Reflection on "The Gold Mountain Coat"

When we first started reading The Gold Mountain Coat story in the class…. I thought the focus of the story would be in the narrator, the little girl. So as we read line after line I was anticipating that the course of events would shift any time to bring the little girl in.  Nevertheless, the little girl wasn’t the main character and the story was all about Sam Sing and his sons.  It is an interesting twist thought; perhaps the writer wanted it to be this way as a sort of a hook. And the story I think is the best description of the Chinese way of living at that particular era. So the story through its proceedings described the hard working, thrifts, and family unity in spite of the personal differences. In fact, it is an ideal reflection of the Chinese culture, which is unlike the Canadian. It is hardly to find grown men in Canadian culture who will be blindly obeying their parents never the less being so submissive and out of character. We can see this clearly when John went to visit the little girl’s mother and he was so upset and scared that his father might not allow him to buy a new coat.  Although he was aware of his rights and he mentioned in that visit “this isn’t China”, later on when he was actually in front of his father he could not get rid of his obedient nature. Therefore, the description of Chinese families was authentic and most probably this credited to the writer’s background.