Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: a novel by Lisa See

Life in fin-de-siecle China was hard - just think about the additional burden of being a woman.

Two girls, growing up in a sister-like bond, watch their feet getting bound and aching terribly in order to take the perfect shape and give them perfect marriage prospects. 

This book was like a window to the room of a house: the room where women usually spent their time together; the room where they were allowed to develop a marginal, secret culture, best examplified by nu shu, their own writing. Have you even seen Chinese calligraphy? It's like art - or war (but isn't war an art as well, according to Sun Tzu?). These are men's letters: strong and confident. Women in the part of China where the novel takes place developed their own writing, since learning men's was out of reach. Theirs had weak, timid shapes. And where else to write it to keep it secret, but to the foldings of a fan?

Snow Flower was a sweet book. What I found very interesting was the fact that we see the story from the eyes of the woman that at some point wrongs the other. Her voice is regretful but there's heart-breaking honesty in it.

I was surprised to see that this book was made into a film, to be released next week. I suppose the raw material is not anything like Wild Swans, but I hope aesthetics can give us something in the spirit of Raise the Red Lantern, one of my favourite films of all time.

Tell me your thoughts on book and/or film, and I shall return after I do my own viewing, since it seems it takes a completely different turn, one that (somehow) includes Hugh Jackman:

You can buy Snow Flower and the Secret Fan here.