Unpolished Gem: Part 5 Summary & Analysis

Later, Kien tells Kuan that Ah BuKien, a family friend, “wants to discuss Agheare for her son.” Kuan laughs. “That crazy antiquated relic thinks she’s still living in Confucian times,” he says. Alice knows the woman well. She made all her money selling rice noodles and built a huge mansion. Now, whenever they drive by, the Pungs say, “Look, there’s BuKien’s rice-noodle house.”

Once, Alice remembers, Ah BuKien gave the Pungs a tour of her house and took great care describing every piece of furniture, including the price. “Do you know how much this cost?” Ah BuKien said pointing at a coffee table. “Do you? Guess.” In the car on the way home, Kien said the table was ugly, but Alice disagreed. “You just watch it,” Kien said. Kien thought Ah BuKien had “peasant taste.” After all, the table was imported from China. “My parents abhorred anything that reminded them we would grow up yellow and there was nothing they could do to save us,” Alice says.

Alice has never met Ah BuKien’s son. He is always busy with tutors and studying. Still, Ah BuKien tells Kien that her son has not been accepted into medical school, and she has not been successful trying to pay his way. “Only a percentile of 92.4! The boy is a retard!” she cries. Alice has no desire to marry the “rice-noodle boy—quivery, white and malleable, made exactly like Ah Bukien’s pasta.”

Back at Kuan’s Retravision shop, the local Chinese population refuses to buy any items made in China. “But sir,” Alice asks an older gentleman, “aren’t you made in China?” Huyen Thai had always taught Alice to be proud of being Chinese. She had raised Alice to “defend herself against all the other blandly dressed banana-children—children who were yellow on the outside but believed they could be completely white inside.” Huyen Thai always said those children would grow to be “sour.” Now, with this man refusing a Chinese television, Alice knows she was right.

One day, Ah BuKien comes into the shop. She doesn’t seem interested in buying anything, and she casually asks Alice the results of her final grades. Alice suddenly understands she isn’t looking to buy a toaster—she is there to size up Alice for her son. Well, thinks Alice, “if she is searching for my child-bearing hips, she won’t find any.”

Alice suspects that Kien wants her to marry Ah BuKien’s son, and she feels like the women are “conspiring against her liberty.” Kien wants her to be quiet and docile, and always warns her to be “careful.” Translated into Chinese, Alice says, “‘careful’ means to have a ‘small heart.’”

One day, Ah BuKien again comes into the shop and tells Kien that her son is no longer going to school. Instead, she says, he is working at the factory. “What!” Kien yells. “You mean your rice-noodle factory?” Smugly, Kien tells her at least he is making money for her. Kien and Kuan have five years of law school to pay for. As Ah BuKien walks out of the shop, Alice knows she won’t be back.

In the meantime, Alice is walking with a young white boy named Michael. He is kind and funny, and they fight when he insists on escorting her home. Alice worries about her family spying on her—she is “more scared of interloping Indochinese ‘aunts’ than the local drug-dealers, because the latter generally left her alone.”

Michael asks Alice if she would like to have dinner with him. Alice thinks he might like her, but part of her thinks he’s just a “sinophile,” and she is “his third-world trip or something.” She has never been on a real date before, and she’s not sure how all of this works. In her mind, Alice tells him that she doesn’t “do conventional Karate-Kid-Part-II romances,” but out loud she says, “Umm, yeah, okay.”

At dinner, Alice fights with her inner “Voice of Reason.” She tells herself that she is “turning into one of those anxious killjoy Asian women,” and she tries to relax and enjoy herself. Not everything has to be so “serious.” Michael looks at her and says, “What will your father say when I ask you to be my girlfriend?”

In the meantime, Alice’s cousin, Melanie, marries a white man, and most of their family calls him “the Round Red-haired Demon,” even when Melanie’s around. Of course, Kien refers to him as a “white ghost,” and she tells Alice never to marry one “because you know how they sleep around.”

Melanie’s father loves her new husband. “The white skin did the trick” because Uncle Frank “can never escape the counter-effects of colonialism.” He tells the family that when Melanie takes this new husband to Cambodia for their honeymoon, “they will be swamped by kowtowers from all sides, heh heh!” Alice says that her family believes that they “were rescued by white people even when the white people didn’t see themselves as our rescuers.”

Alice says that her family are “hypocrites.” They love the white people for accepting them here in Australia, and they certainly love Australia. But “the more we love these things,” Alice says, “the more it makes us realize how much we hate the dirt, the sludge and the smells of our homelands […] But most of all, we hate ourselves for loving them.”

“So…umm, how about it?” Michael asks. Alice sits silently. Alice thinks to herself that he needs a “bowl haircut” and a “shirt-and-tie combo” before she can be his girlfriend. She wants to know if he is only asking her out because she is “exotic,” but she doesn’t ask. “No,” she finally says out loud. “I can’t.” Michael becomes self-conscious. He’s never asked anyone out before like this. Maybe he’s doing it the wrong way. She assures him he isn’t and they both agree to start over.

 After their initial dinner, Alice’s relationship with Michael gets “easier.” She decides to “loosen her small and tightly coiled life” and date like a normal person without worrying about “being under the spotlight of the Indochinese (in)security cameras.” Each time Alice goes out with Michael she tells her parents she is going to the university library. They don’t ask questions because she is “trading on her reputation as a studious daughter.” They never mind if she is studying as long as she is home by six P.M.

“Have you ever hopped on a random train and got off at a place you have never been before?” Alice asks Michael later. He hasn’t, and neither has she; Alice has never been out of Melbourne. As the two chat, Alice tells Michael how she was “brought up to believe that the fall of man was Adam’s fault entirely.” He laughs, but Alice swears it’s true. Kuan has always told her that Eve warned Adam not to eat the apple, but he did anyway. That’s why men have an Adam’s apple, to remind them of their bad decision-making.

Alice tells Michael that it doesn’t look like he even has an Adam’s apple. “Yes, I do,” he says, taking Alice’s hand and placing it on his neck. Alice freezes. She has never touched a boy before. “What a very nice neck you have,” she says awkwardly. Michael easily shifts the conversation, making her feel better. “Did you always want to be a law student?” he asks. She hasn’t, but law is “practical.” As a child, she wanted to be an artist or a teacher. He tells her he has wanted to be a lawyer since he watched Gandhi in the tenth grade.

Michael tells Alice she should get home before her “tracking device goes off.” Kuan usually calls when it gets late, and it is about six o’clock. “Don’t you feel frustrated sometimes?” he asks. Of course she is, but she doesn’t want to tell him that. “I’m not afraid of the dark, you know,” Alice says, staring him down. “Don’t ever give me that patronizing ‘poor you’ look!” she says firmly. He quickly apologizes, saying he had only wanted to get her home so that he could see her again. “Oh,” she says.

After several dates, Michael begins to ask Alice about meeting her parents. “Soon,” she tells him. Neither Kuan nor Kien have any idea about Michael. She promises to tell them about him this weekend, and Michael is terrified. “I’m scared of your parents and I haven’t met them yet!” he says. There is not much to fear in Kuan, Alice thinks, but Kien is a different story. She sees Alice and Michael’s cultural and racial differences as “insurmountable.”

Alice thinks about Kien. In her face there is a “simplicity” that stands out, and she has a beautiful laugh and smile. But when she is angry, “her face literally darkens.” She can never hide feelings of suspicion either, and she is suspicious when Alice brings Michael to dinner with them in China-town.

Michael is a vegetarian. “No meat at all?” Kien asks. “Buddhist? Taoist?” She thinks it is ridiculous when Alice tells her he “feels sorry for the animals.” Michael immediately takes a few prawns, and some chicken, and then some venison. “Oh, I love Bambi,” he says. Kuan tells him how “impressed” he is with his chopstick skills.

“This fish reminds me of the Pol Pot years when the starved, dead bodies floated up the river during the flood,” Kuan says. He goes on to talk about his job dragging the bodies away from town, but his story is sprinkled with jokes and laughter. Most people who have conversations with Kuan about Cambodia don’t know “whether to laugh or cry,” Alice says.

After dinner, Michael gives Kien a lovely, “understated” arrangement of flowers. “Tanks you velly march,” Kien says. Alice can tell that Michael is trying to figure out if Kien likes him, but even Alice doesn’t know yet. She does know, however, that Kien has no idea what Michael is saying to her.

Later at home, Alice listens to Kien’s “list of objections to potential husbands.” She thinks Aussies “sleep around” and have loose morals, and she thinks Cantonese men gamble too much. Vietnamese men “spend too much,” while Teochew men are “stingy.” Just don’t “remain unmarried,” Kien warns.

Kien tells Alice that Michael probably “splits everything in half.” Alice lies and says he doesn’t. The truth is she “hates splitting bills” too, but she doesn’t want to tell her mother that. She would rather pay it all than split the bill. All or nothing, she thinks. She tells her mother that “some non-Asians” think splitting the bill is “true equality.” “Hah!” Kien laughs. “What kind of relationship is determined by a calculator?”

Alice thinks about Michael’s female friends. She has met a few, and they always hug and kiss him when they see him. Alice knows it is “innocent,” but still it bothers her. “They don’t have issues with physical contact like we do,” Alice thinks. “Are you listening to me?” Kien yells, interrupting her thoughts. She isn’t.

Kien continues to give Alice a hard time about Michael, and when they walk downtown by the jewelry shops and the Kims ask if her daughter has a boyfriend yet, Kien says, “No.” One day, Kien tells Kuan that Alice was seen kissing Michael at Alina’s birthday party. “I gave him a peck on the cheek!” Alice yells. “What shame!” Kien yells. “And you stop kissing that boy!”

One night, Alice pulls up to Michael’s college at 10:30 P.M. “Ummm…look what time it is,” he says uncomfortably. Alice knows she should go home. They are surely waiting up for her. Plus, they let her see Michael as much as she wanted—he just had to come to their house, and they are not to go upstairs to her room.

Alice says her parents are worried that Michael will “deflower her,” but that is unlikely, and her room isn’t even that exciting. It is painted all white with heavy pink curtains and looks like it belongs to a “blonde-haired sixteen-year-old sweetheart” “in an American movie.” Other than the same bed she shared with Huyen Thai, it is completely empty.

Earlier that night, Alice had taken Michael upstairs after Kien had gone out. Not to sleep with him—just “to see what he looked like” in her room—then she could say that she had broken one rule at least. Michael had been hesitant, as he didn’t want to break any rules, but he agreed. On the way back down the stairs, Kien walked in and caught them.

“What were you doing upstairs with the boy?” Kien had asked. Alice told her that they were vacuuming. Michael begged Alice to just tell her parents the truth, nothing happened anyway, he said. Alice knows her mother would never believe her anyway. “I’m just going to stick with my story,” she said. “Tell her I told you to go upstairs,” Michael ordered. “No, no,” he said. “Tell them that I made you go upstairs.” He wants to save me, she thought.

Now, as Alice leaves Michael at school, she knows the vacuuming story will work, just “as she knew it would from the beginning.” Kuan is too embarrassed to say a thing to Alice when she gets home. “Some things” he thinks he’s “better off not knowing.”

In the meantime, Michael tries hard to be accepted by Kuan and Kien, and when Alice does her chores at home, he offers to help. She declines and tells him to watch television. “You know,” he says, “if we ever…errr…live in a domestic-type relationship, you can’t do this. It unbalances things.” Alice doesn’t want to live with him, but if she did, she “would do anything to make his life easier.” She felt indebted to him for his kindness and understanding. She is probably just wasting his time anyway, so she wants to “make it up to him.” So, Alice begins to wash his clothes and cook his meals, and she even packs his bags when he goes back to college.

Each night Alice drives Michael home, and if it is past 10:30 P.M., Kuan usually goes with them. Tonight, they opt for “quality, not quantity” time, and they drive back early so they can be alone. His room is a mess, so Alice cleans it. She finds old photographs of an ex-girlfriend, yearbooks, and even a few condoms, which she puts between the pages of 2001: A Space Odyssey. She knows that he has had sex before, and she has no intention of having sex with him. That will “be the end,” she thinks.

Alice is sure that Michael will not understand why she doesn’t want to have sex. It isn’t “only to do with her parents” either. “I only get one go in this lifetime,” Alice says to him, “and I don’t want to screw it up, literally speaking.” Still, he tries to understand but doesn’t get anywhere. “Do I make you happy?” he asks. Alice lies to him and begins to cry.

In the following days, Alice helps Michael pack and get ready to return to Perth for college. Alice takes him to a park nearby and they sit in the silence. “You brought me here to tell me something,” he says. Alice tells him that she loves him, and she thinks that “love is this ‘one true love forever and ever’ kind of thing,” but she is not ready to make that kind of decision. Michael begins to cry. Alice reaches over and wipes his nose with her sleeve. “Come on,” she says, “it’s snot that bad.”

Alice and Michael laugh and then sit in the silence. “Well,” Michael finally says, “I’m going to miss you.” Alice says she will miss him too. After she drops him off at home, she thinks about Kuan and Kien, young and in love. Kuan wanted to live with Kien “for the rest of his life” and “see their lives multiply into four new ones.”

When Alice gets home, Kuan and Kien are sitting on the couch together, sharing a mango. “Good to see you home not so late tonight,” Kuan says. “Let them eat their mango in peace,” Alice thinks to herself as she goes upstairs to her room.