"Rules of the Game"

“Rules of the Game” is about Chinese-American, Waverly Jong, explains how her mother taught her the art of invisible strength when she was six years old, constantly saying that it is a strategy for winning arguments, respect, and chess games, although she was unaware of the last one at the time she learned the art. Waverly Jong was narrates her own story. Who lived in San Francisco's Chinatown with her parents and two brothers, Vincent and Winston. The family lives on Waverly Place, Waverly Jong was named after this street. They are poor, the children do not think they were because they eat regularly and have plenty of fun playing in and out of the alleys and shops in the neighborhood. Through the years, Waverly's mother consistently gives her and her brothers nuggets of wisdom so that they can improve themselves and their situation, instead of allowing them to simply accept the poor confines of Chinatown. From my understanding, Chinese has high expectation in their children, they want them to get a nice, fancy job, or make money. Like for example, I’ve read a story about a girl who was living her mother's dream, it's called ''Two Kinds'' by Amy Tan, a battle of wills between the narrator, a young Chinese-American girl, and her mother, a Chinese immigrant. The narrator, Jing-mei, struggles to discover her own sense of identity in the face of her strong-willed mother's dream. ' her mother, believes in the American Dream. With hard work, she feels that Jing-Mei can be anything she wants to be in this great country. her does not want her daughter to ever suffer the kind of deprivation and tragedies that she had to endure in China. But the daughter has no passion to prove herself. She wants to take life as it comes. The mother believes that anything can be accomplished and she uses her daughter as her outlet to prove it. She continuously give her daughter numerous of tests and eventually forces her to take piano lessons, which becomes her mother's prime focus of her 'perfect daughter' determination. Related to this Chinese-American girl, her mother continue to tell wisdom statement to make them think what it means. The mother teaches her daughter the "secret of invisible strength" she compares the rules of a chess game to the rules that lead to success in life and she has a way where she stay calm, focus, and talked in her head “The wind leaves no trail” I saw a clear path, the traps to avoid. The wind blew stronger. “throw sand from the east to distract the knight came forward ready for the sacrifice. The wind hissed, louder and louder. “Blow, blow, blow. He cannot see. He is blind now. Make him lean away from the wind so he is easier to knock down.” this helped her win tournaments. As you noticed, they used “Wind” (in BOLD), it represented strength to win chess games. My opinion about this story is quite interesting how parent expect so much in such a young age children because of their culture and how much the tolerance they had in China. At the end of the story where it said “I closed my eyes and pondered my next move”, what will happen next? Will she continue to do the tournament or will she stop? Will she do it for fun and not for her mother?