Of mothers and daughters
By Yang Guang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-16 09:55
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After a brief stint at the Lu Xun Literature Academy in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai, she moved to London in 1991 with her first husband, a university professor.
Before leaving China, she went back to Chongqing to visit her mother. They waved goodbye and she saw tears in her mother's eyes, despite her efforts at smiling.
"I knew what was on her mind. On the one hand, she felt happy for me because I could finally be away from the place that hated me and hurt me; on the other, introverted and hard-to-please as I was, she was worried about what and how I would suffer in the brave new world," she says.
Her mother was right. Although successful with her writing, she was not happy in marriage. Worse still, she suffered from severe depression, something she fights to this day.
"When you feel lonely and depressed, you have no one but yourself to turn to," she says. "Hunger in my childhood has taught me the power of perseverance. As long as I manage to survive today, I'm sure one day I will be better off than I am now."
She found London and Chongqing similar, both blanketed with fog. She once dreamed of crossing the Yangtze River and leaving Chongqing. Finding herself in a similar fog (in London), she wanted to come back. Her unhappy marriage ended in a divorce and she returned to Beijing in 2000.
Her mother's death in 2006 prompted the writing of Good Children of the Flowers, which, according to Xu Gang, associate professor with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, "connects two seemingly different periods and tells us about continuities" through "a compelling, compassionate, candid, and often shockingly revealing story about the mother-daughter relationship that endured through the years".
The new autobiography begins with the entire family gathering for mother's burial ceremony, leaving readers hungry to learn how mother spent her last days and how the writer ended up separating with her husband.
Fragmented memories and present realities interweave, consummating in the final poignant climax: Despite the much-improved financial condition of the family, her mother was never able to shake off memories of the extreme hunger she once endured. She simply refused to believe that those days of utter deprivation were a thing of the past.
"I never imagined I would write another book about mother and me," she says, "but I was always aware that only after doing this, could I find myself".
Hong Ying is now married to British writer and businessman Adam Williams and lives in Beijing. She is currently working on a fairytale for her 2-year-old daughter.