May Lin de Chezelles Yellow Mountain

Annotation

Yellow Mountain has been written from the diaries of Susan Loke, a Mandarin's daughter. It gives an account of why her father, a Qing Mandarin, left China. It is not only a story of migration. It embodies some of his powerful psychological views on the reasons for leaving a country where revolution had defeated the Imperial system of China. There was a desolate vacuum which attracted foreign powers to gain economic and political footholds In China. In this environment he knew that a future in China would be bleak, if not impossible. He takes his own family and sails into the abyss of the South China Sea. It's also a story of courage, imagination and strength in the human spirit built into a man who has only read Confucian and Taoist teaching. The entire story is very much from a feminine perspective as it's her story as she understood it from her father.