Customer Reviews

The Money Dragon

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

 

 

Pam Chun writes an engrossing book about a prominent Chinese family in 19th-20th century Honolulu and provides readers with a rare glimpse into a lost past. If you've ever stared at stark, black and white photos of old Chinese families and wondered what they were really like, Pam Chun brings them to life as if they were your own family and leaves you with a quiet, settled, intimacy that only honest, careful writing can bring.

Set in pre-war Hawaii, the tale pulls together historic fact and fiction in a seamless, involving way, resisting the postcard or magazine style of popular history. She focuses on the intimate and personal details of her characters and families and renders them breathing, sweating, and lifelike. My only disappointment was that the book ended so quickly.

Hawaii and history enthusiasts will find fine detail in her tale that fill in the gaps of Western accounts. Asian Americans will feel and smell the painful and yet matter of fact pressures on the lives of their parents and grandparents. You will marvel at the strength of character of the early Chinese women and the entrenched families that were the rule of the day. And because her writing resists the sterotype, the polemic, and the popular, it transcends the usual place and era pieces.

This is not Michener. This is Hawaii. I hope she keeps writing.

I could not put this book down until I had finished it. Pam Chun is a master storyteller and captivates the reader from the first page. L. Ah Leong is a poor Chinese immigrant who comes to Hawaii seeking a better life. Through hard work and diligence he amasses a fortune to declare to himself and those around him that he is a great man. The money, however, brings with it greed, a lust for power and destruction of the family. Set in territorial Hawaii one also gain insight into the injustice brought against the Hawaiian and Chinese population by the United States government and those who claimed to represent it.

Ms. Chun's book the Money Dragon is a well written and informative book. I feel the story is the subject that many families can relate to, no matter what cultural background. For those readers who are not of Chinese decent have the pleasure of a glossary that describes some of the Chinese terms used in the book. Thank you to Ms. Chun, for sharing her family's history with us and for the photos that have captured our interest in your story of pride and honor.

Love this book. I love books that take me into cultures I am unfamiliar with. I read The Good Earth and loved it. This is fascinating to see how the same culture changes when arriving in Hawaii. Excellent discussion on early Hawaiian/American relationships, too. Characters are wonderful and real. Highly recommend this book.

i really enjoyed the book, and finished it in record time. for some odd reason though, i enjoyed the parts about tat-tung and the phoenix a lot more than the parts about the actual money dragon. i guess it's because they were the good people in the book. good historical details about China. I had a little hard time translating the chinese terms into chinese though, because they were in cantonese, and i only speak mandarin. i always like novels based on real stories, and this is a great one.

I really enjoyed this book about a multigenerational Chinese family. It is a fictionalized account of the author's own family history. The patriarch, the Money Dragon of the title, arrives in Hawaii at the end of the 19th century. He becomes an immensely successful businessman and acquires FIVE wives and has many children.

The story is told from the eyes of his daughter-in-law Phoenix, wife of his second son Tat-Tung. She has to live in the shadow of her mother-in-law Dai-Kan, the First Wife. Dai-Kan is one of the most puzzling characters, she favors the children and grandchildren of the other wives more than her own. You would expect just the opposite.

From this book I began to understand the complex social dynamics of this type of family, and how their Confucian beliefs held the structure in place. I don't think that polygamous marriages are allowed today in China. I'm curious about how they did away with it since it seemed to be such an embedded part of their culture at the beginning of the 20th century.

The descriptions of Hawaii itself are somewhat lacking. Perhaps the author, who was born in Hawaii, suffers from too much familiarity with the subject. I didn't really get a sense of place from this book.

For those interested in Hawaiin historical fiction I would also recommend The Floating City by Pamela Ball.