Adolescence is never an easy period in life, and living through it during China's Cultural Revolution quickly turns those awkward wonder years into a deadly test of survival.
For a young girl like Lian, whose intellectual parents have been banished to separate reeducation-through-labor camps, Mao's self-serving national pandemonium would provide a quick and torturous education in the cruelty and beauty of humankind.
She suffers through the repression, humiliations and back-stabbing of her age, while at the same time trying to keep her head above water during the period's arbitrary and sometimes deadly shifts in ideology.
But life is not all lies and deceit for Lian, who spends the tender years of self-discovery between 13 and 15 years old sheltered for the most part by her family's elite status. Though Mao Zedong may try to reshape society into a new order, China's ancient hierarchies hold sway for the most part, and the young girl continues to enjoy the privileges of her society's highest caste.
As such, The Lily Theatre, by Chinese-Dutch author Lulu Wang, differs from most Cultural Revolution memoirs. The story is only partly based on the author's personal experiences, and Lian never shares the zeal of her peers to systematically carry out Mao's word. Indeed, throughout this delightful novel, the mayhem never proves much of a stumbling block for the rugged and single-minded girl.
Lian's is more of a personal coming-of-age story with the country's radical political events as a backdrop. And it is a wonderful backdrop, providing spectacular contrasts of tenderness amid violence, and generosity at a time of acute selfishness.
Lian has the rare luck to be permitted to live at her mother's internment camp in the countryside near her native Beijing. There, under the private tutelage of Qin and Cannibal -- two of China's top scholars also incarcerated at the camp -- Lian learns to tell the difference between truth and propaganda, and right and wrong.
Without other young people at the camp, the girl relieves her solitude by recounting her newly learned knowledge to the frogs in the pond behind her dormitory, which she calls the Lily Theatre. The months roll by, hardening Lian's rugged, and already fiercely independent spirit.
The real turmoil in Lian's life, however, comes when her mother is released from the camp and the young girl takes up school again.
Back in the city, Lian's ability to discern the glaring contradictions in her society do her no favors in allowing for a smooth reintroduction to her friends. She is torn by the desire to reembrace her lower-caste bosom buddy Kim and to fit in with her first-caste peers who sneer at anyone whom they deem beneath them. To make matters worse, Lian's budding sexuality throws her into fits of confusion and torment.
As eager as any teenager to find a comfortable place among friends, Lian is in constant peril of falling in line behind her peers to participate in the mayhem going on around her.
But Lian's strength of character does not allow her to succumb to her worst instincts.
Lian is never a brat, but always maintains her humanity and learns to recognize it in others.
Translated from Dutch in which it was originally written, The Lily Theatre retains the odd jilting word usage that apparently gripped readers in the Netherlands, where the book was a bestseller in 1997. "Tchttt-tchttt," and "triee" are just two of the non-words Wang invents for literary effect.
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