- The story’s narrator is revisiting a place he once lived. Explain the significance that this “revisiting” has in relation to the themes of the story.
Although it’s hard to pin-point a theme in this play, I’ll say that in relation to the central focus of this story, which is basically a conversation between old friends, who were old classmates and colleagues, they both were revisiting their hometown, and we can see that the length and direction of the conversation is solely tied to their revisit. Wei Fu focuses on what he had been up to since he returned to the Southeast, and not necessarily what he had been doing in the 10 years that he had been away, although he briefly talks about it. We also see them reminiscing about old times which is also tied to revisiting. Wei Fu says; “Yes, I still remember the time when we went together to the Tutelary God’s Temple to pull off the images’ beards, how all day long we used to discuss methods of revolutionizing China until we even came to blows.”
3) Describe an instance of Filial Piety in the story. What is its significance?
An instance of filial piety in the story will be when Wei Fu’s mother told him to buy artificial red flowers for Ah Shun, recalling that she wanted it so much when she was a little girl. On getting to her house, he finds out that she passed, and instead of telling his mother the truth about her death, he goes ahead to give the flowers to her sister Ah Chao. He says; “and I have only to tell my mother that Ah Shun was delighted with them, and that will be that” His main focus was making his mother happy, and this is similar to the other incident with his brother’s grave. All he wanted was for her mind to be at rest even if it meant him lying to her. I feel like he did all of this because he felt like he had not achieved all what he wanted in life that will make his mother very proud of him, like a good paying job as he mentions that he earned $@0 a month which is really on the low side, so he tried to make sure that he makes her happy in the little way he could by doing everything she wanted “right.”
Eunice, Thanks for these responses. One point I wanted to make about filial piety, but didn’t make clearly on our call was that the people who were advocating for a modernized China weren’t suggesting a move away from filial piety in order to disrespect their elders; I think the idea was that young people should be charting their own futures, not just doing whatever their parents want them to do. So here, it’s “nice” that Weifu is complying with his mother’s issues, but we don’t see him pursuing a course of action on his own – and that is a problem.