Sunday 2 May 2010

Sons and Daughters

The story is about a man, Merchant Moy, who wanted to have sons boys to carry on his family name. He was about forty years old and he had spent all his life building his business.
He was in Chinatown waiting for his wife, Madame Moy, who was in China, to cross the ocean to be with him. Once she arrived to Chinatown, she gave birth to two twin girls. But Merchant was not so happy because he wanted son boys, otherwise his family name would disappear. So, he decided to bribe the midwife and told her to register the birth of twin sons. After that, he told a servant to tell Chinatown that would be a great party in order to celebrate the birth. Then, he went to China with his two girls.
When he got there, he told his servant to look for two boys and he would pay anything to have them. Finally, he got the two boys. His wife realised what he had done and she felt very sad but she brought them up as if they were her real sons.
The years went by and when the boys were eighteen, Madame Moy sent them to China to look for wives. This is where they met a pair of two twin sisters and finally the boys married them.
Two years passed, and they had no children. Merchant took the girls to the doctor because he thought they could not have babies but the doctor said that they were in perfect health. Then, he decided to go to a temple to pray for them. In the temple, he met a temple-keeper who knew that Merchant had done something wrong with his children. So, he left the temple and he knew that he alone had placed a curse on his children.
A few years later, Merchant Moy died. When he was dead, there was a will that had to be read. In the will he had instructed that all his fortune had to be divided between his sons but they must change their family name. The boys obeyed the instructions.
Soon the daughters gave birth to a boy and to a girl. The name was lost, but the family would live on.
I think this story shows how ambitious people are in order to get everything in life no matters the consequences it would take. I realised that you do not have to be such a terrible person to have what you want to have because people would feel that you have no feelings doing the things you do. So, we need to be very careful when we try to get more and more money and everything and have to take into account not to harm nobody.

Poly

4 comments:

  1. Remember to mention the writer and, if possible, the book where the story appears.

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  2. I agree with you. The story is about ambition, cruelty and insensibility. The main character did whatever he wanted in order to make his dream come true. He didn't care about his wife's feelings or his daughters happiness. In fact he didn't care about anyone except himself and what he desired, which was to preserve the family name at all costs.

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  3. Interesting story...when i first read it i came to know in which way our childhood can mark the after-times in our lives, since the main character used to be very poor and became wealthy, so he didnt want his descendant to have the same destiny.

    Slavonic

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  4. It's interesting to see how strong the values of a culture are. You can see Moy's family name was considered as the main issue in his life.
    Evan

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