Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Our February pick was the result of our search for a fun “theme” book: one that lent itself to trying new and different food/drink, costume, and decoration ideas. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a historical fiction novel that has a load of information about traditional Chinese culture and offered the opportunity to celebrate all things Asian.

Much of the authentic Chinese food mentioned in the book is hard to come by, so we had to improvise a bit. We were able to come up with a recipe for the sugared taro root dessert that ends up being an important part of the story, and we sampled the kanji soup that was a staple of the characters diets. Both of these dishes were very different from anything we are used to, and it was so much fun to try foods that were actually eaten in China at the time the story takes place. We got lucky at an Asian market and found a modern day version of the rice balls and sweet cakes that appear throughout the book. We also filled up on a couple of appetizers from the neighborhood Chinese restaurant, including, of course, fortune cookies!

sugared taro root

We had a great time trying to replicate some of the items that were in the story, particularly the fans and the embroidered slippers that were so vital to the characters in the novel. We found some beautiful fans at World Market for each book club member. The slippers were a bit harder to find…so we made our own! Through trial and error, we used red felted wool to sew a pair of slippers for each person, and we embroidered each slipper with a firefly and the Chinese character “friend”. Time consuming, but worth it!

fans and handmade slippers

An easier craft idea we came up with was using Chinese take out containers as gift boxes for each pair of slippers. We decorated each box with a club members name written in Chinese, (easily found by Google search) and also wrote each persons Chinese name on shoji type screens. We then put white Christmas lights behind each screen to illuminate them. We took another couple of strands of lights and made decorated paper lanterns to cover them.



costumed in our Asian outfits in front of shoji screen



We also came up with a fun addition to the book discussion. We looked up each persons “animal” as found in the Chinese zodiac calendar, and we read the corresponding personality traits assigned to each of us. This, in addition to the many issues brought up by the book itself, created lots of great discussion and made for a memorable book club! (Tip: February is the perfect time for a Chinese themed meeting because party stores have Chinese New Year decorations in stock).