Product Description

This is an insightful and moving memoir of a woman who has lived in two worlds: old China and modern America. Born in 1929 to a wealthy family in China, her childhood memories revolve around four unconventional people: a mother possessed by a ghost, an aristocratic grandmother who was an opium addict, a flamboyant father and an elusive aunt. In the background was a mysterious grandfather, murdered at the age of thirty-nine, and a German microscope he left behind. Mei Liu's early life was marked by family tragedies and dark secrets, and harrowing tales of living under Japanese occupation and Communist rule.

Mei Liu was born in 1929 in Hunan, China. She fled to Taiwan in 1949, graduated from Taiwan University Medical School and immigrated to America in 1953. She served on the faculties of the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and Brown University. In 1989, she returned to Asia and taught at Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and Hunan University in China. She retired in 1997 and now lives in Honolulu. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.