March 3, 1999

Daughter of Han depicts the life and hardships of a Chinese working woman whose life begins in 1867. This was during a time when women were plagued by bound feet and arranged marriages, as well as many other hardships. Ning Lao T'ai T'ai was born and raised throughout most of her life in the city of Penglai of Shantung province. She comes from a family who is fortunate enough to be wealthy, but after Ning is married her destiny fans out a poor and difficult life.

At the age of thirteen, Ning was not allowed out of her house anymore. By the age of fifteen, she was married. She did all without complaint, for this was her duty as a working woman. After her feet were bound, Ning lost the sense of freedom that Chinese females have only as children. Her husband, a fisherman, was not good to her. He smoked opium and often did not bring food back to Ning or her daughter Mantze. On Ning's visits home, her mother and father provided her with food in order for her and her daughter to survive. Despite her duty to her home and new family, Ning only received more hardship and pain. Her husband ate up all of her possessions in order to support a strong habit and opium obsession, and soon Ning was forced to beg in order to survive. This was shameful for her and her family, but she knew she had no other choice. One day her husband went out to beg alone, due to the fact that Ning's shoes had holes in them and she could not. The "old opium sot" sold one of her daughter's in order to fulfill his addiction to opium. After retrieving her daughter, Ning's husband promised to never sell her child again. This promise was broken within the next year when he sold her a second time. The child was sold to an official who had two wives. When Ning went to retrieve her daughter again, one of the wives convinced her to let her daughter stay, proclaiming that she would have a much better life living in a rich family. Soon after, Ning left her husband and began her life with her daughter Mantze, as a beggar. This lifestyle however, did not last long.

With a child to support and no money for a home or food, Ning ventured out on her own to look for work as a servant for chief judges, military and civil officials, and generals who would let a woman and her child remain together under the same household. Each family that she worked for treated her differently, but Ning had learned the importance of hard work no matter where she was. She learned about life through watching others, and sacrificed herself for the sake of her daughter. It was through her work experience that she began to see how fate played itself out within the families she worked for. Ning shares many stories and experiences of other people's lives that she has been witness to. One of her greatest stories revolves around a young beggar man, and a young woman whose parents were very wealthy. The young woman's parents had asked a servant to go and fetch a young man for her to marry. When the servant came home with a beggar man, the young women went with him to his broken house. Each day the beggar man would go out and gather grass to sell. He would bring back food with the money he had made from what he sold. His wife, wishing them to have more, gave him two taels of silver to start a business with and the young man had never seen silver before. He said he knew where there was an abundance of silver, and from that day forth he would go into the hills and come back with a basket full of silver every day.

It was stories like this that taught Ning to have hope and faith, even though she knew her fate would not be an easy one. She saw examples of destiny working itself out through all the families she came to work for, and she believed that fate was always happening to her.

By this time in her life, she has worked for many families, seen her daughter grow up, and gotten back together with her "old opium sot" of a husband. Her daughter had had her own children, and Ning, more than anything, wanted to keep her family close to her. She became centered around her family and helped her daughter raise her children.

It is essential to recognize the importance of the family throughout the Chinese culture. For Ning, it was about remaining close knit not only to her children, but also to her children's children. The value of family and living near one's family was not comparable to what any other job could pay. Ning refused to give this up throughout the entire book, and her sense of family grew to include many people who had wronged her before.

Lastly, the readers of this book will grow sensitive and empathetic towards the life Ning lived. Through her passion to be honest and stubborn, compassionate and hard working, she graciously accepted the life she had been handed. For Ning, there is nothing better. Life is circumstantial and a matter of destiny. Whatever one is handed, one must learn to live with. Her determination to make due with her life is a perfect example of the time period in which she lived. This is reflected through a strong and direct statement in the beginning of the book in which she says, "Within the common destiny is the individual destiny. That destiny is fixed by heaven, by the stars in their courses. Only as one lives does the pattern of one's life show forth." But to hear her destiny is something only the reader will come to know.