Chinese society doesn't even want to talk about breaking the rules
Two Kinds of Nature, Two Kinds of Heroes
The phrase that most stuck out to me throughout this entire book was "the first thing you have to learn…is how to be quiet" (23). The idea of 'being quiet' is emphasized over and over again, but in two very different ways. The author's mother, and indeed the entire Chinese culture, constantly tells Kingston that she should not ask questions or speak out. The 'quiet' is a tense one, masking fear, anger, and rejection. This life philosophy very much reminds me of Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest, through the safety of community, and the heroes of this society are the ones who survive and excel. The other type of 'being quiet' has more to do with peacefulness and Dass' idea of opening your mind and becoming aware of your surroundings so that you can act with compassion towards others. The old man and woman of the Fa Mu Lan talk-story emphasize this kind of 'quiet,' and the heroes of this philosophy seem to be more of the virtuous, helping-other-people kind.
Even though I personally saw Kingston's mother as rather an antagonistic character, within the Chinese culture she could be seen as a hero. During a time when those "who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home," the community was everything, and frivolity was the greatest sin (Kingston 5). The fear Kingston's mother instilled in her children, and the harshness of her feelings and actions towards people like the No-Name-Woman who disturbed the sphere of tradition and protocol would actually be heroic in the eyes of the villagers and other Chinese. It's a matter of values, and Kingston's mother definitely exemplified the values the Chinese held in highest regard. There is no nobility associated with compassion, forgiveness, or even love, for the "work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not be turned into action" (Kingston 8). In the harsh jungle of life, where every day is a struggle to survive, there is no mercy for those who break the rules of the pack, and through the community's silence towards them we know they are shunned as anti-heroes, while the true heroes are remembered for ages to come through the worship of ancestors for their obedience to society which helped to preserve the species.
The kind of hero I most identify with is one who has moved beyond the basic struggle to survive to the struggle for excellence or justice, one who "return[s]…to us, transfigured, and teach[es] the lesson he has learned of life renewed" (Cambell, in Bump 6). Kingston echoes this sentiment in the story of Fa Mu Lan when she says "we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves" (Kingston 19). The idea of becoming something more through hard work and perseverance, of overcoming great obstacles and being remembered in legends, is a different kind of hero than Kingston's mother, whose ultimate goal in life was to do "nothing unless powered by Necessity" (Kingston 6). To obtain this type of hero-status, as Fa Mu Lan did, it is necessary to quiet yourself in order to be at peace within and from their find new strength and abilities to hone. Fa Mu Lan must go out into Nature to do this, but it seems less like a struggle to survive rather than a struggle to become one with Nature, to learn from it, and to use it to one's advantage. A 'hero' in this sense is someone who sticks out as special because of their knowledge or abilities, rather than someone who fits in perfectly with the community and never strays from the observed rules and protocols.
It seems to me that being a hero can depend greatly on outside circumstances. If you are constantly struggling just to get the basic necessities of life like food and water, philosophizing over the inequalities of the class system or other typically heroic deeds could be detrimental to the preservation of yourself and/or your community. In this case, the community's hero may be the person who always does just exactly what needs to be done, without the 'frivolities' of this excess thinking. On the other hand, when times are good, the hero may be the one who breaks away from complacency to inspire change in the society in new and unprecedented ways. Either way, the hero is one who acts for the ultimate 'greater good' of the community, whether it is by helping to preserve the species or ennoble it.
