NOTE: “Cheng Beng” or “Qingming” is a traditional Chinese
festival also known as “Ancestor’s Day.” It goes back over 2,000 years, and is
a celebration of one’s ancestors in early spring; families visit the graves of
their ancestors and offer food and gifts while enjoying their own traditional foods
and festivities.
The “A” / “SF” group should answer TWO of the following:
Q1: What is slightly absurd about the kind of gifts Mrs. Lim
receives in the afterlife? How does she feel about these gifts? Do we
understand why her daughter gives them?
Q2: Mrs. Lim mentions that “once [her husband] had been
satisfied that he had accomplished all he had meant to do in this life…he opted
instead for Meng Por’s forgetfulness tea and went straight for reincarnation”
(92). If he was satisfied, why wasn’t Mrs. Lim? What does she get out of
‘living’ in death that her husband didn’t?
Q3: In her author’s note, Goh writes that “I wrote this for
fellow Asian daughters who have similarly fraught relationships with their
mothers, and from whom filial piety demands a gratitude that we can’t give
freely” (345). In the story, what makes it difficult for Hong Yin to reconcile
with her mother, and for her mother to accept her and apologize?
Q4: Mrs. Lim reflects that “The afterlife…was a place where
nothing could happen, because it is not, after all, a place of living” (97-98).
In that case, why might this story be more about life than death? In other
words, how might this be a metaphor to what we hang onto, as well as how we
decide to let go?
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