Yeh Yeh's House

Here is a romantic memoir of a pilgrimage, ancestors confronted and a mother discovered. I found this engaging book a quick read. Its impact is more emotional than thoughtful.

Ms Chao managed to put off the inevitable trip to China for decades, despite nostalgic longings and prompting from her grandfather (Chinese familiar, "Yeh Yeh" ). In the first half of the book, she tells us about her procrastination while she built her musical career. She felt guilty about not heeding Yeh Yeh's call to Beijing, despite being a world traveller in the name of her music. Her guilt is increased when Yeh Yeh dies, having asked her to come soon. Her resistance ends after Aunt Lucy comes to visit, and then Da Bobo and Da Mama - all paternal relatives. Meeting some of the storied family from the old country makes it easier for her to accept the notion of going to China. Finally, almost without knowing what she is doing, she does it; she goes to China.

In the second and more interesting half of the story, Ms Chao relates some of the events of her travels in China. Things that stand out are the dead (drowned?) man she found in the Yangtze, whose fate we do not learn. Perhaps no one knows what happened to that corpse. Then, there are the mysterious "back door" people who seem to be the backbone of business in China. You just have to have relatives and their contacts to get anything done. Ms Chao does not dwell on the primitive living conditions she found, but it is clear that Chinese people do not lead easy lives. For that reason, even someone of Chinese descent -the American Ms Chao - is easily recognized by the Chinese as a foreigner.
 

What became clear in Ms Chao's travels in1987, just before the Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Square, is that China was ready to explode. Mao Zedong's Great Cultural Revolution had destroyed millions of people, including some of Ms Chao's family. At the time she made her trip, the balance had not yet tipped in favor of the Westernizers, Chairman Deng's modernizations. Ms Chao's intellectual family was among those brought down by Mao, although some of it recovered by moving to California.
 

In the epilogue, we find out that Yeh Yeh's house was bulldozed about 2 years ago in favor of a high rise apartment complex. Beijing is modernizing, and life is improving for millions of Chinese. For Ms Chao, there is a New China; the Old China is dead and buried. While Ms Chao feels nostalgic about a past lost, in paying homage she also discovers that she is an American, not Chinese.
 

Ms Chao's greatest discovery is her aging mother. In her life before the trip, Ms Chao thinks only of her father's family, of Yeh Yeh and those who live in Yeh Yeh's house. Her mother is a nervous, introverted woman who she seems to fear. We - and she - know nothing of her mother until they reach Shanghai. It is there that all those plans made in America fall apart, requiring improvisations only a native Chinese could make. It is Ms Chao's mother who guides her (and us) through the ever-changing itinerary. In the process, seemingly for the first time, Ms Chao discovers her mother's family and her mother.

This book is well worth reading through the slow start to the faster finish. In her memoir, Ms Chao starts the process of being acquainted with her mother. I hope it is not an invasion of privacy to wonder what happened after the return.