan in attacked and she is kidnapped by bandits--setting her life on a very different trajectory.
The author also has asides in the story (here presented as footnotes) that imply the characters were real people. They were not--at least per google. But I wonder how many of those asides will come to play in the next 2 novels in the trilogy?
April 22, 2023
I feel like anyone who is going to attempt to read this book should have at least the slightest background knowledge of Chinese history before delving into it. Understanding the importance of nature, poetry, and writing/intellectual prowess to Chinese culture will help to get a sense for different characters standpoints within the story. Also, the blurb on the back hints at it, but you should know that everything happening in the book is taking place at the end of the last dynasty as China transitions out of a dynastic framework into a republic. So, it's a chaotic time to say the least.
Now, the writing itself is gorgeous and moving. It slows its pace to capture seemingly mundane moments but makes you recognize the importance in them. Yet, it also has plot twists out the wazoo. The story seems to constantly thicken and seeds are planted along the way that will be sprouted and revealed throughout the book.
The protagonist, Xiumi, is a complex character whose actions come to seem drastic and detached from those around her, yet through her history and upbringing, we can understand how she comes to be so removed. The story heavily focuses on the trials and tribulations of women and their suffering at this time in China, and it's impressive to see a man write with such empathy and perspective. There is one relationship I questioned the morality of, between Xiumi and a family friend or 'uncle', Zhang Jiyuan. However, given the time period and context, the idea that Xiumi would find herself attracted to such a man doesn't seem unfounded.
Overall, the book is unapologetically graphic yet immensely profound at the same time. I'd say read the first 30 or 40 pages and if you can't get into it then just put it down. But, if you find yourself intrigued, then get ready for a crazy, beautiful, and heartbreaking story.
Now, the writing itself is gorgeous and moving. It slows its pace to capture seemingly mundane moments but makes you recognize the importance in them. Yet, it also has plot twists out the wazoo. The story seems to constantly thicken and seeds are planted along the way that will be sprouted and revealed throughout the book.
The protagonist, Xiumi, is a complex character whose actions come to seem drastic and detached from those around her, yet through her history and upbringing, we can understand how she comes to be so removed. The story heavily focuses on the trials and tribulations of women and their suffering at this time in China, and it's impressive to see a man write with such empathy and perspective. There is one relationship I questioned the morality of, between Xiumi and a family friend or 'uncle', Zhang Jiyuan. However, given the time period and context, the idea that Xiumi would find herself attracted to such a man doesn't seem unfounded.
Overall, the book is unapologetically graphic yet immensely profound at the same time. I'd say read the first 30 or 40 pages and if you can't get into it then just put it down. But, if you find yourself intrigued, then get ready for a crazy, beautiful, and heartbreaking story.
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