Mining For Meaning

Prose Exercise 6

1)The father was unable to recognize his own daughter when he first ssw her because the last time he saw her, was about 8 years ago, she would have grown up & looked different by then. Evidence show as, "they hadn't met in eight years, he remembered, not since his ex-wife, having won custody of their eight-year-old child". This shows that since their divorce & having won custody of their child back then, the father had not met his daughter once in the past eight years. Therefore through the process of the eight years, his daughter had already grown up and should looked fairly different as compared to the past.

2)My impression of Li Wen is that, she is rather aggressive, as shown in the extract "she kicked the machine once, twice, three times". She kicked the machine three times as the drink did not came out, therefore, her actions shows how aggressive she is by nature. I think that she will have a hard thing having to adjust to her new environment because having to switch to an entirely different environment requires patience and time. As shown in the passage, "her sarcastic exclamations of 'oh my god' and "can this be real' ", shows that she isnt very good in adjusting to new stuff as the songs she heard on the radio back in her country were completely different to the ones she had tried to listen for this instance. Her sarcastic reactions to the songs played, showed how inefficiently that she wasn't a person who would be fine with adjusting to a new environment.

3 a)The writer shows the tension between father and daughter through their conversations. As seen in the passage, "oh my god", "can this be real", and "we don't believe in being swamped by the media here" the writer shows sarcastic remarks made by both father & daughter during the radio incident to create tension in the extract so as to emphasis the difference of the east and west couture.

3 b)In the passage, initially, he was feeling a little pissed at Li Wen because she could not remember anything about her country. He showed his displeasure by making a remark of "Don't you remember anything about your country" ? He was annoyed by Li Wen for not remembering anything, to have already forgotten everything of the past. At the end of the passage, the writer showed how the father tolerated her nonsense by not showing how annoyed he was, instead, he stopped the car for her to get her walkman, to make her happy, & in a way, it was a relief to have both of them not talking to each other.

4)One of the ways the writer used to display the differences and conflict between the East and West is through the conversations of he himself and his mother. As shown in the passage, a sarcastic reaction by his mother, "Is that a new-fangled Western concept or what?" shows how his mother isnt too happy to know that he wants some alone time with Li Wen, rather than her usual ways of doing things in big groups or as a whole family. As to comparing the east, people were more traditional and hence would preferred to do things in groups, rather than to being independent or to be alone as compared to the west. My feelings for the father and daughter in the story is that, they both required time to adjust to the living habits of one another as after all, they had both live in completely different places & they didnt know each other very well either.