When Mao Zedong’s communists took over in 1949, China's elite scattered. She prayed she would not be the next one.įortunately, Adeline’s great aunt-a rare Chinese feminist who refused to bind her feet and who started the Women’s Bank of Shanghai-treated her kindly and set her on a path as a storyteller. On her way to and from school, she sometimes heard the cries of abandoned baby girls. Growing up in Shanghai, Adeline was reminded daily that she was unwanted, lower in the family hierarchy than even Jackie, the dog, who was better loved and better fed.
When her father remarried, her stepmother made Adeline an outcast in her own family, a Chinese Cinderella. When her mother died giving birth to her, Adeline was marked as bad luck - an extra burden in a society that had deep respect for the spirit world but not a whole lot for independent women. For most of us, heroism means confronting life’s tribulations, riding its waves, and emerging as our best selves, like Adeline Yen Mah.Īdeline was born in 1937 in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, the fifth child of a wealthy businessman.
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