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The Crippled Tree (China : Autobiography, History, Book 1)

by Han Suyin

4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 · rating details · 69 ratings · 11 reviews

In The Crippled Tree Han Suyin evokes, through the life of her two families (eastern and western), a panorama of the history of China from 1885 to 1928. It contains eye-witness accounts, from family papers, of the Sino-French War, of the revolution of 1911 and of the emergence of Chiang Kai-shek. This book is more compelling than history and more profound than biography: i ...more

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Published August 1st 1972 by Triad Books (first published 1965)

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Apr 28, 2015 Jordan Nelson added it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The book, "The Crippled Tree", told the story of Han Suyin and her parents during the turmoil of early China. The story begins with Han Suyin's father, Chou Wei. Beginning with his life from the home of a middle class family, he was the son of an engineer of Hakka descent and then the story progresses up until he meets Han Suyin's mother, Marguerite, who was Flemish. The two would meet in Belgium while Chou Wei was studying, Marguerite would fall in love with Chou Wei and follow him to China. Th The book, "The Crippled Tree", told the story of Han Suyin and her parents during the turmoil of early China. The story begins with Han Suyin's father, Chou Wei. Beginning with his life from the home of a middle class family, he was the son of an engineer of Hakka descent and then the story progresses up until he meets Han Suyin's mother, Marguerite, who was Flemish. The two would meet in Belgium while Chou Wei was studying, Marguerite would fall in love with Chou Wei and follow him to China. The story of the two continues until the birth of Han Suyin, and because of her mother's European background and her father's Chinese background, Han Suyin is born Eurasian. In "The Crippled Tree" she describes the experiences that come with being Eurasian in China as well as living during the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek. Han Suyin was able to describe the events during the time, such as famine, war, and revolution with such painstakingly real emotions, it was a beautiful story.

"The Crippled Tree" was written by 'Han Suyin' which was the pen name for Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou. The story is based on the real events of her and her family during the revolutions in China and the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek. The event of Han Suyin were actual events as well as the stories of her parents. As a historical biography/autobiography what is told is left to the discretion of the author, but from the people that I have researched, all were present during the time period.

I enjoyed the book "The Crippled Tree", it was a different twist on looking at these awful events. I liked the view that she wrote from, it was a younger view than what I'm used to when I read war or revolution novels. I enjoyed how passionate she was about everything she wrote, she showed how fragile the human spirit was and that no matter how strong, it is susceptible it was to breakage. "Indeed it is suffering, to go on growing, to hold what is, to try to understand, to knock down one's own preconceptions. To find one's memories ravaged by time and revolution, one's intimate illusions ripped up, laughter for one''s own private desolation the only answer; to realize how difficult, agonizing, is the process of understanding, and how long it takes." I really loved how much emotion was put into her words, there was a lot of passion and love and hate as well as fear mixed up into every sentence, it just gave you chills. "I could see now clearly how terrible it was, so narrow, famed in: my life, which I could not leap away from."

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes stories of war or revolution or likes to read biographies or autobiographies where you can create a connection with the author. This book is also extremely honest and takes you directly to China during the revolution. At times, it can be a difficult book to read, but in the end it weaves a beautiful story. ...more

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Mar 29, 2015 Perry Whitford rated it 5 of 5 stars

'The Chinese have always been history-minded, the one people with a continuous recorded chronicle of their own for two thousand five hundred years ... No peoples escape history, but they are more aware of it than some other nations'.

Han Suyin (real name Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou) was a Eurasian writer born of a Chinese father of Szechuan stock a and Belgium mother, raised in China but educated abroad later, where she married and divorced a British army officer.

In this wonderful book, the fir 'The Chinese have always been history-minded, the one people with a continuous recorded chronicle of their own for two thousand five hundred years ... No peoples escape history, but they are more aware of it than some other nations'.

Han Suyin (real name Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou) was a Eurasian writer born of a Chinese father of Szechuan stock a and Belgium mother, raised in China but educated abroad later, where she married and divorced a British army officer.

In this wonderful book, the first part in a series of autobiographies, she states that her purpose was 'to understand, through one family, the long feudal millenniums of China', a history that she saw as ripe for replacement by the Communist revolution.

Her father's Chou family were descended from Hakkas, the Guest People, refugees who moved in times of flood, drought and war. It was important for the women to work also, therefore 'Hakka women went chest and foot-free, and consequently tongue-free'.

She begins from the year 1885 - the birth of her father - and his experiences, alongside those of his military brother, Suyin's 'Third Uncle' in the Chinese phrase, guide us through the turbulent early years of the 20th century China, which included The Boxer Rebellion (or the Uprising of the Righteous Fists) in 1900.

As impressive as Suyin's writing is throughout, the extracts from her father's memoir that she includes are even more so. Chou Yentung proves to have had the sensitivity and penetration of a true poet, and his contributions provide real insight into the millennia long feudal society of ancestor worship, Confucianism, continuity and imitation that were becoming increasingly inadequate to deal with a modern China harassed by external enemies, such as in this extract:

'All, the mountains, the clouds, the fields, the river going its long journey to the sea, all the matter for literature, all had been matter for history. Every spot had its actual event and also its legend, its appropriate verse, its place in the knowledge of the generations past and those to come. All had been done, commemorated, commented on. Hence at times the real was the calligraphy, and not what really happened; the maxims on the wall were alive, not the revolts and the humiliations'.

In the second half of the book, the young Suyin starts to emerge as the focus for her own story as the centuries old Manchu dynasty comes unstuck in 1928, and the funny thing is, as overwhelmed as I was by her narrative dexterity, I was not even sure if I much liked the author herself.

Admittedly arrogant and full of herself, she really sticks it to mother, who she paints as a selfish, whining racist and an awful parent. Maybe she was, but there is certainly something uncomfortably vindictive in her daughter's portrayal of her, especially when held up alongside the saintly picture she paints of her father.

Nonetheless, The Crippled Tree is a perceptive and fascinating insight into the China of the first half of the 20th century, a China starting to feel the effects of letting the outside world in; as told by someone born into the right circumstances and with the questing, inquisitive nature required to study and consider it.
...more

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Jun 29, 2014 Missy J rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2014-books

FINALLY! Done with this book.
I have many conflicting thoughts about this book, so I will try my best to put it out here in a coherent manner.

First of all, this book has 461 pages. Goodreads may want to take note of that.

Secondly, the reader should keep in mind that this book was published in 1965, just as the Cultural Revolution started. I wonder if the author would've written this book in a different tone if she had, let's say instead written this book in 1978. But the communists don't really FINALLY! Done with this book.
I have many conflicting thoughts about this book, so I will try my best to put it out here in a coherent manner.

First of all, this book has 461 pages. Goodreads may want to take note of that.

Secondly, the reader should keep in mind that this book was published in 1965, just as the Cultural Revolution started. I wonder if the author would've written this book in a different tone if she had, let's say instead written this book in 1978. But the communists don't really play a major role in this book as it traces the events of the author's life and China in general from 1885 to 1928.

This leads me to my third point, which is a critique. Did the author aim to write an autobiography or a history book? I wished that the author would be more clear on this or that she would've hired an editor (no one is credited in the book for editing) for suggestions on the book. Because this was very confusing to me. The parts about her life were excellent; I, myself as an Eurasian can easily identify with the conflicting emotions the author went through and also how the cultural differences of her parents brought a lot of tension into the family home. I applaud the author for bringing to light the ugly truth of interracial marriages and the problems faced in her family. I also do not mind when some political and historical facts are provided for the background story. However, I cannot accept that a character out of NOWHERE pops up, who has no relationship with the family or the story whatsoever, and that a whole chapter of almost 50 pages (it felt like a 100 pages) are dedicated to just add more historical value to the background. It was so boring and dreadful to read chapter 16, that I have to remove two starts at least out of five.

Because of that lackluster chapter, I'm not interested to read the second book. Maybe if I don't have any other books to read, I will give "A Mortal Flower" a chance, but for now there are other books waiting for me.

To finish off this review, I would like to share some interesting points from "The Crippled Tree":
"If today China is Communist, is the Western Powers which forced her into it; and if the peoples of Asia are beginning to believe that nothing can be achieved except by the power of the gun, it is because that was proved by decades of violence. Everyone is conditioned by experience; our future made before we are born. Today the same lesson is being taught to future generations, the lesson that the gun is sole arbiter in the end, and it is still the West which teaches this lesson." (p.265)
This is a very interesting point and I would have to do more research as to why the West support Yuan Shi Kai instead of Sun Yat Sen (if I understood it correctly).

"In Rosalie the necessity of knowing mutually contradictory truths without assuming any one of them to be the whole truth, became in childhood the only way to live on, to live and to remain substantial. And she was astonished that others were unwilling to accept the discomfort of always being partly wrong, of never knowing a total answer; the became so sure, believing on thing only, preferring a cosy semi-blindness to the pricking clarity of doubt." (p. 382)
Beautiful quote summarizing the experience of a person growing up with multiple cultures.

How I wished, this book had been structured better and focused more on the family. Or has Isabel Allende spoiled my reading expectations?
...more

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May 20, 2013 Steven Langdon rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is the first of a five-volume autobiography/history of her background and life in China by noted author (and medical doctor) Han Suyin. I have been an admirer of Dr. Han ever since I heard her speak at a Teach-In on the Vietnam War, and read her passionate novel, "A Many-Spendoured Thing."

This volume tells a remarkable and in many ways tragic story, recounting in detail the struggles of Han's father's Chinese family in the turmoil of 1850-1900 China -- and then the striking shift from This book is the first of a five-volume autobiography/history of her background and life in China by noted author (and medical doctor) Han Suyin. I have been an admirer of Dr. Han ever since I heard her speak at a Teach-In on the Vietnam War, and read her passionate novel, "A Many-Spendoured Thing."

This volume tells a remarkable and in many ways tragic story, recounting in detail the struggles of Han's father's Chinese family in the turmoil of 1850-1900 China -- and then the striking shift from there to study abroad in Belgium for her father, marked by his even more unusual marriage to a well-educated Belgian woman. Their romantic pairing takes the couple confidently back to China, only to confront harsh conflicts and prejudices on all sides -- ultimately undermining their love, and shaping resentments that cripple their life together, and the future of their children.

Despite this dramatic core, I found this volume a very slow read -- mainly because Han Suyin recounts not just her own life, but that of her various family members, using detailed excerpts from diaries and letters that probe many experiences exhaustively. It was easy to get bogged down in specifics, and become diverted from the overall relationships being traced. The author is also anxious to incorporate many aspects of 1885-1928 Chinese history in this book -- including documentation of various regional uprisings and careful probing of railway financing.

Nevertheless, this is a powerful and compelling book, because it presents such a vivid and comprehensive picture of parts of China, and how they were devastated by the years of foreign intervention that marked this period. To understand the nationalism of current China, and the sense of confidence that has grown in the country, one must absorb the depths of distrust and deprivation created in past years and subsequently transcended. ...more

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Aug 19, 2010 Pamela Webster rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the first of Han Suyin's books on the History of China but features her own family and the record of their history. It is thoroughly engrossing and humbles this reader who knows so little about the history of Asia.
I have learned that the recent era (since 1949) is just one act in a series of many acts in the great drama that is China. The ongoing dilemma of how to rule a country with many traditions and dialects so far removed from each other is ongoing, -- perpetual, if you will. The si ...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Nava rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. The author is a Eurasian - Belgian mother, Chinese father.
I recognize the story the story of any third culture kid, but it's by far more than.
It's the manuscripts and letters of family members before she born, it is the story of her family. But it is also the history of China from about 1900 to 1930. It made me realize just how big an influence and how many hopes were placed on the railroad at the time. And just how violent and brutal the take over by European countr ...more

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Oct 09, 2014 Cindy rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book was difficult to get involved in. Parts of it were uninteresting. It was also difficult to follow who was speaking; it changed too frequently. The book is full of history and in that sense, is quite interesting, but not an easy read. The latter part of the book had more personal details and was more interesting. Probably wouldn't recommend this book unless you want to know more about the history of China in this time period.

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Sep 16, 2012 Pippa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography , china

Superb. Gave a huge amount of insight into her life in China. I went on and read every volume of her autobiography.

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May 07, 2013 Francesca Lorenzini rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: oriente , interrotto , divano

E' troppo lento e dispersivo... Mi sono trascinata fino a metà ma ora mi arrendo.

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Jun 11, 2008 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A sad story beautifully told.

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Dec 17, 2010 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography , china-background

Another one that I must read again!

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About Han Suyin

Han Suyin (Pinyin: Hán Sùyīn) is the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow (Pinyin: Zhōu Guānghú). She is a Chinese-born Eurasian
author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and autobiographical works, as well as a physician. She currently resides in Lausanne and has written in English and French.

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Birdless Summer (China : Autobiography, History, Book 3)

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