The Tang family is a wealthy family that exists of husband Wei, his first wife Minghzu and his second wife, and Wei and Minghzu's teenage daughter Qiang and their maid Biyu. The story is set in 1942, and recently the Tang family has fled Shanghai after the invasion of the Japanese Army, and settled in Hong Kong, where they assume they are safe from the Japanese as Hong Kong was protected by the British army. But they couldn't be more wrong. Japan also invades Hong Kong as most of South East Asia. And the Tang family is ripped apart, and Minghzu and Qiang lose each other. Minghzu is a translator, and this helps her to survive in the Japanese camps.Qiang and Biyu escape to Sai Kung and work long hours in a uniform factory and Qiang joins the East River Column Resistance, to hopefully stop the Japanese invasion and to fight against them, which is ofcourse, not without danger. For years Minghzu and Qiang have lost each other, to find each other back in the end of the book in a tragic way. But before that, they fight and do everything they can to survive, until the Japanese war is over.
The story of the Tang family is moving and thought out well by the author. But I do have to mention that a big part of the book, after the Japanese army invades Hong Kong, the story becomes somewhat of a technical war story, in which the Tang family story gets lost. The story switches in POV from Minghzu, Qiang, and some of the Japanese soldiers they have to deal with. The war parts took over most parts and that felt a bit dry and uninteresting for the reader at a big part of the book. The final part of the book was more interesting, especially when Minghzu and Qiang find each other back, and when the war finally ends. This is a book that has some strong parts, and some lesser stronger parts. It was okay, nothing really groundbreaking, it was a good in between read but nothing more than that.
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