Books's Face 1: A Phoenix's call at unwanted children

Chinese Cinderella

Childhood recollections by: Adeline Yen Mah

Publisher: Pearson Education Ltd.

First published: 1999

First educational edition: 2002

Source: Library, Ambo University, Ethiopia

Courtesy: Ms. Deepsikha Saikia, who lent me the book and patiently waited for long before I return.

17^th century Cinderella is an Italian. We change this notion while reading Adeline Yen Mah’s ‘Chinese Cinderella’ - a book that is not only an account of her childhood miseries, but also a handbook on Chinese history, language and literature. Mah’s self portrayal of her childhood agonies and stiff sessions of seclusion are heart rendering. Rightly, she has dedicated the 1999-published book to ‘all unwanted children’.

Adeline turns a Chinese Cinderella once her father makes a second marriage and the couple begins making an unfair distinction between the previous children and their own children. Soon after giving birth to Adeline, her mother died. Father remarries. In her life she couldn’t even see a photograph of her real mother. Consequently the little child falls prey to a superstition. The child was believed to have bad blood that must bring only ill fate to the family. This brought huge extortions and pain in the life of a budding girl. Between 1941 and 1951, i.e. from the age of 4 to 14, she had more abominable things to recollect than adorable ones.

Constantly loving Aunt Baba, gracious grandmother, Nai Nai and generous grandfather Ye Ye were shades of solace. Instead, stepmother Niang and Father only sowed seeds of pain in the tender heart. Her siblings were but miserably influenced by the malice spread by the parents.

Success, achievements and celebrations are untold for a Cinderella, testifies Adeline’s life. Love, care and consideration are exclusive rights of children, except of Adeline’s sort. Scarce privileges and salubrious life experiences are only a mirage for children like Adeline whom parents consider unwanted.

Cities of Tianjin, Shanghai, and Hong Kong have contrast differences. But all these cities gave single bitter experience for Adeline: secluded boarding life, pitifully uncared by any elder from home. No letter, no egg, no special food, and no visitor – she had nothing to expect from home. School for Adeline was thus a lone asylum of dreams and pleasures – created by her and enjoyed by her.  During vacations, while she used to be the only girl unclaimed by parents, empty dormitory beds looked like scary rows of tombs. Still, instead of getting stuck by the dismay, the little girl spends her lonely hours in libraries simply to be engulfed by King Lear-kind of Shakespeare or Sara Crewe-kind of Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Prior to a play-writing competition when a disinterested Adeline told “I’m afraid of losing”, Mother Louis suggested, “Anyone who enters has a chance. However, if you don’t enter, then you certainly have destroyed your chance before you even begin”. When she was dejected for not hearing for over six months from the play-writing competition board, Mother Louisa tells her: “Be patient. No news is good news. As long as you don’t hear, you can keep on hoping […]”. As a child, Adeline had exceptional ability to identify and imbibe from the elixir contained in such elderly words.  She was blessed with a trait to understand the ‘talisman power’ of such words. That must be the secret virtue that made her emerge as the country’s first winner in an international English play-writing competition at the age of 14 and later anchor herself on the victory stands of life. This single aspect can alone motivate readers regardless of age and sex.

While concluding her own Cinderella-like experiences, she compares herself with a Chinese Cinderella named Ye Xian whose legendary story was prevalent during Tang Dynasty of 7^th and 8^th centuries. Ye Xian was loathed by her stepmother, but later emerged a shining star fighting life with sheer determination, hard work and optimism. Through her book Adeline introduces the same genre of phoenix inherent in her. The Adeline Phoenix should certainly kindle a flame of determination among all unwanted children in this modern world.

Adeline has made an admirable selection from the piles of her childhood reminiscences. She could arrange those memory blocks with a cherubic care to make an impressive ‘Chinese Cinderella’. While turning page after page, readers receive an irrefutable soft touch of a petite innocent girl. Line after line, she tweets charmingly the tale of a girl child who was nobody, but later becomes somebody – story of a girl spinning herself a life of dignity and delight against rudely abrasive abashments.

As readers finish reading ‘Chinese Cinderella’, they are gifted with a treasure trove of optimism. A clear insight upon the China of 1940s and 1950s, the wars won and lost and captivating aspects of Chinese calligraphy are just a bonus.

- K.P. Sivakumar