Another book from my Stanford University Press sale haul. Old Madam Yin is a memoir of Ida Pruitt’s friendship with Madam Yin between 1926 and 1938. While there is a sociological and ethnographic lens here, with Pruitt working to explain the workings of Chinese society to a Western audience, the book works more today as a historical glimpse into the beginnings of the destruction of Madam Yin’s way of life, as well as the culture clash between Westerners and the Chinese. Pruitt was born and raised in China as the daughter of missionaries, so she has more of an insider’s viewpoint and is able to understand a lot of nuances that another Western hospital worker of the same time might have completely missed.
I enjoyed this especially due to Pruitt’s writing — she has a very lovely eye for detail and a thoughtful approach to dealing with those around her. I think she succeeds at not exoticizing Madam Yin and her family very much at all, which is a success considering how Western media is still treating China today. This is also a pretty heartbreaking book to read because this beautiful life and probably a majority of the items in this book are all about to be destroyed between WWII, the Chinese Civil War, the Cultural Revolution, and the ongoing massive construction and demolition of swathes of Beijing. I appreciated all of the descriptions of the houses and the lifestyle that had built up over thousands of years — the experience of beauty and the way the gardens are laid out for enjoyment in every season, the furniture, and art — all of it carefully and thoughtfully laid out and about to be bombed, burned, smashed, etc. I know many things have survived, but this world is gone and we’re lucky to have this one view of it.