63 pages • 2 hours read
Wayson ChoyThe Jade Peony
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Struggles of First-generation, Chinese-Canadian Children
The first-generation Chinese-Canadian characters in The Jade Peony occupy a liminal space; they are caught between loyalty to their ancestral homes and traditions, which are very much still alive and maintained by their community, and the desire and mandate to make themselves accepted by white-dominated, Western Canadian society.
This theme is developed by each child’s narration, in a particular way. In Part 1, we see this theme expressed through Liang’s infatuation with Shirley Temple. Liang wishes to replace her Chinese features with Shirley Temple’s idealized white ones, so that she can achieve the acceptance and belonging that are withheld from her both because she is Chinese and because she is a girl. However, she is also staunchly loyal to the myths and folklore of Old China, brought to her by Poh-Poh and Wong Suk. Jung, for his part, yearns to serve the military of a country that views him as a resident alien. Caught up in the zeitgeist against the Nazis and the nationalistic propaganda of both China and Canada, Jung cannot fully see that the country that would gladly send him to war and sacrifice his life does not actually love or hold a place for him because he is Chinese. Sekky is stymied by the intricate demands placed upon him from the time he is a young child, as they pull him in many different directions at once. On the one hand, he is pressured by his family and Chinatown community to study and understand all of the nuances of the Cantonese language, despite having only a partial immersion in Chinese culture and all of the ins and outs of the language, by virtue of the fact that Canada is the only country he has ever known. Made to feel inferior because of his inability to do so, he even calls an elder a “chink” when the elder makes fun of his Chinese. This incident sharply portrays his conflicted position. While he is pressured to grasp and understand an ancestral culture of which he can only ever have limited knowledge, he is also inexorably touched by the Canadian narratives that mark Chinese people as lesser-than.
Political, Economic, and Cultural Forces Impacting Individual Lives
The larger political, economic, cultural, and social forces of oppression exercise an inexorable and intricate influence on the personal lives and consciousness of Chinese-Canadian immigrant communities. Very early in the narrative, we see Kiam and Jung enraptured with a violent and virtually mindless board game in which they use swords to behead Japanese soldiers. Then, we see the casual ways in which the boys surrounding Jung, such Alfred Stevorsky, and Jung himself absorb images of violence and domination trickling in from the war, then quickly internalize and express violence and domination through their play habits. Both Sekky and Jung are preoccupied by desires to bomb the enemy and defend China and Canada through military force; Alfred Stevorsky even reenacts the violence of bomb warfare by burning a doll and then relishing in its destruction.
These instances depict the manner in which the boys are essentially propagandized by the political climate surrounding them. As children, they uncritically absorb narratives that push nationalism and bloodlust and immediately turn around to express and reenact the violence and force that they have been programmed to believe is good and right. There is also a gender component to this theme, as the cultural messages that Liang absorbs and enacts are very different from those that her brothers do. While they, as boys, are hailed into dictums of violence, dominance, and destruction, Liang is forced into the constant knowledge that she is seen as less valuable than her brothers and all men in society, because she is a girl. Her response to Poh-Poh’s gender-based berating is to nurture a vibrant fantasy life to which she can escape, and within which she is accepted, valued, admired, and loved.
All of the characters struggle with issues of cultural white supremacy. Father, wanting the prosperity and survival of his children, adopts a pro-assimilationist perspective. Liang becomes obsessed with Shirley Temple, and believes her features to be inferior to Temple’s white features. All of the children complain about having to learn Chinese, even though they do not question the French, German, and Latin that they must learn in English school. Kiam, in particular, views these Western languages as “scientific” and elegant, while the Chinese language is not afforded a place of honor. This hierarchy of value is undoubtedly produced by cultural white supremacy and therefore produces a subtle devaluing of Chinese culture and language. Each of these are the deeply personal effects of a larger context of cultural white supremacy.
