Road to East Asia

It is often said that love is what makes the world go round. The narrator in Xi Xi's "A Girl Like Me" stakes her hope for happiness on an amorous relationship with Xia, but ironically she does not display any passion for the young man and blames fate for a life devoid of friendship and affection. Her view on predestined human conduct, however, is in contradiction to what she says about other characters in the story.

The narrator works as a make-up artist in a funeral home and seldom finds a friend who appreciates her profession. She blames whatever goes wrong on fate -- a mighty force solely responsible for all her misfortune. Yet she contradicts herself when she describes her brother's relationship with his lover and how they are separated for ignoble reasons. She censures them for failing to redirect the course of events when it takes a turn for the worse although they have acted just as she does herself, surrendering to random occurrences without a fight. She is being hypocritical, and wavers between two contradictory opinions of fate as a power beyond man's control.

The make-up artist repeatedly says that she doesn't deserve to be loved. "It really isn't right for a girl like me to have any love affairs" (p. 107), she reiterates several times throughout the story. While she seems to have given up any chances of having a lasting relationship with Xia despite her strong attachment to him, she denounces anyone who does not fight for love when she tells the tale of a young couple who committed suicide for love. "[A] man who lacked the courage to fight against Fate was not even worth a second glance" (p. 110), she says.

If she is honest with Xia, he may understand her situation and may even appreciate her artistic talents. Because of her passivity, she has banished herself to a funeral home, forever embellishing dead people. None of her friends accept her when they know about her job. She wants, as any young woman does, to have a man in her life, but having abandoned herself to fate, she will continue to live in Aunt Yifen's shadow and play a game of solitarie in total silence. She stagnates in a world without love.

Xi Xi. "A Girl Like Me." Trans.Rachel May and Zhu Zhiyu. Trees on the Mountain. Ed. Stephen


Soong and John Minford. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1986, pp. 58-65.

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Copyright © 1997 by the authors. References to this text should be attributed to the authors.

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Editors and Writers: Jessica Martin, Daniel Sun, Brenda Lo, Kevin Hodgson,
Julie Shim, Shelly-Ann Gunness, Candy Wong, Derrick Choy
Hilaneh Mahmoudi, Megan Donnelly, Benjamin Bacola, Neena Gill
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