Bingo Square – Diaspora (it says so right in the novel’s description – follows two main characters that left China during the war between the Nationalists and Communists and represents two different paths). Also, this makes my first Bingo (4th column is complete).
This novel follows the lives of Suchi and Haiwen, Sue and Howard, or Susu and Doudou as they are called at various points in their lives. Childhood sweethearts in 1940s Shanghai, the two are separated when Haiwen joins the Nationalist army in 1947. In 2008, they have a chance encounter in a grocery store in California, and then meet again when it turns out one of Howard’s friends is also acquainted with Suchi.
The novel alternates chapters and points of views between Suchi and Haiwen – while Suchi’s story is told in linear fashion (with hints based on the 2008 chapters), the novel explores Haiwen’s life in reverse, flashing back to key moments until their timelines overlap and pass each other.
While both make lives for themselves, they are each other’s “what if” question, the lovers separated by war and circumstance who always wonder what might have been in another life or world.
Neither one of them stays in their childhood city – Haiwen ends up in Taiwan as part of Chiang Kai-shek’s escape from the Communist Army, while Suchi’s parents send her and her sister Sulan to Hong Kong to protect them. Both of them struggle in different ways, and are left with questions about the fates of those they left behind – their parents and, for Haiwen, his two siblings. They know of events that are occurring in China like the famine and the Cultural Revolution (especially worrying for Haiwen since his family were successful industrialists before everything) but are unable to get answers on how their families are doing.
While there are some answers along the way, it’s also very bittersweet- any happiness in reunion always tempered with the pain of the past and the many hardships endured.
I quite enjoyed this novel though it was also sad – Suchi especially did not have an easy road, and Chinese history in the middle of the 20th century is a time filled with tragedies and hardships, families separated or forced to betray each other. I am less familiar with what happened in Taiwan though I had heard/read that there were tensions between the local inhabitants and the escaping Chinese forces, leading to abuse and oppression. This novel doesn’t get too deep into any of those details but absolutely acknowledges and alludes to some of the difficulties.