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B. Review on Cultural Backgrounds
It is important to review the cultural background s of The Kitchen God’s Wife
in order to comprehend the story and its cultural context better. This part review Chinese and American culture.
1. Review on Chinese Cultures
Chinese people are famous for their beliefs in superstitions. They believe that everything which happens in their life is affected by supernatural factors.
Meyer 1978: 42 says that the Chinese are considered as superstitious people, for supernatural things influence their daily lives. The Chinese has never made the
separation between myth and reality as the Westerners do. They believe that everything that happens is the result of their obedience to their ancestors or gods
in the past. Chinese people believe in astrology. It is the most well-known element in
Chinese traditional culture. According to the Chinese astrological system, a person’s character is determined by the year of his or her birth. Personality traits
are categorized according to the 12 year calendar cycle in accordance with the Chinese zodiacs. Each year of the cycle is associated with different animals, as a
story when Buddha invited all the animals in creation to come to him, but only twelve showed up: the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey,
cock, dog and pig. Buddha rewarded each animal with a year bearing its personality traits Giles, 2001: 10-19.
Fortune telling is also popular among the Chinese. They have developed many kinds of divinatio ns Bloomfield, 1989: 123. Hook 1991: 288 says that
the cosmological interpreter services fortune teller and geomancer are required PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
14 to any event or venture that may involve an element of risk – from selecting an
auspicious date for a wedding to sitting a new building. From the client’s point of view, the interpreters’ primary task is to guard against any disaster.
Hsu 1948: 30 writes that the life in Chinese community is full of rituals starting from their birth until their death. Chinese people have to obey the rituals
and traditions in their religion properly. According to Smith 1994: 112, birth for Chinese is important, especially when the baby is male. Sons are very important in
carrying on the family line and in maintaining the honors to ancestors. That is why it is considered sinful for a man not to have any son. Latourette 1956: 679 states
that girls have been generally considered much less valuable than boys and sayings in common circulation appraise sons as infinitely preferable to daughters.
Chinese man was viewed higher than Chinese woman in the past, yet the discrimination may still happen in today’s Chinese culture.
The most important element in the Chinese cosmological system is the yin- yang
dichotomy. Yin represents all forces in the universe that emanate from darkness, while yang is the representation of light. The yin-yang dichotomy is
derived from human’s experience, which often conceptualized as the following opposites; good-evil, life-death, and male- female. According to yin-yang
dichotomy, it is obvious that women inferior to men. Yin represents women, which are believed as dark, destructive and in characteristics believed as weak,
emotional untrustworthy being, whereas yang represents men, which in nature and characteristically believed as the opposite side of women. Loewe, 1990: 105
Marriage in China is carried out to produce sons or continue male line. Concubinage can be done if a man could not get any son from his first wife Smith
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