I was just curious, at the time, what did you think you were going to do with those notes?įU: I just knew I needed to take them. But after a little while, it just sort of became something rather taboo.ĬHANG: You write that eventually, many years later, on Christmas Day in 1998, your father - he suddenly started sharing a few stories about his history, and you instantly started taking notes. I thought that was very interesting and exciting. I like the fact that he was Chinese and that I was half Chinese. So we pretty much stopped - we meaning myself and - I've got two older brothers. And then somehow it was clear that we really shouldn't be asking, and he didn't want to talk about it. Can I just ask you, what was that like?įU: I guess initially, I remember being quite curious about his past. Like, you mentioned that when you were a child, your own father spoke very little of his past. And I realize that it is a work of fiction, but you share that you have deep personal connections with some of the main characters, which I would love to understand more.

I'm so pleased to be here.ĬHANG: I'm so pleased to talk to you. It's a story of dislocation, and it asks, can you belong to more than one home? They grapple with the repercussions of China's war with Japan, the Chinese Civil War and exodus to Taiwan. Well, 'Peach Blossom Spring' is now the title of a new novel by Melissa Fu, set many centuries later - a story about three generations of a Chinese family trying to decide where to stay, where to belong. A fisherman stumbles upon this magical place, which is removed from all the social and political problems his world is so familiar with, and he must decide whether to stay in this wondrous place or return to where he came from. It's a paradise full of peach trees bursting with clouds of blooms. There's an ancient Chinese story first told by a poet more than a thousand years ago about a place called Peach Blossom Spring.

Peach blossom spring melissa fu