Moving along to chapter 5: Devotion, Zhao list the obligations of a marriage. A man is…
After Sun Pu-erh and Ma Tan-yang - her husband, were accepted as students of Wang Ch'ung-yang, they were instructed to meditate as much as possible and attain the enlightened path to the Tao. This task was assigned to the new students to rid themselves of the temptations of the world. This included sickness of spirit and body, the craving of liquor and sex, the desire for riches, bad temper and all other sorts of temptations. If these temptations can not be eradicated the path to the Tao will be much harder and will take a lot longer to accomplish, even though time is not of the essence when it comes to becoming an immortal being. With this great advice from their master they decided to start meditation, but since they were now brothers in the Tao, they could not share sleeping quarters because it would bring on the temptation for sex. So, Ma Tan-yang ordered the servants from his house to clean out a room for his wife where she would live from now on.…
How did Women P’eng, Tou, and Wang experience challenges in terms of their relationships to their husbands and their positions within their families?…
My understanding of the novel was first shifted when the importance of food was brought up. While I was understanding the role of food was just to fill in the blanks, it actually reveals s citizen's status in their hierarchy of the social order during the revolution. Huong emphasizes the descriptions of food in the novel because he is trying to express that only people in the higher class can afford and enjoy the delicious Vietnamese food. Looking into the role of food more closely, food is also representing the importance of family and love in the novel. My understanding of this changed because I never realized this aspect of the novel. In the story, Que sacrifices her money and food to help Uncle Chinh when he was diagnosed with diabetes. This obviously pushed Que and Hang towards poverty, but they gave up what was important to them because they did it for the love of their family. Another understanding I came to was how much Uncle Chinh really had on the family. In Vietnamese tradition, the father is the man of the house, followed by his oldest son. In this case, that person was Chinh. He did not allow Que to be with her fiancée any longer because he did not approve of him. This changed my understanding because the presentations proved with their thesis and quotes on the role of Chinh that he really did have control of the women in the house.…
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 father before marriage, the husband after marriage, and the son in case of widows. The four virtues were propriety in behavior, speech, demeanor and employment. The laws of the land and fear of shame in society dictated that men were allowed to rule over their household leaving women in a powerless state as almost a slave of the home. In P’u’s stories women are portrayed as complex characters who hold important roles in the family, but are treated with little to no respect by authority figures, and other men of higher class. In The Death of Woman Wang, Spence portrays…
Fortunate to be born into a family that supported education, Wu Zhou, in her travels with her father, gained a loving parent-child bond that drove her to exceed boundaries and achieve great things. Since her father did not have the chance to become a man of status, she wanted to make him proud and prove society’s standards wrong by outcompeting her opponents—males. Being well versed in education, politics, and discovering her own beauty, she gained position of Talent Wu, or fifth- ranked concubine to Emperor Taizong.…
A young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei “June” Woo, recalls, after her mother's death, her mother's sadness at having left her twin baby girls in China in 1949. June has used her mother's regret as a weapon in a battle of wills focusing on what her mother wants her to be and what she wants. June wins, leaving her mother, Suyuan, stunned when she says she wishes she were dead like the twins. Although this scene characterizes the common struggle for power between mother and daughter, the story also illustrates…
One of the greatest things a woman can become is a mother. Bringing a life into the world, caring for it, and then nurturing it into a productive member of society is a full time and sometimes trying job. Asian women who immigrated to America were women who took part in this life role. These women had not only one job, as mother, they had three. Playing the triple role of being a wife, mother, and moneymaker proved to be more of a challenge then they had ever expected. In Chinese culture, family and home are synonymous. They even shared the same character in Chinese. Women in all classes were regarded as inferior to men and were expected to remain at home, attentive to family and domestic responsibilities (Takaki, 36). After their immigration to America, Asian women found themselves thrust into a position in which they had never truly been before. While still in Asia, they remained in the home making sure to upkeep an honorable household and to take care of the family. In the new world, they were forced to join the working society, the…
More importantly, she does not understand the true desire of her mother’s heart in reuniting with her long lost twin half-sisters from her mother’s previous marriage. She believes in her heart that “their mother “and her mother are two different people. (191) Jing-Mei has repressed feelings of inadequacy. She feels that she was less loved then her twin sisters because throughout her mother’s life, she was always in search of them. “All the times when she got mad at me, was she really thinking about them? Did she wish I were they? Did she regret that I wasn’t?” (197)…
As Emerson once said, “Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today” (Emerson, 82). Emerson is applauding the sense of being misunderstood because every life’s decision is a compromise between one’s will and society’s obligation. So, that is why Janie’s viewpoint of love had differ multiple times because her first two marriages where defined by society, whereas her marriage with Tea Cake was her own decision. Janie’s marriage with Logan was due to Nanny’s will, while the marriage alongside Tea Cake was due to her own freewill. Alike, the marriage with Joe was violating her freedom because she “pressed her teeth together and learned to hush” (Hurston, ), as opposed to Tea Cake, who allowed Janie to voice her opinions and listened. The love between Tea Cake and Janie was challenged by society. For a marriage is between an older man and a younger woman, it is balanced by the wealth one person carries, and the stability a man can offer. However, as Janie once said, “Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore” (Hurston, 191). Every person falls in love one way or another, to Janie, she choose Tea Cake for the realization that wealth and…
Like many other Chinese immigrants, he struggled to come to the U.S. hoping he could find have a better life and prosperity. Unfortunately, his wife, Lea Choo could not come with him because she had to stay to take care of Hing's sick parents. After they died, Choo took a long journey to America to reunite with her husband. She always dreamed of the U.S as a wonderland. However, when she first stepped in this marvelous country, she knew that all her dreams were broken. Her son could not come in with her. She almost lived in depression and solitude for over ten months before reuniting with her son. Ironically, her son could not recognize her and run away from her. She lost everything in this dreamland. Her tragedy dramatizes the theme that people's illusive dream about a wonderful land can cause them sadder and more weepy when they encounter real troubles in this new…
He feels as though she is never going to find a boyfriend and get married. It seems as though the daughter is on the track to dying as an old maid (Jin 401). At a later time in the story, the daughter comes home with a new boyfriend that is one of the most attractive men in the factory. Huang Baowen was Beina’s new boyfriend, and Beina’s father was not impressed with Huang. Even though Huang brought the father gifts of “Capons, Ginseng, Cigarettes, Five Grains’ snap, and Oolong tea,” the father was not impressed at all with Baowen (Jin 401). It could be said that Baowen had money to spend on expensive gifts, but there was no reason to spend so much money on the father just to get approval to marry Beina. The people that worked in the factory could not believe that Huang and Beina got married (Jin 401). “Huang was not exactly the manliest of men. Huang Baowen was extremely feminine in the things that he did” (Jin…
Chuang Tzu was a brilliant, original, and influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE. The background from which he arose involved a period of strife, conquest, oppression, and an attempt to preserve traditional societal values. This situation gives light to the origin of Chuang Tzus philosophy, which was centered on skepticism and mystical detachment (which is why it differs so radically from Confucianism). His ideology provided the disillusioned members of Chinese society with a method to cope with and survive in a world ridden with chaos and suffering.…
"She walked away but stopped and said that she would be pleased if the soldiers could make the man understand that today’s woman was no longer the victim of a man’s desires. (60). It is clear these ladies did not have autonomy, opportunity, or decision; they just had apprehension and mistreatment. Women were treated very poorly and were not equal to a man in ways, taking everything into account, ladies who lived in China the midst of Cultural Revolution lived in trepidation and under consistent investigation from the administration. They didn't appreciate the opportunities we underestimate, and that is the reason such a large number of people left China to attempt and make another life for themselves in the U.S., like Anchee min did in the…
Although the conditions for Qing women, especially upper class ones, were slowly improving (there is some evidence of female writers, poets, and painters), women were still seen as far second-class and subordinate to men and had few, if any, rights. They were not allowed to divorce their husbands, and they could be sold into slavery or prostitution if their parents or husband so desired. Footbinding, a practice in which a girl’s feet are broken and her toes slowly folded under the soles of her feet in the hopes that she would become more marriageable, was a common practice. Concubinage was also commonplace, as was infanticide of female children. These practices show how a woman was judged in society—her worth was determined by her beauty, her ability to be married off for a good price, and her ability to bear male children. Like the structure of society and family life in Qing China, the place of women in society was based on Confucianism; Confucius’ teachings explicitly subordinated women to men. For example, an old Chinese proverb that has been passed down through the centuries is, “The most beautiful and talented daughter is not as desirable as a deformed…