Word: matriarchs
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...long before that the book has degenerated into a crude lesson on the corruption of the bourgeoisie, the likes of which hasn't been seen since depression-era borscht-belt theater. The characters remain one-dimensional types (the boozy black-sheep brother; the frigid trophy wife; the stuffy matriarch) who come and go in one unbelievable, manipulative scene after another. The book gallops along furiously. Within one page Conrad's first wife dies in childbirth, the grandparents are denied the right to take care of the baby, and then are suddenly put in charge anyway because Conrad...
...sort that ply the Liu Creek, where the armada once assembled. Fan Ping owns one of them, the Sutai Yuyou 503, a small steel ship that doubles as her family's home. It's just 10 m long; the engine a mere 20 h.p. But the 49-year-old matriarch uses the modest craft to ply the waterways for riches. She finds oil spills, sucks them up with a powerful hose and resells the fuel. Cruising along the Liu Creek, looking for bounty, we stand together on the cramped deck, imagining what it was like in Zheng...
...Megawati may see herself as the nation's reluctant savior. The 54-year-old matriarch was pressed into politics at age 40 by opponents of the dictatorship who hoped to use the Sukarno mythology to rally support. And it worked. In 1999, when Indonesians had their first opportunity to vote for a successor to the ousted Suharto, Megawati won a plurality of the vote. And that despite the fact that she has few visible talents as a politician. She seldom speaks in public and rarely discusses anything approximating policy; and the fact that she allowed herself to be outmaneuvered...
...Jang family blazed an audacious trail to freedom, China wasn't sure how to react. After a complex trek in which a South Korean businessman led them to Beijing, the Jangs gathered June 26 for what they feared would be their final breakfast together. When they finished, the family matriarch gave everybody, including her teenage grandkids, small tablets of rat poison: if the police were to grab them, they would commit collective suicide. They then marched into a United Nations office to demand sanctuary. "They preferred death to being taken back," says Moon Guk Han, the businessman who helped them...
Back in Anapra, Conrada Valles, 58, is hopeful enough to stay where she is. The matriarch of a large family that has given years of sweat to the maquiladoras, Valles is one of more than 100,000 Juarez residents who have no running water. She's confident the U.S. will help pony up the funds to turn on her faucets. Watching over a front "lawn" of sand and brush as a caged parrot on her porch creates an illusion of oasis, she insists, "We're all here because the Americans wanted us here...