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gannent's review
3.0
This book traces the modern history of China through one family's experiences. It does a good job of humanizing a lot of the experiences of modern China. I found it hard to follow and keep straight all of the family members, particularly in the latter portion of the book when it followed 5+ brothers, many with similar names. I also question the author's decision to drop most of the sisters from the story. If I'm remembering correctly, the reason he gives is because they didn't have contact with the rest of the family, but one of the brothers who left to become an actor didn't have contact with the rest of the family until the 1970s or 1980s. So I'm not sure why he really dropped them from the story, but it sort of made me pause.
Ancestral Leaves is really not a book to teach you modern Chinese history, so if you don't have a pretty strong background with most of these events, you might be confused. I was definitely confused during the Qing dynasty section of the book, since I didn't know that much about Qing dynasty history. But it's an enjoyable book to read, and the stories of the family are very interesting, especially the parallels and contrasts the author can draw between the family under the Qing and under Mao.
Ancestral Leaves is really not a book to teach you modern Chinese history, so if you don't have a pretty strong background with most of these events, you might be confused. I was definitely confused during the Qing dynasty section of the book, since I didn't know that much about Qing dynasty history. But it's an enjoyable book to read, and the stories of the family are very interesting, especially the parallels and contrasts the author can draw between the family under the Qing and under Mao.
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