Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Spiritual Beliefs and Universal Wisdom

Despite having grandparents who were Taoist/Buddhist, I never knew much about these religions. Watching The Tree uses various anecdotes from Mah’s life as she discusses everything from language to food to Confucianism (which seems to be given a bit of a hostile treatment). I did have some issues

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with the hanyu pinyin (a kind of romanised transcription of the Chinese characters), which were a bit wanting – and in one case completely wrong. A decent enough read for those wanting a little bit of insight into this aspect of Chinese culture.

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This was just awful in so many ways. Written at about the millennium by a Chinese woman who was living in America and in her 60s (I think) it manages to be incredibly condescending and glib. It starts the introduction by saying that in order to translate between languages it is important to

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understand both cultures, and yet it feels that she then doesn't really do this herself. She shows a lack of understanding of science more than once, relating Heisenberg's uncertainty to the phrase "Those who know don;t speak, those who speak don't know" by which she puts herself firmly in the second bracket. I just didn't understand her, or her behaviours on multiple occasions. She had one item of her grandfather, a book of the I Ching. And yet having referred to it only once in her life she gives to book to her lecturer, with whom she was engaged on a (probably abusive) affair. I simply don't get it. She clearly has significant issues with the way in which her father and step mother treated her as a child and throughout her life. I once read a quote "You can't blame you parents for anything after the age of 25". She is still, in the final third of her life (her own statement) bearing a grudge that she seems not to have worked through, despite having written a book about that very subject. That is at odds with her characterisation of the Chinese as generally accepting and able to let things go.
The book also lacked a coherent structure. In each chapter there were passages of general interpretation versus personal experience, and they used different fonts to distinguish between. the problem was that the general were too generic and broad brush, while the personal experience didn't necessarily seem to come to any conclusion. they also included entire paragraphs that were in quotes as if quoting speech from her relatives. Yet these conversations would have been at least 40 years ago, and I don't believe anyone can quote verbatim after that time. Each chapter was supposed to be based around a Chinese saying or aphorism, and yet I'm not sure that each chapter did anything to explain how that translates, certainly not in any meaningful sense.
This annoyed me excessively. I'm really not sure why I finished this, apart from right now giving up on things doesn't feel like the right thing to be doing.

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