Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

Four years later, the city is quiet again and China is a republic. Ailin is nine years old. One afternoon, the family goes to the lake and Ailin meets Hanwei again in a boat. It’s an embarrassing situation for the adults, but he seems happy to see her. Father and Big Uncle talk about the political situation; Big Uncle is all for another firm leader in control, but Father welcomes foreigners to their shores.

Father announces that he is sending Ailin to public school. Grandmother disapproves, saying that too much education is “unhealthy” (45) for girls. Father explains that the MacIntosh School is run by American Protestants, and Ailin would learn history, geography, English, and math there. He says the ignorance of their people led to defeat during the Boxer Rebellion, and tells his family, “But we can’t think of ourselves forever as the center of the universe. Ailin and young people like her have to find out about the rest of the world” (47). As they work out the logistics, Grandmother despairs of ever marrying off an educated girl with unbound feet.

Ailin must first take an entrance exam at the school. During the examination, a teacher comes in; Ailin has never really seen a foreigner before and notices that she has unbound feet: “In the whole wide world, only Chinese women bound their feet” (51).