was Tianjin a pleasant place in which to live in Adeline's early years?

Tianjin was not a pleasant place for Adeline to grow up in. A year after her mother’s death, her father remarried a “seventeen year old Eurasian beauty fourteen years his junior” (4) of French and Chinese ancestry. Soon after, they had two children, resulting in a family of twelve at the Tianjin mansion. Their stepmother, Niang, cares nothing for her stepchildren. That, coupled with the fact that Adeline’s siblings “blamed [her] for causing Mama’s death and never forgave [her],” (4) makes it difficult for Adeline to advance her place within the family.

No, it was not pleasent because it was under Japanese rule, and they would often come to force themselves into her fathers busisness. It was a typical reminder of her mothers death and the time her father remarried an evil step mom