The+Jade+Peony

By Kusum Boodhun-Nunkoo The author: ** Wayson Choy was born in Vancouver in 1939 in a working class family. His father who worked as a cook on a ship was very often away from home, and his mother worked long hours in a sausage factory. So very often, he was left under the care of family. According to some sources, it was only when he was 56 years old that he came to know he was adopted. Although //The Jade Peony// is a work of fiction, it includes many elements which are true to Choy’s life. He is adopted and gay, just like Jung-Sum, the second brother in the text. Wayson Choy published //The Jade Peony// in 1995, and won 2 awards - the “1995 City of Vancouver Book Award” and he was also the “Winner of the 1995 Trillium Award”. Wayson Choy has also written a sequel, //All that Matters//, to //The Jade Peony// in 2004.
 * __THE JADE PEONY – Wayson Choy __**
 * 


 * LEVEL**: I would recommend this text for **Grade 9 Academic** and **Grade 10 Applied.**

The book talks about the Chen family who lives in Chinatown, in Vancouver in the late 1930s. The book is divided in 3 sections, with 3 narrators, each a member of the family. In the 1st section, we hear the voice of the only daughter of the family, Jook Liang. In the 2nd section the narrator is the adopted son, Jung Sum and the 3rd section is narrated in the voice of Sek Leung, the youngest member of the family. Each child tells us their story from their perspective and their personal experiences.
 * SYNOPSIS:**

There are 7 members in the Chen family, with the head being the paternal grandmother – referred to as Poh Poh in the text. The 1st wife of Mr Chen died in childbirth in China, and his second wife, who was initially brought to Canada to be a family servant, is addressed as step-mother by all the children, even her own! Kiam, the eldest son is a good student who does well at school and wants to join the Canadian army. The second son Jung Sum is adopted into the family after the death of his parents. He lived in Kamloop, BC and had a hard childhood with an alcoholic and abusive father and a submissive mother. His mother is eventually strangled by his father and at the age of 4, he has to leave his hometown to come to Vancouver to be adopted. He is well-liked and treated fairly by his new family. Jook Liang, the only daughter is considered as inferior by the grandmother, who calls her a good for nothing since she is not good at embroidery. Sek Leung or Sekky is the youngest member of the family and he is different from them in many ways. He feels more adopted than the actual adopted brother. In fact, he seems to have difficulties to understand the complex nature of the Chinese language and culture. He is the personification of the immigrant with a hyphenated identity who feels neither fully Chinese, nor fully Canadian. At a point in the novel, he clearly expresses his wish to be “white” since he is made to feel like a “resident alien”, not a Canadian citizen. Sekky always gets into trouble with the elders in the family since he struggles to address them by the right title, and more often than not, he gets them all mixed up. He was born with a weak lung and had to be treated at home for a few years, meaning that he joined school relatively later than other students. However, since he was home schooled by his elder siblings, he caught up quickly. However, his long stay at home due to the sickness helped Pop-Poh, whom he calls gandmama, develop a closer bond with him. The old lady does not hide her preference for Sekky and spoils him. On her death, she still comes back as a ghost to show Sekky that she is here for him. The family is sceptic, as they are all reluctant to believe in the ghost, but several unexplained incidents occur. A special prayer is said so that the grandmother’s soul can rest in peace, however, this does not prevent her from staying with Sekky as she had promised him before dying. An interesting point here is that the young boy is not afraid of the strange happenings. He looks forward to them and keeps the incidents a secret as he does not want his family to worry too much.

Through Sekky’s narration in the last section of the book, we learn about the 2nd world war. We are invited to see the consequences in Chinatown from the perspective of a young boy. There is open discrimination between the Chinese and the Japanese even among school children. The tone of the book changes dramatically as the tension rises in the community. The war affects everyone. Step mother’s best friend who is a teacher in a Christian school in China is killed. The brother of Sekky’s teacher who is in the military is killed too.

Wayson Choy adds a tragic sub-plot where through Sekky’s voice we hear the story of Meiying, the neighbour’s daughter. Sekky is left under the care of Meiying’s widowed mother after school and the young boy gets to know Meiying better. She is a Chinese teenage girl with a Japanese boyfriend. She takes Sekky with her to the Japanese part of town where she meets her boyfriend. The author insinuates that stepmother knows of the relationship and supports the teenage girl but does not express her thoughts clearly. The story ends on a tragic note. Meiying dies in her bedroom in her attempt to do an abortion using 2 long knitting needles. It is inferred that she got the idea and the needles from Sekky’s mother, but the readers are left to their own interpretation

TEXTUAL KNOWLEDGE Use of flashback to talk about past memories, events that happened prior to the story being told, and events from old times in China ( Poh-Poh and Stepmother’s story)
 * The story is told in 1st person narrative – from 3 different perspectives – Jook Liang, Jung Sum and Sek Lung (Sekky).
 * Use of Chinese words within the narration. The words are translated into English within the narration to help with readers’ understanding.
 * 

CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE Stepmother adds: “When Chen Suling comes to Canada, she will teach you the right way to be Chinese. But the father cuts in to say: “We are also Canadian”.
 * The story provides an insight into the life of Chinese immigrants in Canada and the hardships they faced. The story of the Chen family and other members of their community shows the experience of many immigrants.
 * Throughout the book, we learn about the Chinese culture, the various dialects that are spoken, the complex relationships that exist within the community, the paper-relationships v/s genuine relationships and the cultural beliefs. They believe in luck and superstitious beliefs. When Poh-Poh dies, the family is looking for signs to tell them if Poh-Poh is happy or not. They fear that if the old lady is not happy, and does not bless the family, they will suffer and might even lose everything they have.
 * We are constantly seeing 2 cultures living side by side. The children go to public and Chinese school. They try to be Canadian while maintaining the ties with the Chinese culture. There is that feeling of being “neither Canadian nor Chinese, yet both” throughout the text. Sekky’s teacher calls him Sekky instead of Sek Leung, which according to her is more
 * At one point, Sekky asks his mother – “Am I Chinese or Canadian?” to which the grandmother immediately replies: “Chinese”.

HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE
 * We are introduced to the Chinese immigration in Canada in the 1900s - Chinese people were brought in to build the railways
 * There are various instances where the hardship of railway workers is mentioned in the text (It was a life of extreme poverty and hardship).
 * Historical facts about life in old China – the hardship faced by the poverty stricken people.
 * A sort of slavery where young girls were sold to be servants, abused and exploited in Old China.
 * Historical facts about life in old China – the hardship faced by the poverty stricken people.
 * A sort of slavery where young girls were sold to be servants, abused and exploited in Old China.

ISSUES    
 * I am not familiar with the Chinese culture and some of my students will know much more than I do about the culture and traditions we will encounter in the text. I have learned quite a few interesting things about the Chinese culture and traditions already, and I am still learning new things.
 * Sensitive issues like beliefs in ghosts, after-life, omens – superstitions - might be difficult for some students to understand, since they might never have come across such beliefs before. they should be prepared to be "objective" and abstain from judging the practices.
 * Some use of bad and potentially offensive words. A few references of the word “c...” to describe the Asians
 * Racism between the Chinese and Japanese during the 2nd world war is a highly sensitive issue.
 * The attempted abortion which leads to the death of a teenage girl is another issue with which I have to deal with carefully. It might be that some students do not even undertsand what happens as it is described quite subtly.
 * The homosexuality of Jung Sum has to be addressed effectively - students should not feel that this character is being judged by his sexual orientation.
 * A take home assignment - Students will be asked to select a passage in any part of the text, and narrate it in the Stepmother’s voice. She is one of the characters who is devoid of a voice in the novel. Students will retell part of the story from her perspective. This assignment will help them put themselves into Stepmother’s shoes and empathise with her. This assignment will help students identify the "voices" and create one of their own. They will be asked to use their knowledge of Form and Style to complete this assignment. it could be in a personal letter or a journal entry that Stepmother will express herself. This assignment will also touch on critical literacy. Also, s ince it is a written assignment, students will be assessed on diction, grammar, punctuation, spelling vocabulary and other skills related to the application of writing conventions.

ASSIGNMENTS
 * A take home assignment - Students will be asked to select a passage in any part of the text, and narrate it in the Stepmother’s voice. She is one of the characters who is devoid of a voice in the novel. Students will retell part of the story from her perspective. This assignment will help them put themselves into Stepmother’s shoes and empathise with her. This assignment will help students identify the "voices" and create one of their own. They will be asked to use their knowledge of Form and Style to complete this assignment. it could be in a personal letter or a journal entry that Stepmother will express herself. This assignment will also touch on critical literacy. Also, s ince it is a written assignment, students will be assessed on diction, grammar, punctuation, spelling vocabulary and other skills related to the application of writing conventions.


 * An in-class activity to wrap up the text will be to divide students in groups of 4 and have them work on a particular theme/characters. The topics will be – Gender, Culture, Conflicts, Poh-Poh, Sek Lung and Jung Sum. Using chart paper and coloured pencils, students will explain how Gender, for example, is portrayed in the novel. They will then be asked to present their work to the whole class. This activity caters for multiple intelligences and helps develop interpersonal skills. The presentation will also help students build critical thinking; they will be able to understand and analyse how gender relations are represented in the text. Moreover, this activity will bring forward the duality prevailing in this family, community and by extension Canadian society, where immigrants face similar struggles and conflicts in Canada. They are in between two cultures, two ways of life, and two sets of beliefs, which can very often be contradictory. So, this will be a way of providing real life context to the novel. Immigration is a living reality in our schools, so students will not be alien to this context.