The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy
The book is narrated by a little girl named Jook-Liang (or just Liang). You are introduced to her and her family who live in Vancouver B.C. during the Great Depression. She lives in a rundown house with her father; her real mom (who she's made to call Stepmother); the "old one", the children's grandmother-- Poh-Poh; and 3 brothers. The oldest Kiam; second oldest-- an orphan the family adopted Jung-Sum; and then would be Liang; and then the youngest child Sek-Lung (or Sekky).
One day an old man comes to join the family for supper-- he new Poh-Poh from Old China... the man is odd looking and Liang thinks him to be "the Monkey Man" from the ghost stories her grams is always telling. Regardless Liang and this man she comes to call Wong-Suk become great friends. They go to the movies together and get jeered at (I'm not sure if this is beacause 'Beauty and the Beast' or because they are Chinese); he tells her stories; and she dances for him.
Liang's main interests consist of movies, stories, tap-dancing, and imitating Shirley Temple. Wong-Suk buys her expensive, beautiful ribbon one day for her second hand tap shoes and Poh-Poh helps her tie them into fancy flowers. -- This is where we learn a bunch about Poh-Poh's childhood. She was born in China and so it was already too bad that she had be born a girl child. But further more she was sort of disfigured. Her forehead was sloppy and mis-shapen and immediately everyone told her mother she was the ugliest baby ever. Her mother sold her to a wealthy family; where she was a servant. The concubine would beat her and their other servants with a rod-- as if they were oxen. Poh-Poh had to learn to do things quickly and flawlessly or she would be beaten. Her fingers would bleed because she was practicing tying these intricet(abc?) patterns. She of course grew out of her 'deformity' and was quite a pretty lady.
She even married at one point, a man from a circus-- but one day he just never came back. Anyways, Poh-Poh is always telling Liang that she is a useless girlchild.
Now, so Liang got all dressed up and waited and waited for Wong-Suk to come... and he finally did, but not to see her dance.
Baoyu is introduced to both the readers and Black Jade — one of Baoyu’s cousins — through Madame Wang. She describes him as “a good deal with the girls and maids. He behaves tolerably well if left alone but, if any of the girls encourage him in the least, he becomes quite impossible and may say all sorts of wild things” (Cao 32). Already Baoyu’s rejection of norms can be seen. He doesn’t participate in the homosociality usually expected of him, instead spending a lot of time with members of the opposite sex: girls and maids. Furthermore her assessment that he says ‘all sorts of wild things’ implies that he is unorthodox in his behavior and opinions. He doesn’t abide by the norms of the culture and wants to have his own voice in the socie...
It begins with a happy 9-year-old girl named Ling who lives in a hospital complex with her father, a very successful surgeon, and her mother, a well-known doctor. Her mother, known as Mrs. Chang, is very strict, always nagging Ling to act like a woman and to be perfect in almost every way. Ling believes it is because her mother never wanted to have a daughter. Father, on the other hand, Mr. Chang, spent much time with Ling, and got very close to her, teaching her reading and English lessons. He would
“The Jade Peony” is a lovely short story about traditions, written in first person narrative by Wayson Choy. Every life has its profound moments that touch us deeply and become embedded in our very DNA. Choy artfully details the plot of the story which revolves around finding, gathering, and preparation of various pieces of objects that will become his Grandmama’s gift to the family upon her death.
In her Childhood, she was a middle child of three siblings and the only daughter. She grew up with a loving father and mother. Education was crucial in the Wu family. Her mother was a teacher, along with her father being an Engineer, Chien-Shiung Wu learned to love math and science. She later in her life had a husband named Luke Chain Yuan and had a baby boy with him.
At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple. We'd watch Shirley's old movies on TV as though they were training films” (Tan 222). Jing-mei’s mother finally decided she would be a piano prodigy after watching a young girl play the piano on television. She hired her neighbor by the name Mr. Chong who is a retired piano teacher. He would teach Jing-mei how to play the piano in exchange for house cleaning services from her mother. Jing-Mei doesn’t want to learn the piano. Also, Mr. Chong is deaf and has very weak eyesight and can’t tell if she is playing correctly. Jing-mei is supposed to perform at a concert of what her teacher had been teaching her. Jing-mei has not learned to play the song, and does not play good at all. She thinks her mother would finally let her quit. It only encouraged her mother to keep pushing her to practice even more. Jing-mei is angry and frustrated. She has not told her mother she does not want to do this yet. She thinks that her mother is trying to turn her into something she is not. Jing-mei’s mother tells her there are only two kinds of daughters—obedient ones and ones who think for themselves, and only obedient ones can live in her house. “Then I wish I'd never been born! I wish I were dead! Like them” (Tan 228). Jing-mei vented, telling her mother she wished she was dead like her twin babies she lost back in China. Her mother is so sad she says nothing and walks
“I think Lowe’s journey was about authenticity, how to get to someplace in himself that was truer than what he’d been living. I think he was tired of pretending. I think, at a certain point, he had lost himself in the many stories he was living—his father’s story, Cecil’s story, Miss Sylvie’s story, the villagers’ stories.”
When I first started reading the book I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It showed a functional family in their daily routine. The story starts out with Mam, Pap, Grandma Mary, and JP (James Patrick) all living in a home. Grandma Mary was the one who kept everything in line. Pap is mentally challenged but seems to catch a grasp of a few things. Mam seems to be antisocial, while her son, JP, strives for good grades. His main reason for this is not to fall into the shadows of his father. However, this all changes when Grandma Mary dies. Now that the backbone of their family has passed away, they have to start over from scratch and hope that their family doesn't get ruined. It doesn't help that Mam makes them move while doing many other crazy things. She lets people come and go as they please at their new house. She also leaves with Dr. Mike to Switzerland for vacation.
After Taizong’s death in 649, Wu’s cunning allowed her to become the privileged wife of Taizong’s son and heir to the throne. Wu had been a concubine, an official mistress of Emperor Taizong. Concubines were extremely i...
The beginning of the book opens up with a flashback of the day Papa gets taken of the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The narrator is a girl name Jeanne and has other siblings, also. She starts to run through some memories of the tradition she had of standing on the wharf with her mother watching her father sat out on another fishing trip. Like any other time she watches until the boats clear the horizon but on this day Papa’s boat and the rest of the fleet stop short of the horizon. This being because Japanese planes just bombed Pearl Harbor so Papa and the rest had to turn around and sail back to the shore.
So what about Xiao Shu? What about Elder Princess Jinyang? What about Consort Chen, who was Lin Xie's sister and Prince Qi's mother?
The main characters are Helen and Mabel. Helen is the woman that companioned the Goshawk Mabel. The book is written in first person protagonist which I think compliments the overall feeling you get when you read it.
betrothed. The Huangs, the family of Tyan-yu, were very wealthy and took little interest in Lindo which lead to the first impression that Tyan-yu was a cruel man by the way he acted. He and his family made her stay in their servants’ quarters and made her perform physical tasks, such as cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, and embroidering clothes. Tyan-yu would make her sleep on the couch lying to his mother so that he would not get himself into trouble which was a sign of weakness on Tyan-yu’s part. Lindo proves this by saying “That’s when I could see what was underneath Tyan-yu. He was scared.”. (58)
O-lan, from The Good Earth, gets treated terribly and does not have the power to say or do anything. She proves that the Chinese culture treats their women with no respect. This will contradict with many other cultures and can cause lots of conflicts. Most cultures believe that women should be treated justly and fair. If they came upon such cruelty done in the Chinese culture, a lot more than arguments would arise. After giving birth, O-lan “worked all day” and “the child lay on an old torn quilt” (Buck 40). The Chinese culture expects their women to work all day and give birth to many children, therefore, they expect families from other cultures to also have large families. Since all cultures do not have the same beliefs, the view of the world will differ from person to
The story of Princess Huo’s daughter is a story about a man by the name of Li Yi. Li Yi was from a good family and showed brilliant promise. Even senior scholars admired him. At the age of twenty-one, he hoped for a beautiful and accomplished wife. In Chang’an Li asked a matchmaker by the name of Bao to find him a wife. Li gave her expensive gifts and she was very well inclined to him. One afternoon, some months after talking to Bao Li was sitting in the south pavilion of his lodgings when he heard continuous knocking. Bao entered and Li asked her “What brings you here so unexpectedly, madam”. Boa had found Li a perfect match for a wife, and with the good news Li was ecstatic and leaped for joy. Saying “I shall be your slave as long as I live!” Bao informed him that she was the youngest daughter of prince Huo. Her name is Jade, her mother was the prince’s favorite slave. When the prince died, his sons refused to keep the child, so they gave her a piece of wealth and made her leave. She changed her name, and the people do not know the prince was her father. She is the most beautiful...
Po, The Biography of Li. "The Biography of Li Po." Poemhunter.com. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. .