The Peach Blossom WellAuthor: Ada CHIANG
Publisher: INK Literary Monthly Published Date: 2011/04 【Synopsis】 In 1949, Chinese Communists took over the political power of China. Richman Yang Jing-Yuan, accused of being an evil landlord by the Communist Party, chose to leave behind his beloved wife and six-month old son to follow KMT (The National Party) to Taiwan. He was falsely accused of being a Communist supporter and was sentenced to life in prison. He was deported to the notorious prison of Fire Burning Island, where he met Li Jing-Zhou. Li was an ex local politician, who was the mayor of his hometown. These two men became good friends. Li was released after being in jail for 4 years, but Yang wasn’t let go until he became an old man who spent 25 years in the isolated prison. In 1987, Taiwan government finally let its people visit China. Families and relatives that had been separated for over 38 years got to reunite for the first time. Li’s prison records had become a shame mark that followed him and his family throughout the rest of his life. After his wife died, with the door to China now open, Li decided to move back to his hometown in China. Li met a match-maker Wang Xiao-Hong at his hometown, who successfully matched Li with her widowed 63-year-old mother-in-law, Dong-Po. Dong-Po was a prostitute before the Communists liberated her. With no proper skills, she could only marry from one man to another. Given her background and age, she was married a few times to the old and the sick. Li and Dong-Po lived happily for the first couple of years in the Peach Blossom Well district until Xiao-Hong encouraged Dong-Po to open Li’s deposit safe. Li had a stroke after discovering that he had been looted by Dong-Po. Li forgave Dong-Po after all. Dong-Po felt sorry and grateful. She realized that Li was a different man from all others that she had had before. The stroke paralyzed Li. Out of a sense of atonement, Dong-Po took good care of him. She actually fell in love with Li as he was the most decent man that she had ever met. With him, she felt that she was never a prostitute. Li died 5 years later. His final wish was to be buried together with his original wife that he met in college. Dong-Po knew that she couldn’t be buried in Li’s family graveyard according to their prenuptial agreement. Dong-Po hung herself; she committed suicide for love. Her humble final wish was to have her ashes spread around Li’s tomb. 【About the Author】 Ada CHIANG is a literary legend in Taiwan. She started writing in 1974 while she was still in college, winning three major fiction contests in 1976, 1977 and 1979. She was widely acknowledged as the most talented young writer of the 1970s in Taiwan. She published two collections of short stories before 1980: Sui-Yuan (Follow Your Fate) and Yin-Yuan-Lu (Pathway to Marriage). By the mid-80s, she withdrew from the public eye completely. During her absence from the Taiwanese literary scene, CHIANG earned a Master’s degree from UCLA, and then worked in Silicon Valley for over thirty years. As suddenly as she had disappeared from public view, CHIANG started writing in Chinese again in 2010. In 2011, she published 2 new novels: The Peach Blossom Well and Love for 100 Years, and republished her collection of short stories from the 1970s: The Weather to Lose Your Umbrella |
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110 台北市信義區基隆路一段180號10樓
Tel +886-2-2767-1268
Fax +886-2-2767-2808