Daughters of Shandong

The Daughters of Shandong (2024) is a work of historical fiction by human rights lawyer Eve J. Chung. The work is inspired by Chung’s family history, particularly the experience of her maternal grandmother, whose family was displaced during the Communist Revolution in China and who eventually established a new home in Taiwan.

The Daughters of Shandong is told through the eyes of Hai, the eldest daughter of the Ang family. After Hai, her mother, and her sisters are turned out of their home in Zhucheng during the Revolution, they endure a long, difficult journey to reunite with Hai’s father. Their time as refugees teaches Hai valuable lessons about self-preservation, community, and the importance of financial independence as she struggles to achieve her own goals within a culture that systematically devalues women. Through the experiences of Hai and those she loves, Chung explores the consequences of war, trauma, displacement, and gender-based discrimination while telling a story of survival and triumph.

This guide uses the 2024 Berkley hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source text and guide feature depictions of violence, death, gender-based discrimination, and war. There is also mention of death by suicide, expressions of prejudice toward people with disabilities, and reference to termination of a pregnancy.

Plot Summary

The Angs are wealthy landlords living in the town of Zhucheng in the Shandong province of China. Hai’s grandfather and father teach at Shandong University and her uncle Jian is an officer in the Nationalist Army, which is fighting a war with the Communists. Jian has a son, Chiao, who is close to Hai in age and is the family’s cherished male heir. Hai’s grandmother, Nai Nai, is cruel and vengeful to Hai’s mother, Chiang-Yue, because she has borne four daughters but no sons. The cultural inferiority of girls is driven home to Hai when her two-year-old sister, Three, falls ill with tuberculosis. Nai Nai refuses to spend money for a doctor’s care and Three dies of the disease, leaving Hai and her mother devastated.

When their workers warn Hai’s mother that the Nationalist Army is retreating and the Communists are killing and removing landowners, Hai’s grandparents and father flee to the city of Qingdao, leaving Mom and the girls to defend their property. The Communist cadres arrive and turn the women out of their home. While they shelter in the animal shed of a kind neighbor, Hai is taken by the soldiers to stand in for her father in a denunciation rally. Hai is terrorized by being made to kneel on frozen ground while workers and Communist solders insult, throw things, and beat her. Several of the other landowners are killed before her eyes. Hai is traumatized by this event, fearful of the Communists and their hatred for what they call the oppressors and reactionaries.

Hai works with her mother to forge a travel permit that gains them entry to Qingdao. After living on the streets for a time, the women are taken in by Mom’s brother, who tells them the Angs have fled to Taiwan. Mom is determined to go south to rejoin the family. An Ang cousin, a policeman, helps them buy train tickets on the black market. Lan, the youngest daughter, falls ill with tuberculosis, while Di, the second daughter and closest to Hai in age, adapts to their makeshift life. After they trade their only gold coin for train tickets, the four women travel south and cross the border to Hong Kong. There they live as refugees, but at least they are not under Communist rule.

Living in the camp of Mount Davis, the women build a community and do their best to survive. They befriend other Northerners, including a displaced businessman and a wounded soldier. Mom gets a job at a match factory while Di befriends restaurants owners to work for food. Hai obtains paper and sets up a stand using her calligraphy skills to write letters, earning a bit of money to support them. They send a letter to the family in Taiwan and receive a reply from Nai Nai saying that Father intends to remarry. Mom is crushed, but Hai and Di look for ways to make a life for themselves, even when the people living in Mount Davis are removed to the remote location of Rennie’s Mill. They learn to look after one another even in difficult circumstances.

A letter comes from their uncle Jian, saying he can get the women entry permits to Taiwan. Mom is determined to return to the Angs because she believes their father can provide a better financial future for the girls, including arranging good marriages. Hai no longer trusts that their father truly cares about them, and Di doesn’t want to see him at all. She believes they are better off in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, they obtain their entry permits and travel to Taiwan.

Hai has mixed feelings about reuniting. Father, who didn’t know they were alive, appears glad to see them, but Nai Nai is rude and calls them “savages.” When Nai Nai returns to treating her mother cruelly, Hai does the unthinkable and talks back to Nai Nai, defending her mother, who has sacrificed everything for them. Di joins in, resisting Nai Nai’s authority. To preserve the peace, their father takes another job and moves the family to a different city where they can have their own home. There, Hai prospers. She is determined to get a job so that one day she can support her mother and sisters. She studies hard in school and, with her mother’s help, takes an exam that gains her entrance into the country’s top teaching school. Mom has another daughter and then the prized son, Ming. Hai is angry when she realizes that, after all they suffered because they are girls, her mother still gives Ming preferential treatment because he is a boy.

Hai’s determination to be independent drives her, even when she realizes she can never change her mother’s worldview. Hai meets and marries Jia-Shen, who supports her need to help her family. Di, on the other hand, doesn’t thrive in Taiwan. She falls in love, but when the family forces the couple apart, her spirit is broken. She marries and moves away, and Hai loses touch with her. Hai focuses all the more on her own children, a daughter and two sons, whom she is determined to give the best opportunities. She crams them with food when they are babies, recalling her own years of deprivation, and supports an education for all of them. When her daughter leaves for the United States to pursue a master’s degree, Hai sees her off at the airport with pride. She has given her daughter the freedom to choose her own life and happiness, and that feels like a great victory.