Yeh Yeh's House: A Memoir

by Evelina Chao

Book Overview

Growing up Chinese in Virginia in the Fifties, Evelina Chao's sense of historical or cultural context was colored by the images contained in her grandfather Yeh-Yeh's letters and news of his life as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312330782
• ISBN13: 9780312330781
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A subtly moving and honest memoir

On one level this book is a travelogue. The author is one of many thousands of American tourists visiting China in the late 1980's. She is taken to see the beautiful lakes of Hangzhou, rides on a boat through the Yangtze's three famous gorges, and is shown the wonderful troops of clay warriors in the tombs of Xian, besides visits to the Forbidden City and Tian An Men Square. However, the author's fellow traveller is her mother, who has many relatives and friends in China. During a good part of their 5 week journey, they are guided by ordinary Chinese citizens and eat with or stay with them in their homes. As a result, the author sees the lives of these citizens as few truly foreign tourists would. Her descriptions of old men with back sores who pull pedicabs for a living, or the indignities endured by four families sharing a communal kitchen doubling as a communal toilet, or of the distant cousin who, having come on a 5-hour train ride, had to leave on the return trip after only half an hour's visit for fear of missing the next day's work, serve as a valuable cultural study of daily life in China in that period. On another level, this book is the author's exploration of that part of her identity which is Chinese even though she was born and bred in the USA. Inextricably interwined with this exploration is the author's attempt to understand and resolve her uneasy relationship with her own mother. While they journey together through Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xian and ChongQing towards Beijing, where lies her grandfather's house, "Yeh Yeh's House", these other explorations occur in parallel. We see the author begin to perceive and appreciate her mother in new ways as her mother reveals herself more fully in surroundings where she feels truly at home. Through the connections the author makes with her relatives and their unconditional acceptance of her in the family, the author also appears to achieve a better acceptance of her role in her family's Chinese lineage. The author is able to capture many poignant episodes with understatement that is all the more affecting. When she offers her uncle visiting her in Minnesota spending money, his face "reflected a clash of spontaneous myriad thoughts", trying to assess what was proper in their relationship as "uncle and niece, foreigner and American, poor and rich, man and woman, guest and hostess." When her female cousin links arms with her in an off-handed way during a shopping trip, the author writes that she sees "in her warm brown eyes only simple attention, uncomplicated by judgment or expectation. In the firm support of her arm I felt a closeness I had not felt anywhere else, a simple unspoken intimacy...". In these and other episodes the author manages to describe the intricacies underlying human relationships with as much skill and delicacy as in the finest playing of any Bach sonata. Bravo!

Will's Thoughts on Yeh Yeh's House

I have just finished this book and it was an absolutely wonderful read, getting me very excited for my own upcoming trip to China and everything that it might hold. Of course for me it will be a completely different experience, I'm a white boy from Canada, however it is a truly wonderful journey she takes us on. Evelina slowly brings you in to the world of her family and all that encapsulates being a Chinese-American never having visited Yeh Yeh's house in China. Over the journey, she helps you to try and understand the relationships of everyone involved and how being in China transforms her own understanding of her herself. She is such a beautiful writer that you the reader go through this transformation with her, coming out at the end of the book with a new understanding of what it means to connect with your own heritage. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone, and will treasure it forever on my bookshelf

An extraordinary family portrait in modern Communist China

Ms Chao, a St Paul, Minn artist and first generation Chinese American, writes a personal travelog about seeking her roots. She portrays a saga with extraordinary sensitivity and cultural transparency. Common with the demands of establishing her professional and family life, she indeterminably delays the plaintive urging of her paternal grandfather (Yeh Yeh) to come and visit him in Beijing before it is too late (p6, 22). Her wryly, humorous writing style makes this an enjoyable read and for Sinophiles there are many topics in each chapter to chuckle and reflect on cultural differences. She writes about a sojourn of 15 years ago, a 5-week visit with her mother. As with most Americans, she must rely on her to explain and interpret what they see, do and meet. As an added layer of complexity and intrigue, as youngest daughter of three children (p3, 72) she discusses the increasing dichotomy between her and her immigrant thinking parents. During the trip, plans and actions by her mother slowly reveal a newfound awe in her brilliance, cleverness and resourcefulness. As a then 38 year old, her trip to China (p110) was set in the late 80s, when Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening program is in full swing, but before the Tiananmen Square incident in 89 or completion of the Three Gorges Dam. Her book has 26 chapters divided into 2 sections. Her China journey starts on Part II, Chap 10, p103 with a flight to Shanghai. Her book is illustrated with one portrait of her grandfather and a map of the China journey, but no diagram of the family tree, references or index. There is little discussion on the writing of this book, so the artful craft is ultimately up to the reader to judge the intimate thoughts, innate Chinese mannerisms, and veracity of the passages. Because of her trip's timing to China, the author portrays the hardship and indelible imprint of Mao's China had on her aunts and uncles, cousins and extended family. While personal and intimate, Chao does not mince words in describing the birth of Communist China and how the various epics of the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward and Reform left their lasting imprint and what it meant to survive. She also clearly and succinctly describes the life and environment of the common people, both their pleasures and their warts. Part I is a prelude to the actual trip. Sung Lien, her Chinese name given by her grandfather, has been calling for her several times since the 70s. Her grandfather was a famous theologian at Yenching U, Beijing, one of the first Christian missionary schools in China and who was educated at Vanderbilt U in the States. Her grandfather was Dean of Yenching's School of Religion and a top China leader for the World Council of Churches. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard singled out Chao Tzu-ch'en for reform of intellectuals and religion. Reform meant forced public recantation of beliefs, burning of his works, being publically denounced, interrogated, imprisonment and me