I think many of us, as I, believe certain traditional Chinese practices a bit bizarre. Denise Chong demonstrates this in The Concubine's Children, where Hing grows up in a highly traditional Chinese household and later rebels against her upbringing, abandoning her mother's ideals. She later goes by the name Winnie after assimilating into the western culture, and pushes her "Canadian" side in her own family life. Chong distances her mother and herself from the traditionalist model by binary comparison of food, mothering techniques, and beliefs.

Many critics blast Chong for reinforcing notions about China being backwards. I don't personally feel Chong is out of place because I don't see her portraying China as unprogressive. She reports the conditions of China through her own interpretation, one that is influenced by western ways. To encounter unfamiliar grounds is to judge aspects of this different world from your own national background. It this so wrong?

The Chinese remedy May-ying spreads on Hing's eczema-laden legs seems peculiar to us. Have you ever heard of rat wine? It's supposedly a cure-all like aspirin. Parenting by the feather duster, still prevalent in many areas of the world, is considered child abuse nowadays. We can accuse other countries as being inhuman ("you eat cats and dogs?"), but they could criticize you just the same ("look at your country's crime rate"). The fact is, different cultures have different discourses that pertain to different areas of knowledge. We just all seem to hold an ethnocentric view.