was Tianjin a pleasant place in which to live in Adeline's early years?

Tianjin was not a pleasant place for Adeline to grow up in. A year after her mother’s death, her father remarried a “seventeen year old Eurasian beauty fourteen years his junior” (4) of French and Chinese ancestry. Soon after, they had two children, resulting in a family of twelve at the Tianjin mansion. Their stepmother, Niang, cares nothing for her stepchildren. That, coupled with the fact that Adeline’s siblings “blamed [her] for causing Mama’s death and never forgave [her],” (4) makes it difficult for Adeline to advance her place within the family.