Ties That Bind Ties That Break Chapter Summary

  

Ties That Bind Ties That Break

  

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Chapter One:

            In chapter one readers are introduced to Tao Alin and her family. Alin talks about her sisters and Amah (domestic servant) who have bound feet She is five years old and she meets her fiancé Hanwei who was seven years old. They discussed his life in private school and Alin was so fascinated because the only school that she knew was at home. Her grandfather would hire teachers to teach at home. We see that Hanwei was educated because he learned about the classics, astronomy, and the English language. They became friends especially after he promised to teach her all of the things he learned at school. In this chapter readers learn that boys have more privileges than girls because they aren’t allowed to attend public schools.

Chapter Two:

            This chapter we hear the discussion between Alin’s mother and father about her feet being bound. According to her mother she was pass the age of when it should’ve been done. Mrs. Liu was shocked that her feet were unbound. It seems that having little girls feet bound was a tradition and they shouldn’t have the ability to run around freely like the boys. In this chapter readers wee introduced to Big Uncle. He was portrayed as a big stern man who didn’t like children, especially girls. Also we heard more from her father who seemed very educated, as he would talk about the history of China. Later on in the chapter Alin gets an opportunity to see what bound feet look like because she was very inquisitive about it. When she seen what they looked like she expressed how they made her feel which was nothing but pity and agony. She stated, “I’ll never let them do this to me, I vowed to myself. Never! Never” (Namioka, 28). 

Chapter 3:

 opens with the women of the family coming for Ailin to bind her feet. She is in school when they come for her so she hides in the bushes until they are finished looking for her. She is then sent to her grandmother who scolds her for not yet having her feet bound. It is clear the other characters have great concern for Ailin's future as a woman and as a wife. The grandmother convinces Ailin to have her feet bound and the others proceed in the necessary steps to have the work done. After her feet are wrapped someone says she will have to learn how to walk again. This upsets Ailin and she reacts in a frenzy, trying desperately to escape and get away. The adults contemplate tying her down but her father steps in and allows Ailin to not have her feet bound. This upsets the women in the family but the father silences all of them.

chapter 4 :

the chaos that had ended in chapter 3 has seemingly died down, however everyone's displeasure and concern for Ailin is still apparent. She speaks of the changes in government into a republic and the debates her father and uncle share over these changes. Her father decides to enroll Ailin into a public school which angers the elders in the family. Before she is accepted into the public school she must pass a few tests. Her first impressions of the people are very interesting and the first thing she looks at in the woman are their feet. She gets accepted into the school and excels in speech classes as she has a speciality in hearing and repeating sounds. The chapter does not end on an optimistic note, rather it points out that Ailin's grandmother is getting weaker and weaker.

Chapter five:

In this chapter, Grandmother has just passed away. At the funeral, Ailin runs into Mrs. Liu who tells her that she is truly sorry about her Grandmother’s death and for breaking off the engagement between her Hanwei. Since Grandmother has died, Ailin was concerned with who would be the one in charge of the household. Big Uncle continued to complain about the state of the government and the fact that Ailin goes to public school. He is concerned that public school is becoming too costly. Father disagrees with Big Uncle because he believes he is making enough money to afford the public school.However, father has been starting to get very sick and Ailin has become concerned with his constant coughing. At school, Ailin has been getting better with her English. She and Xeuyan were being taught that women were weak. They both disagreed with this. Ailin runs into Hanwei outside of school and Xeuyan believes he is interested in her. That is when Ailin starts to realize it was not his fault for the broken engagement.

Chapter six:

In this chapter, Father had grown increasingly sick and eventually died. Because of this, Big Uncle became in charge of Ailin’s future. He told Ailin that she would not be able to return to school. As news spread around school, Miss Gilbertson, Ailin’s English teacher, offered to tutor Ailin for free outside of school. As the term approached its end, Ailin was concerned with her future that Big Uncle was setting out for her. She was worried about the man he would make her marry and she was worried about not becoming an English teacher. When school ended, Ailin started going to Miss Gilbertson’s house for tutoring. Her mother knew, but she tried to hide it from Big Uncle. Ailin worked really hard with Miss Gilbertson and eventually started speaking entirely in English. It was at Miss Gilbertson’s house that she met Imogene Warner, who was a missionary that had been transferred to Nanjing.

Chapter 7:

 begins with a pleasant, happy scene of Ailin teaching her little brother an English song while her mother smiled. This moment of hope is destroyed when Ailin is summoned by Big Uncle who will tell her what he has decided for her future. Her mother is scared for her. Big Uncle reveals to her that he wishes for her to be a concubine for the second son of the Feng family. He believes it is the only future he can find for her. After attempting to reason with Big Uncle, he finally says that she has three choices: become a nun, become a farmer’s wife, or become a concubine. She realizes that she has no way out of Big Uncle’s decision because she has no money, her Father is dead, her sister’s are married and gone, Xueyan’s family cannot legally help her and may not be on her side, and she does not want to commit suicide. She was left with the idea of becoming an amah. Her mother shoots this down by telling her that no respectable family will hire her because her feet are not bound, she does not have the respect and manners that they want their children to learn, and she ran from her own amah as a child. She turns to her teacher, Miss. Gilbertson, who was shocked at what Ailin confessed to her about her Big Uncle’s decision for her future. She offers her to be an amah for the English missionaries that were her friends. Ailin agrees to go visit them. She meets the children, Grace and Billy. She then accepts the offer to be their amah and live in their home.

Chapter 8:

begins with Ailin going to tell Big Uncle of her decision to become an amah. He is beyond furious and lets her leave alive because he loved her father. She moves in with the Warner family and is immediately stunned by several aspects of her new life. The first in that she is responsible to care for herself entirely and run her own errands. Second, she finds that she must care for the children as well as teach them lessons in reading and writing. She has trouble adjusting to the food, her clothes no longer fitting, and the strange customs of the Warners. She is able to care for the children though and their behavior improves when she bribes them with learning to brush Chinese characters when they are good. She tells them Chinese folktales that they love. Ailin is disturbed when she overhears the Chinese house help talking about her and placing her on their level. She is also disturbed when she hears the Warners talking about her teaching the children a “heathen” language. She finally understands the price she I paying for her rebellion when Mr. Warner pulls her aside and is upset with her for talking about Confucianism in front of their children. He reminds her of Big Uncle during this conversation. She realizes that her is now in a culture where they hate what she was taught to value.

Chapter 10:

 starts out with Ailin boarding the boat with the Warners. The Warners are put in the second class class, but Ailin is put in third class section because the Warners could not afford to have her up with them.  Although Ailin was in the third class, she could still visit with the Warners and care for the children. Xueyan came to see her off, and the two were very sad when they parted. She brought with her the sack of money that Ailin had given to Big Uncle. Big Uncle had given it back to her so that she could give to Ailin. Ailin stayed in a cabin with four sets of bunks and many people got sea sick throughout the journey. One day, Ailin went to get Billy a snack from the bar when the bartender refused to give her the cookies because she was a third class passenger. However, Ailin defended herself and explained that Billy was a second class passenger, and the bartender gave her the snack for the boy. A Chinese man that spoke Cantonese laughed, but Ailin only knew Mandarin so they had to speak in English. This man was James Chew and was born in America where his family owned a restaurant. Ailin and James became friends for the next few weeks. When Ailin would take Billy and Grace to the children’s activity room every afternoon, her and James would talk. She told him her entire story. He said she was the bravest person he had known and she was a revolutionary who was fighting a war against tradition. He told Ailin his story, and she was pleased to find out that he wanted a companion, not a status symbol so unbound feet did not bother him. When they reached America, James told Ailin to look for his father’s restaurant if she ever went to Chinatown.

The Warners were much better off in China than in the United States. In China, they had servants and cooks, but in California, they had to do everything themselves. Mrs. Warner had to start cooking for the family, but it was not always the best. One night, Ailin suggested that she cook some Chinese food.  The family was very pleased with her offer. After a while, Ailin wanted to get some actual Chinese spices. Mr. Warner suggested that she go to Chinatown. Mrs. Warner took her down there one afternoon and Ailin instantly felt at home. She continued to go back to Chinatown each week to buy the ingredients she needed to cook. Ailin started to pick up Cantonese phrases in Chinatown that helped her communicate with others. One day, James Chew saw her and invited her to have a meal in her father’s restaurant. He told Ailin that meeting her had helped him make up his mind that he was no longer going to work under his brother, and he was going to open his own restaurant. They continued to meet on her weekly visits. Ailin finally decided that she did not want to return to China with the Warners. She decided to marry James and help him open his restaurant.

At the end of the book, Ailin is in the restaurant with Hanwei. He told Ailin that the times were changing in China. If she would have waited, they could have been married, and she would have led a much easier life. However, Ailin enjoyed the life she had chosen. She decided that she wanted to Hanwei to send a message to her family and tell them all about the restaurant. She was proud that she had helped make the restaurant successful and was able to stand on her own two feet.

Character description

character	What the character wants	What this shows about character
Tao Ailin	to run and play	doesn’t want bound feet
Second sister	to play flute and embroider	believes in bound feet and tradition
Grandmother	to stick to tradition	believes in bound feet and tradition
Mrs.liu	Hanwei marriage with Ailin	Hanwei and Ailin was engaged
Hanwei	To marriage with Ailin	He look for Ailin
Father	Ailin to be happy	believes Ailin can have unbound feet
Mrs.Gilbertson	Ailin to be a teacher	Teach Ailin in MacIntosh school
Zang xueyan	to study medicine and become a doctor.
Mrs.warners
Mother	to bind Ailin’s feet, so she can marry	believes there is no future for Ailin with unbound feet

The conflict of the story

The story take place in China, around 1911, when girls are forced to bind their feet, because people think girls with smaller feet are of higher social status, wealthy and well bred. It was a mistake not to bound a female feet, and no man will want to marry a female without bound feet. In the story, Ailin is a girl born in a Tao family.  A headstrong, determined child, Ailin rebels against the horrifying ancient tradition of having her feet bound. As a result the family of her husband immediately breaks off the engagement. Ailin grows up realizing just how powerless a girl is in Chinese society, but then she was offered a great opportunity to work in a family of westerns, she need to make a difficult, life-changing decision.

 Settings

  China is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third  or fourth largest in total area. The practice of foot binding in china began around the end of tang dynasty in the years 618 and Chinese tradition of foot binding was an attempt to stop the growth of the feet and has been traced back to 700 AD and it was not banned until 1911.The binding of feet was said to be an indicator of Chinese class and a symbol of beauty, but through time, ended up becoming a tradition.

Ailin live in shanghai. After her grow up, her father send Ailin to Macintosh school. Ailin’s father death and she have to break her school, after that she become a Warner in Ailin finds work as a governess for the Warner’s, an American family. After some years, she go to California and marry with James chew.

 resource:

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