Synopses & Reviews
Four Sisters of Hofei is an intimate encounter with Chinese history, told through the collective memory and stories of four sisters born between 1908 and 1924, and with the benefit of the extraordinary knowledge of Yale historian Annping Chin.
Now in their late eighties and early nineties, the Chang sisters lived through a century of historic change in China. In this extraordinary work, assembled with the benefit of letter, diaries, family histories, poetry, journals, and interviews, Annping Chin shapes the story of this family into a riveting chronicle that provides uncanny insight into the old China and its transition to the new.
From their father, the Chang sister inherited reason and a belief in the virtues of modern education. From their mother they learned about the human spirit and the art of finding an appropriate path. Their nurse-nannies -- uneducated widows from the Hofei countryside -- contributed their own traditional beliefs and opinions on modern ways. As the sisters grew up, one broke with tradition to marry an actor, one survived the most violent political years of Communist rule, one married one of China's greatest novelists, and one, raised separately by her devout Buddhist great-aunt, was taught to be a rigorous practitioner of China's classical arts.
The Chang sisters' prolific correspondence provides a rare glimpse of private life in China during the twentieth century, as well as a chronicle of the country from prosperity to persecution, from foreign wars to Cultural Revolution. In Chin's expert prose, Four Sisters of Hofei is an intensely person story that illustrates the complex history of a complex land.
Synopsis
Not since "Wild Swans" has the history of China been so intimately encountered: Through the stories of four sisters born between 1908 and 1914, a renowned historian brings to life a century of Chinese culture. 8 photos throughout.
About the Author
Annping Chin was born in Taiwan in 1950 and received her Ph.D. in Chinese Thought from Columbia. She is the author of Children of China: Voices from Recent Years and coauthor Jonathan Spence, her husband, of The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years. She currently teaches in the history department at Yale.
Table of Contents
Contents Acknowledgments
The Chang Family
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Wedding
Chapter 2: Birth
Chapter 3: Reasons for Moving
Chapter 4: The Hofei Spirit
Chapter 5: Grandmother
Chapter 6: Mother
Chapter 7: Father
Chapter 8: The School
Chapter 9: Nurse-Nannies
Chapter 10: Yuan-ho
Chapter 11: Yun-ho
Chapter 12: Chao-ho
Chapter 13: Ch'ung-ho
A Note on Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index