Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu

 

Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu.

Published 17th March 2022 by Wildfire.

From the cover of the book:

With every misfortune there is a blessing and within every blessing, the seeds of misfortune, and so it goes, until the end of time.

It is 1938 in China, and the Japanese are advancing. A young mother, Meilin, is forced to flee her burning city with her four-year-old son, Renshu, and embark on an epic journey across China. For comfort, they turn to their most treasured possession - a beautifully illustrated hand scroll. Its ancient fables offer solace and wisdom as they travel through their ravaged country, seeking refuge.

Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. His daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, but he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down?

Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It's about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the search for a place to call home.

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Our story begins in 1938. The Japanese have invaded China and are swarming across the country like an unstoppable tide. Meilin's husband has been killed in the conflict, leaving her with a four year old son Renshu. Forced to flee their home when the city comes under attack, Meilin and Renshu embark on a dangerous journey across China in search of safety. It is a journey that brings them much hardship and sorrow, but Meilin sustains them with stories from the precious, hand-illustrated scroll her husband gave her years before their lives were ripped apart.

Meilin and Renshu eventually find themselves in Taiwan, as civil war ravages their homeland in the wake of World War II, and with family links to the Kuomintang, the nationalist party in opposition to the more powerful communists, they cannot return to the Chinese mainland. Somehow Meilin must find a way to keep them safe and provide a future for her son.

Years later, Renshu gains a scholarship to study engineering in America, changing his name to Henry Dao. It is a country that becomes his adopted home, and Henry settles into a new life with an American wife, and a daughter called Lily. He refuses to talk about his childhood or be drawn into the political concerns of China, and lives in fear for his mother trapped in Taiwan. As the years go by, he becomes more and more withdrawn and cowed by fear and suspicion.

As Lily grows older, she wants to know more about her Chinese heritage, and the grandmother she knows so little about. Her father's silence baffles her and she struggles to make sense of her own identity. How can she break through the wall he has surrounded himself with, learn about his past, and make peace with all the little pieces that make up who she is?

"Chinese history is sad, Little Girl."

Peach Blossom Spring is a sweeping, multi-generational family saga at its compelling best, that delves deep into the themes of fear, identity, family and sacrifice. Melissa Fu, drawing on the childhood memories of her own father that he kept buried deep inside for many years, weaves a beautiful tale mixing fact and fiction about China, its people, and the lives of those who are parted from their homeland by conflict - and she covers a lot of ground both literally and metaphorically.

Beginning with the courageous and determined Meilin who gives so much of herself to ensure the safety and security of her son, Fu paints a picture that holds nothing back about the horrors that war brings, as they find the future they envisaged torn from them and have to survive against the odds. She then moves onto the complex and troubled Henry, making a new life for himself that is full of opportunity, while struggling with the weight of his past and the shadow the politics of the country of his birth. And finally, we follow Lily as she tries to find her own identity by reconciling the pieces of her Chinese and American heritage and live her own life. Meilin was by far my favourite of the three, and she earned a place firmly in my heart, even though her tale is the saddest of them all. Henry is a tricky and troubled character, and I did find him difficult to warm to, although Fu explores some very insightful themes through his part of the tale. Lily's story too examines many thorny issues that come with mixed-race heritage, and at times my heart broke for her as she and her father were divided by her need to know more about his childhood and his refusal to allow the memories to resurface. 

There is something especially beautiful about the way Fu uses the notion of stories and fables throughout this book, imbuing them with a kind of magical power that ties generations together, and helps them overcome what life throws at them. The story of Peach Blossom Spring, which Fu uses so achingly brilliantly as her title is one which has such emotional significance for each of the characters, as they struggle in their own way with tough decisions about the things to pursue and those to sacrifice in the process. This brings everything together in a deeply touching and emotional way.

If, like me, you have absorbed Wild Swans by Jung Chang, and been enchanted by the books of Amy Tan, you will absolutely love this debut novel, but in many ways this book looks at China in a way I have not come across before, because it addresses a different side of the history we most often read about in fiction. What's so fascinating about what Fu does here is that her characters find themselves on the losing side of the Chinese civil war and are forced to flee to Taiwan to escape retribution at the hands of the victorious communist forces, which allows her to highlight the difficult position of Taiwan and explore the effect of fear and political machinations on her characters across a big chunk of history. I am impressed with how this makes the story unexpectedly relevant to the world we live in today.

This book is stunning and wonderfully immersive, and I could go on and on about it. It is steeped in sadness, but not without the golden thread of hope and this makes it a joy to read. I loved it!

Peach Blossom Spring is available to buy now in hardback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Wildfire for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Melissa Fu grew up in Northern New Mexico and has lived in Texas, Colorado, New York, Ohio and Washington. She now lives near Cambridge, UK, with her husband and children. With academic backgrounds in physics and English, she has worked in education as a teacher, curriculum developer, and consultant. She was the 2018/19 David TK Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Peach Blossom Spring is her first novel.