By Audrey Fong
It’s 1938, and Japan is making its way across China, bombing cities and killing Chinese people in its wake. It’s here that we meet the protagonists of Melissa Fu’s debut novel, Peach Blossom Spring: Meilin, a newly widowed mom, and her four-year-old son, Renshu. Together, they flee from their ancestral home in Changsha for what they hope will be a safer city, the newly established capital of Chongqing.
Fu’s novel follows Meilin and Renshu as they move throughout 20th century China, seeking safety and reprieve from the poverty and warfare plaguing the country, caused initially by the Japanese occupation of China and then later by the civil war between the Kuomintang and the communists. In the beginning of their journey, the two follow Meilin’s brother-in-law’s family wherever they go. While her brother-in-law’s position in the Kuomintang is vague, Meilin understands he is of enough importance within the party to keep the family safer and better fed than the general public at the time. Therefore, she relies on his position to keep her and Renshu safe.
Since I don’t want to give away the plot, I won’t say why Meilin and Renshu eventually depart from his family. But after they do, they find their way to Shanghai and then to Taiwan—a common migration pattern for many Chinese who sought to flee the communists and the same path my maternal ancestors took when they fled the communists. In Taipei, the two of them settle down and start their lives over; Meilin finds various jobs, while Renshu excels in his studies. When it’s time to pursue his master’s degree, Renshu moves to the U.S., where he changes his name to Henry, starts a family, and lives for the rest of the novel.
At first glance, it’s easy to compare Peach Blossom Spring to Min Jin Lee’s National Book Award-winning novel, Pachinko. Both novels follow several generations of one family as they navigate a tumultuous East Asia and much of their suffering is caused by Japanese colonization. However, unlike Pachinko, Peach Blossom Spring does not continue to focus on the impact that Japanese policies have on the family. Instead, it focuses on how Meilin and Henry are impacted by the traumas of war and what life looks like for refugees.
In that way, Peach Blossom Spring reminded me more of Eric Nguyen’s Things We Lost to the Water and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do. In one scene after Henry has moved to the U.S., Henry “awakes to the smell of smoke. Bells clanging. Shouts, screams.” In response to the commotion, he jumps out of bed and screams at his neighbors’ doors that they need to run to the shelters. It turns out that a neighbor is smoking and it’s the smell that triggers Henry’s memories of war. This scene reminded me of Things We Lost to the Water’s opening chapter in which one of the main characters, a Vietnamese refugee, runs into the streets of New Orleans, briefly having flashbacks to the war in Vietnam which lead her to believe New Orleans is at war and of a scene in The Best We Could Do in which the narrator’s first response to an emergency is to grab her important documents and run outside. This focus on the refugee trauma response and how war continues to shape refugees’ lives grounds Peach Blossom Spring firmly in refugee literature.
This is especially apparent in the way Fu portrays Henry’s adulthood in the U.S. On his first date with his future wife, Henry summarizes his life’s story “as simply as possible” and ends by saying, “Eventually, we made it to Taiwan. I worked hard, was lucky, and came here, met you.” Henry keeps much of his previous life purposefully vague to his wife and their daughter, Lily, not wanting to delve into his trauma. He remains worried that sharing too much could harm his status in the U.S. or endanger his mother who is still in Taipei. At this point in the novel, Henry hears of rumors that the Kuomintang is locking up anyone who insults the party or appears to be a communist sympathizer, so he is worried about spies reporting him and of the new government in Taiwan harming his mother in response.
This refusal to speak on China injures his relationship with his daughter, who desperately wants to learn about her heritage, showing how his experience with war and being a refugee continues to haunt his daily life even after he arrives in a country of refuge. Tracey Lien’s All That’s Left Unsaid and The Best We Could Do – both stories about Vietnam War refugees – both similarly illustrate how war, trauma, and refugeedom can affect a parent’s relationship with their children by having fathers who cope with their trauma by drinking and smoking. Whether it’s refusing to ever speak on China or substance abuse, both of these devices work to show the lingering effects of war and the ways trauma paints a refugee’s everyday life.
Peach Blossom Spring is an impressive and expansive debut, covering decades of Chinese history and portraying one refugee experience in a way that feels simultaneously both unique and universal. It is a must-read for those interested in modern-Chinese history or in refugee literature.
Peach Blossom Spring is available from Alexander Book Company, Barnes and Noble, Fire Femme Books, Kinokuniya, Laguna Beach Books, Loyalty Bookstore, and Waucoma Bookstore.
Audrey Fong is a writer, interested in food, coming of age stories, and Asian American narratives. She earned her B.A. in English from UC Irvine and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.