Comparing Literary Techniques in Chinese and Chinese-Diaspora Fiction

Perspective and Style in 'Wandering in the Garden' and 'Soul Mountain'

One of the most striking contrasts between Pai Hsien-yung's "Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream" and Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain is the narrative perspective each author employs. Soul Mountain is written in the second person, while "Wandering in the Garden" is written in the third person. The narrator in each story is omniscient — this is their most significant similarity — but the two works diverge considerably in style. "Wandering in the Garden" has a stream-of-consciousness quality that runs throughout, taking the reader deep into the main character's thoughts as she revisits her past. The style of Soul Mountain is far more descriptive and externally focused, producing the effect of placing the reader at the heart of the action. Because the reader is the subject of the narrative, the novel functions almost like a choose-your-own-adventure story without the choices. This essay examines how the two works compare in their use of omniscient narration and how they contrast in style and perspective with regard to the theme of cultural transformation.

The most immediately noticeable difference in literary technique between the two stories is perspective. Pai Hsien-yung writes in the third person, describing the actions of Madame Ch'ien as she visits an old friend. While the narrator is privy to her innermost thoughts, her history, and the history of the other characters, the main focus remains on Madame Ch'ien and how her evening unfolds. Over the course of the dinner party, her character is revealed to the reader in a way that generates considerable sympathy: her position in life has not changed while her friend's has. A cultural transformation has occurred for the latter but not for the former, and it is a sad, slow realization that the reader arrives at alongside the character.

In Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain, by contrast, the story is written in the second person so that "you" — the reader — are the actual subject, undergoing a cultural transformation by being placed directly into the narrative. You are transported into a foreign world and told by the narrator what you are doing, feeling, and seeing. Your surroundings are vividly described so that you can easily picture yourself there. Rather than creating sympathy for a character, Xingjian creates an experience felt personally by the reader through the use of the second person — a technique only rarely employed by authors. This choice transforms what might otherwise be a travel narrative into an act of literary immersion.

Omniscient Narration and Cultural Transformation

Despite their differences in perspective and style, both stories are narrated by an omniscient narrator who knows all things and conveys everything the reader needs in order to either feel sympathy or participate in an experience. In each case, the author deploys omniscient narration to achieve a specific aim within the story's context. In "Wandering in the Garden," the omniscient narrator is able to see into the soul of Madame Ch'ien, revealing layers of longing, regret, and displacement. In Soul Mountain, the omniscient narrator inhabits the moment of travel, depicting every aspect of the surroundings in such precise detail that it is as if the reader is genuinely present.

The two authors also use different styles to convey the action of their stories. "Wandering in the Garden" enters the stream of Madame Ch'ien's consciousness so that the reader experiences her thoughts and feelings in real time over the course of the party — especially towards the end, when she suffers a nervous breakdown before being asked to sing. The style of Soul Mountain is far more descriptive and objective: the author steps back from the character's interior life and instead paints a vivid account of the world through which "you" are moving, producing an effect not unlike a literary virtual reality.

In sum, "Wandering in the Garden" and Soul Mountain are two works that are similar in their use of omniscient narration yet markedly different in perspective and style. The former is primarily concerned with plumbing the depths of a character's inner life; the latter is primarily focused on creating an immersive experience for the reader.

Mother-Daughter Relationships in 'Shaman' and 'Jing-Mei Woo'

The mother-daughter relationship in Maxine Hong Kingston's "Shaman" and Amy Tan's "Jing-Mei Woo: A Pair of Tickets" is similar in some respects but markedly different in others. In both stories, there is a degree of distance between mother and daughter that results from the generational gap and the difference in their formative experiences. At the same time, each story conveys the sense that mother and daughter are closer than they fully realize. This essay examines how "Shaman" depicts the mother-daughter relationship through the lens of the mother's experiences as a shaman, while "Jing-Mei Woo" illuminates the same relationship through the experiences and growth of the daughter.

"Shaman" tells the story of Brave Orchid, who goes off to medical school and becomes a shaman who does battle with ghosts. Her experiences give her a certain standing that she carries back to her village, where she wages war against supernatural forces. The stories are fantastical, yet to the mother they are entirely real; the daughter listens to them without judging but without fully seeing where she fits into her mother's world — she belongs to the modern Western world, not to an ancient Eastern culture in which ghosts are a living reality. The relationship between the two is essentially communicated through the stories that Brave Orchid tells. Those stories both bind and divide them.

"Jing-Mei Woo" tells the story of a daughter who travels to China to experience her heritage and meet her long-lost siblings. During her travels she reflects on her relationship with her now-deceased mother and grows in empathy toward her. She comes to understand her mother more deeply — and to recognize the callousness with which she treated her mother while growing up, having never grasped the importance of her mother's past in China. By meeting her siblings, Jing-Mei comes to appreciate her mother more fully and even sees traces of her mother in herself, particularly in the way she reacts with irritation when her travel broker makes a booking error.

Cultural Hybridity in Jade Peony, Diamond Grill, and Pushing Hands

Cultural hybridity is the predominant theme in the novels Jade Peony and Diamond Grill and the film Pushing Hands. In the two novels, the cultures in contact are Chinese and Canadian, set primarily during the wartime and post-war eras, while the film places Chinese and American (specifically New York) cultures in contact during the modern era. The novels reflect the ways in which Chinese Canadians struggled to define their identity — especially during a period when the war against Japan caused all Asians in the West to face discrimination and confusion — and are told primarily from the perspective of the younger generation. The film presents the ways in which an older generation feels neglected when the younger generation, now living in America, has lost touch with the Confucian family ideals that remain central to the elderly father. This essay compares and contrasts all three works to show how cultural hybridity poses a challenge for Chinese emigrants to the West across different historical moments.

The central lesson the father learns in Pushing Hands is that while he has every right to expect respect for Confucian principles regarding family, he must also accept that he is no longer living in China and that life in America requires accommodation to a different culture. The film thus suggests that the values of both cultures are important, yet difficult to hold simultaneously. Unlike in Jade Peony and Diamond Grill, it is the father who comes to understand his children — whereas in the novels it is the children who come to understand the older generation, particularly in Jade Peony, where Poh-Poh's death prompts the younger characters to reflect more deeply on their Chinese heritage.

In Jade Peony, a Chinese-Canadian family in the 1930s and 1940s struggles to define itself against the backdrop of war. The stories and perspectives in the novel are profoundly shaped by the Old One (Poh-Poh), who weighs on the younger characters as a living embodiment of the traditional Chinese way. Sek-Lung, for instance, is especially close to Poh-Poh, and the war is deeply troubling to him because it manifests the clash between East and West at the level of culture as well as politics. The novel differs from Pushing Hands in that it offers no easy moral resolution, and it differs from Diamond Grill in that it is rooted primarily in the pre-war and wartime era, filling the book with dread and tension as the characters work to understand their hybrid identities.

Diamond Grill is set in the immediate post-war era of the 1950s in Canada and explores the relationship between food and cultural identity. The diner serves as a fitting setting for the examination of two cultures through the lens of food — what dining, eating, mealtime, and family mean both universally and specifically to a Chinese-Canadian family. The novel takes a gentle approach to cultural hybridity by placing it in a relatively comfortable and optimistic era. It differs from Pushing Hands in that the film is set in the modern period and presents a kind of reverse coming-of-age narrative in which the father learns to appreciate his children's American customs, whereas in Diamond Grill there is mutual appreciation between young and old. Jade Peony, by contrast, is less optimistic in tone and less clear in how it resolves the tensions of cultural hybridity.