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Culture and interpersonal relationships
Culture and interpersonal relationships
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Opiate of Love Mian Mian’s novel Candy, takes a deeper look into China’s economic upbringing to the modern world. The book is entirely narrated by Hong – a fictitious character who levels with the exploding populous of drugs, prostitution, and new-age music through her early adult years. She meets a young musician named Saining who both fall hopelessly in love for each other. The binding relationship of Saining and Hong did not go un-aided, as the social repercussion of heroin and alcohol soon found its way into controlling their lives and eventually their future as a couple. When Saining found an entry to escape the world with heroin, he would inevitably leave Hong out. Consequently, if either of them was in absence of any substance, they fell out of each other’s “wavelength”. In turn, both would sequentially drop in and out of each other’s wavelength that proved fatal to their relationship. To maintain order of this relationship, indulgence of alcohol and heroin was their only answer, and eventually a self-botched religion. When beginning to understand this dilemma of love vs. drug addiction and withdrawal, the answer lies back to when Saining first introduced heroin to Hong. When she tries heroin for herself, she believed that the drug was horrible and decided she disliked it. The first instance of this unbalanced wavelength level is noted when Saining decides to kick his heroin habit. “He took to spending long hours outside the balcony, sitting motionless and looking out. This solitude was more than I could stand, and I joined him and we watched it all together, the chaotic street below. The sunlight was always so full of poison. A drug that was a stranger to me had put up a wall between me and my closest friend. I couldn’t read his expressions, and I had lost the power to attract him … I was determined to get my lover back.” (Mian, 73) With this, Hong slowly realizes they are losing trust in each other… and without trust, a key element; one cannot have a decent relationship. After Saining went into rehab, Hong soon found draining herself away with liquor rather heavily… and still drinking when Saining was released from rehab. There, the balance of the wavelength becomes uneven again between the two and Saining starts using heroin again. “Sometimes you really scare me, he said. How can I make love with someone I am afraid of?
I’m reading Gym Candy. It is a book about football. This book is about a young boy named Mick is and his dad was a pro football running back. Mick would always talk about his dad and brag about how good he was and how he stopped because he blew out his knee. Well the truth came out and his dad wasn’t taking it seriously. Well now Mick is in high school and is on varsity as a starting running back. The team had just got a new coach and is weight training in the off- season. Well Mick is not progressing and is wanting to go to a different gym. Well his dad is sponsoring a gym called Popeye's and can get him a membership. So now mick has been going there and isn’t progressing and his trainer told him about gym candy, and now he is progressing.
Although Mrs. Spring Fragrance has only lived in America for a short amount of time, her husband states “There are no more American words for her learning” (865). It is obvious through reading this statement that Mrs. Spring Fragrance has become quickly acquainted with not only the English language, but also with American customs and traditions. However, not every character in Mrs. Spring Fragrance adjusts to American culture as easily as Mrs. Spring Fragrance; some characters have a difficult time leaving their Chinese traditions of marriage and accepting that in America, love comes before marriage. Throughout Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Sui Sin Far describes the process that the Chinese characters experience as they slowly begin to alienate traditional Chinese culture and becoming Americanized through accepting American culture as their own.
Additionally, although proclaiming his love for her, Lester becomes a negative influence on Kathy. Under the false sense of security he provides, Kathy, a recovering alcoholic, allows herself to start drinking again after an abstinence of three ye...
“It was not easy to live in Shanghai” (Anyi 137). This line, echoed throughout Wang Anyi 's short piece “The Destination” is the glowing heartbeat of the story. A refrain filled with both longing and sadness, it hints at the many struggles faced by thousands upon thousands trying to get by in the city of Shanghai. One of these lost souls, the protagonist, Chen Xin, was one of the many youths taken from his family and sent to live the in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Ten years after the fact, Chen Xin views the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution internally and externally as he processes the changes that both he, and his hometown have over-gone in the past ten years. Devastatingly, he comes to the conclusion that there is no going back to the time of his childhood, and his fond memories of Shanghai exist solely in memory. This is in large part is due to the changes brought on by the Cultural Revolution. These effects of the Cultural Revolution are a central theme to the story; with repercussions seen on a cultural level, as well as a personal one.
To achieve this goal, he crafts a stylized capitalistic society that inflicts grave injustices upon his protagonists. The avarice inherent to this society governs everyday life within Street Angel. Xiao Hong, for example, lives with adoptive parents so corrupted by greed that they prostitute their older daughter, Xiao Yun. In a transaction that reflects the inhumanity of higher-level capitalism, these parents sell Xiao Hong to a local gangster. By juxtaposing the implications of this sale with Xiao Hong’s exaggerated innocence, Yuan appeals to his audience’s emotions, stoking anger toward social values that could enable such barbaric exploitation of the poor. Yuan employs a similar juxtaposition later in Street Angel, when Wang visits a lawyer’s office in a skyscraper – an environment so divorced from his day-to-day realities that he remarks, “This is truly heaven.” Wang soon learns otherwise, when the lawyer rebuffs his naïve plea for assistance by coldly reciting his exorbitant fees. The lawyer’s emotionless greed – a callousness that represents capitalism at its worst – contrasts strikingly with Wang’s naïve purity, a quality betrayed by his awestruck expression while inside the skyscraper. Again, this juxtaposition encourages the film’s audience to sympathize with a proletarian victim and condemn the social values that enable his
The fact that the fictional mothers and daughters of the story have unhappy marriages creates a common ground on which they can relate. However, marriage has different meanings for each generation in this book. In the mothers’ perspective, marriage is permanent and not always based on love. Especially with their marriages in China, which was a social necessity that they must secretly endure in order to be happ...
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, written by Anne Fadiman, emulates on the ways in which cultural ignorance can have drastic effects on the lives of people caught in between two cultures. Published in 1997, the book chronicles the struggles of a Laos refugee family, and their experience with the health care system in Merced, California. This story centers on Lia Lee, a young Hmong child diagnosed with epilepsy. At three months old; Yer, Lia’s older sister, slams a door that triggers Lia’s first sensors. Her parents, Foua and Neo Kao, believe that this noise causes her soul to flee and diagnose her with qaug dab peg, “the spirt catches you and you fall down.” While the family is concerned with the health of her daughter they also see her sickness as something special. This is a beautifully written book- you feel for everyone in the story.
There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for
Even though the feudal imperial regime has ended years ago, the traditional thoughts and burdens that have ruled Chinese country women for thousands of years remain unchanged. In Young Master Gets His Tonic, Wu Zuxiang presents a first-person narrative story where the young master, guanguan, drinks human milk to get nutrition for making up his previous loss of blood and energy from an accident. Right after the accident, the young master had received shots of blood from a wet nurse’s husband to supplement his loss, and three months later he drinks woman’s milk from the wet nurse. The young master’s description of the wet nurse effectively exhibits the oppressed life of lower class women, that they still lived in poor and unhealthy condition with subordinate status in the society.
The thought of opium as a topic of conversation in China throughout the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century brought about discussions that varied from arguments for its legalization and praise of its distributors to the complete ban of the drug and punishment for all users and smugglers. For those who acted as proponents of the narcotic, they sincerely believed that this necessary evil was one of the only aspects of the economy that could effectively propel China into the same class as that of the world’s supreme powers (Janin 6). Those who condemned even the slightest interaction with opium or its derivatives opted for the more “honorable” route, in that, they pledged to rid their country of such horrible vices in order to follow a purer path throughout their daily lives (Mackay 124). It was from these arguments that made these debates rampantly widespread throughout the country, with neither side effectively telling the truth about the future of China and ultimately being left to the voice of those in charge of the economy, since they are the ones who control what is worth importing and exporting. If the use of opium were permitted, then the impact would have been generally positive, in that, there would be fewer smugglers to worry about breaking the law, and more profit actually being given to the Chinese government since they would actually be included. On the other hand, basing this drug trade on purely moral and some economic terms, then the people of China will constantly be in a state of intoxication because they will no longer be able to think and process clearly, while the economy of the Chinese government might also not be able to possess the buying power that they would have previously had when they unc...
Jealousy is an innate facet of humanity, an emotion universally felt during childhood. It is through this jealousy that we begin to resent the reality that we are given. In the article “Eat, Memory: Orange Crush,” Yiyun Li recalls how influential the western product “Tang” was during her childhood. Growing up, Li remembers a time where she was resentful of her lack of Tang, desiring the “Tangy” lifestyle which was symbolic of luxury and social status in China. Through the logos of Li’s father, Li’s appeal to pathos through her childhood experiences, and the disillusionment of Li’s utopian view of Tang, Li typifies the struggle a teenager undergoes as they grow up.
In analyzing these two stories, it is first notable to mention how differing their experiences truly are. Sammy is a late adolescent store clerk who, in his first job, is discontent with the normal workings of society and the bureaucratic nature of the store at which he works. He feels oppressed by the very fabric and nature of aging, out-of date rules, and, at the end of this story, climaxes with exposing his true feelings and quits his jobs in a display of nonconformity and rebellion. Jing-Mei, on the other hand, is a younger Asian American whose life and every waking moment is guided by the pressures of her mother, whose idealistic word-view aids in trying to mold her into something decent by both the double standards Asian society and their newly acquired American culture. In contrasting these two perspectives, we see that while ...
This is evident in the persistence of elderly characters, such as Grandmother Poh-Poh, who instigate the old Chinese culture to avoid the younger children from following different traditions. As well, the Chinese Canadians look to the Vancouver heritage community known as Chinatown to maintain their identity using on their historical past, beliefs, and traditions. The novel uniquely “encodes stories about their origins, its inhabitants, and the broader society in which they are set,” (S. Source 1) to teach for future generations. In conclusion, this influential novel discusses the ability for many characters to sustain one sole
The family's personal encounters with the destructive nature of the traditional family have forced them to think in modern ways so they will not follow the same destructive path that they've seen so many before they get lost. In this new age struggle for happiness within the Kao family, a cultural barrier is constructed between the modern youth and the traditional adults, with Chueh-hsin teeter tottering on the edge, lost between them both. While the traditional family seems to be cracking and falling apart much like an iceberg in warm ocean waters, the bond between Chueh-min, Chueh-hui, Chin and their friends becomes as strong as the ocean itself. While traditional Confucianism plays a large role in the problems faced by the Kao family, it is the combination of both Confucianism and modernization that brings the family to its knees. Chueh-hsin is a huge factor in the novel for many reasons.
“If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one’s very own” (Hua 61). This quote said by Yu Hua speaks volumes about his feelings for reading and writing. There were many times in the novel that he suddenly remembered a feeling by writing it. There were also times when the reader experienced an emotion that was completely his or her own by reading the words he put on paper. Hua presents the reader with several stories from his early childhood in which he learned to read and write. From an early age he learned that words have meaning and the power to change a person’s life, for better or for worse, and although he did not have the best conditions to become a writer growing up, he still managed to make a name for himself with what he was dealt in life. Although Yu Hua had limited literature to read, he still managed to fall in love with reading.