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War as an Influential Force in the Jade Peony Essay

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War as an influential force in The Jade Peony
The Jade Peony is a novel that concentrated on the life of early Chinese immigrants by describing a series of stories happened in a four-kid family. The novel told the reminiscences of three children’s child life in that family, therefore it was divided into three parts according to the different characters. But apart from the family routine portrayed in the novel, it can be clearly seen in the whole book that war, as another implied clue, played an important role in the development of the story.
In the first place, as an overall background, Chinese civil war between Kuomintang (the party leaded by Chiang Kai-shek) and The Communist Party (the party leaded by Mao Tse-tung) caused the first …show more content…

People lived in Vancouver Chinatown were far from the flames of war, but they were so concerned about what was happening in Old China. Not only because they cared about their hometown, but also because they cared about their families, friends, or relatives who were still living in China. From this point, the concern about the war that was showed by people were regarded as strong feeling connection with Old China. Although war did not directly caused pain to people in Chinatown, the suffering it caused in Old China was also brought to Canada. In chapter eight, one of stepmother’s childhood best friends, called Chen Suling, was killed by an explosion of a bomb. In the beginning of this chapter, we can see Sek-Lung’s family was looking forward to the Chen Suling’s visit to Canada, and appreciated her talents of English. All of them, except for Sek-Lung who disliked her because he would be controlled if Chen Suling came, hoped to see her eagerly. But a bomb turned their hope down. Stepmother felt extremely painful for losing her best friend, just like Sek-Lung said in the end of this chapter “I never heard stepmother mention Chen Suling’s name again.”(161). Later, with the war becoming fiercer, the social order in Vancouver also became instable. “Gangs of older, jobless boys roamed back streets hunting for Japanese. Fights broke out. There were knifings on some

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