Peach Blossom Pavillion（ISBN=9780758220141）

In this disappointing courtesan novel, a 98-year-old Chinese émigré woman in present-day San Francisco reviews her youth in early 20th-century China, where she was a ming ji, or "prestigious prostitute." Falsely accused of rape and murder, Xiang Xiang's father is executed, and her mother retreats into a Buddhist nunnery. Xiang Xiang, alone and friendless at 13, is tricked into entering the Peach Blossom Pavilion, where she is given the "art name" of Bao Lan, or "Precious Orchid." Her extraordinary beauty and gifts in painting, writing poems and performing music, and in the bedchamber, make her a prize. After some improbable adventures (including a liaison with a female transvestite and a love affair with a Taoist monk), Xiang Xiang eventually makes her peace with what fate has made of her-just as the Japanese invade China. While Xiang Xiang's forthright perceptiveness, grace and smarts are intriguing, Yip's English language debut vacillates between melodrama and fictionalized sociological study. That split personality is reflected in the clunky prose, which never does its lead justice.
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"I thought Peach Blossom Pavilion was beautifully written, wonderfully imagined--erotic, funny, bursting with life--a terrific novel!" Max Byrd, Professor of English, University of California, Davis."I thought Peach Blossom Pavilion was beautifully written, wonderfully imagined--erotic, funny, bursting with life--a terrific novel!" Max Byrd, Professor of English, University of California, Davis.

"In the sure voice of Precious Orchid, Mingmei recounts thirteen tumultuous years of Chinese history: vicious politics, pristine piety and heartrending scandal, framed in the classical arts. She writes with a painter's fastidious eye and the irresistible energy of grand storytelling. The pages just turn themselves." Neal Chandler, director, Creative Writing Program of Cleveland State University.

"Peach Blossom Pavilion, the story of the last geisha in China, is told with amazing insight as if the author had lived in the tumultuous China of a century ago. Through her beautiful, lucid prose, Mingmei brings modern Western readers into the mysterious world of the cultivated courtesan." Hannelore Hahn, Founder and Executive Director, International Women's Writing Guild.

Peach Blossom Pavilion is the story about the last Chinese poet-musician courtesan, or Geisha. Chinese geisha culture existed 2500 years ago and reached its fullest development about four hundred years ago. (While the geisha tradition continues in Japan, the remarkable Chinese courtesan culture has passed into history.) Peach Blossom Pavilion is about these elegant, artistic courtesans and the fascinating culture that they represented. The protagonist, Precious Orchid, had many adventures both inside and outside the prostitution house, Peach Blossom pavilion. After her father was executed for a crime he did not commit, Precious Orchid's mother is tricked into leaving her in a high-class house of prostitution where she has a traumatic initiation in the ways of her male customers. Yet Precious Orchid is able to find ways to mitigate her misery through art and music, taught by her "sister" Pearl.

Through all this she plots her escape, only to find herself in the "bitter sea." Her adventures include practing sex magic with a Daoist monk on a remote mountain, and a perilous journey to find her long lost mother, a prominent Buddhist nun. Just when she has an offer of marriage from an American merchant, the Japanese invade...

MingmeiYip was born in China, recieved her Ph.D. from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, on a full academic scholarship from the French Government. Later she was lecturer and senior lecturer respectively at Chinese University and Baptist University in Hong Kong. She has seven books to her credit, five in Chinese and two in English. Peach Blossom Pavilion is her first novel, her other book in English is Chinese Children's Favorite Stories. Mingmei was columnist for seven major Hong Kong newspapers and has appeared on over forty TV and radio programs in Hong kong,Taiwan, China and the US. She now lives in New York City.