A Hakka Woman

Everyone who knew her as Ah Ping is now dead.

I know her only as Paupau – Cantonese for ‘maternal grandmother’.

Paupau is forgetting many things. She can’t remember what day of the week it is, what she had for breakfast or even how old she is as early onset dementia slowly eats away at her brain.

But some things Paupau can never forget, even if she tried. The burning smell of her village after the Japanese destroyed her home in Southern China, or her mother’s pained face as seven-year-old Ah Ping is sold to the Tang family as a child bride.

Torn from her family and imprisoned in Tang House on an island off Hong Kong, Ah Ping endures decades of physical and emotional abuse, sexual violence and abject poverty. How does Ah Ping learn not to succumb to the tyrants in her life and lose her capacity for love?

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Hong Kong, A Hakka Woman is a remarkable and heart-wrenching tale about survival, womanhood and the power of a mother’s love. Retold through her granddaughter Di Lebowitz, Paupau’s story defines what it means to be a Hakka woman.