Used book – La Mémoire de l'eau, Ying chen

In 1912, when the last Chinese emperor was driven from the throne, Grandmother Lie-Fei was five years old. She had just undergone the operation to bind her feet, to make them "beautiful like lotus flowers." But thanks to the change of regime, or because of it, the operation was quickly interrupted, and it was with "average" feet—guaranteeing a middle position in the conflict between tradition and modernity—that she traversed the communist regime without too many hitches...

This singular destiny is retraced by the narrator, "the little one," with a dry humor and an unwavering tenderness throughout a story that spans the 20th century, that of Grandmother Lie-Fei, lulled by the scents and colors of the waters of a China undergoing profound change.