Daughters of Shandong

In 1948 the Ang family of rural Shandong is wealthy, landowning and obsessed with a missing heir. The mother has borne four daughters and is abused by her in-laws for it. Hai, the eldest, spends her days minding her sisters. Di, a year younger, has learned to go unnoticed, and their mother finds small ways to rebel in the kitchen.

Civil war is spreading across the Chinese countryside, and the Communist army is closing in on the town. The rest of the household flees and leaves the mother and girls behind, since it counts them as useless mouths. With no Ang man to put on trial, the cadres who seize the family's land choose Hai, as eldest child, to answer for the family's crimes. She barely survives.

Expecting worse, the women plan to leave. They have no money and little food, but they forge travel permits and set out on a thousand-mile trip to face the relatives who abandoned them. The route runs from the countryside through the city of Qingdao and on to British Hong Kong, and finally Taiwan, past crowds of people displaced by the revolution.

This is historical fiction based on the author's own family story. It follows a mother and her daughters through war, hunger and danger, and it carries a hopeful tone. Losing their home also opens a chance for the women to decide their own fates.