Fiction Review
Falling Leaves:
The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
by Adeline Yen Mah
Penguin, 1997
Paperback, 278 pages
Reviewed by Sally Mavin
It is by general consensus that Adeline Yen Mah has been heralded as one of the most important contemporary writers to have emerged from China. Her novels represent a complex tapestry in which political, religious, cultural and economic strands merge inextricably to reveal a society heavily steeped in tradition. Undoubtedly, Adeline Yen Mah had a harrowing and at times, unbelievable childhood. In 1997 after a silence of more than fifty years, she published her first novel, Falling Leaves, a calmly eloquent account of a dramatic tale.
Adeline Yen Mah’s novel, set in the context of considerable political upheaval, is lucratively enlightening. Her chief impetus was clearly to portray the devastating reality of a family life devoid of love and benevolence. However, within this autobiographical framework, Yen Mah also succeeds in stressing the turmoil and inconsistencies inherent in the wider structures of Chinese society. The result is a novel that works on a multitude of levels, appealing to an audience of a heterogeneous nature.
The synopsis for the Penguin edition of Falling Leaves states,
Adeline Yen Mah’s childhood in China during the civil war was a time of fear, isolation and humiliation. The cause of this was not political upheaval but systematic emotional and physical abuse.
To me, this is an oversimplification that grossly misjudges and undermines the significance of this novel. Rather than politics and family being entirely separate, it can be argued that the convulsions sweeping through the Orient propagated the dysfunction which infiltrated the Yen family. The two themes overlap and influence each other implicitly and sometimes unequivocally, becoming the very fabric of the society they represent. Therefore, it is precisely amidst the political turbulence that a little girl struggles to survive an oppressive and potentially paralysing childhood.
Perhaps the most explicit example of this is the growing presence of Western influence on Chinese culture.
Besides Victorian office buildings and French churches, there were Russian dachas, a Prussian castle, Italian villas, Japanese tea-houses and German as well as Austro-Hungarian chalets, all situated in separate concessions adjoining each other along the river bank.
Shanghai and Tianjin appear to straddle East and West, providing a collage of architectures, religions, behaviours and appearances which contradict each other, creating a racial backdrop in the light of which many begin to question their identity. This unsettling environment reveals a power struggle which begins to question the validity of family tradition when it asks, is Shanghai the ‘Paris of the Orient’, or is Paris the ‘Shanghai of Europe’?
In the light of these details, it becomes evident that the apparent triviality of adorning Western attire and marrying externally to one’s own nationality in fact has the potential to overturn established family values. For the Yen family, the sudden presence of a Eurasian wife, Jeanne (or Niang), transforms the traditional patriarchal household in which Ye Ye’s authority is absolute, into a lifestyle of alien activity.
It is clear that Adeline Yen Mah wishes to imply the growing Westernisation of China as one of the chief detriments to Chinese tradition. Ye Ye, as a Buddhist, is described as being ‘soft-spoken and gentle… he was tall and slender, with poetic leanings and gentle ways.’ Yen Mah reveals a flair for calmly relating gravely saddening accounts of situations in which Western materialism and consumerism appears to swallow the very essence of Chinese culture,
Ye Ye found himself one of the very few male guests dressed in a long Chinese gown, matching satin ma-gua (short jacket), skull cap and cloth shoes. All the other men were in western suits and ties. The French guests called for endless toasts but the Chinese party were simply not used to drinking so much. My aunt believed that she may have embarrassed Jeanne and her family because she had to retire to vomit more than once.
On a more simple level, Yen Mah’s depictions of her experiences of family life are distressing. Financially, the family experienced an affluence which accorded to them certain uncommon privileges. However, prosperity and social standing did nothing to protect Adeline from a stifling environment of physical and emotional abuse.
Perhaps the most obvious reason for Adeline’s marginalisation within her family was the fact that her mother died within two weeks of giving birth to her, forging her status as an ill omen. This tainted beginning spurred a pattern of indomitable cruelty, where Adeline represented little more than an emotional punch bag. Prevented from having friends, perpetually insulted and virtually disowned, Adeline was forced to find her own way of surviving.
Her relationships with her siblings were at once fragmented and vilified. Adeline finds solace only partially in her youngest brother Gregory, but even his loyalties dubiously lean away from Adeline. Their father, Joseph, is both detached and indifferent to the welfare of his children, biased instead towards his fashionable Euroasian wife, perhaps the most nefarious and malicious character of the entire novel.
In the prologue Niang, Adeline’s storybook stereotype ‘wicked stepmother’, immediately has her benevolence called into question in her dubious claim that the children’s father left no wealth in his death. Practising open favouritism and calculated cruelty, Niang’s power becomes instrumental in punctuating the text with malignant vignettes.
Niang stands out within the family because she is the epitome of the Westernised Asian. Yen Mah doesn’t wish to portray Asians as benevolent victims and Westerners as their barbaric alter ego, but instead criticises the willingness of the Chinese to sacrifice traditional values in favour of the foreign. The result is a stifling identity confusion which ultimately mars the family domain.
It is interesting, however, that Yen Mah opts to depict her characters in a very two-dimensional fashion. This is at once the novel’s greatest asset and its fundamental flaw. Consistently, individuals are represented as wholly virtuous or utterly corrupt. There are no shades in between to colour the spectrum and give it credibility as a realistic account. While this tactic induces a greater degree of sympathy within the reader, it simultaneously alienates itself as unrealistic, calling into question the legitimacy of the text as a truthful account. The autobiographical genre is already steeped in suspicion, as it is subject to possible bias and one-sidedness, potentially providing a misleading account. Humphrey Carpenter stated in 1982 that ‘autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.’ This is not to claim that this is the case for Yen Mah, but the superficiality and subsequent predictability apparent in the characters of Falling Leaves does have the potential to isolate the reader from the text, failing to engage with the reader’s faith that the novel is as genuinely poignant as it deems.
Regardless of these inconsistencies, Falling Leaves never fails to engage
the reader's interest. It incites a sense of dismay and discomfort which
challenges the legitimacy of a Western, consumer society and ultimately
searches for a way to reconcile the East and West. The importance and
popularity of this novel is indicative of society's willingness to begin
addressing its flaws, both in the familial arena and in the wider context of
international relations.
About the Reviewer: Sally Mavin
Sally Mavin is a graduate from the University of Nottingham and holds a BA (joint honours) in English Studies and Theology. She now works in publishing, writing for a magazine based in Essex, England. Sally’s passion lies with poetry and she has had a number of poems published in various literary magazines and anthologies in the UK. She also writes for the Saratoga Foundation for Women Worldwide - a non-governmental organisation working in collaboration with the United Nations to encourage gender equality.
