Summary
Chueh-min and Chueh-hui sit with Chueh-hsin in his office and discuss new magazines they have recently purchased from a nearby store. Chen Chien-yu, a distant relation of the Kao family and tutor to the Wang family, joins the group, much to Chueh-hui's annoyance. Chin and her mother join the group. While Chueh-hsin escorts Mrs. Wang to shop for dress material, Chin informs Chueh-min, Chueh-hui, and Chien-yun that Mrs. Wang and Mei have returned to Chengdu. The group expresses regret that Mei and Juexin were not married. Chin explains that Mei's and Chueh-hsin's birth charts are incompatible. In fact, there was a prophecy that if they had matched, Mei would have died young. Additionally, Mrs. Wang and Mrs. Chou had a dispute over a game of mahjong. In retaliation, Mrs. Wang denied the match. The group decides not to inform Chuei-hsin that Mei has returned to Chengdu so as not to rekindle his romantic feelings.
After Chien-yun leaves, Chin announces her intention to take the examination for the foreign languages school. She asks Chueh-min to tutor her in English, and he agrees. Mrs. Chang and Chueh-hsin return, and then Mrs. Chang and Chin depart.
As Chueh-hui walks home from Chueh-hsin's office, he meets his classmate, Chang Hui-ju. Hui-ju is breathless and agitated. He explains that there was a riot during one of the school plays at the Wanchun theater. The riot began after a group of soldiers demanded to be let in to see the play without paying for tickets, and when the students acquiesced, the soldiers disrupted the play with heckling and applause. When the soldiers were told to be quiet or leave, they turned violent and injured several of the students. Hui-ju explains that students from various schools gathered in Shaocheng park to bring a petition of demands to the governor.
Chueh-hui passionately joins the efforts. Along with two hundred students, Chueh-hui marches to the governor's office, where an assembly of armed soldiers stands guard. The guards inform the students that the governor has gone home for the evening. The students demand to see the governor's secretary.
Eventually, after the students threaten to wait outside the office all night, the soldiers allow eight deputies into the office to discuss their demands with the Department Chief. The other students wait in the cold and rain for several hours until midnight. Though tempted to return home, the students encourage themselves by thinking of student protesters in Beijing who packed bags for their demonstrations, expecting to be arrested.
After midnight, the Department Chief and the deputies emerge from the building. The Department Chief promises to pass the demands to the governor the next day. He also says that representatives will check on the injured students. The Department Chief then encourages the students to head home so they do not catch cold, and so that nothing "unfortunate" happens to them. A few students read a threat into the Chief's statement. Chueh-hui and the others return home.
The governor does not make good on his promise to check in on the injured students, and in retaliation, the students begin a strike. Tensions between students and soldiers flare, resulting in several days of violence, political demonstrations, and general lawlessness. Chueh-hui is active in these demonstrations, handing out flyers and joining rallies. The authorities turn a blind eye to soldiers abusing their power.
Chueh-hui's grandfather, the Venerable Master Kao, requests Chueh-hui's presence. This strikes Chueh-hui as an unusual request, seeing as Chueh-hui speaks to his grandfather to say good morning and good evening, a formality required by Confucian manners.
When Chueh-hui enters his grandfather's room, the old man is asleep. Chueh-hui regards his grandfather's frail, aged appearance. Chueh-hui tries to imagine his Yeh-yeh as a young man and reconcile things he knows about his grandfather's past with his grandfather's station. For example, the Venerable Master Kao is known for his somewhat indecent poetry, though he is also a prominent member of the Confucian Morals Society.
When the Venerable Master Kao wakes up, he reprimands Chueh-hui and the student movement for disrupting the peace and not staying in their place. He says the students deserve to be beaten for their disobedience and forbids Chueh-hui from participating in the movement. Chueh-hui attempts to argue back and justify the students' actions as self-defense. Chueh-hui's defiance angers Yeh-yeh so much that he succumbs to a severe coughing fit. The Venerable Master Kao then asks Mistress Chen to summon Chueh-hsin. Yeh-yeh instructs Chueh-hsin to keep Chueh-hui on the family compound and away from the student movements. Chueh-hsin agrees with a smile.
After the Venerable Master Kao dismisses Chueh-hui and CHueh-hsin, Chueh-hui turns on Chueh-hsin, asking how he can stand to be docile and non-resistant. Chueh-hsin explains that it is easier to go along with Yeh-yeh's demands because, ultimately, the man's mind will not be changed. Chueh-hui agrees to stay home for the next few days, not because Yeh-yeh commanded it, but because he does not want to stir up trouble for Chueh-hsin.
After Chueh-hsin leaves, Chueh-hui vandalizes one of his family's plum trees, breaking off a branch and mashing it to a pulp. He is initially pleased with his defiance but then feels ashamed of himself.
Analysis
The revolutionary texts and New Culture Ideas bring the brothers together. They read and discuss articles in New Youth magazine, and the magazine's content frequently inspires the brothers to share their true feelings of unhappiness. Chueh-hui's sympathy does not extend to people who directly impact him. For example, Chueh-hui considers Chien-yun obnoxious and Chueh-hsin weak-willed, and dismisses and berates them both, although the two men are victims of the patriarchal family system Chueh-hui abhors.
Chin explains that a dispute over a mahjong game resulted in Chueh-hsin's not being matched with Mei. This absurd conflict demonstrates how the Kao family puts great stock in appearances and social relationships and creates problems where there need not be any. Chin also explains that Chueh-hsin and Mei's birth charts were incompatible. Though many members of the Kao family regard divination and prophecy as superstition, these beliefs have a tangible impact on many lives. For example, Chueh-hsin is perpetually dissatisfied with life because he could not marry Mei, and Mei loses her will to live because she was not matched with Chueh-hsin.
Chueh-hui joins the student protest after being invited expressly invited by Hui-ju. Hui-ju explains that a violent riot broke out during a performance of a play; it fits with the motif of performance and facade that the site of conflict between students and authorities is a play. Chueh-hui's contributions to the Student Movement generally come from other people's ideas; he is not a leader, and his participation is directly influenced by shame and a sense of duty. For example, Chueh-hui wants to leave the protest and go home because it is cold and he is hungry. He is quickly shamed by another student's comment that protesters in Beijing are not afraid to be arrested. Chueh-hui returns home after being told to do so by an authority figure claiming to be looking out for his best interests. It is ironic that in the space of the student movements and the New Culture reforms, the patriarchal tools of shame and duty influence Chueh-hui's attempts to find liberation and individualism.
The Chueh-hui's moral hypocrisy is demonstrated in the injustices he chooses to protest and the injustices he chooses to ignore. For example, Chueh-hui takes to the streets and participates in violence when the authorities do not check in on injured students. However, Chueh-hui does nothing when Ming-Feng, the woman he loves, is sold as a concubine or when Kao Sheng, Chueh-hui's friend, goes to prison. Chueh-hui seems to only fight for those who have class and privilege; to the less fortunate he gives individual acts of charity or silently suffers remorse and grief.
Ironically, the student protests begin the development of Chueh-hui's relationship with his grandfather. Though Chueh-hui objects to the patriarchal family system and its arbitrary rules, he does not do anything to try and ingratiate himself with his grandfather. Chueh-hui conforms to Confucian expectations by only seeing his grandfather for formal greetings, when arguably, Chueh-hui could make more headway in changing his family dynamic by countering this specific custom and spending more time with his grandfather. Only when the Venerable Master Kao reprimands Chueh-hui for his participation in the student movements does a dialogue begin to open between them.
The Venerable Master Kao's body symbolizes the disintegration of the Confucian patriarchal family. Chueh-hui can see how his decrepit grandfather might have been striking and lively in his youth. Similarly, the Confucian system might have been orderly and beneficial in the past before new ideas were introduced and developed. Chueh-hui notes his grandfather's contradictions, notably how his Confucian morals coexist with his infamously salacious behaviors. Chueh-hui sneers at his grandfather's hypocrisy but does not consider that the Venerable Master Kao might have also been corrupted or victimized by the patriarchal family structure. Chueh hui also fails to see his own complicity in the system.
When Chueh-hui talks back to his grandfather and argues that the students acted in self-defense, the venerable master Kao succumbs to a coughing fit. Since the patriarch's body and health represent the old system, this represents how breaking Confucian manners and morals deals a significant blow to an already decaying system.
Mistress Chen represents the Venerable Master Kao's true self outside of his patriarchal role. In his youth, the Venerable Master Kao was a scholar and poet known for his lewd poems about "sing-song girls" and other irreverent publications. At his sixty-sixth birthday, he enjoys erotic and vulgar performances. Mistress Chen is coarse, overly made up, and overly perfumed. She has none of the qualities expected of a proper Confucian wife, yet the Venerable Master Kao loves her more than every other family member, and even leaves Mistress Chen the entire compound in his will.
The Venerable Master Kao outsources the responsibility of keeping Chueh-hui on the compound to Chueh-hsin. Then, Chueh-hui vandalizes one of the family's plum trees. Cheuh-hui is initially pleased with the vandalism, but is then ashamed. This act foreshadows Ming-feng's death. Plum blossoms represent romantic young love in this narrative. Chueh-hui is initially pleased by Ming-feng's love and encourages her affections. After her death, Chueh-hui is ashamed and considers himself her murderer, as Ming-feng commits suicide because of her love for Chueh-hui.
