The Concubine's Children
This superbly told saga of family loyalties and disaffections reads more like a novel than an actual chronicle of Chan Sam, a Chinese peasant who left his family in 1913 to seek his fortune in the "Gold Mountain" of western Canada. There, though always planning to return to them, he set up a second family with the beautiful, headstrong concubine he brought with him from China. The story is narrated in the third person by his granddaughter, a Canadian economist, who creates an unsentimental portrait of both families: of Huangbo, the patient "home-wife" who raised their son and the two children the concubine, May-ying, left behind, and survived the Japanese occupation of China and the rule of Mao Tse-tung; of May-ying, whose earnings as a waitress in west coast teahouses often supported the struggling Chan Sam, his family in China and her own two Canadian-born children. And we learn of the fate of all the children, especially May-ying's daughter Hing, the author's mother. Although Chan Sam never fulfilled his dream of returning to his home-family, after his death, Hing and the author made the pilgrimage to China to embrace the relatives they had never known. Photos.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.