Customer Reviews

The Crippled Tree

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Very good reading for those who love history which is told in a simple way, thrue a live story of an Europen - China couple and their children at the beginning of the 20th century ; and for those, who are always seeking the real truth and are never satisfied with just one point of view.

All the masses of people who loved "Wild Swans" will love this one too. It gives a slightly different perspective on the same situation. Gives less recent history, but more information on colonial exploitation in pre-communist times than Wild Swans does. This author has written a few other books too.

As the first volume in Han Suyin's history/autobiography of China, this covers an approximately 50 year period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With all of the great themes of the human struggle intertwined through her life, that of her family and that of her country of birth (China), one can imagine the impact this book has on the reader. Here is history actually sifted through the lives and emotions of one who was there and either personally witnessed or interviewed others who were. Han Suyin especially calls on the reminiscences of Third Uncle, a meticulous researcher in the mold of 25 generations of his own family.
Truly fascinating stuff--love, cruelty, corruption, colonialism, poverty set against great wealth, the huge land mass of China literally fighting its inhabitants, the Western dream of China as Ur-Orient and as a bottomless mine of natural riches to plunder. Han Suyin has all of this under control and delivers it with beautiful prose and intelligent commentary. She breaks the reader's heart over and over, but the reader cannot shut the book and escape because it is all so engrossing. I plan to read the next volumes in the series, and I have great expectations for them as well.

This is the first of a 5 book series that gives an inside out look at the evolution of China through the 1900's. I find the weaving of the authors life story and the events going on in China fascinating and would recommend the book highly. I've also read the second and third in the series and feel the same way. They may be a little hard to find but it's well worth the effort!!!

The Crippled Tree is the first volume of Han Su Yin's autobiography. Published in 1965, it covers the years 1885 to 1928, beginning with her father's early life up to her childhood in Peking in the 1920s.

Her father was a Hakka sent to study engineering in Belgium where he married Marguerite, a Belgian. Marguerite lived a very difficult life in a China ravaged by bandits and short of life's necessities.

Her cook was decapitated by bandits and his head is in the garden as told in her letter to her " Dear Papa, dear Mama " . In the same letter she asked her parents to send her two dozen tins of talcum
powder for her little one crying with prickly heat. The little one was Han Su Yin( page 11 ).

Han Su Yin writes very well. She takes the trouble to write at length on the social aspects of Old China to assist a Western reader. Her books are sadly out of print now except for ...and The Rain Her Drink. But you can buy at websites like Alibris.com.