Examples Of Nostalgia In A Private Life

The autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin is successful in informing readers of the marginalisation of the people in communist China through the recounts of his life. The autobiography raises awareness of how those with disagreements against Chairman Mao’s communist government received penalties that could be as consequential as death. It examines how no one was able to pursue dreams of their own agenda during Chairman Mao’s dictatorship. The author also reveals through his own experience, how if someone were to change loyalties from Communist China, they and their families would be threatened. Mao’s Last Dancer clearly displays the marginalisation of the Chinese people throughout the time of Communist China.

The Cultural Revolution was a time of much confusion in china. The memoir Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang illustrates the chaos of that time. Ji-li’s experiences during this time period led to her point of view changing. Ji-li starts the Cultural Revolution full of progressive thoughts, but this quickly turns to confusion, and leads to an important choice, something that impacts the rest of her life.

Seeing something that is different can be interpreted in many various ways. In a world full of judgement and curiosity, making conjectures from something that is strange can lead to conflict. In the story “The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband” by Feng Ji-cai, an odd couple: Mrs. Tall and Mr. Short are separated by the height of 17cm capturing the interest of passerby’s. The couple was often made a laughing stock by neighbors. The Tailor’s wife a know-it-all was especially intrigued by the incongruous couple. During the Cultural Revolution, China’s government and politics were at debate in this time. The lives of many people were changed by this event. Feng Ji-cai uses the literary elements such as symbolism and theme of love, judgement, and uniqueness to show how the Cultural Revolution and others affected the lives of Mrs. Tall and Mr. Short.

When Jan Wong first arrived in China, she was filled with the complete belief that China’s totalitarianism way of government was the best way of governing, and that no other way would do. While natives smiled behind false expressions, she failed to realize the true extent of the miserable lives under the Maoist regime until she herself experienced the injustices faced by the Chinese citizens. In Red China Blues, author Jan Wong writes of her experiences during her life in China and after, and how her whole journey led to the realization of the harsh reality that Maoism really was. As Wong learned more and more about the truth behind the totalitarian government, her own experiences helped her to transform

China is and always will be a land seen as mysterious to those with roots in Western culture. And in its own way, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie is what can happen when Western and Far Eastern culture interact. Outside of the cultural revolution, headed by Mao Zedong, which makes the whole novel possible, and was a push back against Western involvement in China, the novel includes many other ideas of cultural interaction. However, it also prominently provides complex emotions and changes within the characters who are followed throughout the novel. In fact, one passage in particular reveals much character change and development in the narrator of the story (who will simply be known as narrator for the entirety of this essay), and it occurs on the pages of 166 to 169. The passage is a daydream of the narrator’s after having taken a beating by a band of hooligans and potential suitors of the Little Seamstress. In it, readers can see the narrator develop to the same sort of manhood as Luo: the satisfaction of changing something and reaching independence. However, after reaching this stage, he also realizes the drawbacks to having done so, causing him to feel remorse for his actions. This is achieved by the narrator’s expression of hidden desires he developed over time and what lustful feelings and desperation accompany them.

The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When

Change can be a scary thing, especially when it comes to where one lives. Set in China, the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie, is narrated by a seventeen year old boy, and follows him and his best friend, Luo, during the Cultural Revolution, a time of immense change in China’s history. The year is 1971. Chairman Mao, the communist leader of China, has declared that a large number of children are to be moved to the countryside to be “‘re-educated by the poor peasants’”(6), the protagonist and his best friend being among those children. During the narrator’s time in the peasant village, both the he and Luo quickly fall in love with a girl they call Little Seamstress, a beautiful, local girl, whose father is a well known tailor. At the start of the novel the narrator hints at being in love with the seamstress, however he does not discuss his love for the Little Seamstress much. The narrator initially has a fear of his new environment, however he eventually adjusts to it, relaxing and allowing himself to dwell more upon his love for the Little Seamstress.

Xiao Shi, like many rural workers in urban areas, is in a crossroads between two worlds. She only goes home for holidays and lives full time with the family she works for. She is not a full migrant to the city either as her home is still in the countryside. Xiao Shi and her are able to “ enjoy a taste of the high life without all the headaches and side effects that go along with it” (Loyalka 181). Many of rural workers of the countryside have a taste of life in the city without fully being a part of the city either. These workers try to work to support their families and migrate to these cities in search for opportunities not found in their own homes in the countryside.

Past and Present Especially in today’s society, many people like to document memories. Some like to do so on popular social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, while others like to keep tangible tokens to later take out and reminisce. There is nothing wrong with looking back on memories from time to time. They play an important role in everyone’s life. However, as seen in the “real life” and the “literary world”, living in the past can hinder one’s happiness.

All through time, consecutive generations have rebelled against the values and traditions of their elders. In all countries, including China, novel generations have required to find a different conduit than that of their previous leaders. Conventional values become obsolete and are replace with what the younger society deems as noteworthy. Family concentrates on this very subject. In the novel, three brothers struggle against the outdated Confucian values of their elders. Alike in their dislike of the traditional Confucian system of their grandfather, yet very different in their interactions with him and others, begin to reach beyond the ancient values of Confucianism and strive for a breath of freedom. Their struggles against the old values lead to pain, suffering and eventually achievement for the three of them, however at a harsh price for two brothers.

Providing the two heroines with strong and engaging personalities, the novel portrays the life of two young Chinese girls, who because of historical events and family secrets, have to grow up faster than what they had planned. The book delivers emotional themes that are powerful yet familiar, and is written in a compelling manner.

The unfortunate influx of young immigrants working in Chinese factories lies a fact that is bizarre to our opinions behind the creators of our beloved everyday items: the workers choose the “factory life”. This statement is especially true of women of rural China. Leslie T Chang’s Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, tells harsh stories of life in China’s chaotic industrial city, Dongguan. She tells the lives of two girls closely, Min and Ming, on their journey to the “environmental ruin, corruption, traffic, pollution, noise, prostitution, bad driving, short term thinking, stress, striving, and chaos… (27)” that is of the city life. By doing so, Chang makes her case compelling enough that turns the immoral practices of

In addition, the sense of disorientation is also displayed through the way the past story and present story are narrated. The story of Fleur and the story of the present couple are not presented in linear time from past to present but in the way that the past and the present are intermingled and its boundary is blurred. Also, the story of Fleur is in the past tense but it is an unfinished story which keeps presenting and haunting the present. The confusion projected by the merger of past and present clearly speaks to the feeling of disorientation of Hong Kong people when facing with their dramatic future changes. Experiencing that undesirable feelings, Hong Kong people yearn for their past as a mean of escaping from the awful reality. Their longing to the past is expressed in the juxtaposition of 1930s-Hong Kong and 1980s-Hong Kong. As mention above, the past story of Fleur and the story of present couple, Yuan Ting and Chu, are intermingled. One of the purposes of the juxtaposition is to highlight and emphasize the world of difference between two versions of Hong Kong. The society of Hong Kong in 1980s is depicted through the life of the present couple who are both so occupied with their works; they do not even have enough time for work, let alone time for pleasure and relax. The first scene of Ting and Chu where Chu is in haste to her work so she

All around the world, it is believed that men are superior to women. In some countries it is worse than others but nevertheless, almost every woman in the world has or will have to face gender discrimination at least once in her lifetime. In nineteenth-century China, since the day a girl was born, she was taught that she was useless. She was told that as a child, her job was to obey her natal family and as a married woman, it was to obey her husband & in-laws. In a remote Hunan County, Lily is a girl who, her whole life, has longed to be loved. However, as a girl and later a woman it was considered wrong of her. At the age of seven, Lily is paired with a laotong or “old same”—an eternal friendship that bonded two girls as kindred sisters who are even closer than a husband and wife. Her laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan where she has written a poem in nu shu, the unique and secret language created by Chinese women. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on the fan and compose stories, on handkerchiefs, to share their hopes, dreams and accomplishments. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See shows the pain, the hardships, and the pressure that girls and women, like Lily and Snow Flower, living in nineteenth century China had to go through because of their culture’s beliefs.

Tagore uses the term-‘Nostalgia’ for distancing the past by the protagonist (Kabuliwala).Through Mini Tagore opens before the readers the innocent world of children. She is very beautiful, energetic and talkative. Tagore contrasts the innocence and playfulness of Mini with the seriousness of her father and the extreme loving-nature of Kabuliwala who sees the reflection of his own daughter in Mini. Mini baffles her father by asking him “Father, what relation is mother to you?” Mini could make her noble, educated, high-ranking father think that the illiterate, criminal Kabuliwala is also a