Bound Feet : Stories of Contemporary Taiwan(纏足：短篇小說集)

A young wife diets by eating only pineapple to become invisible in revenge against her lover\’s mother; a former model-turned-photographer defies the gossip of her neighbors and shoots the aftermath of a typhoon; an American sinologist succeeds in learning everything Chinese except how to keep his Chinese wife; a film critic and his painter wife have their marital troubles viewed through the eyes of their naive boarder who confides her confusion to a stray dog; a Taiwanese immigrant to the United States returns and discovers she doesn\’t envy her friends who became rich during Taiwan\’s ”economic miracle;” and a Chinese American architect, accustomed to the fast life in Los Angeles, seeks the companionship of blondes in the Taipei bars.

All are among the lives exposed in Bound Feet by the mischievous god. Ji Gung, who dances on his pedestal with his feather fan and gourd filled with wine. Troubled by the mocking Ji Gung and a mad neighbor who shouts her incomprehensible torments to the midnight sky, a writer stares at the blank page as the stories write themselves, even against her will. The tradition of keeping up appearances is shattered and ridiculed, but then finally, with mysterious complicity, resealed.

Catherine Dai has published two other books with Bookman Press; a novel, Under the Phoenix Tree, and another collection of- short fiction, Sringara Tales, stories of the dancers in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. She is a dancer and a theatre reporter.