Chinese Cinderella

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 1999

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-22

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Nai Nai’s Feet

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses child abuse and animal abuse and describes historical cultural practices that constitute female mutilation.

Nai Nai’s bound feet symbolize the rapid movement of Chinese history in this time period and also the misogynistic underpinnings of Chinese society, which Adeline will have to contend with herself. The lifelong mutilation and debilitation that Nai Nai experiences for the sake of the male gaze is a physical manifestation of patriarchal culture’s toll on women. Nai Nai articulates her sorrow forcefully: “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” (8). Her pain can be interpreted not only as literally physical but also as the figurative pain of social expectations and objectifications thrust upon her from infancy.

When Nai Nai dies, it signifies a changing of the guard between generations of women and a spiritual liberation from the physical confines of her mutilated body. Adeline’s last memory of Nai Nai, when she soaks her toes in steaming hot water for physical relief, serves as one of the memoir’s most striking portrayals of feminine struggle. At her funeral, Adeline recalls, “I watched the smoke curl up from the sacrificial urn and believed with all my heart that it would regroup somewhere […] for the exclusive use of our Nai Nai in heaven” (21). Here, the imagery of smoke mirrors the steam used to soak Nai Nai’s feet, pairing spiritual relief alongside physical relief.

PLT

PLT is Adeline’s loyal pet duckling; her killing by the family German shepherd is one of the most tragic consequences of Father’s abusive behavior. As such, PLT symbolizes Adeline herself, and her brief life is a cautionary tale about the dangers of Adeline’s own family. As soon as Adeline selects PLT as her pet, the two become an inseparable pair, with Aunt Baba noting, “I just heard you speaking to PLT as if she were your baby sister, in a tone both proud and loving” (74). This sisterly bond establishes the notion of PLT as a miniature Adeline, shaped by her nurturing guidance and invested with all Adeline’s hopes for a more loving family. Small, fragile, and subject to the will of other more powerful figures such as Jackie the German shepherd, PLT mirrors Adeline’s status in the household.

Unfortunately for PLT, this lowly position proves fatal. Adeline’s inability to face the reality of PLT’s death is a prime example of the limits of her escapist tendencies. She writes, “Surely everything would remain the same as long as I kept my eyes shut and did not look at PLT” (82), indicating the fear she feels over what PLT’s death might mean. The gleeful cruelty with which Father orchestrates the duckling’s murder is resounding evidence of his dangerous personality and the irreparability of the Yen family dynamic. In the wake of losing PLT, Adeline recognizes that the odds are stacked against her with striking clarity, telling Third Brother, “I feel as if it’s the two of us against the world” (84).

Niang’s Perfume

The scent of Niang’s perfume is a motif that appears in scenes during which Adeline comes face to face with her dreaded stepmother. Adeline repeatedly reports the perfume as being overwhelmingly pungent to the point of causing her physical discomfort. In the car on the way to her new boarding school in Tianjin, she recalls, “Niang and I were alone in the back-seat. I smelled her perfume and was dizzy with worry and nausea” (126). Here, the perfume is like a physical trigger, heightening Adeline’s already anxious state. In this sense, it represents the harmful effects of Niang’s abusive personality beyond the confines of her physical body.

More specifically, the perfume is associated with Niang’s Eurocentric worldview. At the very beginning of the memoir, Adeline recounts it as one of her new stepmother’s defining features: “She wore heavy makeup, expensive French perfume, and many diamonds and pearls” (4). The motif is therefore complicated as a status symbol and weapon of colonialist ideology. Although Niang is the one wielding this cultural weaponry, the narrative suggests that, conversely, it also places limitations on her. Her marriage to Father at the young age of 17 reduces her worth to the clout that comes with her “Frenchness,” and the perfume is merely one tool of this objectification.