Secrets of a Thousand Beauties
Mingmei Yip
Kensington, Nov 25 2014, $15.00
ISBN: 9781617733215
Years before she or her fiancé were conceived, Spring Swallow was
engaged to the son of her mom’s BFF if one had a boy and the other a girl. As she turns seventeen, her mother and her
future mother-in-law enforce the zhifu weihun ancient marital tradition though
Spring Shallow finds that ghastly as her soon to be husband died before he was
born.
On the day she is to “exchange” vows with her “ghost”, a horrified
Spring Swallow runs away. Martinet Aunty
Peony finds her and employs her along aside other females with depressing
backgrounds at her Su-style embroidery shop. Spring Swallow struggles to adjust to the
strict rules enforced even much more than usual to insure they complete a
Peking order in six months. When she can
she mountain climbs where she falls in love with Shen Feng; and learns what she
can about her “mentor” including Aunty was a royal embroiderer before the
Revolution two decades earlier. When she
loses her position, Spring Swallow obtains work at an embroidery store and soon
marries the owner’s son. When she
suffers a miscarriage losing Shen’s baby, her irate husband’s family tosses Spring
Swallow out. Missionaries give her a home
and a priest his love.
Though there are too much happening to the heroine especially several
fortunate and tragic events in a short period, this is an entertaining 1930s
Chinese drama due to an energetic heroine who “The record shows (she) took the
blows and did it (her) way” (My Way by Frank Sinatra). Filled with captivating insight like the
zhifu weihun ghost marriage, Mingmei Yip authors another delightful historical
(see The Nine Fold Heaven and Peach Blossom
Pavilion).
Harriet Klausner
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