The Jade Peony

It is 1939 and Sekky is 6. His whole family insists on calling him brainless. There are two chief reasons for this insistence: a persistent lung infection that has kept Sekky homebound, instead of at school, and his struggle to understand the intricacy and nuance of the Chinese language.

Throughout this chapter, Stepmother is preoccupied by thoughts of her old friend, Chen Suling, who has become a Christian missionary back in China. Suling is estranged from her father as a result of her conversion to Christianity; has been on the run from persecutors of her religion, who have threatened beheading; and has had to be wary of the advance of Japanese troops into China.

Stepmother shows Sekky a picture of herself and Suling as young girls. In it, they are stiff and unsmiling. Suling reminds Sekky of Miss MacKinney, his Grade One teacher at school. Miss MacKinney has a steel-edged wooden ruler which she uses to slap on the desks of inattentive students, and calls Sekky “Sekky” instead of  “Sek-Lung” “because […] it [is] more Canadian” (130). In the photograph, Suling wears a handsome jacket with a fearsome and powerful dragon embroidered onto its sleeve. 

Stepmother makes plans for Suling to come to China, and tells Sekky that Suling has won prizes for her English abilities, and also that she will teach him proper written and spoken Chinese, so that he will finally have a brain.