#748 Min- Rebecca Lee
Sarah and Min are students and best friends at college in Missoula. Min is from Hong Kong, a son to an influential family that deals with Vietnamese refugees back home. Min is marrying age and when he returns for the summer his family is to choose a bride. Because his mother, normally the person to recommend a bride, has passed, the father is left to the task. Min asks Sarah to come home with him this summer. She can work for his father and get to see Hong Kong. She agrees, but when she gets there the job the father wants her to do is screen the bride applicants.
It’s a confusing time in Hong Kong, and it’s a confusing situation for Sarah. Things get more difficult when she befriends a union leader and gets a whiff of the class politics she has fallen into. A large part of this story is about the political landscape of late 80’s Hong Kong, but it’s also about friendship, family and culture. Not least of which is the story about father and son:
“I wondered how that would be, to be a father and stare across a table, through the crackling candlelight, and see your own face, younger, broadened and transformed by both time and race. How interesting it would be to see the future that precisely.”
Notable Passage: “Only a man who hates his privilege can be trusted with it.”
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