By Kevin Brown
Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s debut novel, Four Treasures of the Sky, follows Daiyu, a girl named after a poet from the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, who dies spitting up blood after her beloved marries another woman, as he believes her to be Lin Daiyu. Daiyu’s life, unfortunately, also has its own share of heartbreak and struggle, beginning with the arrest of her parents. She moves from one place to the next, at one point, being kidnapped in China and then, ultimately being forcibly shipped over to the United States, where more hardship awaits her. Zhang’s novel is set in the 1880s, a time when anti-Chinese prejudice was sweeping through the country, especially the Western United States, where Daiyu lives.
Complicating matters, once Daiyu leaves home after her parents’ arrest in China, she often pretends to be a boy or young man to protect herself. She changes names and identities as she moves from one place to another, a mirroring of her search to discover who she is. She spends most of the novel denying her name, which prevents her from recognizing the ways in which she reflects the positive attributes of Daiyu, the poet. Whether she is Feng or Jacob Li, when she is presenting as a male, or Peony, a female role she inhabits, Daiyu is unaware of her identity and her purpose.
Daiyu tries to draw on others’ ideas of who she should be in an effort to define herself. She often reflects on her parents’ life and what she knows about them, only to find out important information they kept from her, which reshapes her view of them later in her life. She also draws on Master Wang’s teachings on calligraphy she learned in China, before her kidnapping, as she uses art as a metaphor for how she should live her life. In fact, writing is an image that runs throughout the novel and Daiyu’s attempt at self-definition.
As Daiyu learns from Master Wang, she begins to see how tragedy—such as in the poet Daiyu’s life and work—can still convey beauty. When she comes to the United States, she encounters other girls and young women whom men have abused for their own profit. In thinking about how such women paint their eyebrows, she comments, “Now I am beginning to understand that tragedy makes things beautiful.” Later, when reflecting on a type of paper Master Wang shows her, one with an eye-catching design that resembles a tiger’s stripes, but is also rigid and dense due to the heavy treatment necessary for its appearance, she believes the paper is “a reminder that what is hardened can also be beautiful.” Despite all she endures, though, Daiyu never hardens herself, for good or ill. She remains naïve and trusting, which leads to her developing important friendships, but also prevents her from seeing the reality of the world she lives in.
She ultimately works to use her writing to try to create change in the world, but, more importantly, to create change in herself. When she helps write a letter to a Chinese American organization that works against those who would seek to prevent Chinese immigrants from coming to America and protects those Chinese Americans already in the country, she begins to find her name and her selfhood. As she writes, she thinks, “I envision the goddess Nuwa from Lin Daiyu’s story. Every stroke I make is a celestial repair of myself.” By tapping into her writing—a clear connection to Lin Daiyu, the poet—she begins to write her own story. After that moment, she continues to try to shape her own destiny rather than believing it must follow that of the poet.
However, Zhang the writer is not naïve, and she recognizes the reality of the world in which Daiyu lives. Much of the second half of the novel concerns the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the consequences of its enactment. Daiyu and her friends try to live in predominantly white environments, but the prejudice that inspired the act and that the act inspires dominates their lives and actions. There is no way to be Chinese American in the 1880s and not have to deal with that reality, much as they all try each in their individual ways.
Zhang wrote this novel in the years leading up to 2020, and the echoes between our time and Daiyu’s are clear. The Chinese Exclusion Act mirrors the travel ban and shutting of borders during the Trump Administration, both of which led to an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions. Then, during the beginnings of the pandemic, anti-Asian American rhetoric increased, leading to more attacks on the AAPI community. Zhang bases her novel on a historic event, but one that has little information, so she can create the details leading up to that event. She ties the event which ends her novel and Daiyu’s life to the realities of living as a member of the AAPI community in the late 2010s and into the early 2020s. The power of the novel lies in Zhang’s ability to create realistic characters who live in a world that is so distant from readers’ lives, while showing readers that, unfortunately, humanity hasn’t changed much.
As with all good historical fiction, Zhang’s novel is as much a commentary on the world in which she’s writing as it is with what once was. We come to care about these characters, especially Daiyu, because we want them all to have lives in which they find purpose and selfhood, the same characteristics we strive for in our own lives. Zhang wants readers to care about the contemporary world just as much, to care about people like Daiyu who want to live meaningful lives in a world that seems bent on preventing them from doing so simply because of their gender, their race/ethnicity, or any of the other ways we create to divide ourselves.
Four Treasures of the Sky is available from Bookshop, Green Bean Books, Laguna Beach Books, Skylight Books, West Side Books, and Wise Blood Booksellers.
Kevin Brown is a high school English teacher, book reviewer, and freelance writer in Nashville, TN. He’s published three books of poetry, a memoir, and a scholarly work. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or on his website.