There are not enough reviews from Chinese people and boy, is that clear. Just look through them and you'll see the difference in ratings when someone is Chinese vs not.

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The story follows one woman in quaint 1400s China from like 9 years old to 90+. She's a laaady doctooorrrrr. As a whole, this book is dreadfully long-winded and repetitive. I don't need to hear a hundred times about what makes a good and proper wife, what the foot binding process is, how important it is to have a son, etc. It gets old. We get it, the characters already know, everyone gets it. There is no need to remind the reader again how important sons are.

In terms of details. Jfc. I despise the way See just directly translates the different characters that make up a word. The uterus, "Zi-gong" or 子宫, is just uterus. No one calls it a "child palace," what the fuck is that. The main character refers to her mother as "Respectable Lady" and idk what tf that's supposed to be in Chinese. It would be like if you called Coca-Cola "quench thirst, happy" （可口可乐）mmmm NO. As one of the other reviewers mentioned, German, would've never been translated like that. Imagine a whole book where German medical terms like uterus Gebärmutter was constantly called the "give birth mother". Who thought this was a good idea??? It's so cringey. Why are you directly translating characters sometimes and then not doing it other times? Who was the Chinese person who OK'd this because I doubt it was Lisa See who is happy to let people believe she's Asian because her great great grandfather or something was from mainland China.

I would love to hear the perspective of an actual TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) practitioner on this book. Because while in SURE this book was meticulously researched, I don't know if it was laid out or displayed well or if like with "child-palace," Lisa See just directly translated everything and made it weird.