Ida Pruitt (1888–1985)

Insightful and Frustrating

"A Daughter of Han" is both an insightful and a frustrating read. The author, Ida Pruitt, writes in the first-person from the perspective of Lao T'ai-t'ai, a woman Pruitt met and interviewed. There are several interesting themes in the book: conservative society, saving face, foreign missionaries, poverty, numerology, and domestic life.

Each chapter presents a few years in Lao T'ai-t'ai's life. She describes her childhood, her marriage to an "opium sot," her husband trying to sell her daughters, and her working life. Lao T'ai-t'ai's life is terribly difficult. She and her children go through periods of hunger that force them onto the street. She sees children and grandchildren die, which Pruitt barely mentions in passing.

Unfortunately, the book is somewhat scant on specifics and details. At various times she works as a domestic servant for a Muslim family, a mandarin bureaucrat, and different missionaries, but we never learn how exactly she serves the families or how she makes house-calls as an itinerant vendor. In addition, events just come and go with very little reflection or detail, such as deaths in her family or friends that she mentions with no specifics. I would be curious to know about how funerals were held, what she did with her friends, or even what the cities she lived in were like.

Sometimes, the scant details work in favor of the narrative. For instance, there is a brief sentence that describes seeing some of supporters of the Boxer Rebellion in her city. For her, a woman more interested in getting by than paying attention to politics, this would be a realistic description.

The narrative style is a little dated, even for a book written in the ‘30s or ‘40s. Even given the local idioms that Pruitt mixes in for color, the writing is a bit halting. There are interruptions and odd interjections that make reading this book very clumsy.

Nevertheless, there is very little biographic writing about the lives of ordinary people from this time. This alone makes "Daughter of Han" important for students of history and society.… (més)

A really interesting book about a chinese woman's life in the late Qing empire into the Republic era. Her husband is an opium addict and sells her daughters. She works from menial job to job trying to keep her family together.

While it is unlikely Ning Lao Tai Tai is the average woman for the time period, this book offers an interesting insight into Chinese society over the course of 70 years. Perhaps the most shocking thing is how little she was affected by the momentous changes going on in China during this time. An easy read that would be great for anyone interested in China.… (més)