“Mom, do you remember brother Jian Ming?” I asked as I was looking at the family photo we have up on the wall in the living room. It was a full family picture with all my uncles, aunts, cousins, and other family members on my father’s side of the family. I wondered why we never took a family photo for my mother’s side of the family; the side of family that brother Jian Ming belonged to. “Yeah, what about him?” Mom took a deep breath and replied back as she was preparing our dinner. She acted as if she did not want to bring him up. “Why is it that we never hear about him anymore?What happened to him?” I was too young to remember what happened to brother Jian Ming. “A lot happened. Why are you asking?” My mom frowned upon my curiosity. “I …show more content…
After he got married, his life went straight downhill.” Mom said indifferently and shook her head. “The group of friends that he had completely crashed his life. The day after he got married, he and his friends were celebrating in his store. His friend took out some marijuana and tempted him into trying some. An hour later, the police came and caught brother Jian Ming and his friends doing drugs. The police held their guns against them and told them to bend down with their hands behind their head. ‘Whose drugs are these?’ the police asked aggressively. The crowd was silent. ‘Who?!’ the policed yelled again.‘They are mine, officer.’ Brother Jian Ming did not have to take the blame all for himself but he was blinded by what he defined as faithful friendship. He was then handcuffed and brought the police station. The police put him on trial a week later. Besides the drug case, brother Jian Ming was also charged for stealing money.” It was not clear to me why he was charged for that crime because I had always known him as the righteous brother. However, the question did not bother me much as mother went on with the …show more content…
I have money right here in my hand, we have money!’” Perhaps my aunt was just trying to defend brother Jian Ming but her method was definitely a foolish one. “Your aunt’s action obviously irritated the policers and that was what was recorded down as your aunt’s testimony. Perhaps it really was the case that your brother Jian Ming valued his friendship with all his heart, so he beared the responsibility for all of them. However, the cost for this loyal brotherhood was twenty years in jail. Who knows what he was thinking?” Mother sneered again and went back to cooking. “Wait, how did the police know that they were doing drugs there? They were in his private store.” I went straight to the blind spot of the story. “And what about his wife?” I
In the Lexington, Kentucky a drug operation occurred at an apartment complex. Police officers of Lexington, Kentucky followed a suspected drug dealer into an apartment complex. The officers smelled marijuana outside the door of one of the apartments, as they knocked loudly the officers announced their presence. There were noises coming from the inside of the apartment; the officers believed that the noises were as the sound of destroying evidence. The officers stated that they were about to enter the apartment and kicked the apartment door in in order to save the save any evidence from being destroyed. Once the officer enters the apartment; there the respondent and others were found. The officers took the respondent and the other individuals that were in the apartment into custody. The King and the
In her book, The House of Lim, author Margery Wolf observes the Lims, a large Chinese family living in a small village in Taiwan in the early 1960s (Wolf iv). She utilizes her book to portray the Lim family through multiple generations. She provides audiences with a firsthand account of the family life and structure within this specific region and offers information on various customs that the Lims and other families participate in. She particularly mentions and explains the marriage customs that are the norm within the society. Through Wolf’s ethnography it can be argued that parents should not dec5pide whom their children marry. This argument is obvious through the decline in marriage to simpua, or little girls taken in and raised as future daughter-in-laws, and the influence parents have over their children (Freedman xi).
China Men - The Brother in Vietnam & nbsp; In her tale, "The Brother in Vietnam," author Maxine Hong Kingston relates the drastic misinterpretation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" on the part of the "brother's" students. It is clear to the reader that their disillusioned thoughts and ideas of the world were instilled in their vulnerable minds by their own parents at young ages, an occurrence that still takes place in our society today. In his account of the situation, the brother first clearly makes a note that these confused and suspicious students comprise not one of his elementary classes, but rather his only non-remedial class. From this he is evidently implying that one would expect a heightened ability to understand and more accurately analyze the power and beauty of great literature on the part of the students. Thus from the beginning, the reader is alerted to the fact that their confusion the students perceive this Shakespearean tragedy as a horror story, the mere thought of it shadowed in their minds by fear. They see the Montagues and Capulets as families driven mad; Verona as a plague-infested country where killing and marriage take place in dark regions alike. They infer from it that young love is dangerous, and by reading of a suicide made possible by a potion that was initially intended to preserve tender love instead of stealing it, their notions that there is evil in everything seem The brother, frustrated and upset, is unable to "shift the emphasis" that the play has left on these youths, and he feels that he is to blame for "spoil[ing] the love story for a generation of students. " The reader looking on from the outside, however, is able to see that the brother could not have prevented this warped learning no matter how hard he tried. For it seems that the fault lies in the parents of these young people, who were continually planting seeds of suspicion and fear in their children's vulnerable minds. In fact, as we look back on the author's former accounts as a child, it seems that these Chinese parents told their children lies more often than the actual truth. told by her mother that their religion was Chinese. She further remembers her parents having claimed upon the birth of her younger brother, which she had secretly witnessed, that the infant had been miraculously discovered "naked under a pine tree" on Christmas Day. Still perhaps the most disturbing of all is the author's recollection of the war through the eyes of her younger self. Her memories are uncannily realistic and vivid; nevertheless, she was, on more than one occasion, told by her mother that what as a young girl. However, to any reader, it is evident that these are not, and can in no way be mere "scary movie flashbacks." As a result, we are left asking ourselves why any parent would teach their children what they know is untrue. In the case of a war, it is somewhat easier to comprehend the desperation of parents to hold their families together from the tearing claws of battle. And if it will prove to be the only glue that will preserve the family structure, such lying seems more acceptable.
Family became an important aspect in Mah’s life. In the Chinese culture family is typically a vital part of the way of life. Mah may have been ashamed the way her first marriage ended and did not want the same with this man she met named Leon. Leon is a Chinese immigrant and family is his priority. Mah and Leon marry and have two girls, Ona and Nina. They form a family like connection more than ever before. Leon was a fairly stable man and loved his family. Mah and Leon were b...
The uncle, on the other hand, does not care how he uses his money. As long as it helps himself in some way then he is happy. He sells his harvest as soon as it is ripe and then always ends up running out of money before the end of winter. The uncle farms on barren land that has no nutrients left in it. Since he is always gambling his money away, he cannot afford to buy new land and receive some kind of decent crop from his investment. The Uncle is so selfish that he threatens to tell the village if Wang Lung does not give him money and food. In the Chinese culture this would be considered dishonorable if Wang would not help his family. It is their duty to help if their family, even if that means that Wang would have less than everybody else. The uncle spends his money on expensive delicacies for his wife who is overweight as it is. He could save the money and use it in the winter when they are in need the most.
Growing up in California, Tan continued to embrace the typical values of Americans. She had taken on American values as her own identity, completely ignoring most of her Chinese heritage. In fact, young Amy Tan would answer her mother’s Chinese questions in English (Miller 1162). Teenage Amy Tan lost both her father and sixteen-year-old brother to brain tumors. Soon after that, she learned that she had two half-sisters in China from her mother’s first marriage (“Amy Tan Biography”). In 1987, Tan made a trip to China to meet those very same ...
Kingston’s mother takes many different approaches to reach out to her daughter and explain how important it is to remain abstinent. First, she tells the story of the “No Name Woman”, who is Maxine’s forgotten aunt, “’ Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her can happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born”’ (5), said Maxine’s mother. Kingston’s aunt was murdered for being involved in this situation. The shame of what Kingston’s aunt brought to the family led them to forget about her. This particular talk-story is a cautionary tale to deter Kingston from having premarital sex and to instill in her fear of death and humiliation if she violates the lesson her mother explained to her. Kingston is able to get pregnant but with the lecture her mother advises her with keeps her obedient. Brave Orchid tells her this story to open her eyes to the ways of Chinese culture. The entire family is affected by one’s actions. She says, “‘Don’t humiliate us’” (5) because the whole village knew about the pregnant aunt and ravaged the family’s land and home because of it. Maxine tries asking her mother in-depth questions about this situation, but her m...
Perhaps moments later my mother finally whispered to me that he was my Uncle Eddy, her brother. My face lit up as I remembered stories my mom had told me of her childhood spent with her sometimes annoying big brother. I ran over and gave this strange man a big hug. The Asian woman, it happened, was his wife. I was a little shy around the both of them as I hadn’t really ever seen them in person before that I remembered. I remember my uncle introducing his wife, Jullianne, to my grandmother. She smiled very big as she rea...
In conclusion, Wu made us remember how important our grandparents no matter how different are we from each other. Also, I learned a lot from my grandparents, and some of things that I learned are that we should treat others with good manners and secondly, we shouldn’t blame others for things that we are uncertain they did it. What I learned from my grandfather made me owe both of my grandparents a lot. And off course one of the things that I and Wu share is that we miss our grandparents a lot and we hope to see them as soon as possible in the
People in the Chinese culture have honor in their family. Their family wanted other people to think of them as amazing. Each family wants to be superior to each other. Family names were a status symbol in China. Father told Adeline to get good grades and make the family proud multiple times. Honor was also shown when Adeline refuses to take the tram fare from Niang. Adeline said, “I simply couldn’t force myself to go to Niang and admit that I (and therefore Ye Ye) had erred in the past” (Yen Mah 40). Adeline stood up to Niang and refused to apologize to her. She knew that she didn’t do anything wrong and shouldn’t have to apologize. Niang wanted her to apologize for taking tram fare from Ye Ye and Aunt Baba. Adeline showed honor and didn’t let Niang tell her what to do.
Lindo Jong provides the reader with a summary of her difficulty in passing along the Chinese culture to her daughter: “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame . . . You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head . . . In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. . . . but I couldn't teach her about Chinese character . . . How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best”(Tan 289).
Kingston uses the story of her aunt to show the gender roles in China. Women had to take and respect gender roles that they were given. Women roles they had to follow were getting married, obey men, be a mother, and provide food. Women had to get married. Kingston states, “When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband…she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now” (623). This quote shows how women had to get married, which is a role women in China had to follow. Moreover, marriage is a very important step in women lives. The marriage of a couple in the village where Kingston’s aunt lived was very important because any thing an individual would do would affect the village and create social disorder. Men dominated women physically and mentally. In paragraph eighteen, “they both gav...
Within the book The Joy Luck Club, in the chapter “The Joy Luck Club,” Auntie Ying and Jing-Mei Woo are having a conversation. In this conversation Auntie Ying tells Jing-Mei, “Your mother was a very strong woman… She knew they were alive, and before she died she wanted to find her daughters in China” (pg.39). In this sentence it shows the determination of Jing-Mei’s mother to get out of China and the sacrifice she had to make to leave her two daughters in order for her to produce a better life for her and her kin in a new country.
When he found out that the pictures of beautiful women in the tea house were real prostitutes, “his desire overcame him” (178). After seeing one regularly, he took her as a second wife. When one is rich, he does not depend on loyalty within the family for survival. Families do not need to support each other to a great extent. When Wang Lung’s daughter complained about getting her feet bound, she told him that “my mother said I was not to weep aloud because… you might say to leave me as I am and then my husband would not love me even as you do not love her” (249).
” Her mother is so critical of rich because he was not only Chinese but also younger than Waverly. It’s really hard to adapt another culture, that’s what happened with Rich when he came for a dinner at Lindo’s house. He was doing mistakes again and again even when he didn’t know it was a mistake. “He had brought a bottle of French wine, something he did not know my parents could not appreciate”.