1. Discuss the similarities and the differences between Li-Xia and her daughter, Siu-Sing. What matters most to each of them, and what does each do to achieve and preserve it?

2. Pai-Ling tells Li-Xia to “gather your thousand pieces of gold wherever you may find them and protect them with all your strength.” What do you think this means? How do Li-Xia and Siu-Sing gather their “pieces of gold” throughout the story?

3. What role does learning, from books and otherwise, play in the principal characters’ lives?

4. Discuss the tradition of foot binding in Chinese culture. What are the deeper implications, aside from the obvious physical handicaps of the practice?

5. The Concubine’s Daughter is the story of three generations of women, all of whom are faced with challenges. How does the experience of one generation influence the next? What does the novel have to say about continuity with the past?

6. Myths and legends are recurring elements in the story, and link generations with a common thread. How are stories used to explain the violent forces that barrage the lives of Li-Xia and Siu-Sing? What role does spirituality play in the characters’ lives?

7. Although society in the novel is explicitly dominated by men, in what ways are both major and minor women characters able to assert some sort of power over their destinies? In what ways are they powerless? Although the position of women has obviously changed since that time, can you see any similarities to the role of women in contemporary society?

8. What motivates some of the women in the story to help their fellow women, while others try to thwart them?

9. Discuss the roles of the various men in the story, and Ben Devereaux’s role in particular? What do you think Li-Xia finds most attractive about Ben? And how great a factor do you think his otherness plays in that attraction?

10. How does Siu-Sing’s childhood, which is idyllic in some ways, prepare her for a world beyond the mountains? How does it leave her vulnerable?

11. As young readers we are taught that every story has a “moral.” Is there a moral to The Concubine’s Daughter?

12. The Concubine’s Daughter is set in an exotic world that often seems to date back many centuries instead of less than a hundred years ago. What seems most alien to you about this world, and what, if anything, reminds you of life in our own times?