Chinese Cinderella and The Secret Dragon Society by Adeline Yen Mah

Not one of the best book by Adeline Yen Mah who is the author of the bestselling book 'Falling Leaves'. This book tells the story of a girl named CC (Chinese Cinderella) who seek refuge in a martial art school under the guidance of Grandma Wu. She later joined the Secret Dragon Society and got involved in a few daring adventures which include rescuing a crew of American pilots. The story was set in China during the Second World War.

The story of CC and the secret society was originally a short story written by Yen Mah when she was small. At the beginning, I expected this book to be somewhat similar to the heartbreaking story written in Falling Leaves which I have already reviewed in this blog. Looking at the picture of the small girl on the front cover which was also shown on the front cover of Falling Leaves, made me thinking that this book must have some connections with the book Falling Leaves. Since I really like the story in Falling Leaves, I decided to buy this book instead of buying Paulo Coelho's Like a Flowing River. And now I feel regretting buying this book.

The book's description of a girl's adventure with a secret society with a little bit of kung fu might sound appealing at first but quite a disappointment when reading it. Firstly, I cannot deal with the fact that the society members included a Japanese Russian boy, a Chinese American boy and CC herself. I am not being a racist but why aren't there any real chinese members excluding CC, in the Secret Dragon Society? I would assume that having a true chinese as the members of the society would be more interesting that they will show some interesting cultures being a chinese as well as some real Kung Fu moves! I assumed that The author is trying to suit the story to the western readers by creating characters which are mixed-blood. This might be acceptable for the Western readers but not for me. Having wathing Chinese Kung Fu movies all my life, I have come to accept that every Kung Fu movies have Chinese warriors showing their their remarkable Kung Fu and later getting involved in some kind of adventure.

I think that this book would definitely suit to the small children who might be interesting with the concept of secret society and Kung Fu. But for the rest of us, it might be worth checking out other books.