Adeline Yen Mah was born in Tianjin, China. She lived in Shanghai as a child and from shelter to shelter until settling down in a Hong Kong boarding school at age 11. At age 14, she won an international playwriting competition that convinced her emotionally distant father to allow her to study abroad. Although she had a passion for writing, she attended London Hospital Medical School, graduated as a physician and established a thriving medical practice in California.
After the commercial success of her first novel, Falling Leaves, in 1997, Mrs. Yen Mah decided to leave her medical practice to write full time. Chinese Cinderella was her second novel, receiving the award from the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California in 2000 for Compelling Autobiography and Lamplighter’s Award from National Christian School Association in June 2002 for Contribution to Exceptional Children’s Literature. She has released two other novels, Watching the Tree and A Thousand Pieces of Gold.
Adeline is Founder and President of the Falling Leaves Foundation. The mission of her foundation is to promote understanding between East and West and to provide funds for the study of China’s history, language and culture. Toward this end, she has started the website to teach Chinese over the internet at no cost to the subscriber.
She is married to Professor Robert A. Mah, with whom she has a daughter; she also has a son from a previous marriage.
Along the River is a novel that was written by a famous Chinese American writer called Adeline Yen Mah. It was published in early 2009 by Penguin Publishing in hardcover format, and on April 10, 2012, in paperback. The book is part of her Chinese...
Chinese Cinderella is the story of Adeline Yen Mah's youth as the unwanted daughter of a rising businessman in the midst of a great transformation within Chinese society. Adeline’s affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother...
Adeline Yen Mah had a traumatic upbringing. As a child, she was raised by her cruel stepmother, abused and neglected. Later, when her father died, this same stepmother kept Adeline from reading his will until two years after his death, at which...
