Wendy Chen’s Their Divine Fires is a novel that follows the Zhang family tree (down a
patrilineal line) from the late 1800s through to the 2000s or thereabouts. The novel begins with Mei-Mei, a young girl whose big brother Da Ge (Zhang Yunli) wants her to cut off his singular braid, worn as a symbol of the dying Qing Dynasty and tradition over modernization. She does so, and in that action, also nicks her hand.
A power struggle emerges with the end of the dynastic era, with changes to political systems and individual lives. Foot binding goes out of fashion for women. Instead of arranged marriages, there is more choice. There are whispers of education for girls. This is so, too, in Liuyang Village on the periphery of big city Changsha, Hunan Province, in China.
Then follows the Chinese civil war, between the Communists (under Mao) and the Guomindang (under Sun and Chiang). China then goes through the Cultural Revolution in the waning days of Mao Zedong. China opens to the world in the 1970s.
The narrative of Their Divine Fires follows various members of the Zhang clan as the various power struggles express and as decisions on high trickle down to common folk. Individual’s lives are not their own per se. They are affected by their surroundings. A human life itself is a very thin and frail thread. Through the generations, just a few decisions that make a humble human life: love, education and work, family, friendships, and politics. For individuals, some elements may come to the fore more than others. None are unmarked by traumas from power struggles on high. Human strife is a constant in the human collective experience.
The state of the hidden world is never truly revealed in this novel. Do the characters live one life, or many lives (based on different religious systems)? What is the state of heaven or hell and ghosts? In moments of political turmoil, what ethics apply, if any? Is human life sacred or not? What is meant by the “divine fires” in the title?
This novel ends with a young Chinese American woman in Massachusetts, who is privy to some of her family’s past through artifacts, through a visit from a person in China, some of her own direct learning.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
