The Water Lily Pond: A Village Girl's Journey in Maoist China

Joseph Jones is librarian emeritus at the University of British Columbia
Library and the author of Reference Sources for Canadian Literary
Studies.

This coming-of-age story capitalizes on its setting in Mao’s China.
Like the author, the first-person narrator May-ping was born in 1954.
The author’s middle (perhaps maiden) name, Zao, resembles the
protagonist’s family name, Zhao. The story opens and closes with an
influential grandma, and the author dedicates the work to her own
grandmother. While the book reads as autobiography, the easily
overlooked title page verso explains that the genre is metafiction,
meaning “the events are based on facts but the characters and
institutions are fictitious.”

The engaging story blends elements of family history, contemporary
sociology, the education of a village girl, the vicissitudes of
politics, a search for romance, and a career that led to North America.
Judicious use of folklore, fables, songs, mottoes, proverbs, and fairy
tales adds atmosphere to the tale.

The thoughts and actions of May-ping reveal a complex character. The
idealism of a compulsive novel reader dovetails with the shrewd
self-advancement of a hard-working student of English. Awkward and
dangerous situations (an accident with a Mao statue, an infraction while
riding a bicycle, the exposed lie of a superior) get turned to
advantage.

The family’s status inconsistency originates in an ancestor’s
decline into the “poor class” through an opium habit. May-ping
progresses from her village of 36 households, to residential high school
in a county town, to a “third-rate” university in a provincial
capital city, to a medical college teaching job, to being “one of
hundreds—in a billion—who were allowed out of China.”

A leitmotif of antagonism to Maoism runs through the story. A risky
refusal to condone misappropriation of funds ironically leads to a
invitation to join the Party. Masquerading as a peasant in old clothes
and bare feet contrasts amusingly with May-ping’s continual concern
about presenting a fashionable appearance.

Contributing to the overall effect is a voice with a subtle non-native
flavour. The excellent command of English occasionally lapses in phrases
such as “apprehensive to stop it” and “sacked from my job in
future.”