The Valley of Amazement. Amy Tan

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Название The Valley of Amazement
Автор произведения Amy Tan
Жанр Приключения: прочее
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isbn 9780007467242



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      Fourth Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      77–85 Fulham Palace Road

      London W6 8JB

       www.4thestate.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2013

      First published in the United States by Ecco in 2013

      Copyright © Amy Tan 2013

      Cover photograph © ZenShui/James Hardy

      Amy Tan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © November 2013 ISBN: 9780007467242

      Version: 2014-07-15

      FOR

      KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK AND ZHENG CAO

      KINDRED SPIRITS

       Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,

       Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and

       elude me,

       Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes

       not,

      One’s-self, must never give waythat is the final substance—

       that out of all is sure,

       Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?

       When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

      —WALT WHITMAN, “QUICKSAND YEARS”

      CONTENTS

       Chapter 5: The Memory of Desire

       Chapter 6: A Singing Sparrow

       Chapter 7: A Blue Disease

       Chapter 8: The Two Mrs. Ivorys

       Chapter 9: Quicksand Years

       Chapter 10: Moon Pond Village

       Chapter 11: Heaven Mountain

       Chapter 12: The Valley of Amazement

       Chapter 13: Fata Morgana

       Chapter 14: Shanghailanders

       Chapter 15: The City at the End of the Sea

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       Also by Amy Tan

       About the Publisher

       HIDDEN JADE PATH

       Shanghai1905–1907Violet

      When I was seven, I knew exactly who I was: a thoroughly American girl in race, manners, and speech, whose mother, Lulu Minturn, was the only white woman who owned a first-class courtesan house in Shanghai.

      My mother named me Violet after a tiny flower she loved as a girl growing up in San Francisco, a city I have seen only in postcards. I grew to hate my name. The courtesans pronounced it like the Shanghainese word vyau-la—what you said when you wanted to get rid of something. “Vyau-la! Vyau-la!” greeted me everywhere.

      My mother took a Chinese name, Lulu Mimi, which sounded like her American one, and her courtesan house was then known as the House of Lulu Mimi. Her Western clients knew it by the English translation of the characters in her name: Hidden Jade Path. There were no other first-class courtesan houses that catered to both Chinese and Western clients, many of whom were among the wealthiest in foreign trade. And thus, she broke taboo rather extravagantly in both worlds.

      That house of flowers was my entire world. I had no peers or little American friends. When I was six, Mother enrolled me in Miss Jewell’s Academy for Girls. There were