The Jade Peony

The novel, The Jade Peony, is about Chinese in Chinatown Vancouver around 1930s and 1940s. The setting for this poignant first novel was told through the eyes of three children of an immigrant family: Jook-Lian the only sister, Jung-Sum the second brother and Sek-Lung the third brother. They each experience a very different childhood, and are witnesses to adult realities that they cannot fully understand. All the experiences are dependent on age and sex, as the three youngsters encounter the complexities of birth and death, love and hate.

Wayson Choy’s semi-autobiography, The Jade Peony, won the Ontario’s Trillium Award in 1995 and the City of Vancouver Book Award in 1996. Wayson Choy’s Chinatown is a community of unforgettable individuals who are neither totally Canadian nor Chinese. In his view, Vancouver’s Chinese community seethes with buried information, much of it connected to the unhappy time when Canada’s immigration laws turned Chinese immigrants into second-class citizens. The new law divided families and created untold suffering. They learned to keep their secretes well, Choy remarks.