Lady Tan's Circle of Women

This was our book club pick for the month of September and it absolutely delivered. So much to discuss. We were transported to the 15th century Ming Dynasty, where we were privy to the private lives of China's elite class. Imagine practicing medicine but never touching blood and male doctors never so much as looking at their female patients. This is how medicine was unless there was a female who practiced hereditary medicine. The protagonist here was a real person in the late 1400s who learned the practice of women's medicine from her grandmother who practiced that same medicine. The bound feet- that hideous torture done to Chinese girls from the 10th century until the 20th century- was well explored, both from a child's and mother's perspective.

This book is chock full of beautiful, profound quotes sprinkled throughout the dialogue about everything from friendship, marriage, relationships, childrearing, love, and a funny one concerning mothers-in-law and their relationships with their daughters-in-law. We were astounded at their cultural norms. The idea of never leaving your compound- never seeing the town or the outside world. Not attending your own wedding banquet. Buying a servant for your child, buying concubines for your husband, selling your extra sons to the emperor to become eunuchs. This book takes you through all of this and so much more.

This book will get you thinking and talking about what has changed for women and what really hasn't. We were glad to meet this rare woman doctor who had a life so much fuller than the typical woman of her time and stature. The women in her part of China lived better and longer lives because of her.

The four phases of a woman's life- She begins the book with this and ends the book with it.
Divided this way:
the milk days,
the hair pinning days,
the rice and salt days, and finally,
the sitting quietly days.

Well if that doesn't say it all.
Excellent read. One of our liveliest discussions yet. Highly recommend.

I was way behind in my BOTM Club orders, and I ended up ordering five books right after Christmas. I researched what I wanted to order a bit, and this book was high on others' lists of favorites. I was prepared to be disappointed. But I was not.

Lady Tan's Circle of Women took me right into the life of a woman in fifteenth-century China. Tan Yunxian is our main character, and the story carries us through all the stages in a woman's life in that time—Milk Days, Hair-Pinning Days, Rice-and-Salt Days, and Sitting Quietly. Yunxian suffers all the agonies of girls and women despite being born into a family of high rank, and her story, along with the side stories of all the other women in her life, is deeply compelling.

A few quotes:

“Friendship is a contract between two hearts. With hearts united, women can laugh and cry, live and die together.”

“It takes a lifetime to make a friend, but you can lose one in an hour,” she recites. “Life without a friend is life without sun. Life without a friend is death.”

“I wish I were a giant gingko tree hundreds of years old, with the deep roots it takes to stand strong against mighty winds. Instead, I feel like a sapling in a typhoon, desperately trying to hang on.”

“After all, having a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law in the same room is like tying a weasel and a rat together in a sock. The weasel and rat are enemies by nature. The weasel may be larger and have sharper teeth, but the rat is smarter and faster.”

“What surprising pleasure I get from imparting words alongside my mother-in-law. ‘Always respect your mother-in-law,' I say. ‘Always obey.' Lady Kuo hears this, folds her hands together, and adds in a sweet—mocking?—tone, ‘Listen to your mother-in-law, but follow your mother's example: Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.'“

“But happiness is transient. Yin and yang always struggle for balance, with the darkness of yin sometimes winning and the brightness of yang striving to bring things back into balance.”

“All the sorrows of the world arise from parting, whether in life or by death.”

This is only my second read of hers but Lisa See has already become one of my favourites. While I'm sure a great deal of research goes into her writing (I mean the author's note with the extensiveness of research and resources used mentioned is proof enough), it's the way she brings these characters alive, the way she captures the essence of humans in her characters, enabling readers to be transported to a different time, a different place. I like how her books allow us to experience the everyday of people so different, so hard to relate to or even understand, yet there's some part of us that can empathise and be grateful for the lives we lead.

This book took me back to 15th/16th C China or the era of the Ming Dynasty, introducing me to the very normalised then, horrendous now, tradition of foot-binding. Much of the book had content that frustrated me and angered me to the core sometimes, yet such was the norm of the times and I believe this book did a great job presenting a perspective that both experiences and witnesses a lot of pain. As someone who is currently interested in alternative medicine, I found all the instances mentioning the practice of healing the body as a whole with herbs and natural sources, identifying temperaments etc. quite interesting

Lady tans circle of women was my favorite fictional historical novel I've read in a very long time. I feel like I don't hear much about historical fiction being written in non-European countries maybe that's my own personal experience, but when this book was recommended to me, I knew I had to read it.

Learning about Confucius medicine and what's considered medicine at that point in time was extremely interesting . I felt like I was falling into China in the 1400s. though it's not what we would consider a happy story now, the way that the novel covers so many points in her life and ends in a way that connects her story all the way to the beginning, really gives you an encapsulation of what it would be like to be a Confucius female doctor!!!

4.0!

This was a book that had intrigued me for a while. It’s the exact type of book I’m trying to read more of: books with Chinese influence that don’t focus on the male perspective. I held off on it because I was worried it wouldn’t be too serious but it really blew me away. This book is part medicinal textbook, part tale of a friendship between two women, part history lesson on Chinese women in the Ming dynasty and part a commentary on how class and gender interact. This is a book that covers a lot of ground and yet I don’t feel like it’s trying to do too much, which is the sign of strong writing.

Part of that is definitely the characters. Yunxian is a very compelling protagonist and she is able to make her supporting characters really come to life. While it is clear that every character is there to serve an explicit purpose, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. As I said before, this is a novel with a very wide scope and to accommodate said scope one needs a lot of characters. I think every character here is quite well-realized, allowing the rest of the book to flow smoothly.

I’m guessing that most of this book’s praise will come from the research and I’d like to add to that as well. See did an absolutely remarkable job at bringing this period to life and I appreciate that she didn’t just focus on the upper class. Most aspects of Ming Dynasty China life are explored here, which makes it all the more remarkable that this book feels less like a history textbook and more like a well-paced novel. This book could have been incredibly boring but See writes it in a way that it almost doesn’t feel educational. This sounds like an insult but it’s actually a huge compliment.

Overall I’m super impressed by this book and I look forward to reading more of See in the future.

From capturing the toil of women in the Ming dynasty to featuring the history researched chinese medicine, this book features such a journey I really enjoyed. For an exploration of girlhood to motherhood and beyond, there is something very moving about See's portrayal of the beauty and inspiration in women's experiences in the context of the time period.