The Lost Garden: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan) by Li Ang

The Lost Garden: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan) Reviews

• 
  Vivian

  I was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War.
  
  The story is a woven recollection by Zhu Yinghong of both her life and the legacy of her father, Zhu Zuyan. Set simulatanesouly in the 1970- 80s and thirty years earlier, it weaves back and forth creating a tapestry of nostalgia. A mourning shroud of the White Terror and its fallout.
  
  What I did was never the issue. Ayako, you must keep in mind that throughout the course of human history, knowledge has repeatedly gotten people into trouble. I was guilty of the crime of being an intellectual, of being able to think, and not easily manipulated.
  
  Taiwan was experiencing an economic boom and expanding. There was a shift beginning in the hierarchy as new entrepreneurs became wealthy and older families fell into gentile poverty. That constant cultural friction between the honor of tradition and embracing the new is illuminated quite beautifully here as Yinghong's life intersects with Lin Xigeng, billionaire Taipei businessman.
  
  The use of repetition is like an echo, throughout the story one is brought back to these beacons. Much like life where pivotal points in one's life never leave but send out waves occasionally, this is Zhu Yinghong's.
  
  This would be a gorgeous movie: political, romantic, nostalgia, and grit.
  
  Taiwan's subjugation of its citizens during the White Terror is addressed obliquely for the most part. Zhu Zuyan's house arrest and the constant surveillance and other societal effects heavily influenced Yinghong, but the perspective in how it affected her personal life and not a discussion of the public arena.
  
  Li is known for her feminist writings, and she addresses issues that contemporary women face navigating an inequitable society. How do you balance that need to love men and despise their complicity in an unjust system. The commodification of the female and irrelevancy as possession rather than a companion is at the crux of this. Heartbreaking, a game that can't be won.
  
  At that moment, he obviously had no idea how to react to a self-possessed woman who wanted nothing from him, and all he could do was instinctively mumble a promise.
  
  An evocative layering of time upon itself. The title and its significance is multifold, and the reader reevaluates their interpretation as the story progresses. Part of me will always mourn the lost garden.
  
  Overall, this is a melancholic song, an ode to what is lost and will never be.
  
  Favorite quote:
  The world is filled with boundless mysteries and wonder; everything is possible and nothing is tenable.
  
  
  ~Copy provided by Netgalley~
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  I was hoping to recommend this for Women in Translation month but I think both the novel and translation are flawed. The narrative sometimes jumps from third person into first, giving us the internal narrative of one of the characters, but it almost always repeats what the author already said in third person. Why? And the story of the novel seems to jump around and resort to sex like maybe the author got bored. And the translated edition has multiple grammatical and spelling errors that would have been caught by any word processing software, so it's perplexing how they made it into a publication I actually paid for. I think a garden in Taiwan that spans the generations of a family was an interesting concept but not one that really worked in this case.
• 
  Kelsi H

  Please check out all of my reviews at
  http://ultraviolentlit.blogspot.ca!
  
  The Lost Garden follows two parallel story lines that enhance one another in their description of both the political and the personal in Taiwan. The first follows the childhood of Zhu Yinghong, whose father was imprisoned by Chiang Kai-Shek’s regime for his intellectual dissent. When he is eventually released from prison, he retreats into his Lotus Garden, built to his exacting desires. The second story line takes place in modern day Taiwan, where Zhu Yinghong begins a courtship with wealthy tycoon Lin Xigeng. The Lotus Garden has been appropriated by the government, and the relationship between the two hinges on their ability to regain the paradise of the garden.
  
  My main issue with the writing style was the abrupt shifts in perspective, from first to third. It made the story seem jumpy and was sometimes hard to follow. There were also many small stories – almost like parables – within the broader plot. I was completely drawn in by the strong and exciting prologue, but after that the pacing really slowed down and became very repetitive. Although we as readers are constantly being moved around in time, the repetition did serve to hold the story together, especially Zhu Yinghong’s insistence that she was “born in the last year of the war” – metaphorically of course, as she is referring to the First Sino-Japanese war which ended in 1895. Her father tells her that the statement is essentially true, as she is a result of the effects of this war.
  
  The novel has a strong political theme, especially concerning Japan’s control over Taiwan and the communist regime that followed after World War II. Zhu Yinghong’s family prospered under Japanese rule, and then lost everything simply for being a part of the intellectual gentry. Zhu Yinghong performs well in her new circumstances, yet she still yearns for her family’s lost property. Her romance with Lin Xigeng distracts her for a time, until their rocky courtship leads to an unfulfilling marriage. She gives up her sense of self for her husband, then realizes it was not him that she wanted – it was always the Lotus Garden.
  
  The Lost Garden explores issues of identity, both personal and political. Zhu Yinghong develops throughout the novel, on a journey to understand what is really important to her. The garden represents not only her family’s lost wealth, but also their lost innocence. The writing and the translation were lyrical and lovely, sometimes awkward but always interesting, with beautiful descriptions of Taiwan and its struggle for independence.
  
  I received this book for free from Columbia University Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
  
• 
  Lee

  A fun, weirdly erotic feminist novel that connects gardens to vaginas to Taiwanese nationalism.
  
  It is hard to summarize this novel. It is about a Taiwanese woman who falls in love, then seduces a rich real estate magnate, subduing him through her feminine power. She uses her lover and then husband's money to protect a garden that her ancestors built.
  
  There is a lot of strange symbolism going on here. The garden becomes both a symbol of Taiwan and Taiwanese nationalism, while it also becomes a vaginal symbol.
  
  There are some very explicit passages in this novel, but I never felt like Li went too far. She is a great writer, and her sexy-time passages were always saying more than just titillating.
  
  A great short novel that is a compelling read for anyone interested in Taiwan, Taiwanese nationalism and feminism.
• 
  Pia

  I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
  
  What a beautiful book!
  
  A story of falling terribly in love and then becoming disenchanted, it's also the story of the magnificent garden that surrounds Zhu Yinghong and her family.
  
  The book evolves around two different story lines: One regarding Yinghong's father, his political arrest and imprisonment and the return to his family home and the garden. The other takes place many years later, and regards Yinghong and her love affair with Lin Xigeng, a wealthy businessman.
  
  The book has a sad and poetic feeling, and it is written in a smooth, flowing prose. The translation is also very good and I can imagine it honors the original language.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Harry Miller

  There are two main points of interest in this book.
  
  The first is the idea that Taiwan is distinct from China. The character Zhu Zuyan (the protagonist's dad and family patriarch) proves this assertion by insisting on speaking Japanese (after the Japanese, whose rule he had opposed, departed). His rationale is:
  
  "One day I realized that there were people who were not from an alien race yet were more ruthless than the aliens, not invaders but more bloodthirsty than the invaders. So I began to use the aliens' language to teach my own children." (p. 166)
  
  Zhu Zuyan was being generous to say that the mainland Chinese were not invaders. Most Taiwanese independence folks would claim that they were. Also, emphasizing Taiwan's Japanese influence is indeed a common tactic employed by said independence advocates. It's interesting to consider that speaking the Taiwanese dialect of Chinese is not defiant enough; the independence folks have to avoid the language entirely. (Later in the book, a minor character with less of an ax to grind does content himself with speaking Taiwanese.)
  
  The second interesting aspect of the book is its bleak portrayal of the male-female relationship in Taiwan. The bar-girl culture of the island placing male fidelity beyond women's expectations, the result is a light-years distance between the sexes. There is not a shred of true intimacy or anything Westerners now call partnership. Instead of "you and me against the world", it's "you and me against each other." The only two policies women can employ against men in this world are indulgence and entrapment. The former is exemplified by the protagonist's mother and the latter by the protagonist herself.
  
  The translation is fine, but the vagueness of Chinese verbs sometimes confuses the chronological narration.
• 
  Kurt Kemmerer

  Slightly uneven, but mostly wonderful. The novel transports the reader to a Taiwan of many ages, with beautiful, subtle overlapping stories, all including one magnificently complex heroine.
• 
  Victoria Tang

  Loved the descriptions of scenery and emotional turmoil, but didn't see the purpose in the shifting narration styles
• 
  Sarah loves books 😻😻😻

  ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• 
  Sharlene

  Although I spent so much of my life at Lotus Garden, it was only recently that I was deeply moved by the many wondrous scenes, a result of learning to observe the garden in its minute details. The world is filled with boundless mysteries and wonder; everything is possible and nothing is tenable.”
  
  I really need to start writing down how I come across certain books. I can’t remember the exact details for this one, possibly that it came from a list of books in translation written by women. I definitely hadn’t heard of Li Ang before this. She is a Taiwanese writer, her real name is actually Shih Shu-tuan. And her major work is The Butcher’s Wife. Unfortunately my library only had this book of hers so I made do.
  
  The main character in The Lost Garden is Zhu Yinghong, an only child, the last generation of an old family in Lucheng, Taiwan. The family’s home is known as Lotus Garden, a sprawling estate, very much the pride of the family, and which, in the prologue we are told is being opened to the public.
  
  There are two important men in her life. One is her father, Zhu Zuyan, part of the old guard, who speaks to her in Japanese, calls her by her Japanese name Ayako, and was once arrested for dissent, then returned to his family due to his old age. He then devotes his life to photography and to his beloved garden – replacing foreign trees with native Taiwanese plants
  
  The other man is Li Xigeng, a real estate mogul, filthy rich, powerful, materialistic, and fond of the seamy nightlife of Taiwan.
  
  The contrast between the two men is stark, representative of the old vs new, culture and tradition vs development and modernisation. It’s a story full of symbolism.
  
  The narrative moves from past to present and back again but what takes some getting used to is the occasional switch from third-person to first-person (from Yinghong’s POV). It can sometimes be a bit too jarring.
  
  The Lost Garden would please plant lovers as Li Ang is adept at writing about the garden and all its wonders.
  
  “Cape lilacs were overtaken by a blanket of misty white flowers in the spring, like a lost cloud pausing at the green leaves; it was the kind of mysterious illusion that could only be embodied by a string of lithe, tinkling notes plucked by the nimble fingers of a harpist.”
  
  Despite having traveled to Taiwan a couple of times – once as a kid with my family (my father used to travel to Taipei for work quite often) and then once again about 12 years ago for my own work when I used to be a research assistant and was working on a project about creative clusters in Asia – I know pretty much nothing about Taiwan’s history. So to read in the translator’s note that this book, published in 1990 (3 years after martial law was lifted), was the first to re-create in fictional form the “White Terror Era”. I of course had to go google that and learnt to my surprise that martial law in Taiwan lasted for 38 years and some 140,000 Taiwanese were imprisoned during this time with around 4,000 executed.
• 
  Tammy Wooding

  Li Ang, the pen name of Shih Shu-tuan, is also the author of the award-winning The Butcher’s Wife. A prolific writer and astute social critic, she was honored by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication with its Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres award, and a modern dance based on her short story was shortlisted for Der Faust Prize. Sylvia Li-chun Lin, formerly associate professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame, translates contemporary Chinese fiction from Taiwan and China. Howard Goldblatt, a Guggenheim Fellow, is an internationally renowned translator of Chinese fiction, including the novels of Mo Yan, the 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• 
  !Tæmbuŝu

  Reviewed by The Complete Review
  
  Available in Chinese
  here
• 
  Nichole

  Stellar writing that challenges sociocultural norms of womanhood and modernization.
• 
  World Literature Today

  This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the May/Aug 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
  
  
  http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...