Study Questions for Disguises by Jean Fong Kwok Essay

The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on

What are the ways in which each major character experiences conflict (either with self, with other characters, or with the social and/or physical environment)?

the inner conflict of Connie, the protagonist of the book. The source of that struggle is her

The story has an external conflict between the main character and her daughter in regarding best way of disciplining Sophie but this conflict is based on the internal one. The main conflict of the story is the internal conflict of the Chinese immigrant who decides to live in the United States but carries the values of her native country with her and therefore, finds it difficult to accept other types of behavior, such as the actions of the Irish family. Her internal conflict is evident when she

One of the first conflicts in the film causes a bigger conflict in later years and later in the plot between the same characters. A conflict is defined as "Conflict is a fact of human life. It occurs naturally in all kinds of settings. Nations still struggle, families fracture in destructive conflicts, marriages face challenges and often fail, and the workplace is plagued with stress." in the textbook "Interpersonal Conflict" by Wilmot. Meriam-Webster defines conflict in three ways. Firstly a war, fight or battle. Secondly "competitive or opposing action of incompatibles :antagonistic state or action (as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons)" or "mental struggle resulting from incompatible or opposing needs, drives, wishes, or external or internal demands". Lastly "the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the

6. What is the relationship between jen and li? Jen is the love of all man while li is a set of rules, or rites. Practicing li seems crucial to the successful integration into society in ancient China but without jen, is one only getting half the benefit? This reminds me of saying you love Jesus but not following the ten commandments or vice versa.

In the story by Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Wife of His Youth, there are many different types of conflict. There is internal conflict amongst the characters, internal conflict, and conflict with society. The conflicts that Chesnutt raises in this story are not easy to relate to for

The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan D. Spence, paints a vivid picture of provincial China in the seventeenth century. Manly the life in the northeastern country of T’an-ch’eng. T’an-ch’eng has been through a lot including: an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Chinese society in Confucian terms was a patriarchal society with strict rules of conduct. The role at this time of women, however, has historically been one of repression. The traditional ideal woman was a dependent being whose behavior was governed by the "three obedience’s and four virtues". The three obedience’s were obedience to

8. In what different ways did Japanese and Korean women experience the pressures of Confucian orthodoxy?

When it comes to conflicts in literature there are two main types; internal and external. There are multiple different types of conflicts that can appear in literature, usually all stories or novels have at least one conflict. What is a story without a conflict? An internal conflict is a conflict that

As she recalls back on this time by telling her daughter what she calls her Kweilin story, Suyuan describes her feeling during this horrible time as “And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” (22) At this point in her life Suyuan was separated from her husband who is in the military and eventually is forced to abandon her two young daughters. This aspect of Suyuan’s life parallels the life of Amy Tan’s mother. Daisy tan was also married to a military man during the Chinese Civil War and like Suyuan was forced to abandon her two daughters in Shanghai. This was an experience that would affect her mother for the rest of her life and a story she would continue to tell and never forget. The life of Amy Tan is also a parallel to the life of Jing-Mei Woo of “June”. As a young girl June was forced to play the piano and practice constantly to become the best like Amy Tan was as a child. Along with playing the piano Suyuan also had high expectations for June as far as her future. She wanted her daughter to be the best in her class and go off to medical school to become a well educated doctor, the same expectation’s Amy Tan’s mother had for her. Both daughters decided to follow their dreams and

Have you ever heard the fascinating Chinese story “The Story of Miss Li”? This short story is about two main characters. One being Miss Li, a beautiful young Prostitute, and a young man of great wealth and power. Soon in the story Miss Li finds the young man and convinces him to marry her. Unfortunately, two years later they spend all of their money and end up having nothing to their name. So, Miss Li, tricked the young man and left him with nothing to his name. years pass and the young man was very sick and almost dead, he runs into Miss Li one more time. Miss Li felt so terrible that she did this to him that she took him in and cared for him. Soon, she became an ideal Confucian woman and led him back to great wealth in power by helping him learn “the five texts” and making sure he was ready to take the Civil Serves Examination. Even though Miss Li was not what most Chinese call a proper woman, later became an ideal Confucian woman and wife by following the Admonitions for Women and the Analects for Women.

Stories from a Ming Collection is a work which reveals clearly people's life in various levels in traditional China. How does the book portray different levels of people's life (including scholars, peasants, military men, working men and women, beggars etc.), and from their life how do you perceive Chinese society?

As culture varies from place to place, stories told by authors incorporate different themes and settings. In the book A Thousand Years of Good Prayers written by Yiyun Li, Li sets most of her short stories in the two countries, America and China. This allows her to focus on the mainstream culture in both. These short stories include a large variety of themes that can be interpreted differently depending on the reader. In the short story “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” Mr. Shi is an old father who travels from China to support his daughter when she divorces her husband.

One subject that seems salient in the four classical Chinese poems included in the reading is social status. I use this term loosely because in "The Charcoal Seller" and "On the Birth of His Son" social status is probably best understood by the western designation of social class, but in "Woman" and "Mei Yao Ch'en" social status is better understood as part of gender relations. However, I think that the more generalized designation of "social status" is appropriate in approaching these four poems, because of the way it illustrates the Confucian concept of "ren," usually translated as "goodness" or "virtue". This is very different, however, from most western notions of "goodness" or "virtue" because in Confucianism the concept is defined in terms of social relationships: for Confucius, there were five specifically-defined social relationships in which one should exhibit "ren". These are the relations of a parent to a child, of an older sibling to a younger sibling, of a husband to a wife, of an older person to a younger person, and of a ruler toward a subject. In other words, relationships which might risk a potential power imbalance are governed by right rules of conduct.