She was employed by Western missionaries as a young servant girl in Changmian during the 1800s. It focuses on her fate in a former life when she was a one-eyed servant named Nunumu. She wants Olivia to acknowledge that the World of Yin, a place that exists in Kwan’s mind, is real. However, Kwan’s loftiest goal is one that is spiritual in nature. Her plan includes luring the couple to her home in Changmian, China.

In spite of Olivia’s behavior, Kwan is undeterred and remains fiercely loyal to Olivia She sets her sights on reuniting Olivia with her estranged husband, Simon. Olivia begrudges her sister her strengths, going out of her way to ignore her. Demanding and cynical, she has been forever embarrassed by Kwan’s outlandish behavior though she is secretly fascinated with her stories. Olivia, now in her late thirties, has been fully integrated into American society. Her conversations with ghosts land her in a psychiatric institution not long after her arrival in America.

Believing she can see the dead, she fancies herself a medium. She came to San Francisco from her home in China when she was eighteen years old. She tells otherworldly stories of mystics and magic. Kwan is outwardly annoying, naïve, and eccentric. Olivia and Kwan have a difficult and complicated relationship. Kwan Li, her half-sister, is the product of their father’s first marriage and is twelve years older than Olivia. Born to an American mother and a Chinese father, Olivia’s father died when she was four years old. Olivia (Laguni) Bishop, a travel photographer, is the story’s primary protagonist and narrator. In The Hundred Secret Senses, Tan’s attention shifts to explore the relationship between sisters. Another of Tan’s contrasting themes is these women’s frustration with their American-born daughters. The well-known author of two widely successful novels: The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, her previous books focused on the tortured lives of older generation women whose journey brought them from China to America. Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses (1996) focuses on the relationship between Olivia and her half-sister, Kwan.

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan