Ruth Young
Ruth is the de facto protagonist of the story even though a story-within-the-story is actually narrated by another character. That first-person narrative is distinctly related and inextricably tied to the overarching tale of Ruth’s journey as a writer. Ruth is a Chinese-American woman in San Francisco with grander ambitions to be a serious writer who has in the meanwhile latched onto ghostwriting self-improvement tomes as a way to enjoy economic independence.
LuLing Young
LuLing is Ruth’s mother. She is also the person who narrates her own autobiographical tale in the story-within-the-story. She has recently become more and more absent-minded. This onset of memory loss combined with a sudden propensity for making strange comments about her past leads Ruth to suspect her mother is suffering from dementia. Several years before taking this turn, LuLing had set herself down to the task of writing her life story down in Chinese. Ruth has the manuscript translated into English and it is this story of LuLing’s life back in China that forms most of the second half of the novel.
Precious Auntie
LuLing’s narrative tells of her early life in a small Chinese hamlet called Immortal Heart where she was raised by a nursemaid whose family had been bone-setters going back nearly a millennium. Her muteness is explained by a suicide attempt by swallowing a caustic ink. LuLing is emotionally abandoned by her mother, but Precious Auntie steps in to become her devoted caretaker.
Peking Man
The 1921 discovery of a fossilized human remains that came to be known as Peking Man becomes a character of sorts in the story by virtue of the discovery playing a significant role in the flashback story told by LuLing. It will be the discovery of Peking Man and the subsequent excitement over the possible changing of economic conditions that will directly lead to LuLing’s eventual immigration to America as well as the shocking revelation about the actual identity of Precious Auntie.
