Matthew Xia The jade Peony

How are symbols used in this story?
First of all, in this story, the wind-chime is the symbol of the grandma´s memory about her lover. The whole process the Sek-Lung and his grandma make wind-chime crossing the story have several meanings. To begin with, the wind-chime which grandma had before represent the memorize and love between she and her lover; and it also represents grandma her spirit, narrator point out that `her hand began to tremble, the tips of her fingers to shiver, like rippling water. “You see that, little one?” that is my body fighting with death. He is in the room now?”, “this colour is the colour of my spirit.”….
On the other hands, it is an intermediary that helps her finds house after she died, for instance, „my spirit will hear its sounds and see its light and return to this house and say goodbye to you.”
Secondly, in the story, there is also a white cat involved the story, Grandmamma was preparing supper when she looked out our kitchen window and saw a cat---- a long, lean white cat--- jump into our garbage pail and knocks it over. She strong believes “that was not a cat,” she saw the white cat as her lover came to take her away, because her saw that the white has pink eyes like her lover.
Last but not at least, the jade peony, in the center of the wind-chime once hung a precious jade peony, and grandma kept until she died, which belong part of the wind-chime as same as wind-chime itself to the grandma, and also which finally appears in the end of the story represent the protagonist´s thought of his grandma. ´in my mind´s eye I saw Grandmamma smile and heard, softly, the pink center beat like a beautiful, cramped heart.



What is the conflict in the story?
In this story, the main conflict is grandmamma between other characters which is called external conflict. People cannot understand why grandmamma pick up garbage, the problem for the rest of the family was in the fact that she looked for these treasures wandering the back alleys of Keefer and Pender Streets, peering into neighbors’ garbage cans, chasing away hungry, nervous cats and shouting courses at them. In all the common people´s eyes, she is just crazing old woman. To be more specifically, during the family cove ration, all the sisters and brother have problem with their grandmamma, “all our friends are laughing at us!” “We are not poor” “she will make little brother crazy!” But at least, the protagonist and his father understand grandma, for instance, “the father stop children to argue about grandma ´s action, and the protagonist listen to grandma to tell her story.

Do you like this story? Why or why not?
Personally, I do not like that story at all, there are many reason for it.
First and most important, I do not have a grandparent who I get along with, I had never try that, so this story does not touch my heart at all, I could not understand grandparent especially the grandma the story, her action was meaningless to me. Why should she go to pick up garbage to rebuild her wind-chime? On the other hand, who don´t her son stop her to doing it? Well he could also buy the staff which she needs to rebuild her wind-chime.
Second, although the structure of story is fantastic, which has use foreshadow approach, is undeniable that the structure is quit stereotype, even I did not read the story, I could know what is it talking about and expect correctly what might happening next. For example, when I was read the first paragraph, I knew that the old women will die and there should be some relationship between the protagonist, the grandma and the jade Peony.
Well, what I expect to read is something more interesting and cannot be forecasted. Because I am more like my own fantasy instead of to try to understand an old woman´s one, which is not march for our age. While if all the younger people should to know and understand about aging people, then there is no more difference between people ´s age, young will lost their dreams, creativities and spirits. It is not a good thing for the young for learn too much from the olds. The best experience from me is that I am worried too many things this pressure is not for external, instead of internal, it is because I have good understanding over my parents staff, their conflicts, working pressure, financial problem and high expectation on me, when all that things build up together on me, I could not hold the pressure, that why I hate to read a story like that.