Q1: When Lanying is told of the judge’s solitary life and
his relationship with the chi-lin, the narrator writes, “It is perhaps
the heart of this tale that Lanying chose to believe one of these truths and to
disdain the other” (212). What do you think this means? Why is it important to
the story which one of these “truths” she didn’t believe? How might this
explain what she does and says to the judge?
Q2: The writer Joseph Campbell once said, “mythology is the
penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words.”
With that it mind, what does the chi-lin represent in the story that
“cannot be put into words”? Why does it only come every few generations, and in
this case, only to the court of Kao Yu? What makes him special?
Q3: Kao Yu’s retainers say of him, after his affair with
Lanying, that “He is like a vase of pot that has been shattered into small
bits, and then restored, glued back together, fragment by fragment. It will
look as good as new...but you have to be careful with it” (217). Why is his
“shattered” by this experience? And what do they fear will break him to pieces
again?
Q4: Why does Kao Yu save Lanying at the end of the story
from the chi-lin? After all, he knows she’s a liar and a murderer and a thief;
why does he want her to escape justice for her crimes? Is it as simple as he’s
in love with her? Or is there something else that makes him alter his ideas of
justice?
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