Word: ling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Idiom. From her tenth year through her 19th, the most formative time of her life, Mei-ling Soong lived in the U.S. While one of her older sisters went to Wesleyan College (Macon, Ga.), she stayed with friends in nearby Piedmont, learning the idiom and the point of view. She bought gumdrops at Hunt's general store with the other girls, and went hazel-nutting with them. She was always the one who was teased, but through the teasing she learned American gags. Later the girls went north to a summer school. A history teacher asked Mei-ling...
...length the rulers of the city fled, and the foreigners, as rats leave a ship; and the city fell. Ling's village endured the plunder of their own retreating army, and prepared to meet the enemy. They decided to make ready tea and small cakes and fruits, and courteously to welcome the invaders outside their village, "and thus in decency and honor the conquest would take place...
They learned, also, to ally themselves with the free fighting men of the hills, to "harry the enemy like fleas in a dog's tail so that the beast can make no headway for stopping to gnaw his rear." Ling Tan's sons wandered, but always secretly to return, sophisticated in the ways of killing. The eldest son set deep traps and coolly killed his victims with his knife. The second smuggled in firearms from the hill-men, and killed only when he had to. The youngest killed for pure joy and found joy in nothing else. Ling...
...This secret anger and this constant search for ways to kill could not but change men's hearts"; and the change-which calls forth some of the most just and serious writing in the book-deeply worried Ling Tan. In his sleepless nights he thought: "Is this not the end of our people when we become like other warlike people in the world?" And he answered himself, admitting the necessity of killing: "And yet in these days we must remember that peace is good. The young cannot remember, and it is we who must remember and teach them again...
...later pages of the novel rather sadly peter out. There is a not quite convincing effort, through radio, to give Ling Tan (and the U.S. reader) a realization that his people suffer not alone but as companions among the peoples of a planet. The last 50 pages are would-be-legendary romancing about the fierce third son and the goddess-like young woman who is found fit to be his wife and to pair off with him, presumably, as a symbol of China's Future...