Four years ago in San Francisco a 63-year-old Chinese matriarch named Sin-shee Jang decided to spend her declining years in the village of her ancestors, a hamlet named Kutow in Kwangtung Province. Sin-shee Jang was an old-country woman: her feet had been bound, and she liked the quiet scenes of her girlhood. Furthermore, in Kutow she owned a 14-room brick house and was a woman of wealth and importance. She bade her five Americanized sons goodbye, and sailed for home.
All went well with her for a while—even after the Communists took over...