‘Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden’ Review: Sisters Enduring

Once upon a time, almost a century ago, two sisters from an illustrious Chinese family lived in a lush estate known as the Flower Fragrant Garden, in China’s southeast coastal city of Fuzhou. Then came Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of China, the deprivations of World War II, and the chaos of civil war and revolution—and, with those upheavals, the family’s exile from their garden paradise and their descent into poverty.

The two sisters remained undaunted by the fight between Mao Zedong’s Communist army and the Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek. By 1949, Hong, the younger sister, was completing medical school. Jun, older by two years, was at last, after numerous war-related delays, to begin teaching history at a prestigious secondary school. But first she would visit a college friend on nearby Jinmen, a tiny island off the Chinese coast reachable by a short ferry ride.