Search results for ""author ida pruitt""

Within the common destiny is the individual destiny. So it is that through the telling of one Chinese peasant woman's life, a vivid vision of Chinese history and culture is illuminated. Over the course of two years, Ida Pruitt—a bicultural social worker, writer, and contributor to Sino-American understanding—visited with Ning Lao T'ai-ta'i, three times a week for breakfast. These meetings, originally intended to elucidate for Pruitt traditional Chinese family customs of which Lao T'ai-t'ai possessed some insight, became the foundation for an enduring friendship. As Lao T'ai-t'ai described the cultural customs of her family, and of the broader community of which they were a part, she invoked episodes from her own personal history to illustrate these customs, until eventually the whole of her life lay open before her new confidante. Pruitt documented this story, casting light not only onto Lao T'ai-t'ai's own biography, but onto the character of life for the common man of China, writ large. The final product is a portrayal of China that is "vividly and humanly revealed."

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By the author of the classic A Daughter of Han, this is an affectionate, revealing portrait of an old, wealthy widow and her family in the Peking of the 1920s and early 1930s. Through the daily life and the memories of shrewd, forthright Lao Tai-tai, we are given an intimate glimpse into centuries-old way of life that was fast coming to an end. We explore the inner workings of an upper-class urban family: the relations between husbands wives and between wives and concubines, the interactions among brothers, the activities and family concerns of a widowed matriarch, and more generally the role of women in such a family. We go behind the high walls surrounding the family compound, and see how the houses, gardens, and courtyards are constructed according to precise rules derived from religious and aesthetic beliefs, and how the layouts of the rooms are closely related to their occupants' status and role in the family. We learn the enormous importance to the Chinese of protocol, etiquette, and reciprocal obligation, and we learn also of Peking's pleasures—traveling in rickshaws, eating in restaurants, visiting parks. Above all, the book captures the essence of prewar Chinese cultural and social values in the busy life and strong, complex personality of the memorable Lao Tai-tai.

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