SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN

I just read the book "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See.  I purchased it for my kindle and meant to read it before I came to China.  Once I saw that the book was made into a movie, I made sure I read it asap.  I LOVED this book!  And I loved it for so many reasons.  First though I want to say that I think you can get so much more out of reading a book about a certain culture or people when you are actually living among them. I felt like I understood this book so much better having read it while in China than if I were to have read it in the States.  This book was beautifully written. I could visualize the story in my head easily and vividly and I really appreciated the authors ability to convey imagery without being overly verbose or detailed.  I also loved how she explained aspects of Chinese traditions, culture, and symbols in this book. The story was beautiful and heartbreaking.  The friendship of the two main characters in this story is amazing. These girls were pretty much forced to be friends from a very young age and it could have been a disaster but I loved reading of how the two of them clung to each other and learned to love the other.  That made it all the more heartbreaking near the end (I will not spoil it for you) when the friendship became challenged.  The story is also based on a secret language discovered not that long ago that was used among Chinese women to communicate one with another.  I loved this because the culture and society looked down upon women a great deal and this was something they had that belonged only to them and empowered them.  The chapter about the footbinding was too much for me handle. I could not imagine young girls having to go through something so painful and unnecessary.  I will write about the history of footbinding in a seperate post at a later time.
 
I just saw the trailer for the movie and I could tell right away that it wouldn't be nearly as good as the book but I still want to see it. I found a copy of the dvd today but it was apparently all in Chinese with no English subtitles available but I will try another store next week to see if they have one I can watch.  
 
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