Musings of a reading addict

Keywords: Chinese literature, modern Chinese history, Chinese exclusion act, calligraphy, Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Genre: Literary fiction

Length: short medium long

Country: China, USA

Review

“Your intentions were good, she said, but your actions betrayed you. From now on, Daiyu, you must learn that the two cannot ever be separate. No matter what your intentions may be, you also must think of your actions and act from a place of truth. Relying on just one does not make you a good person.”

A little bit of history

Before I get into the book itself, I need to give some background. It’s important—not because I’m a historian or anything like that, but because without knowing the context, you miss the weight this story carries.

Mid-1800s China was going through disaster after disaster: wars, famines, colonial invasion. Life was fragile. Entire communities were crumbling. So when people heard about “Gold Mountain”—the nickname for America—it sounded like hope. A fantasy, maybe, but a better shot than staying in a village being picked apart by warlords or hunger.

Most of those who left were men. Poor, rural, desperate. They ended up doing the kinds of jobs no one else wanted—railroads, mines, field labor. At first, the U.S. needed them, so their presence was “tolerated.” But the second the economy turned, the narrative flipped. They weren’t hardworking anymore—they were “taking jobs.” “Un-American.” “Dangerous.” And of course, the logical solution for a country afraid of immigrants doing too much work for too little money? Ban them.

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first law in U.S. history to bar a specific ethnic group from immigration. And that law didn’t just change paperwork—it changed lives. It made families disappear from records. It kept generations apart. And for Chinese women and girls, who had almost no legal pathway into the country in the first place, it created a system of trafficking that was both violent and invisible. Young girls were kidnapped or lured with false promises and sold into brothels in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities. Once there, they were trapped. No legal protection. No exit. No voice.

That’s the world Four Treasures of the Sky drops you into.

So now we can start

“A resilient brush is one that, after depositing ink on paper, can spring back up in preparation for the next stroke. But resilience is not achieved by pressing harder. No, the artist must master the art of releasing the brush, giving it the space and freedom to find itself again. Resilience is simple, really. Know when to push and when to let go.”

I read this book shortly after coming back from my first trip to China—a two-week whirlwind across the country. And I’m glad I didn’t take it with me, because I wouldn’t have had time to sit with it properly. It deserved that.

One night during the trip, I watched a movie called Detective Chinatown 1900—a Chinese detective story set in San Francisco during the days leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act. A young man from the Chinatown community is accused of murder, and the case threatens to tip the political balance. If he’s guilty, the exclusion act gains fuel and some can benefit from it; if he’s innocent, maybe there’s a chance to protect what little space the Chinese community has left. Afterward, I found myself in a long conversation about the real history behind the film—the contribution of the Chinese to the U.S., their treatment, and how much of it has been erased or ignored.

That’s what Four Treasures of the Sky does so well. It takes those gaps in knowledge—those blank spots—and fills them with something human.

We follow Daiyu, a girl from a loving family. Suddenly, her parents vanish. She’s left with her grandmother, who disguises her as a boy and sends her off, hoping to keep her safe. She ends up working in a calligraphy studio, where her talent is recognized. But just when you think she might find a small path forward, she’s tricked, kidnapped, and trafficked to the United States—forced into a brothel in Los Angeles.

From there, she escapes. And what follows is a story of survival, transformation, and reinvention… or that’s what we hope. However, it’s not just her personal story. Through Daiyu’s journey, we also see the hardships, exploitation, and racism that Chinese immigrants—especially women—faced in America at that time. The novel doesn’t shy away from showing how Chinatown communities were both refuge and prison, how survival often meant silence, and how the broader American system made sure Chinese bodies were used, taxed, feared, and discarded. It’s not preachy—but it’s there, in every choice Daiyu is forced to make.

What I admired most about the novel was how readable it is despite the heaviness of the topic. Zhang writes with calm precision. The violence and trauma are there, but she doesn’t sensationalize them. And she could have. She could have written a rage-fueled revenge narrative. She had the history, the moral high ground, and the emotional weight to do so. But she didn’t. She chose balance over bitterness. And that, to me, is far more powerful.

Now, for what didn’t quite land.

It wasn’t the multiple identities Daiyu has to adopt throughout her journey. That made complete sense to me—survival often demands reinvention. What I struggled with was the presence of the fictional Lin Daiyu, the character from Dream of the Red Chamber whom our heroine is named after. She appears almost like an imaginary friend, visible only to our main character, floating into scenes with commentary or emotional weight. For me, that device didn’t work. I understood the symbolic layer—it’s about destiny, name-giving, cultural expectations—but I personally found it distracting. It pulled me out of the story instead of grounding me deeper in it. It’s not that it was poorly done. It just wasn’t my thing.

“My life was written for me from the moment the name was given to me. Or it was not. That is the true beauty. That is the intent. We can practice all we want, telling and retelling the same story, but the story that comes out of your mouth, from your brush, is one that only you can tell. So let it be. Let your story be yours, and my story be mine.”

Also, I was surprised by the ending. After everything Daiyu survives, I expected her story to circle back to China—to find closure there, with her grandmother or her past. But that’s not where the novel takes us. And while I understand the narrative choice, emotionally, it left me hanging a bit.

Still, stepping back, I recognize that this is a book that prioritizes reach over perfection. The prose is straightforward, the pacing steady, and because of that, it will land in more hands than a more “literary” version of the same story might have. And I think that’s a good thing.

To make a comparison—recently I read James by Percival Everett, which also deals with historical violence and systemic racism. That book, for me, felt cynical and acidic. Like it wanted to punish the reader for history, rather than share it. Four Treasures of the Sky, on the other hand, wants to be heard. And it succeeds in that.

So no, it’s not my perfect book. But yes, I’m glad I read it. And I hope many others do too.

“But above all, you must have respect for yourself. It is the monumental task of creating unity between the person you are and the person you could be.”