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      The two stories of love and marriage are the means by which Sui Sin Far reveals the Chinese Americans’ bicultural life and interactions with European Americans, particularly those of Mrs. Spring Fragrance, which facilitate the becomings of both herself and her Chinese and European American neighbors. Sui Sin Far’s descriptions of the Chin Yuens and Laura’s sweetheart in the first story show that unlike their parents, second-generation Chinese Americans are bicultural in their appearances and attitudes. Laura’s Chinese name is “Mai Gwi Far (a rose),” but nearly “everybody called her Laura, even her parents and Chinese friends.” Laura’s sweetheart, Kai Tzu, is American-born, and despite his Chinese name and its implied insistence on his Chinese identity, he is “as ruddy and stalwart as any young Westerner,” is “noted amongst baseball players as one of the finest pitchers on the Coast,” and can “also sing, ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’ to Laura’s piano accompaniment” (“Mrs. Spring Fragrance” 17). Only Mrs. Spring Fragrance knows of their love for each other, because Laura’s apparently Americanized parents, in following an old Chinese tradition, betrothed their daughter “at age fifteen, to the eldest son of the Chinese Government school-teacher in San Francisco” (17–18). As it turns out, the schoolteacher’s son, Man You, is in love with Ah Oi, who has “the reputation of being the prettiest Chinese girl in San Francisco and the naughtiest” (20). However, as a result of Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s mediation during her long, multipurposed visit to San Francisco, Man You and Ah Oi are married by an American priest in San Jose, hence enabling Laura to marry Kai Tzu. The situation forces Laura’s traditional Chinese parents to change their belief in the ideals of their Chinese ancestors.

      Sui Sin Far also challenges spatially maintained boundaries

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