Daughters of Shandong

Hai’s mother was born in Rizhao to the Dao family, who are biao cousins to the Angs, which is a familial relationship in which marriage is permitted. Her feet were injured by early attempts at binding that her mother later abandoned. Her feet come to represent Mom’s position as caught between two worldviews, one traditional and one modern. She inherited the deeply traditional Confucian beliefs of her youth that regard girls as beings of inferior value who must be subservient within the family. However, the footbinding was incomplete, leaving Mom with “large” or “peasant” feet. While she needs large feet to navigate the travels and hardships awaiting her, the injuries done to her feet make these efforts additionally painful for her. Just as she never assimilates the post-war worldview that has changing ideals about gender, so too do Mom’s feet never truly fit her for the new world, either.

Mom chooses to remain trapped in old beliefs, staking her future on her son, whose duty will be to care for her in her old age, just as Father is obligated to care for Nai Nai. Hai eventually realizes how deeply her mother has internalized the worldview of her youth, realizing, “Mom’s love for us chained her to her past” (271). When Mom wants to return to Taiwan, even when they see opportunities for freedom in Hong Kong, Hai realizes, “every move she made was motivated by sacrifice […] her willingness to go back to the Angs was a testament to her love, not for our father, but for us” (271). Mom believes that only her husband can provide a better future for her girls, bringing them good husbands, community status, and economic security.

The idea that a woman could support herself is utterly foreign to Mom, which makes her unable to realize what Hai is offering her later in life. Mom’s reflex is to sacrifice her own needs for her children, particularly Ming, as demonstrated when she tells Hai to sign the apartment Hai bought for Mom over to Ming. Hai sees her mother’s “courage and altruism” (271) as heroic, encapsulated in the image of her as victorious when she reaches Qingdao by whatever means possible. While Mom is willing to be strong and bold in defending her children’s interest, she is nevertheless unable and unwilling to assert herself for her own sake.

While the young Hai often thinks of Mom’s sacrificial quality as a strength, she ultimately realizes that Mom can never break free of the pre-war belief that it was “a world in which men operated, and women were significant only insofar as they could perpetuate this way of life through the births of heirs” (372). Only when she has raised her son to adulthood is Mom able to stand up for herself before Nai Nai’s cruelty, finally stepping free of the burdens of obligation to her mother-in-law.

Di, the second girl in Hai’s family and only a year apart in age from Hai, is Hai’s foil throughout the novel, as she is more independent and defiant in the face of family demands. As a young girl, Hai says, “Di was always in her own world and seemed happiest when left alone” (14).

Di’s independence and self-sufficiency are only one way that Di stands out in a culture that values communal bonds and familial affiliations over individual autonomy. While Hai as a child accepts that girls are valued below boys, Di never submits to this value system, perhaps because her name, “Brother,” indicates that she feels she should be treated equally. Where Hai struggles with hurt over their father’s distance, Di is ready to cut ties altogether. She sees no reason to try to reconcile with the Angs when they so clearly rejected Mom and her daughters by leaving them behind in Zhucheng.

Di’s independence causes conflict with Hai, who resents Di’s instincts for self-preservation in finding and keeping her own food, like the eggs she takes from the Zhang chickens. Hai sees how her sister’s strong-mindedness puts her in conflict with her environment: “Di was a firecracker in a society in which restraint was a virtue” (142). Hai also perceives Di’s self-sufficiency as, in some cases, a virtue: “In times of hardship, Di was a one-woman show, and as a result she was not just a survivor, but a climber” (166). Hai also notes that “Di at her core was a survivor, not a loyalist” (244), as she adapts to whatever situation she is in, whether it is taking flour from the Communist cadres in Qingdao or befriending restaurant owners in Hong Kong.

Di is defined by being “scrappy and clever” (365) up until the family’s reunion in Taiwan. For all her adeptness at surviving physical hardship, Di’s emotional loss breaks her when her lover Li-Tang ends their relationship and refuses to acknowledge the child he fathered. Tang cousins, who share the same surname, cannot marry, as they are considered siblings. While Di is willing to go against tradition, the rest of her family, including Li-Tang, are not.

It is this heartbreak that seems to take away Di’s spark, and Hai thinks that, after her abortion, Di has become a ghost. True to her survival abilities, Di marries, but the break with her birth family is definitive. When Di leaves, Hai thinks, “I had lost a part of myself” (371). It is Hai, and not Di, who is able to adapt and thrive in the new world, with Di’s tragic character arc providing a contrast to that of Hai and Mom, who eventually triumph.