A Chinese-Canadian, Denise Chong tells a touching autobiographical story through three generations on two continents. The Concubine’s Children traces the story of her maternal grandmother, May-ying, who was sold at the age of seventeen as a concubine to Chan Sam, an immigrant who left his family in China in search of wealth in Vancouver’s early Chinatown. May-ying lived out her life as a tea house waitress -- her wages used to support and build a house for Chan Sam’s family back in China. Eventually, she slid into a life of alcohol and became a single mother whose strict yet negligent ways were used to raise Chong’s mother, Hing, in Canada.
However, the book is more than the sum of distant memories -- it documents the changes of the Chinese community abroad, the slow process of acceptance by white communities in North America, as well as China’s turbulent history in the twentieth century. In revealing the mysteries of her family’s past, Chong adds a very human dimension to the role of the Chinese in history, both here and abroad.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
Book courtesy Penguin Group Canada
September 2005 issue