Chapter 5 - by Intikhab Amir

Immigrants remain immigrants

Cultural and social differences play a central role in igniting ‘otherness.’ These differences cause segregation by excluding some under the strange notion of ‘outsiders’ or ‘foreigners.’ Language plays an integral part in promoting such feelings. Choy conveys the same in a nice manner in the fifth chapter. Jung-Sum encounters somewhat the same feelings, when he hears something pronounced in an odd way, “a tone of dialect different from the way,” he had always heard it before. He feels excluded, not part of the same community. But, his strange feelings are subdued by the love and affection he gets from the family that embraces him as its adopted son.

Immigrants can be helped avoid segregation and seclusion in the same manner. If their host society accept the immigrants with all sincerity, their integration into the adopted country becomes easy.

The power of love is so strong that it helps to bridge the gap between rivals, brings people close to each other, cultivate cohesion, weed out hate, and make possible 'the impossible.' Jung-Sum’s story tells us the same. His integration into his new family comes smoothly because of the love and affection he gets. The cultural and social background also plays an important part in his case. His integration into the new family seems easy, because he is not an ‘outsider.’ He comes from a Chinese family, speaks Chinese, but in a different dialect.

The concept of ‘otherness’ appears to be so deep in Choy’s thoughts that it overwhelms him throughout this chapter of his novel ‘The Jade Peony.’ It is dominant at many places. “Families went to cemeteries to see graves dug up after seven years, to see bones gently washed and prepared, and wrapped by Bone Men who hummed blessings as they worked. These bones were to be returned to China, as promised.” He is referring to those Chinese rail workers who died and buried in Canada. Does not it sound strange? They could not become Canadia even after their burial. After seven years of their death the bones would be shifted to China. But, it is not unusual. These are the strange ways in which the immigrants act. We red earlier, ‘bones must come to rest where they most belong.’ Immigrants remain immigrants.