At first, he couldn’t pick his daughter out from the crowd at the airport when he went to meet her, and he panicked, imagining all sorts of things. All he had was a rather smudged photograph to go by, showing a girl with long Janis Joplin hair framing her face, her smile wide and lopsided. He saw her finally, by the soft-drinks machine, inserting coins; no drink emerged and she kicked the machine, once, twice, three times. He should have recognized the flowing hair, but her clothes—a black man’s jacket and tight red jeans—had led him to suppose it was someone older. She looked up, her forehead furrowing in doubt, when he came up.
“Are you my dad?” she asked in a pronounced American accent.
“Li Wen?”
“Yeah. But everyone calls me Lee.”
Clumsily he hugged her and she accepted it with a sort of grudging nonchalance. She kept looking at him with a certain measured surprise—they hadn’t met in eight years, he remembered, not since his ex-wife, having won custody of their eight-year-old child, had taken the first plane out to California and never come back. He’d heard that she’d got ajob at a refugee centre, helping displaced Asians settle in their new country. Three weeks ago she had drowned accidentally in a friend’s swimming-pool in LA, hence Li Wen’s return. To be with her kith and kin, as his mother had sonorously put it. He had had great difficulty persuading his mother to stay away that night; he needed, he said, to be alone when he met LiWen.”Is that a newfangled Western concept or what?” his mother had demanded. She had never understood that one sometimes needed a modicum of privacy, a moment to take stock; everything had to be done As Family.
He picked up Li Wen’s luggage, all three small pieces of it—”Oh, just my favourite shirts and a couple of records”—while she swung her own tennis racket carelessly and walked ahead of him. Her step was jaunty, light-footed; it was almost like cat-walking. She was as tall as he and he was five foot nine. She was sixteen.
“Hey,” Lee said, when he caught up with her, “it’s kind of hot here, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you remember anything about your country?”
He dumped the luggage in the back of the car. “My country?” Lee said, as if not sure what he meant.
“Oh.Yeah. Some. Not much. Not the humidity.” “You won’t need that jacket here.”
She looked down at it, flicking an infinitesimal speck of dust off the lapel, and an odd reflective look came over her face; he was to recognize it well; it was the look which signified she was back in LA in her mind.
“I guess not,” she said.
In the car, she made straight for the radio, her hair swashing over the gears. Backing out, he didn’t pay attention to her restless flicking of channels, her sarcastic exclamations of, “Oh my God” and “Can this be real?”
“Man, is that all the radio there is? M.O.R. and Bach?” She sounded flabbergasted.
“We don’t believe in being swamped by the media here,” he said in amusement.
“Hey—stop,” she commanded. Her tone was imperative.
“Why?”They were near the exit of the car park. “I gotta get myWalkman out from the back. I can’t listen to this junk. Kenny Rogers—” She rolled her eyes.
“Do you have to listen to anything right now?”
Lee said intensely, “I need the music, man.”
He was about to say, No, annoyed, then relented. So he stopped the car and she was out and back in a flash; now she sat contentedly, legs tucked under her, swivelling her head round in curiosity at things which caught her attention along the road. She played the music loud and he could hear it above the noise of the traffic; in a way, it was a relief not to have to talk and he was almost apprehensive when she finally turned the thing off.
“So what do you do?” she said, prepared to be amused again. He told her he was a deejay.
“Gross out, man,” she said; her tone was midway between being tickled and patronizing.
“What?”
“Forget it,” she said soothingly.
Pages 84-87 (Practice text)
Question Exercise:
With close reading of the above text, show how the writer was able to use language effectively to convey one of the following ideas:
1. the father-daughter relationship
2. the character of Lee
3. the character of the father
Lee and her father are not very close considering that they have not seen each other for 8 years. From their speech, like Lee’s exclamations or comments that she makes to what her father says. The way they met at the airport also shows that the father is not used to being one either as he hugs Lee rather clumsily and she accepts it with nochalance. They also do not talk much during the car ride home and the father is actually relived.
Lee is very much influenced by the American culture and she talks and acts so. She also expects the way Singapore is to be like LA. For example,the temperature and climate. She also critisizes the number of radio channels and their limitations. She enjoys listening to music and that is most likely American hard rock and such like. She speaks with an American slang and sometimes, her father would not understand what she is talking about but she does not bother to explain it to him.
Lee’s father talksvery little and does not take the iniciative to build a good relationship with Lee. But he knows what Lee is thinking when she has certain expressions on her face. For example, when she fumbled with her jacket, she had a faraway look on her face and by looking at her, her father could tell she was thinking of LA. This shows that he is an understanding man. In the mean time,he is also very nervous about finding his daughter in the crowd at the airport and panicked. This shows that he is afraid that he would not be able to find her and that he is afraid of things that he is uncertain about.
The father and daughter relationship.
Lee and her father were separated for eight years after Lee’s parents divorced and Lee want California with her mother after winning the custody of Lee. Now Lee’s mother was died and after being ‘abandoned’ by her stepfather, Alan, Lee went back to her father side. Both of them didn’t seen, communicate, or even wrote to each other for the last eight years and they have to live under the same roof now without knowing each other lifestyle, characters and not even looks until they made in the airport. Lee’s father is trying very hard to fascinate her about her very own cultures and to let her accept her own country, religion and traditions.
Lee’s characters
She is a very straight-forward girl who have confident and believe in herself and do not care about other people criticism about herself as long as she feels happy with it. She always put up a brave front in order to hide her own feeling and she will try changing the subject in the conversation to prevent herself being notice that she herself was sad. As a Chinese who live in the West for eight years, she find following the Eastern cultures bothersome as there are lots and lots of things that she have to follow. Therefore she prefers following the Western cultures as they are more ‘open minded’.
Lee’s father characters
Lee’s father is a person who respects his own cultures and think highly of it. He tries very hard to let Lee accept her own culture and stop being sarcastic towards her own culture, country and traditions. He felt guilty about not even writing to ask about Lee for the last eight years even though she is his own daughter or shall I say that he nearly forgotten having a daughter as he was shocked himself after being told by Lee’s stepfather that Lee will return to him. Therefore he tries to clear his guiltiness by being lenient to Lee and try not to invade her privacy.
1.Lee stayed in America with her mother so she is westernised and also has an American accent when she speaks. Lee’s father had not seen her for a long time thus he could not recognise her when he went to fetch her at the airport. From “I can’t listen to this junk”, this means that Lee did not like the music played here but prefers what she listen in America. When her father says,”Do you have to listen to anything right now?”, Lee said intensely, “I need the music, man.” This shows Lee does not respect her father, she even uses words like “gross out” when talking to her father. From “He was about to say, No, annoyed, then relented” shows that Lee’s father did not answer her back because he knows that she is new to Singapore.
2.Lee is very westernised. She wants others to call her Lee instead of Li Wen as Lee is an English name while Li Wen is a Chinese name. This is probably doe to her long stay in America and influences from her mother. It also shows that she is influenced by the Western cultures. From “her clothes—a black man’s jacket and tight red jeans—had led him to suppose it was someone older” and “her step was jaunty, light-footed; it was almost like cat-walking”, we know that Lee is very trendy and fashionable.
3.Lee’s father is very understanding to Lee. From “he had had great difficulty persuading his mother to stay away that night”,this shows that he tries to give Lee some privacy and time to adapt to Singapore. This is because it is her first day in Singapore after so many years. Lee’s father tries to make her remember about her country by asking,“Don’t you remember anything about your country?” This shows that Lee’s father hope she can have some impression of Singapore even though she was in America for so long. From “he was about to say, No, annoyed, then relented’ shows that he does not scold Lee as he knows that her attitude is due to influences from the Western culture.
1. When Lee first saw her father after so many years, she treat her father just llike her friend. She has no respect for her father even though she is younger than him. The gap in the relationship between her and her father is very big as her father did not contact her after so many years. He did not understand his daughter’s way of doing the things that she liked. From”Hey—stop,” she commanded. Her tone was imperative.”shows that she has to have complete control of doing things that she wanted. I do not think that her attitude is completely her fault. Her mother has to take some responsibility for it too. She should teach her how to be more respectful to other people who are older than her as they have more experience and knowledge than Lee.
2. Lee’s character:
From the way that she walks , I can see that she is a confident, full of life teenager. The sentence,”Her step was jaunty, light-footed; it was almost like cat-walking” shows that she is very comfortable with the surroundings and is going to explore the unfamiliar country. She may seem to be too confident and looks like she is very arrogant but that may be the way that everyone shows that they are confident in her previous country. I admire the confidence that she shows in everything she does.
3.Father’s character:
He appears to understand Lee from the way that he gives in to her when they were at the aiport From,”He was about to say, No, annoyed, then relented” shows that he gives in to her because she is still not sensible enough for her age. For Lee, he pleads with his mother to stay away for a night just to have a talk that would bring he and Lee closer. He is a pretty reponsible father as he take cares of Lee when her stepfather did not want to have the burden of a teenager with him.
Good Job!
Great ideas and analysations but I don’t really agree that ,in Q1, its her mother’s fault.The word parents would have been more appropriate as (I think that) her father also should not have given in to Lee’s unappropriate behaviour. It might have given her confidence and the mindset that she could behave like that without being disciplined.
Just an idea though.
1. When
1. The father-daughter relationship between Lee and her father is very distant and not linked as Lee only comes back to Singapore after 8 years in America. The father cannot link teenagers’ things to her as they have different mindsets and culture. Lee does not accept Singapore’s music because she is not used to it. But the father gives in to her because Lee has just arrived in Singapore and will continue to stay in Singapore for the rest of her life as her mother had just died and her stepfather in America does not want to take care her. In other words, she was forced to come to Singapore and be taken care by her original father. So therefore, she has the attitude of not accepting nor adapting to Singapore and her father, so that’s the reason why she was very rude to her father.
hello ms stanley