Original language:
English Translated from: English
Authors: Pai Kit Fai
Translated by: Jakutienė, Dalė Virginija
Full translated source bibliographical description:
Pai Kit Pai, Concubine’s Daughter, St. Martin's Griffin, New York,
ISBN: 978-609-01-0047-9
Published in: Vilnius
Published on: 2011
Publisher: Alma littera
When the young concubine of an old farmer in southern China gives birth to a daughter called Li-Xia, or “Beautiful One,” the child seems destined to become a concubine herself. Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father’s orders to bind her feet. At the age of eight she is sold to the silk weavers at Ten Willows, where she faces a life of degradation — but Li manages to escape that too, and finds a way to continue the studies that mattered so much to her lost mother. An English sea captain, Benjamin Jean-Paul Devereaux rescues her by buying her freedom and safe passage on his ship, and she is able to fulfill her dream of literacy. They marry, defying societal norms, but in Hong Kong, Li is assaulted by an enemy of her husband, and fearing for her newborn girl, Siu-Sing, she has the child taken to safety in the mountains.
That daughter, Siu Sing, is spirited to safety by the Fish, a devoted old servant of her parents. The Fish takes Sing to Master To, a great teacher who watches over the child and trains her in spiritual wisdom and martial arts. But when Sing is approaching young womanhood, the Master is slain by a jealous former pupil, who sells Sing into slavery. Finding temporary refuge at an opium den where she is tutored in the arts of pleasing men, Sing refuses to settle for life as a concubine. Determined to find her English father, she calls upon all her courage and wisdom to embark on an adventure that will take her from great peace to great danger, and from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Shanghai and Hong Kong on the eve of World War II.
The “Concubine’s Daughter”- epic, heart-wrenching story of a mother and daughter’s journey to their destiny. It is a story about the early 20th century, Chinese women and girls were brutally exploited: female infanticide was commonplace and those that did survive were often sold as children, their sung-tip contract bonding them into a lifetime of slavery. This is a story of three generations of courageous women who use their minds, whether through scholarship, business or the age-old discipline of Tao learning and martial arts, to break out of this mould and find love and fulfilment.
Pai Kit Fai, who real name is Geoffrey Morgan Pike, is Autralian writer. He was born in England on 17 October , 1929. Pike first came to Australia as a young seaman soon after the Second World War. He worked as a railway fettler, station hand and timber-cutter before returning to England to join the British Army. Finally he stayed in Australia as an immigrant. He started to work as illustrator and cartoonist. In 1973, Pai Kit Fai was really passioned by his writting career, ant then he published first trilogy of novels, based on the adventures and experience he had. When he was writing “The Concubine’s Daughter” he used history of China, personal knowledge and experiences, that he earned while he was living in Asia.