Daughters of Shandong

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Book Club Questions

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Background

Historical Context: The Communist Revolution in China

In 1911-12, millennia of rule by imperial dynasties ended in China with the revolution that established a republican government. The early republic was challenged by assorted warlords, against whom the Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) party created a united front with the Communist party (CPP), which was founded in Shanghai in 1921. The White Terror in 1927, during which the Nationalists attempted a Communist purge from the party, resulted in a decade of civil war. The resources of the Nationalist army were diverted to Japan with the advent of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, and thereafter the second World War.

During World War II, Communists gained ground in rural areas with successful efforts at land reform that drew increasing support. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a civil war emerged between the Nationalist Army led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Army led by Mao Zedong. Mao’s ideology, based on the philosophies of Karl Marx as expressed in The Communist Manifesto (1848), called for dismantling the ruling class of China and elevating the status of the rural worker.

In October 1949, after a series of military victories that pushed the Nationalist armies out of significant urban centers, Mao declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with himself at its head as Chairman. The Nationalist Army withdrew to Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek re-established the Republic of China (ROC), which claimed to legitimately control mainland China. In return, Mao threatened an invasion of Taiwan, which was prevented by US support of Taiwan during the war with Korea.

To effect the transformation to a communist economy in the countryside, landlords were eliminated, often through violent means, and land was redistributed and collectivized. In cities, Communist cadres occasionally worked with existing administrative officials to put governing bodies and industry under Communist control. Initially, the Communist cause enjoyed great popular support, but an ambitious plan called the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), meant to revolutionize the economy from an agricultural to industrial society, resulted in a famine that killed millions of people (estimates range from between 15 to over 50 million). The social engineering experiment called the Cultural Revolution that lasted from 1966 to 1976 resulted in political, economic, and social stagnation for the country. Only after Mao’s death in 1976 did his successor, Deng Xiaoping, pursue reforms that helped China modernize and grow economically.

Today, China is considered a world power. Its system of government is described in the Chinese Constitution as a peoples’ democratic dictatorship, which has been led since 2012 by General Secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping.

Geographical Context: China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Hong Kong is a special administrative region located in southern China. In 1842, following the First Opium War, the Chinese government ceded the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain, followed by Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong became a destination for Chinese fleeing upheavals on the mainland, including the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937.

In 1946, after the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, Britain re-established control over Hong Kong. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of people arrived at the island, many of them fleeing the civil war in China and the subsequent Communist takeover. Despite civil unrest and labor disputes due to the influx of refugees, the economy of Hong Kong developed ahead of China and many other Asian counterparts. The combination of peninsulas and islands that make up the territory were returned to China by the British government in 1997. Since the formal return of the territory to Chinese control, Hong Kong has struggled to retain its democratic freedoms and a measure of self-governance. The ethnic majority is Chinese, and Cantonese is the most common spoken language.

Taiwan is an island that lies about a hundred miles off the southeastern coast of mainland China. It has an indigenous population that viewed itself as separate from mainland Chinese. The Dutch set up a colony in Taiwan for a few decades in the 17th century. At the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, the Japanese took control of the island, and the Taiwanese supported Japan during World War II. At the end of the war, Japan returned control of Taiwan to the Chinese Nationalist government, which established the Republic of China (ROC) there after defeat on the mainland by the Communist army.

When the United States entered the Korean War in 1950, they sent a naval fleet to protect Taiwan from invasion by the Communist forces of Mao Zedong. Despite claims from the Communist government, the island retained its independence in the following decades. The comparatively democratic style of governance allowed Taiwan to enter a period of modernization and prosperity beginning in the 1960s, ahead of several other Asian countries in the region. Many Taiwanese who would later hold important positions visited the United States for their higher education, including President Lee Teng-hui.

The majority ethnic group on the island are the Hoklo or the Fukien Taiwanese, who originally emigrated from the Fujian province. The Hakka, who emigrated from Guangdong province and elsewhere, comprise about 15% of the population. Another 15% are mainland Chinese, and the remaining are indigenous or aboriginal groups. Each of the groups have their own language, but the official language is Mandarin.

Relationships between mainland China and Taiwan remain contested, as the Republic of China (ROC), governing from Taipei, resists claims of sovereignty by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whose government is centered in Beijing.