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A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (Light on China )

by Ning Lao T'ai-T'ai , Ida Pruitt

3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 · rating details · 237 ratings · 26 reviews

Within the common destiny is the individual destiny. So it is that through the telling of one Chinese peasant woman's life, a vivid vision of Chinese history and culture is illuminated. Over the course of two years, Ida Pruitt—a bicultural social worker, writer, and contributor to Sino-American understanding—visited with Ning Lao T'ai-ta'i, three times a week for breakfast ...more

Paperback , 264 pages

Published June 1st 1945 by Stanford University Press (first published 1945)

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Mar 31, 2012 Nick Dupree rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

A wonderful, insightful narrative of East Asia's tumultuous history, from the eyes and lips of an old Chinese woman.

History is, ultimately, the story of people and their relations, whether peaceful, characterized by the worst violence and gore, or the myriad of grays in between. The "Great Man" historians offer a lot of the peoples' story, through the words of the great leaders and their actions and reactions to the people and society they helped lead, and for that reason I'd never discount "Gr A wonderful, insightful narrative of East Asia's tumultuous history, from the eyes and lips of an old Chinese woman.

History is, ultimately, the story of people and their relations, whether peaceful, characterized by the worst violence and gore, or the myriad of grays in between. The "Great Man" historians offer a lot of the peoples' story, through the words of the great leaders and their actions and reactions to the people and society they helped lead, and for that reason I'd never discount "Great Man" histories and still read them. But I've learned the best way to figure out the story of a people is from the horse's mouth, reading the narratives of the people of that time and place and learning from that common, everyday person the rhythms of that past culture, how the society functioned, etc. etc. This story of a Chinese working woman as told by the woman herself is an excellent example of such a narrative, a great and sweeping social history of China's working majority. This is social history at its finest—or perhaps, since it was first published in the '30s, a proto-social history that served as a crucial model for every social historian that followed.

"Daughter of Han" is an intimate portrait, not only of a woman's long, rich life and experiences, but also a rare glimpse of a late Imperial China in the throes of dynastic decline, foreign aggression, and, eventually, revolutionary social and political change.

Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai (roughly equivalent to “old lady Ning” or “granny Ning” in English) began, and spent the bulk of her life, in Pénglái, a port city in Shandong province, and a culture wedded to tradition. Nowhere was tradition more strictly upheld than in Shandong, which, being the birthplace of Confucius and the home of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu, was the epicenter of traditional Confucianism. Ning, though admittedly devoted to tradition herself, nonetheless refers to Pénglái as a “conservative and provincial” place deeply concerned with “saving face” (p. 120) where rules for women are strict (people worry women may have been menstruating or “with her husband” and are “unclean.”)

Ning explains that women, especially young women newly eligible for marriage, are better never seen or heard, sequestered indoors or in an inner court. When parents came asking after a girl to be a future daughter-in-law and asked "what is that girl like?" and neighbors said they didn't know who that girl is, that meant she was a good girl. "We've never seen her before" was a big compliment (p. 29). Bound feet, a tradition that all strata of Chinese society held dear and was at peak popularity during Ning's lifetime, were essential for a good match: “match-makers don't ask 'is she beautiful?' they ask 'are her feet small?'" (p. 22) Ning had bound feet, and for women in late Imperial Pénglái unbound feet “are a sign of laziness." The Muslims, or “Mohammadeans,” of China were one of the only groups that opposed foot binding, believing that people should leave the world as unaltered as they entered it. (p. 101)

Though a deeply traditional society, Americans may be surprised at how enlightened some Chinese practices were during this period. Facing no official discrimination, Chinese Muslims had great social mobility. They served at every level, as Mandarins, officials, bureaucrats, generals, soldiers, and had no barriers to rising in rank. Though Ning herself condemned prostitution, it was tolerated, and gay behavior was also tolerated, not punished by death as in European and Middle Eastern societies of the 19th century. The opium addicted Assistant Prefect had a son who “swayed like a woman and didn't care for his wife, spending all his time with actors and female impersonators.” (pp. 111-112) To devote time not to work but to leisurely pursuits, odd ones or not, was equally privileged and strange from Ning's perspective. Work is what brings merit.

Merit determines not only success, but personhood. Ning relays the story of her son-in-law and his family: despite descending from successful military men, not one of the four sons “became a person” (p. 170). Her son-in-law rarely held down a job, and even tried to sell Ning's daughter for money to feed his opium habit before she thwarted him. But Ning also tells of “a woman who had four sons and begged. She raised them and all four became Mandarins.” (p. 225) An auspicious fate and work can overcome a lot.

Reading Ning's experiences, one is acutely aware how deeply opium and opium addiction had wormed its way into the fabric of Chinese society and how much damage it had done. Ning admits that “everyone” in China has used opium to some degree (p. 83). And her husband, her “opium sot,” makes moot the Confucian obligation to be subordinate, as he is normally too drug-addled to work, and it's her that always must work to support the children and maintain the family's “face.” Ning says that those who eat opium “have no face,” and that is readily apparent when her husband sells their daughter (p. 66) for 3500 dollars to spend on opium (p. 67). Ning laments that women had no rights back then, the husband could do whatever he wanted with the children, including sell them to the neighborhood brothel, and the mother was legally helpless (Ning implies she *does* support some of the Republic-era progress in women's rights). After she gets her daughter back by arguing the sale was invalid, Ning's husband promises not to sell her again, only to sell her again soon after. (p. 71) Ning's daughter ended up sold to the wife of a magistrate for an unknown sum, and seeing the child well-provided for in an affluent household, she leaves her there, knowing that her husband and his opium addiction will make it hard to feed the child. Pruitt admirably refrains from inserting her own views into Ning's life story, but even without any editorializing, it is easy to understand why the Qing government issued edicts forbidding opium and launched numerous campaigns to stop the drug's spread.

The Chinese people were incredibly resilient throughout the terrifying and violent upheavals of this period. Shandong province, containing the easternmost extent of the North China Plain and the Shandong peninsula that sticks out and divides the Bóhăi Sea from Yellow Sea, has been of critical importance throughout Chinese history and is the stage for many momentous events and much turmoil during Ning's life. Though the narrative is strangely silent on the Boxer Rebellion, which incubated in Shandong, Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai feels the effects of Japanese aggression acutely. You can nearly feel the panic in Ning's descriptions when the Japanese Navy first shows up at Pénglái, perhaps as part of the First Sino-Japanese War (p. 87) and she and everyone she knows frantically try to leave the city as Japanese gunboats' cannons roar and shells scream past the rooftops overhead (p. 88).

Even as Japanese conquest advances deep into China and societal stress reaches unprecedented levels as the Second Sino-Japanese War nears in the '30s and Ning's narrative draws to a close, Ning offers rare insights into Chinese resiliency during this time and the ideas behind it. Five stars. ...more

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Apr 13, 2015 Briana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommends it for: History buffs, People interested in modern China

Shelves: school-reading

Very good book on the working class women.

Read it for a history class at school. The mood of this book is very much someone reading it to you, very similar to an oral story written down. Some of the sentences are structured awkwardly but that I believe comes from the translation into english, or T'ai-T'ai speaking in english. There are places where she jumps from topic to topic very quickly, but for the most part it is structured in major events such as her wedding or her moving towns.

One thing ...more

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Jan 06, 2014 Rita rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography , memoir-autobiography , novels-set-in-other-countries

1945 [Yale Univ Press], 1967 and after: Stanford
Subtitle: The autobiogrphay of a Chinese working woman

Esp. meaningful to me because I knew Ida Pruitt in Philadelphia, she was already around 80 then. A very independent person, she knew what was important and what wasn't.

I bleed for this woman and her children for the life-long consequences of being so poorly raised. She and her family could have used some good family therapists.
Apparently Lao Tai-tai was an entertaining talker and sociable person 1945 [Yale Univ Press], 1967 and after: Stanford
Subtitle: The autobiogrphay of a Chinese working woman

Esp. meaningful to me because I knew Ida Pruitt in Philadelphia, she was already around 80 then. A very independent person, she knew what was important and what wasn't.

I bleed for this woman and her children for the life-long consequences of being so poorly raised. She and her family could have used some good family therapists.
Apparently Lao Tai-tai was an entertaining talker and sociable person, seeing how valued she seemed to be as a servant in so many households [mostly Chinese, but also missionary ones, mostly American or English]. But as she keeps saying, she has a terrible temper and can fly off the handle causing irreparable trouble for herself..

Interesting comparison of easy Chinese housekeeping vs. complicated time-consuming European/US [making beds; sweeping brick-paved floor vs. sweeping carpet].

It's true the writing is not very smooth, often clumsy, unnecessary repetition here and there. One would have liked more detail for almost each of the incidents described, but perhaps Lao Ning did not give more detail.
On the other hand, Pruitt puts a lot of things into context for us quite unobtrusively, that we certainly wouldn't have been able to make sense of otherwise.

"The young master, the young mistress and my mistress fought all night [about me]. But they talked it through. Chinese are that way. if a matter has been talked through there are no dregs left. I stayed on and their faces were not changed toward me and they treated me as before." 84

[I worked for Mohammedans, for Christians, and for ordinary Chinese.] I saw around me those that were baptized and those that were not. There did not seem to me to be any difference in their characters or their actions. The ones that were baptized were on the payroll of the church and the others were not. That was all the difference I could see.' 192

"A friend of mine from Qixia, a poor mountainous district, said the reason Penglai [her village, on the coast of Shandong] was not as wealthy as it had been was because they had been stealing the poverty of Qixia. In all the great homes and the yamens of Penglai there were cooks and teaboys from Qixia. And the men of wealth and the officials did not know the difference between these and women. They used them as such, each man with the servants in his house." 181

...more

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Jun 01, 2008 Carrie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: too-awful-to-complete

half way through and couldn't finish. way too old, this lady is just babbling and if there was a plot i couldn't follow it.

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May 31, 2013 Rebekah Lewis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: china-modern , women , cultural-revolution , bibliographic , china-historic

An "autobiography" - this is the story of Ning L. T'Ai-T'ai told by Ida Pruitt as she heard her story over several meetings. Ning lived in the last days of China's Qing dynasty. Born with some of the worst luck, she makes the best of her surroundings and friends to overcome the troubles of an opiate addicted husband and the troubles he bought to her. Not really poor, not rich, Ning is an outlier of her time - a working class woman and a true revolutionary (though she would have never seen hersel ...more

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May 01, 2014 Christian Patterson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

As literature, it's really dry. This is more like a history book on a very micro level. So you get a lot of good insights into late Qing Dynasty/Warlord Era/early modernizing China. But it isn't so great to read as a narrative

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Aug 14, 2015 Jason Honeycutt rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of those books that's alright, and then every now and again skims a passage of pure gold across placid surface of words. Overall ok, but an extremely fast read that gives insight from an average person's point of view during the era

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Mar 03, 2014 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: school-books , china

This book is a very interesting look into the life of a woman in China at the turn of the century. If you are interested in Chinese history, especially from a female perspective, I definitely recommend this book. However, I didn't like the writing style. The author seems to have copied straight down what the woman told her. I think it could have used some editing and rearranging since the style was very anecdotal. This made it difficult to figure out times and dates, since she seemed to be jumpi ...more

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Nov 01, 2013 Becca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: chinese-studies

The narrative makes a lot more sense if you are familiar with the geography of where Ning lives and what is happening in China during this period. Ning grew up on a coastal town of China, in the age where foreigners (missionaries and some traders) were common sights. Most important, this really illustrates the debilitating impact opium addiction had on many families. The tale ends with Japanese bombing in the early 1900's.

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Jun 05, 2008 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

This autobiography gives more than a few insights into the life of a woman struggling to survive in a culture that is not accepting of opinions that vary from those of the government. She struggles, not because of who she is, but because of the people she chooses to associate with. I enjoyed stepping into the mind of this corageous woman and watching her slow ascension up the bittersweet mountain of triumph.

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Jun 23, 2012 Heather added it

This book is better understood with knowledge of Chinese culture, otherwise it would not make for an interesting read. Also,it is a period piece and the whole of Chinese culture should not be based off of a single woman's story. I have read this book twice and found myself polarized by the poverty and strength of Nang each time.

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Nov 28, 2007 Maureen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommends it for: anyone interested in eastern culture and history

I found this as a really unique view into the life of a woman living through WWI and the beginnings of WWII in China. I knew little about the cultural history of this part of the world, so I learned a lot about the effects of foot binding, the introduction of Opium into their society, and the Japanese Occupation.

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Nov 13, 2008 Lars rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: college-books

Some ethnocentrism comes from this autobiography of a late nineteenth century working Chinese woman, including her marriage, troubles and hopes. Not only a good read for someone interested in the period itself, but for those looking for primary sources related to feminism or gender studies.

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Apr 12, 2008 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In my quest for more information on China, I read this autobiography. It was dictated by a Chinese woman to the wife of a preacher. It offers a lot of insight into daily life of the Chinese during the latter part of the 19th century, and illuminates some of the aftershocks of globalization.

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Jul 30, 2015 Shane rated it 4 of 5 stars

"We women knew nothing but to comb our hair and bind our feet and wait at home for our men." Excellent autobiography of Chinese peasant woman Lao T'ai-t'ai who lived during the transition from the Qing Dynasty into the Republic of China.

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Apr 17, 2008 Gina rated it 2 of 5 stars

this book started out pretty good... a lot of interesting stories that really grabbed you in... but towards the end it got pretty dry and boring (i actually didn't even read the last like 20 pages)

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Aug 02, 2014 Joshua Deaver rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

It's not often that you view the life and times of the 'small' people. This was a great look at life and times. It is extremely tough to get a book out of the East Asian powers that is true to form.

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Apr 08, 2015 Neal Adolph rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: grad-school , 2013-reads , non-fiction

A fascinating oral history of a Chinese woman struggling with a rapidly changing China and rapidly changing life. Heartbreaking and heartbuilding.

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Dec 17, 2012 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was fantastic. I couldn't put it down. It was nice reading about a China no one in our lifetime got to see.

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Jun 17, 2007 Kat rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: class

Good, if you're looking for a book describing the daily life of regular folk.

Similar feel to The Good Earth.

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May 25, 2013 AlyaziaMKY rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: english

Indeed a period piece of Chinese history. A hardship and struggle of a mother to provide for her children.

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May 22, 2009 Meagan rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good one for understanding Chinese culture and also the bonds between women in that culture.

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Mar 27, 2012 tata rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: uofl

Fascinating look into Chinese culture from a woman's perspective.

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Mar 06, 2009 Angie Solvie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an incredible book

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Oct 01, 2014 Emma rated it 4 of 5 stars

Super interesting

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Jul 22, 2009 Heidi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fabulous read!

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Katie Bailey rated it 4 of 5 stars
Sep 22, 2015

Alexa marked it as to-read
Sep 19, 2015

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Sep 26, 2015

Almielag marked it as to-read
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