Chinese / Taiwan
Xue ying nai nai de gu shi
(The story of Grandma Snow Flower)
Zhou, Yifen
(Chou, Yih-Fen)
(text)
Zhang, Chao
(Wu, Mao)
(illus.)
Zhu bei shi: He ying wen hua shi ye you xian gong si (Heryin Books), 2019. – [39] p.
(Series: Wo men de gu shi xi lie)
ISBN 978-986-96460-1-7
Taiwan | China | History 1949-2007 | War | Mother | Daughter | Separation | Picture book
Reading age: 6+
White Ravens issue: 2020
Chou Yih-fen, founder and editor-in-chief of Heryin Books, dedicates her newest picture book “to an era, and all those whose destinies were shaped by it”. One of those is Grandma Xueying, whose short-term memory is shaky but who still remembers that time as if it were a painting. Instead of becoming the manager of her mom’s teahouse in Suzhou, she goes to Taiwan in 1949 to train as a nurse. When the People’s Republic of China is proclaimed in the same year, Taiwan and China are warring states and there is no chance to return. She then graduates from college, gets married, has children … and writes all those letters to her mother, which cannot be sent off. In 1987, when martial law is lifted in Taiwan, she is able to return to her hometown, only to learn that her mother has long since passed away. Zhang Chao (pen name: Wu mao), professor at Shandong Academy of Arts and multi-awarded illustrator, contrasts the deeply moving story through his own visual narrative, with a mixture of traditional Chinese imagery and Western techniques. [LO]