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Chapter 14: Class President
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Chinese Cinderella, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Physical and Emotional Abuse
Coming of Age and Self-Worth
The Power of Stories
Toxic Family
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
The airport is crowded the next day, but to Adeline’s surprise, their flight from Shanghai to Tianjin is nearly empty. Although Adeline is unaware at the time, China is undergoing a major revolution: Mao Zedong and the Communists have initiated a civil war with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists. The Communists, with their People’s Liberation Army, are conquering many provinces, moving from north to south, and have nearly arrived in Tianjin and Beijing, which most people assume they will swiftly take control of.
The fact that Father and Niang elect to leave Adeline in the path of the Communists is particularly grim, almost as if they hope she will be captured or killed. Taking Adeline from the relative safety of Shanghai to the danger of Tianjin seems akin to a parent abandoning their child in the middle of a busy highway when they could have left them on the side of the road. This is a supreme example of emotional abuse, an apparent death wish from one’s parents, and further contributes to Adeline’s loss of self-worth.
Themes
A flight stewardess gives Adeline and her parents landing cards to fill out, during which Father reveals to Adeline that he does not even remember her given Chinese name since it is never used in the household, and he doesn’t know her birthday since it is never celebrated; he doesn’t even know how old she is. This wounds Adeline, knowing that she means so little to him. However, she does not even know her own birthday, so Father offers to give her his. Despite her pain, she finds the thought of sharing Father’s birthday “wonderful.” And thus, November 30th becomes Adeline’s legal birthday.
Father’s forgetting of Adeline’s given name reiterates his utter apathy towards his own daughter, further characterizing him as a callous and self-absorbed figure. It is tragic then, that even in the face of such disregard, Adeline thinks it “wonderful” to share the same birthday as Father. This nods to the way in which children naturally idolize their parents, even in the face of abuse or neglect, making childhood abuse a particularly grim occurrence.
Themes
Niang’s brother meets them at the airport in Tianjin with his chauffer and they all drive together for hours, arriving at a large, familiar-looking building sometime at night. Niang gets out of the car with Adeline while Father remains in the vehicle. The two of them stride to the gate and are met by two foreign nuns. With only a few brief words to the nuns, Niang turns and re-enters the vehicle. The car pulls away. Adeline has been abandoned, “tossed aside…like a piece of garbage.” Father did not so much as look up or wave.
Adeline’s abandonment in Tianjin constitutes an emotional abuse as great as anything she has suffered thus far, which once again crushes her self-esteem. Although she is now out of arm’s reach and safe from the beatings of Niang, Father, or even Second Brother, the emotional trauma of abandonment will be with her for as long as she stays in Tianjin. This demonstrates the way in which the emotional trauma of abuse, especially childhood abuse, can have a far greater impact than physical harm.
Themes
The nuns, Mother Marie and Mother Natalie, inform Adeline that she is no longer allowed to speak Mandarin, only English (which Adeline knows very little of) or French. The nuns show Adeline to the sleeping quarter, a massive room filled with empty beds and only 3 girls besides herself. When Adeline asks where she is, the nuns are surprised, answering that she is in the same school where she had attended kindergarten so many years ago. Adeline is crushed, but decides that at least a boarding school is better than an orphanage.
The nuns’ forbidding of Chinese language reiterates the recurrent tension between Adeline’s traditional Chinese culture that she is raised with and the modern, Western values being thrust upon her. On the one hand, such Western values are necessary to succeed in the Twentieth century. This will become a consistent tension throughout the author’s entire life, and much of her later writing and work as an author is dedicated to sharing and preserving traditional Chinese values and culture.
Themes
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Adeline wakes the next morning to find a girl her age sitting on the next bed, talking with her mother. When Adeline admits that her English is poor, the girl happily switches to Mandarin. The girl’s mother is shocked that Adeline’s parents have sent her from the safety of Shanghai to the danger of Tianjin (since her family has been trying to get a flight out of Tianjin for months). In Tianjin, they are at risk of being persecuted by the Communists. The girl’s mother asks what Adeline could have done to merit such punishment.
Once again, a third party enters the story briefly to show how cruel Niang and Father are. While any decent parent knows they should be taking their children out of the danger of Tianjin, Adeline’s parents seem to intentionally put her in harm’s way. That the other girl’s mother recognizes that Adeline is being punished is also revealing, suggesting that, regardless of the cruelty of Adeline’s situation, there is at least some cultural precedent for it.
Themes
The school is split into six classes and students are placed based on their fluency in English. Adeline, to her shame, is placed in the beginners’ class, akin to a kindergarten class. She is years older than any of her classmates and they are working on basic addition and subtraction, rather than the algebra she had previously studied. During class, Mother Marie initially mocks Adeline’s limited English but, once Adeline proves to be quick-witted and humorous even in a language she speaks poorly, Mother Marie lets off.
This is yet another humiliation that will contribute to Adeline’s extremely low sense of self-worth, contrasting heavily with her school life in Shanghai—where once she had many friends, now she is alone; where once she was the top of her class, now she is studying next to kindergartners and suffering through learning English. Even so, Adeline’s sense of humor despite her humiliation suggests a particular ability to persevere
Themes
The girl that Adeline met at boarding school escapes Tianjin in November 1948. There are so few students left in the entire school that they are all put into one classroom. Students leave every day until, by mid-December, Adeline is the only student left. Mother Marie makes an effort to keep teaching Adeline, but she is not sure what to teach anymore. All of the nuns seem to avoid eye contact with her, pitying her, and Adeline spends her days wandering from empty room to empty room. One day, Adeline discovers the chapel filled with nuns in prayer and hears one of them at the organ. The music brings her back to evenings with Aunt Baba and Ye Ye, snuggling into her blankets and listening to them play cards.
The peace of the prayer chapel and the memories of safety that Adeline recalls after hearing the organ music contrasts with the looming threat of Communist occupation. Especially for the nuns—and Adeline by extension, since she is living with them—this would have been a particularly dangerous time. Mao Zedong’s Communism is known for being militantly atheist and hostile towards religion and capitalism. As a French school, the nuns are representatives of both religion and Western capitalism, making them as likely targets for persecution.
Themes
For Christmas Day, Adeline eats dinner all alone in the refectory while one of the nuns occasionally wanders in and out with food. Adeline places her head and the table and falls asleep. Later that evening, she writes a letter to Aunt Baba, telling her she misses her and asking why she doesn’t write back, since Adeline has sent so many letters.
Though Adeline, still quite young, does not yet seem to assume that Niang is interfering here, the reader naturally intuits this. Aunt Baba’s commitment to Adeline is too strong to simply ignore her like the rest of the family. Adeline’s belief that Aunt Baba has simply neglected to write back indicates the childlike nature of Adeline’s perception and the psychological control Niang has over her.
Themes
New Year’s Day and 1949 arrives without fanfare. Adeline spends time making origami out of a book that Mother Marie gave her. She tries not to ask whether she has received mail too often, since she never gets anything. Though she does not know it at the time, Niang ordered all incoming and outgoing mail to be intercepted and forwarded to her in Shanghai.
Niang’s obsession with control over Adeline’s life, even when she has left the house and is completely out of sight, once again reinforces her own near-psychotic obsession with power and demonstrates yet another method of emotional abuse. For Niang, it is not enough to be rid of Adeline, she must also make her feel as alone as possible. This demonstrates the way in which emotional abuse can be far more powerful and wider-reaching than physical abuse.
Themes
One day, Mother Marie comes running up to Adeline and announces that her aunt has arrived to take her to Hong Kong by ship. Adeline is flushed with joy, knowing that Aunt Baba has come to rescue her. She races to the visiting area but stops short, seeing not Aunt Baba but a foreign-looking woman in a Western suit who tells Adeline that she is Aunt Reine Schilling, Niang’s older sister. Aunt Baba remains in Tianjin. According to Aunt Reine, she has not seen Adeline since Adeline was in kindergarten. Adeline is crushed, and despite her best efforts to thank Aunt Reine for coming to take her, she begins to weep.
This introduces Aunt Reine, who will play an important role in showing Adeline what a healthy, normal family can look like and demonstrating the manner in which friends (or extended family, functioning as friends) can help to keep one grounded. The contrast between Aunt Reine and her sister Niang is immediate: Niang has abandoned Adeline; Aunt Reine has come to rescue her from the Communists.
Themes
Aunt Reine strokes Adeline’s hair and tries to comfort her, telling Adeline that she will join Aunt Reine’s family and share a cabin on the ship with her and her daughter Claudine, who is nine. They will also be traveling with Aunt Reine’s husband and their son, Victor, who is ten. They will meet Adeline’s family, whom Aunt Reine assumes will be thrilled to see her, in Hong Kong where they have fled.
Aunt Reine shows physical affection to Adeline to try to calm her, stroking her hair, which is something that Niang has never done. This is another indicator that Adeline’s relationship with Aunt Reine will be fundamentally different than her relationship with Niang.
Themes
They leave the school, seeing the city streets deserted except for young Communist soldiers. Aunt Reine explains that Chiang Kai-shek’s army simply gave up the city and fled southward. Big Sister had also been living in Tianjin but fled more recently, and Aunt Reine is surprised to hear that she never visited Adeline. Although Adeline begs to go to Shanghai instead of Hong Kong, Aunt Reine thinks this is madness since the Communists will most likely capture Shanghai soon, as well. Aunt Reine believes the best thing for Adeline is to be with her family in Hong Kong; to Adeline, this seems the worst thing.
Aunt Reine seems strangely unaware of her sister Niang’s cruelty and the state in which her family lives, otherwise she would not be so surprised that Adeline wants to avoid her family or that Big Sister has not visited. This once again highlights the fundamental difference between Niang and Aunt Reine, raising the question of how, being sisters, they turned out so completely different in temperament and demeanor. This question is never explored (although clearly Adeline turns out to be very different from her siblings, as well).
Themes
