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Dramatis
personae (Note: Chinese names are shown Western-style, surname last) Tian-chong Chai, middle manager in a New York investment bank. Ding Li, his wife Hetty, their infant daughter Boris, Chai's boss at the bank Mr Chan, and old friend of Chai's, living in Hong Kong Selina Yoy, wife of a Boston restaurateur Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States The time span of the encompassing narrative is a few months-- from August Moon Festival to Lunar New Year-- in the early 1990s. The story is set in New York City, Long Island and Boston. There are extensive flashbacks to China and Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s. |
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"To enter in these bonds, is to be free..." Chai, born around 1948, endured an impoverished childhood in north China and became a Red Guard during the Great Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. Sent down to the countryside when the Red Guards were disbanded, he eventually escaped from mainland China by swimming to Hong Kong. Living single and carefree in Hong Kong, he had an intense affair with a local girl, Selina. She left the colony for America, to marry a Chinese boy she is engaged to in San Francisco. Chai got a job in a bank and worked his way up into management, eventually-- after many years-- being transferred to New York. There he met and married Ding. They now have a house in the suburbs and a child, Hetty. Determined to Americanize himself, Chai takes to reading U.S. history. His attention is caught by Calvin Coolidge, whom he perceives through a Chinese prism as the virtuous ruler of a secure and prosperous nation. Coolidge joins the list of sages and role models Chai has, at various times in his life, been obsessed with. At a dinner party given by Boris, his boss, Chai learns by chance that Selina, whom he has not seen for twenty years, is living in Boston. He attempts to re-kindle the affair. A rather vain and smug character, he believes he is steaming confidently towards his goal. The women in his life, however, have other ideas. With the assistance of Chai's old friend Mr. Chan, they get him back on course. While basically a domestic comedy, the novel-- via Chai's ruminations-- passes comment on numerous larger topics: language and culture, freedom and despotism, marriage and fidelity, weakness and redemption. All of this is treated in (I hope) a light-hearted way. Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream is a good-natured book. The epigraph, used as a heading for this synopsis, is taken from John Donne's Elegie XIX: To His Mistris Going To Bed. There it has, I think, three different meanings; here, only two. |
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