Thousand Pieces of Gold

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of sexual enslavement, enslavement, sexual assault, death by suicide, anti-Asian racism, gun violence, and lynching. This section also quotes the text’s use of outdated terminology to refer to Indigenous Americans.

“‘But what if there wasn’t?’ Lalu insisted. ‘Would Guo Ju have killed his child?’

‘It’s just a story from the Twenty-Four Legends of Filial Piety,’ her mother said. ‘To teach us we must honor our parents and do whatever we can to make their lives happy and comfortable.’

‘Would you kill me?’

Her father put down his half woven basket and pinched her cheek. ‘Of course not. Aren’t you my qianjin, my thousand pieces of gold?’ he asked.”

This quote introduces the recurring motif of gold throughout the novel and highlights the theme of The Burden and Pain of Family Betrayal. As Polly grows up, she believes that her father will never sell her because she is his qianjin. As a result, when she is eventually sold, she is shocked at her father’s betrayal and struggles to make peace with his decision.

“There was another smell, one of hot gaoliang wine. The kind her father offered to his dead parents and grandparents on feast days. The kind disappointed gamblers used to forget what they had lost.”

When Nathoy’s winter harvest fails, he tries to ease the pain of failing his family by drinking. Interestingly, this is the same way he would celebrate his ancestors, which highlights the theme of The Burden and Pain of Family Betrayal throughout the novel.

“Lalu released her father and stared down at her feet. Every day for two years, her mother had wound long white bandages around each foot in ever tightening bands, twisting her toes under her feet and forcing them back until her feet had become two dainty arcs. They were not as small or as beautiful as those of a girl from a wealthy family who would not need to use them at all. But they were useless for heavy labor.”

Determined not to be sold, Polly insists on going to work in the fields with her father, even though doing so will require her to have her feet unbound. She does so fully knowing it will hurt her future marriage prospects, introducing the recurring motif of Polly’s feet and highlighting the theme of Gender Expectations and the Quest for Agency.