The Lost Daughter of Happiness : A Novel (Hardcover)

by Geling Yan (Author) "THIS IS WHO YOU ARE..." (more)
Key Phrases: Gimpy Chan, San Francisco, Gold Mountain (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Yan, who fled her native China after the Tiananmen Square massacre, counts herself part of the "fifth wave" of Chinese immigrants to California. In this potentially intriguing but flatly told novel, she tells the story of a "first wave" forebear, Chinese prostitute Fusang, who became a celebrity in 1870s San Francisco. Kidnapped from her village in China to be sold as a prostitute in "Gold Mountain," as the Chinese immigrants dubbed San Francisco, Fusang distinguishes herself through her extraordinary serenity, which many take for slow-wittedness. Once in the U. S., she runs afoul of her madams by refusing to hawk herself aggressively to potential customers. Despite Fusang's reserve, she attracts a slew of devoted lovers, including Chris, a "little white devil" who is only 12 when he first purchases Fusang's services. Chris tails Fusang around San Francisco's Chinatown and follows her adventures over the next four decades. After prompting a bloody battle between two suitors, nearly dying of tuberculosis and being healed by the Christian ladies of the Rescue society, Fusang is stolen by the charismatic Chinese gangster Ah Ding, who changes his name to Da Yong to elude his enemies. The fugitive pair encounter the sordid splendor of Chinatown, witnessing slave auctions and mob riots and enduring attacks by threatened whites. Fusang is a real historical figure about whom little is known; Yan's account does little to clarify Fusang's motives. Such opacity creates an intriguing mystery, but lack of resolution frustrates the reader. Yan's detached, dispassionate tone contributes to the sense of unreality pervading her narrative. (Apr.)China in 1985, wrote the script for the movie Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this first novel, a young Chinese woman named Fusang is kidnapped and sold into prostitution in San Francisco during the Gold Rush. Based on an actual historical character, she is here presented through the sometimes distracting voice of the imagined writer, a descendant of Chinese immigrants, who compares impressions of Fusang's time with her own. Fusang is especially appealing in her simplicity and beauty, and she is loved and pursued by two different men a young, well-to-do white man, Chris, and a charismatic Chinese criminal, Da Yong. Her story reveals a brutal and lawless time and place when the Chinese were a despised group. Though the historical setting is intriguing, Fusang never becomes a fully realized character, and it is unclear whether she survives her ordeals through the power of her personality or a lack of intellect. Purchase only where there will be a strong interest in the subject. Cathleen A. Towey, Port Washington P.L., NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition (April 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786866543
• ISBN-13: 978-0786866540
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,100,087 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars hobbesian, April 19, 2001

By	Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Chris realized that he had never, ever understood Fusang. -The Lost Daughter of Happiness

Geling Yan, a widely respected young Chinese author, immigrated to the United States after the Tienanmen Square massacre. She is best known here for the movie Xiu Xiu : The Sent Down Girl, the script for which she cowrote with director and childhood friend Joan Chen, from Yan's own short story. In this new novel, set in the 1870s, she has borrowed a figure from history, Fusang, the most famous prostitute in San Francisco, and has imagined an unusual lover for her, a 12 year old white boy named Chris.

Approaching the issue of anti-Chinese racism through these two characters, she tells a tale of slavery, rape and murder, and, ostensibly, love. I say ostensibly because Chris and Fusang remain completely opaque throughout the novel; we can never comprehend their motivations or thought processes. One of the things that helps to make them so mysterious is that the novel is narrated by a female descendant of Fusang, who has gathered 160 texts about the Chinese experience in San Francisco, in an effort to understand her enigmatic ancestor's life.

I may well be wide of the mark here, but it seems like Yan's point may be that Fusang and Chris are equally incomprehensible to each other, as they are to us. In fact, though the novel has the structure of an epic love story, the message would seem to be that there is something fundamentally illusory in such interracial love affairs. At one point she says of Chris :

He has yet to realize that the infatuation one feels for what one cannot understand is just as violent as the animosity.

This linkage of racist hatred with cross-cultural romance, though awfully harsh, has more than a grain of truth to it. Equally stern is her later judgment of Chris, when he wants Fusang to marry him :

It is as if being with you, Fusang, is not a matter of anything so shallow as love or happiness, but rather a grand sacrifice. Or perhaps when love reaches this stage it crowds out ordinary feelings and becomes a doctrine, an ideal, that can only be realized through sacrifice. He is using you to enact his sacrifice for the ideal of love. He also wants to show everyone of his race and yours that his self-sacrifice will form a bridge across the racial divide.

It's hard to imagine a more stinging indictment of the kind of racial understanding which, though it masquerades as selflessness and acceptance of others, is really based as much on objectification of those "others" as is racism.

In what I found the most powerful passage of the book, which after all is an examination of racism and violence directed against Chinese-Americans, Yan, in discussing the causes of a riot, reveals just how universal and non-specific is the human hatred which fuels such incidents, and even links it to the Cultural Revolution in China :

Hatred is amazing. It makes people self-righteous; it drives them with a sense of mission. I'm not talking about revenge; that's too simple. People are born with a higher form of hatred, so immense it doesn't even need a target. Like love so vast no object is necessary. This kind of hatred can lie dormant for years, like a swell of darkness, and people are never even conscious of it. But once the darkness is breached, all rationality drowns and the things people do out of hatred serve only the purpose of fulfilling an overwhelming emotional need. Burning, smashing, killing, rape--they're all just channels. It doesn't even matter what started it, because people quickly become intoxicated by the sheer spectacle of destruction. Like love at the earth-shattering stage, hatred by this point feeds on itself, simply for its own sake. The pleasure of watching some person or thing destroyed by one's own hand is virtually orgasmic.

When I was a child I saw those sexual impulses they called the cultural revolution and those orgasms they called rebellion. The gratification of hatred produces the same rapture in everyone.

This is a very dark--though I would argue realistic--vision of human nature.

This darkness, combined with various scenes of violence, the emotional distance of the central characters, the sparseness of the author's prose, make this a book that many people will not enjoy. Quite honestly, I wasn't sure if I liked it until I thought about it for quite awhile. But ultimately, despite the somewhat harrowing nature of the story, the brutal honesty of Yan's ideas won me over. And the more I've thought about it, the more I appreciate it.

GRADE : A-

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting look at nineteenth Chinese immigrants in USA, March 27, 2001

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Though the California Gold Rush was over two decades ago, many Chinese immigrate to Gold Mountain as they call San Francisco in hopes of making a fortune. However, not all the Chinese living in San Francisco voluntarily crossed the Pacific. For example Fusang was kidnapped in her homeland and brought to California where she was sold to serve as a prostitute used by many white males.

Only twelve, Chris finds Fusang's aloof detachment quite attractive and begins to obsess over the Oriental woman. This begins a lifetime in which Chris watches Fusang as her life unfolds mostly in a negative way over the next forty or so years.

THE LOST DAUGHTER OF HAPPINESS uses a real person (Fusang) to provide a glimpse at the American mistreatment and prejudice towards the first wave of Chinese immigrants. The historical setting is quite deep and enhances an intriguing plot. However, Fusang, though a genuine person, never comes across as real to readers. They never understand her motives in spite of following along side Chris forty years of her life. The same is said of Chris who is a fictionalized account of a prostitute follower, but his motives seem contrived. Geling Yan shows much talent especially in describing the era, but the inability for the audience to feel anything towards Fusang leaves the plot a bit short and disappointing.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Story of Hope and Survival, October 5, 2003

By	Katie Osborne (Portland, Oregon and the sunny Caribbean) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lost Daughter of Happiness, The (Paperback)

Fusang is kidnapped from her tea-growing village in the mountains of China and shipped to San Francisco. While many of the other young women die on the journey, she survives and is sold into a brothel, becoming one of many women lining the windows of Chinatown. She is sought after because of her beauty and friendly nature and a wealthy, young Californian falls in love with her. However Da Yong, a notorious criminal is obsessed with owning her.

There's enough of the story right there to keep you tuning the pages of this five star story that is filled with wonderful writing. I just loved this book.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne