We do have a new format here since Meg has been here (WELCOME BACK MEG!) and it IS different.

Similarly, I believe Ruth is also feeling resentment but doesn't know it yet! She is confused about what she owes to others, what they owe to her. She has not examined her own feelings or talked about them and doesn't seem to realize she has a right to do so. It has to do with the way she has been raised, everything is kept inside.

The front of the sarcophagus shows a battle scene between Roman soldiers and Germans. The Germans have distinctive clothing, beards, and hairstyles that distinguishes them from the cleanshaven Romans. This work has been dated to ca. 250 A.D. The Roman on horseback in the center-top has been identified with Hostilian, son of the emperor Decius, who died in 252 A.D.

The word comes to us from Latin and Greek, having been derived in Greek from sarx, "flesh," and phagein, "to eat." The Greek word sarkophagos meant "eating flesh," and in the phrase lithos ("stone") sarkophagos it denoted a limestone that was thought to decompose the flesh of corpses placed in it. Used by itself as a noun the Greek term came to mean "coffin." This Latin word was borrowed into English, first being recorded in 1601 with reference to the flesh-consuming stone and then in 1705 with reference to a stone coffin.

The claw-footed iron tub was as soothing as a sarcophagus and the pedestal sink with its separate spigots dispensed water that was either scalding hot or icy cold.

And had GaoLing known all along that the necklace was fake, that Ruth, the good daughter, was also a fake?

I believe that Ruth's silences or loss of voice could be psycho-somatic. I know that when I would work with a very traumatic case, I would lost my voice - laryngitis - . This was so obvious that one of the doctors I was working with would constantly tell me that this was a symptom of throat cancer. I haven't lost my voice since I stopped doing clinical work.

Yet, didn't the pearls symbolize the cross cultural gap between Ruth and Luling?

Ruth didn't start out planning to gift her mother with a junky trinket. She was caught up in the flush of her new romance with Art and the two of them were on a romantic Hawaiian vacation. Self absorbed, she simply forgot her mother's birthday and then hastily gave Luling her own new vacation souvenir necklace to compensate.

In Luling's cultural background, only the most precious and valuable things are modestly presented as being a small gift of little value, so Ruth's honest disclaimers about the value of the necklace..."it's nothing much, mom"... only convinced her mother what a great treasure the pearls really were. Ruth was caught between her mother's Chinese culture and her own American straight-talk. I guess Ruth originally just couldn't cope with putting down Luling's joy and let the misunderstanding ride

Sometimes when we truly love someone, a parent or a child, a spouse or a sibling, trying to understand the loved one can be similar to winding our way through a foggy maze filled with confusion

She noted with dismay that he hasd asked what she would do, had not said "we."

Why did she feel she didn't belong to anyone? Did she unconsciously choose to love people who kept their distance?

The fact is that we can't get rid of each other no matter how much we try. We're stuck through the ages, with the bonds cemented by sticky rice and tapioca pudding.

And I did not know who she really was until I read what she wrote.

"I am your mother," the words said.

I read that only after she died.

Chinese characters are made up of as many as 26 different strokes which would be written in the correct order. This character called Yong, which means "eternal," is the model character for practicing the five basic strokes. A famous calligrapher called Wang Xizhi is said to have spent 15 years perfecting his Yong.

When Luling read the word "Doggie" that Ruth wrote to try to get her mother to give her a dog, Luling was convinced that Precious Auntie was trying to reach her since "Doggie" was what she called her ..."

So she relates the invasion to the important experiences in the life of her character, Lu Ling - the death of her husband, the imprisonment of Ruth........, the exodus to Peking of the children and teachers at the orphanage and the continuing impact it had of the lives of Lu Ling and Gao Ling.