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University Settlement's Writing Class of ESL Program at 175 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002  (212) 533-6306
     A Chinese Old Woman Who is Partial to Certain People
                                      
By Wah You Lee                                    Contents


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Yu Zhen Chan
David Chan
Ofelio Chen
Lisa Lee
Marisa Leung
Wen Fei Liang
Winnie Leung
Pak Ping Ng
Elena Tang
Gunsel Y. Faraguna
Sau Mei To
Man Ying Wong
Pauline Yau
Muhammed
Aunt Lee is a Chinese partial old woman. She lives in Chinatown with her husband.
Her two sons and one daughter have gotten married and moved out. The elder son lives in New Jersey with his wife and three sons. The younger son and his American wife and two daughters live on Long Island. Her daughter lives in the Chinatown of Queens with her husband and one son and one daughter.
Aunt Lee has different emotions and loves for every person in her big family. When she was young, her husband is important to her. But now her sons are more important than her husband, because she is a traditional Chinese woman. She believes that “young woman should depend on her husband and an old woman should follow her sons.” Besides her sons and husband, her loving sequence is her grandsons (her son’s sons), then her daughter, then her granddaughters, then her daughters-in-low. The Last is her son-in-law and his children. She thinks that because they have a different last name, they shouldn’t belong to the “Lee” family.
When she has dinner parties at home, besides preparing the food for dinner, she makes some extra dishes for hers, such as fat pork with salted vegetables for her elder son, sweet and sour pork for his sons, salted baked spice shrimp for her younger son. She cooks a lot and puts them in different boxes and let her sons take them away, because she thinks that it is not easy for her sons to taste their favorite foods in their location. As for her husband, she thinks he is too old to eat too much fat pork and shrimp. She never thinks about what her daughters-in-law like to eat, because they are women, so they can cook anything they like. She knows the favorite foods of her daughter’s family, but they are convenient to buy, so she does need to worry about it.
One day, when her sons and daughter got together, she said to her daughter, “Your cousin in our hometown is going to marry. You should send him some money as gift.”
The younger son asked, “Mom, how much should send?”
She said, “We are a whole family. You are under the last name of your father; you don’t need to send money by yourself.”
But sometimes when she need help, the first ones she considers are her daughter and son-in-law. It’s not only because they live near her, the major reason is that her sons make big money, so their time is more precious, and they are not used to do trifling jobs. So her daughter and son-in-law are more suitable for doing something for them.
She has some jade and gold ornaments, and she has thought about which ornament should go to which person after she passes away. She thinks that her elder son is the first boy in the “Lee” family, and he has three sons, so he should have more valuable ornaments. Although she loves her younger son very much, his children are daughters, so he should not have ornaments as valuable as his elder brother. She will give her husband or children. To her daughters-in-law, she will give a ring to each one.
Oh, how sensitive this old woman is!
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