Week 3, Post A, Chinese Cinderella

Besides pervious cultural differences like the Japanese controlling China, I only noticed a few minor differences. One of the cultural differences was when Adeline was describing a game they played in china, and says, “I first noticed Wu Chun-mei when we played shuttlecock against each other one day during recess. A shuttlecock was a rounded piece of cork with feathers stuck on the top […]. We would kick it up and down and add up the number of kicks made without interruption” (pg 56-57). Adeline goes on to describe how when you hit the shuttlecock with a racquet over a net, they call it badminton, and then I realized the shuttlecock is like a birdie.

The other, not necessarily cultural difference, but difference in time periods, or society, was the American soldiers living in china after the end of World War II. Adeline says, “At school, we were given surplus C rations for our lunch, left by China’s new hero’s the U.S. marines. We ate hard biscuits, canned meat and chunks of bittersweet chocolate. After each meal, we prayed and thanked our American allies for winning the war” (pg 59). This shows how grateful the Chinese were, and they were happy to have the Americans stationed there. This thankfulness is a lot different that the feeling towards the Japanese soldiers who were in China earlier in the story.

Lastly, I noticed alot of small cultural differnces throughout the story, like the mentioning of the Chinese New Year, and the traditons for that. Also Adeline talks about going to the park and seeing famous players competing in Chinee chess, and she talks about listening to storytellers spinning yarns about kung fu heroes(64).