Miss Chopsticks – Xinran
4 out of 5 stars
I have done some reading on China, but mostly historical China: Communisms take-over, the Cultural Revolution, Taoism and what remains of it because of the communist regime, but I had never read a story about contemporary China. And it was surprising to me how rural China felt like I was still reading about the China of 50 years ago. Is that some evolutionism creeping into my thinking? It might be, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. It’s more that this book made me realise how big the differences are between rural areas and cities in China. Sure, we joke about the backwardness of farmers in the Netherlands (ask anyone from Amsterdam about the East of Holland and they’ll think we’re all farmers that talk silly – I’d know, I’m from that particular area), but the differences aren’t all that great. In the description of Xinran, the gap is so striking that it’s hard to stop thinking about it once you’ve finished the book.
I know a lot of people know Xinran from her book “The Good Women of China”, but I have never read it. After reading Miss Chopsticks, I sure hope I’ll get to read it soon.
In Miss Chopsticks, Xinran describes the lives of three girls from the countryside that try to make it in the big city. She’s taken the stories from her meetings with girls similar to those in the story, but changed them around a little and combined their storylines into the story of three sisters: Three, Five and Six. Girls aren’t thought of as important in rural villages in China, as we can read on the back cover of the book: ‘Women, their father tells them, are like chopsticks: utilitarian and easily broken.’ That’s why they only merit a number as a name. At the beginning of the story, Three goes to Nanjing to flee her impending marriage and start a life of her own. When she returns home for the spring festival a year later, her other sisters and all the girls in the neighbourhood want to come to the city as well. After her second return home, she takes Five and Six, her younger sisters with them. We follow all three of the sisters on their journey that they hope will lead to a self-fulfilled life. The story is somewhat hopeful, but can also make you feel hopeless. The girls run into a lot of differences in attitude and expectation in the city and sometimes find it hard to cope. It’s more of a struggle than an easy transition, which makes this story all the more interesting.
Xinran writes the story in a voice that I can only call “naive”. The style is thus entirely fitting to a story of three ‘naive’ country girls coming to a big city, trying to find their way. It also got on my nerves sometimes. That had nothing to do with bad writing; however, more likely the writing was too lifelike. One of the sisters, five, is said to be stupid (as in: not smart at all and she can’t read or write) and seems very naive. I found it very hard to read some parts of her story; she was so childlike that it sometimes bothered me to no end. On the other hand, I felt like I could relate to Six so much. She is a girl who loves books, who likes to learn all she can, even though she hasn’t had much of a chance in early life. I loved her for her observations, her determinism to try and understand things she didn’t get, but also her shyness in asking what people meant by the things they said. One of her observations that really got to me was what she said about the growing distance between yourself and your relatives once you go to college (or just start higher education in general) and start living on your own. I know I sometimes feel this tinge of sadness, just imagine how Six must’ve felt chasing her dream and yet slowly losing part of the connection to her family and friends.
“But when she got back to the teahouse that evening, her happiness was tinged with sadness. She knew that, every day, she was learning things that would take her further and further away from her sisters. And what about her mother – her best teacher of all? Could she leave her behind? Much as she rejoiced at her entry into the world she had dreamed of, at the same time she felt a sense of loss at her fading attachment to home..”
Miss Chopsticks by Xinran would be a great read for the Women Unbound Challenge, but I’m counting it towards the China Challenge, since I have faith I’ll end up with a lot of books in the Unbound Challenge anyway. What makes this book extra fitting for women-unbound is the connection all three of the girls feel with their mother, their first teacher in everything. Those parts of the book were so touching to read.
