Chinese Cinderella

“Bilingual store signs were common, but the most exclusive shops painted their signs only in French. Nai Nai told us this was the foreigners’ way of announcing that no Chinese were allowed there except for maids in charge of white children.”

Yen Mah establishes the racist environment of her childhood through her grandmother’s words. Though Chapter 2 primarily consists of exposition in a straightforward style, this brief observation at the end of the chapter is a fleeting example of indirect exposition.

“I had a pair of perfectly normal feet when I was born, but they maimed me on purpose and gave me lifelong arthritis so I would be attractive. Just be thankful this horrible custom was done away with thirty years ago. Otherwise your feet would be crippled and you wouldn’t be able to run or jump either.”

Despite the grandparents being the most traditionally minded members of the Yen family, Nai Nai offers the most scathing critique of traditional Chinese society in the memoir during this passage about her bound feet. Her use of the collective pronoun “they” places blame for her mutilation on society as a whole, establishing misogyny as a diffuse yet overwhelming force in her daily life.

“I loved everything about my school: all the other little girls dressed in identical starched white uniforms just like mine; the French Franciscan nuns in black-and-white habits with big metal crosses hanging from their necks; learning numbers, catechism, and the alphabet; playing hopscotch and skipping rope at recess.”

The complex list of things Adeline loves at her elementary school is an example of indirect characterization. Her love of uniform dressing, both among the students and nuns, reveals her desire for equality in all things because of her profoundly unequal home life, and her love of activities that require jumping recalls her grandmother’s reminder to be thankful for her ability to jump.