Jade Snow Wong, in the excerpt from her Fifth Chinese Daughter in American Voices by Dolores laGuardia and Hans P. Guth, describes her upbringing as obedient daughter to a father who runs the family from a paternalistic and economic perspective. Wong is seen by her father (and her mother, who is little more than an extension of her father) as an asset, an investment. When Wong becomes influenced by Western ideas and values and decides to live as a young woman of independence economically and socially, her parents respond as if she were an indentured servant demanding her freedom without repaying the debt she had incurred.
Wong's story highlights the problem which young Chinese female immigrants face as they come to the cultural crossroads of the old and the new. There is something in Wong which leads her to choose an uncertain life as an independent young woman making her way through Western culture over a life of security in the patriarchal shadow of the traditional Chinese culture. We do not clearly see what that "something" is, aside from some work outside the home and attendance at a junior college. It may simply be that her choice for independence was an inevitable result of her exposure to Western culture, but certainly many other young Chinese daughters in the United States are similarly exposed but never make such a sudden and dramatic break from their parents.
Up to the time that she makes her decision to disobey her father and mother, she appears to have been an obedient daughter with little or no inclination for independence. It does not take much to persuade her that the life she has been living is thoroughly repressive, and that the life offered her by life outside of that culture is just as thoroughly desirable.
The problem is that there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue. The father---as extreme as his views and practices certainly are---nevertheless acts in a way which will preserve the Chine...