Whiz[ard] of Waverly Place!

Woods' English 2A: "Rules of the Game"

3. I think that...

• When I first read the mini opening about "biting back your tongue", I realized, "Hey, that sounds like me!" Once a young Asian child, I have learned that if you follow your parents' orders, they get what they want and you get what you want. Yet, the bond between the two is somewhat distant.
• Why didn't she want to know what her soup was made of? 
• Oh dear, the exquisite descriptions of food smelled captured me as if the delicacies were in my room and I craved for dim sum real bad (which I eventually got ;) ).
• Why was the alley the best playground?
•  When I read about the Ping Yuen Fish Market, I thought about my friend telling me how she had always wanted to purchase a tortoise and saving it as a pet, instead of making it into food.
• Waverly's mom seems to threaten her in a caring way, just like my mom! "Don't do that and don't do this or else your fingers will get chopped off!" or something of that sort. I know parents mean well when they say that, but it's sort of creepy.
  
• I didn't understand why Amy Tan talked about Hong Sing's, the cafe. It was not relevant to the rest of the story, to me.
• Why did Waverly's mom tell her that Chinese people "do best torture"?
• When Vincent asked Waverly, "Why is the sky blue? Why must you always ask stupid questions?" I was reminded of the times when my cousins were young and used to annoy me with these "Why"s.
• I think it's typical that Waverly's mother would encourage her to enter into the chess tournament in such a cold and indirect manner. My parents often do that to me.
• Waverly's mother is proud, too proud, if you ask me. She shows off her daughter because she is proud of her, but she does so in a way that reflects the fact that she has nothing else to be proud of; therefore, she uses her daughter as a trophy to show off and brag to the world. However, Waverly isn't a trophy. She has feelings.
• The ending was very mysterious and it made me want to read more about what happened to their  relationship.

4. After her mom scolds her about "this American rules," Waverly decides to take matters into her own hands. She goes and borrows all sorts of books about chess, looks up words in the dictionary, and practically learns the game from every perspective that she could. That proves to me that she is a dedicated person, someone who might need that nudge/hint from her mother about "finding out by herself" and seeks out her own answers. Waverly is someone who would depend on nobody but herself, an independent individual.

5. I will admit that I didn't fully understand what the conflict was. I thought maybe it was Waverly vs. her mother because her mother was always pressuring Waverly and bragging about her as if she was an inanimate object and Waverly always kept her feelings inside until the very end where she yells at her mom. However, I realized the conflict was her heritage. It was man vs. man, an internal one, where Waverly's two cultures (Chinese and American) battle it out with each other. How do I know? Um, I don't, but this is what I think. Maybe it's because Amy Tan juxtaposes her two cultures throughout the whole story, comparing the contented mystery of her Chinese soup to the luring secrets of American chess and Chinese etiquette to American snottiness, (NO OFFENSE).

6. One of the themes stated would definitely have to be "Is shame you fall down nobody push you" (96). You should realize that trying and failing is better than not trying at all. Every time you try, it is counted as success. You should never give up  before starting. That's just ... bogus. This is definitely an important theme and a moral for life.