Characters
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San Francisco – current day
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Changmian - 1864
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Changmian – current day
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Olivia – narrator
Parents – Jack Yee and Louise Kenfield
Brothers – Kevin and Tommy
Kwan – half-sister
George – Kwan’s husband
Virgie – George’s cousin from Canada living with them
Simon Bishop – Olivia’s husband
Elza – Simon’s deceased girlfriend
Samantha – Olivia and Simon’s daughter
Bob Laguini – Louise’s 2nd husband
Yin people
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Miss Banner
Nunumu
Yiban Johnson
General Cape
Lao Lu
Zeng
Missionaries
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Big Ma – died in
accident day Kwan arrived
Du Yun/Du Lili
Buncake – Du Lili’s deceased daughter
Kwan (Pancake)
Andy – Boston grad student
SPOILER ALERT!
Chart at end with reincarnations
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1. Miss Banner learned to sense the world like a Chinese person
(sight, touch, hear, smell, taste) but was never able to eliminate “her
American sense of importance.” (Chapter
3, page 49) How did this affect Miss
Banner and Nunumu?
2. A visitor found Changmian populated and vibrant one month
after the Manchu soldiers set fires at the cave entrances. Were the people real or ghosts? If real, how did they survive? (Chapter 22, page 339)
3. Do you think Kwan is really Olivia’s half sister or was she
switched with Buncake? (End of Chapter
17)
4. What did you think about Simon’s sterility and Elza’s
pregnancy? At the end of the book he was
not sterile and the doctor’s thought the diagnosis had been a mistake. Did you think Elza was lying or that she was
pregnant by someone else?
5. What is the difference between tradition and
superstition? (Chinese tying rooster to
lid of coffin to help ghost body fly away and American tales about Easter
Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy)
6. The Chinese and Americans had different reactions after witnessing the accident on the way to Changmian. Kwan says that in China, the driver is always at fault, but Olivia says that “A dead pedestrian is a dead pedestrian, no matter whose fault.” Kwan told Olivia and Simon that, “In China you always responsible for someone else, no matter what. You get run over, this my fault…” (Chapter 14, page 199) Can you understand this difference in view? What is your opinion?
7. Would you be willing to go to Changmian and live and explore
like Olivia and Simon? Would Olivia have
gone if she had known the actual conditions?
8. Did Kwan and Olivia really see ghosts? At one point Kwan pretended to see Elza but
Olivia really saw her and heard her say, “Simon, wait for me.” What alternative explanations are there? (Pages 105, 107)
9. Do you think Kwan has been reincarnated in Samantha?
Reincarnations:
Olivia was Miss Banner Olivia; Elza was Olivia’s mother
two lifetimes ago
Simon was Yiban Johnson
Kwan was Nunumu
George was Zeng
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