The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan, 1995, Ivy Books (Ballantine Books)

The Hundred Secret Senses. What are they? Why are they secret?

Is The Hundred Secret Senses outdated?

Hard to believe it’s thirty years since this book was originally published. Author Amy Tan was born in 1952, just two years older than me, so I can relate to her writing from those days.
The Hundred Secret Senses attempts to make sense of Chinese thinking from the point of view of a half Chinese person who grew up in the United States.

Of course, by this time, in 2025, Chinese thinking has evolved to be quite different. People who thought in the old ways have largely died off. Everything is now modern and worldly. But have the hundred secret senses been obliterated? Do they, or did they, actually exist?

These days, in both North America and China, people unfortunately ignore the spiritual realm. People who pay too much attention to it are often treated for mental illness.
Even then, when Kwan, the Chinese half-sister of Main Character Olivia, told Olivia that she communicated with the dead, she was locked up and given shock treatments.

Could Ancient China hold clues to spiritual secrets?

But when Olivia accompanies Kwan to China, she gradually finds that many of the mysterious things Kwan told her are true. Has Olivia also gone crazy, or are we ignoring an entire ghostly realm? Do our five physical senses tell us everything there is, or are there other senses that we never pay attention to? What about internal senses such as anger, hope, and importance?

I love the quote from the end of the book, “I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. I once thought love was supposed to be nothing but bliss. I now know it is also worry and grief, hope and trust. And believing in ghosts–that’s believing that love never dies. If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.”