Comprehension questions
Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah
Answer the questions below in full sentences:
1. What stage is Yen Mah at in her school career?
2. Explain how the writer uses pathetic fallacy in
paragraph two.
3. What does the simile at the end of paragraph two tell
us about how Yen Mah feels about leaving school?
4. What is a chauffeur?
5. Read lines 15 and 16 - how often does the writer go home from boarding school?
6. Explain how Yen Mah feels about going home, using evidence from the text.
7. How does the chauffeur treat Yen Mah?
8. How does the writer describe her father’s room on line 33? What does this description tell
us about how she feels about the room?
9. How does Yen Mah feel as she approaches her father’s room? Use a quotation to support
your answer.
10. What has Yen Mah done that her father is so proud of?
11. What language feature does the writer use on line 51 to express her astonishment?
12. What do you think the expression, ‘I had given him face’ means?
13. Is the writer pleased about winning? How do we know?
14. What do you think of the father’s question, ‘How come you won?’?
15. How does Yen Mah feel about the possibility of going to England to study? Use a quotation
in your answer.
16. What does her father think of Yen Mah’s idea to become a writer? Use a quotation in your
answer.
17. Look at the way the father speaks to his daughter towards the end of the extract. The
father uses an imperious tone when he speaks to his daughter. What does ‘imperious’
means?
18. Describe Yen Mah’s relationship with her father.
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Comprehension questions
Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah
Suggested answers:
1. Yen Mah is at the end of her school career.
2. The writer uses pathetic fallacy, ‘there was a warm wind blowing’, to suggest a change is
coming for Yen Mah. The typhoon hints at a stormy time ahead, emotionally or
psychologically, for Yen Mah and builds tension.
3. The simile, ‘the thought of leaving school throbbed at the back of my mind like a persistent
toothache’, suggests that leaving school bothers her and she cannot stop thinking about it.
4. A chauffeur is someone who is employed to drive a private car around.
5. Lines 15 and 16 show that she usually only goes home when something significant has
happened.
6. Usually students are keen to return home from school, but Yen Mah is consumed by fear by
her summons home. ‘… my heart was full of dread’ makes the reader pity Yen Mah.
7. The chauffeur is unfriendly towards Yen Mah. He answers her ‘rudely’ and ‘defensively’, he is
disrespectful towards her.
8. She describes his room as ‘the Holy of Holies’. This metaphor suggests that Yen Mah sees her
father’s study as a sacred, separate place, into which she would not normally be allowed.
9. Yen Mah feels afraid as she approaches her father’s room. She approaches ‘timidly’ and is
‘overwhelmed’.
10. Yen Mah has won first prize in an international play-writing competition.
11. The language feature used on line 51, ‘Is it possible? Am I dreaming? Me, the winner?’ is
rhetorical question to show her amazement and a triple to emphasise her shock.
12. The expression, ‘I had given him face’ means her act of winning the prize had given him
something people would respect him for.
13. She is delighted about winning. We know this because she uses the metaphor, ‘My whole
being reverberated with all the joy in the world’. The use of exaggeration here expresses how
happy she is.
14. The father’s question seems rude and insulting because it implies he wouldn’t have expected
her to be good enough to win.
15. Yen Mah feels that going to England ‘is like entering heaven’, this simile conveys how ideal
this would be for her and how it is something she would never have seen herself doing, it is
out of reach for her.
16. Her father thinks that becoming a writer would be fruitless and she would end up penniless
and starving. He ‘scoffs’ at her idea, showing that he thinks she is silly to think of it.
17. ‘Imperious’ means commanding and controlling.
18. Yen Mah has a difficult relationship with her father. She is not close to him. He dominates her
and she is fearful of him.
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