Transcript for:
Lecture on Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah

hello everybody it's mrs ware extreme english here and today we are talking about chinese cinderella now i'll admit this is one of the easiest of the edxl igcse texts but in some ways for those of us going for the highest grades that can make it a bit harder so i'm going to be making sure that you understand not just what this text is about and the key ideas but all of the very best things that you can analyze so let's do this so the first thing we need to understand is who adeline yenmar is and for that i basically want to turn to the information that edexcel provide at the very start of chinese cinderella growing up in a wealthy family in 1950s hong kong ma should have had an enviable childhood but she was rejected by a dominating stepmother and despised by her brothers and sisters she was sent to a boarding school and left there in this extract from her autobiography she relates one of the few occasions when she went home so we get from that some important background information of you know she's talking about her life she is from hong kong she's growing up in the 1950s we also get from this the text type of autobiography which means we can think about the purpose of the text and who our potential audience is now the audience is less helpful here because essentially it's anybody who is interested in reading about this person's life so the audience can't really be narrowed down but the purpose can be autobiographies are primarily about entertaining yes there is an informing aspect in the she's looking to inform us about her life the entertainment aspect is far bigger because you read autobiographies for the purpose of enjoying the act of reading about somebody's life so she's looking to describe i guess you could say that's more of her purpose she's looking to describe rather than inform about her life and entertain us in the process considering adeline yemar's background it's really important that we also understand hong kong chinese culture because of how it affects the key ideas in the text now obviously i am not an expert in hong kong chinese culture you can tell from my accent i am very english but there are three key things i want us to understand the first is that they have a strong social hierarchy within the family the second is the importance of education and the third is the concept of face in hong kong chinese culture education the concept of faith are quite closely tied together but the general gist is you need education in order to succeed and success is particularly defined with you know wealth but also particular careers so becoming a doctor or a lawyer an engineer for example so in this case education it's not just about the importance of education because it broadens your mind or increases your critical thinking or makes you a more well-rounded person it's all about how it is a stepping stone to later success and that also links to the concept of face now the concept of face is a difficult one to really get a western audience to understand the nuance of the closest concept is like you know your reputation but that isn't an exact parallel but it's basically the idea that your family's reputation shall we say is incredibly important and there are certain acts that somebody can commit that will affect your entire family's reputation so when you have positive things happen to you personally it affects how your entire family is viewed in society and that is called giving face when you positively affect the way your family is viewed on the other hand you can lose space engaging in behaviors that will be perceived negatively in society and thereby harming your entire family's reputation so these three aspects of hong kong chinese culture we see directly in chinese cinderella now of course we have absolutely no idea what questions we can be asked about chinese cinderella but there's a fairly limited scope here and so i've raised the question of what does she think and feel because i think that essentially captures all the different things you could potentially talk about so in terms of the first thing that she thinks and feels it's that there is a shift from consternation to confidence and hope consternation is a feeling of anxiety dismay dread or confusion so the reason i'm using that word is because i think what we see adeline going through across this text is a kind of mix of all four of those so it's not just confusion it's not just dread it's not just anxiety it's like a mix of them all we see that shift from consternation to confidence and hope once she realizes you know she's not in trouble and it's a good thing that her father has asked to speak to her so that's one of the big ideas that we've got in this text and then the second is all about her father essentially the fear and deference that she has for her father deference is when you have a polite and respectful attitude towards someone particularly because you think they hold an important position so in this case it's that he is you know that social hierarchy family social hierarchy her father is at the top of that and so she's showing him the deference that he is due it's possible you could get a question that was like how is the father presented in this extract in which case the ideas that i'm going to be talking about link to fear and deference will still give you an answer to that as well we're going to get stuck into the actual analysis of the text now and i want to start off with the title of the novel as a whole of chinese cinderella so having that allusion to cinderella connotes neglect and hardship because of course that was the life of cinderella she was sort of didn't fit in with the family and she was treated poorly by them as well which basically is what adeline jenmar is trying to say about her life so that's some very obvious foregrounding straight away from the title there is however also a potential foreshadowing of a fairy tale ending you know cinderella gets a happy ending and so if we think about the extract we're dealing with here by the end of this extract she is potentially going to get to study in england and get to live her dream so there is perhaps a hint at the ending that's coming the happier ending that's coming at the end of this extract too i'm not going to read through the entire text i'm going to talk assuming you've already read it through so as i go through this chunk make sure if you haven't yet read it you do so now but i want to start by talking about the fact that it opens with her at school so she's not yet at home she is at school and she's thinking about the process of leaving school and this whole section really foregrounds the important things we need to understand about hong kong chinese culture so first of all the act of playing the ball game is a great metaphor for the importance of success in life if we think about the game they're playing monopoly a game all about sort of trying to achieve economic success and then you've got that mary protests when um adeline tries to leave because she's winning and that's sort of the big celebration there but also the adeline isn't really that interested in it she's quite you know distracted from it and isn't really focused on it you've also got the respect the deference that they show to mamian valentino as well so the fact that they stood up and they greet her the fact that the mode of a dress used for her is mother valentino so we see that there now structurally that's important for when father arrives later because if we're going to say that her audience a decent chunk of them are going to be a western audience who are not familiar with asian culture and hong kong chinese culture we need to have it established for us that father's behavior is not out of the ordinary he's not just a randomly mean man who's incredibly fixated on success and adeline isn't showing him a level of deference that she doesn't show to anybody else or anything like that we need to understand that this is normal this is part of a typical culture and showing what school life is like really helps with that this section is also really important in showing her relationship with her father and that initial consternation now we don't yet know it's about her father we just know that she just really doesn't want to leave school and there's this hyperbolic focus on time that really foregrounds the dread she's feeling so time went by relentlessly that's quite hyperbolic that in that adverb of relentlessly eight weeks more and it would be the end of term she's really counting down as well so by really opening up at the very beginning with that hyperbolic focus on time we immediately feel a lot of dread and tension because we're like why is she feeling this way why is she so concerned about leaving school what is it that's happening to her because of course we don't yet know she's going to see her family and she doesn't know why we don't know that yet we just know she really doesn't want to leave school and the passing of time is making her feel really nervous i think there's also a question of some potential pathetic fallacy here as well now one of the things about autobiographies about all non-fiction is of course technically this is all true there very possibly was an actual radio warning of a possible typhoon the next day however writers also have a degree of creative license like i'm not being funny but if when i'm in my 40s or 50s you ask me to remember what the radio was warning about when i was a child i can barely remember what i had for dinner last week that's the reason i hesitate on the pathetic fallacy because obviously if a fiction writer makes the weather a certain way it's clearly conscious crafting it's clearly deliberate being used for symbolic reasoning if a non-fiction writer is doing it it's possible that that is just what the weather was like however the reason i'm still going and calling pathetic fallacies because when you think about it she didn't have to include that detail adeline yenmar didn't have to mention that the radio was warning of a possible typhoon the next day but she did and therefore there is conscious crafting in what she chooses to tell us about from these events and these moments in her life so if she's telling us about the the weather there must be a significance to it and i think the significance is more of that building tension you know is the typhoon the problem is that what's why she feels so tense is that why we're having this tension built because there's going to be this horrible thing happen or it's also potentially sympathetic fallacy in the form of reflecting how she is feeling you know if we think of the uh strong emotional distress that she is feeling and how that is symbolically represented in the typhoon you then also have the simile i'm leaving school throbbed at the back of my mind like a persistent tooth ache so yes of course there is the comparison to a physical pain that suggests at the level of distress that she is feeling and it also shows her anxiety about leaving school as well because it's constant it's something that's not leaving her so it's suggesting that it's all she thinks about all she can think about is leaving school and she can't stop worrying about it the next thing i'm going to talk about technically applies across the entire text but i think we can really see it being used effectively in this section and that is the internal narrative now if you don't know what an internal narrative is you need to check out my video on narrative viewpoint but to very quickly summarize here internal narrative is when we hear the thoughts and feelings of the characters so we're hearing adeline mars thoughts and feelings so we have this line full of foreboding i ran down the stairs as in a nightmare wondering who had died this time and that internal narrative there is really important in helping communicate to us yes her confusion she doesn't understand what is going on but also how distant the family relationships are the fact that that's the only reason her family would talk to her to tell her somebody would had died that's not a close family bond there it also now brings to the forefront the significance of all of the different tension building that we've had up to that point because we're now starting to realize oh home is what's making her so tense is what she's so afraid of her family and seeing them is what she's so afraid of so we had all of this build up of tension and dread around how she's feeling we didn't know why and now we know why and once we know why we understand what kind of relationship they must have and the fact that it can't be a good one and in that sense i would argue that adeline yanmar is juxtaposing the severity of how adeline feels with the relatively normal situation that she's in she's just going to see her family and yet she is filled with dread and anxiety and confusion she is filled with consternation and so when we see that it subverts our expectations you know there was a red herring in there earlier of a possible typhoon and now we realize oh she's just going to see her family so when we realize her family are the cause of all that tension and fear we understand so much more of what her relationship must be like with them as well we also of course in this section put the two and two together that her family have a lot of wealth and power and that is from the fact that she has a chauffeur come to pick her up and then also the fact that the chauffeur has no idea why he's there so that dialogue telling us they give the orders and i carry them out so the dialogue plus the detail about what is in dialogue as well isn't it the dialogue is used to communicate the wealth and power that they have and that is again structurally important before we meet dad before we ever meet dad we have shown to us the wealth power that he possesses and also the fear and anxiety he causes in his daughter so if you did get a question for about the father i would spend a decent chunk of my response talking about the way that his character is built up before we even meet him i would also say that we're starting to get a sense of adeline's position in the family too because of the lack of deference that is shown to her by the chauffeur you know he is technically speaking her you know employee yes it's dad who pays for it but he's part of the family so he should be showing her more respect but he doesn't he speaks to her in quite a blunt tone which doesn't match what you would expect for that kind of chauffeur child of your boss kind of dynamic so the fact that he can speak to her with such a lack of deference again indicates at adeline's low status in the family and also the fact that adeline also doesn't know what's going on so the chauffeur doesn't know and adeline doesn't know putting them almost on a similar status of considered importance in the family they both have an equal right to know what on earth is going on and the answer to that is neither of them get to know so in the opening of this section we again immediately have that internal narrative being used right and it is again communicating to us the confusion that she's feeling and highlighting the distant family relationships because you have her wondering what she did wrong my heart was full of dread and i wondered what i had done wrong now we don't want to zoom in on the language there if my heart was full of dread that's way too explicit we want to focus on the structural analysis of that internal narrative is how consistently throughout the text we have it communicated to us the confusion that we have at the confusion that she has and how distant her family relationship is that's also suggested in the fact that it's a short drive home so there is a close physical distance between them she's in a boarding school but really nearby home that could therefore also suggest a large emotional distance between her and her family because why would they send her to a boarding school that is so close to home why would she not just stay at home so again suggests at a distant family relationship structurally though again it's important for us to remember that this is all being suggested to us we haven't seen this family relationship in action yet we're going to see that in a bit later so it's all laying the ground for work for what we could expect from when she sees her family when she says where are we i asked foolishly i think that adverb foolishly is worth talking about as well because it shows that she should have known better now there's a question of who is calling her foolish right is that adult adeline myanmar writing the autobiography looking back on childhood her and you know with the hindsight of looking at the situation is calling her younger self foolish or is it suggesting that that the young adeline ma knew that it was a pointless question to ask and knew she was being foolish that isn't clear and so either interpretation can be taken if it is the older adeline ma reflecting back then it has because of the text type of autobiography it has that purpose right of her describing her life and reflecting back on her life and evaluating her life with hindsight if it is the young adeline mark calling herself foolish then what it tells us is that even as a child she knew the way things were she knew what it was like to be in her family and that she should have known better than to try and understand what was going on and why she should just accept that she was always going to be left in the dark about what was going on in her own family we again then have the dialogue from the chauffeur where he's being rude to her and it's showing that lack of deference except this time it's now almost a lower status because of the fact that he's being rude to her you know he knows more than she does about what's going on in their family he knows that they've moved a few months ago and she didn't so there is a slight change there that's worth noting too that actually she is even lower than the chauffeur in some in some respects when we consider what she actually knows about what's going on in her own family when she enters the house we're told it was quiet and cool now that could be seen as a form of sympathetic background sympathetic background is when the setting reflects the various emotions of the characters so in this case just as the atmosphere in the house is quiet and cool the relationships between the different family members are quiet and cool you know they are quite distant they don't talk to one another really and that's also reflected in what we next get told about what all of the family are doing if we look at that imagery mothers out playing bridge the siblings are sunbathing by the swimming pool father is in his room so they're all quite separate in what they're doing that being said the siblings are all together your two brothers and little sister are united so it heightens that feeling of adeline being the odd one out and really being separated from her step siblings because of that we then have our final little chunk of information that tells us something about the father before we meet him and that is when she says i was overwhelmed by the thought that i've been summoned by father to enter the holy of holies a place to which i had never been invited so again there is the internal narrative that's key to us understanding this but there's also the interrogative why and also the interrogative seeming in his room like she's shocked and surprised so the interrogatives highlight her confusion and how little she knows about what's going on in this situation you've also got the dynamic verb have summoned and the power that that shows that her father has to summon somebody plus the metaphor of um entering the holy of holies so it's a religious metaphor there where it's suggesting at the extremely high levels of power and respect that her father holds by comparing it to a place that holds an incredibly high amount of power and respect in a religion the holiest of holies the most important of important places so at this point we really realized if we hadn't already that the relationship she has with her father is the source of her consternation his dad in particular because it is dad who holds a lot of the power and respect that she has and we also are understanding why that is as well if we think about the hong kong chinese culture and the family social hierarchy and dad being the most important it would make sense that she has a lot of respect for him but not necessarily fearing him and having all this anxiety about him so we still do have questions at the same time as well still so we finally meet dad he's alone looking relaxed in his slippers and bathrobe reading a newspaper so that imagery of dad when we first meet him juxtaposes what we might have been built up to expect so again like she did before with building up the tension to subvert our expectations of what that tension was about she was just gonna go see her family it's a similar kind of thing dad has been built up and up and up and now here he is chilling in his slippers in his bathrobe reading the paper like all of that has connotations of somebody quite calm and relaxed so when we and we're explicitly told actually in fact that he is relaxed so when we've had all of that buildup of tension to have it then subverted again interests us because we're wondering what is it about that that has caused this consternation in adeline and has caused such a distant relationship between them but of course we very quickly get an answer to that because adeline says i breathed a small sigh of relief at first but became uneasy again when i wondered why he was being so nice so we quickly figure out that this is not normal okay what the moment we're seeing here of dad being relaxed and smiling this is not typical and that is again thanks to the internal narrative viewpoint communicating that to us and so we see more of her confusion her distrust her anxiety her consternation because dad's behavior right now is not the typical and that consternation of hers has never gone away so you have the adverb at the very beginning of that paragraph of timidly showing her hesitation there and you've got the repeated interrogatives that have been going throughout these two paragraphs and then you've also got those metaphors right at the end the giant ruse on his part to trick me dare i let my guard down both of those metaphors are about a lack of trust with somebody so the writer is really putting side by side the consternation adeline is feeling with a seemingly calm father which heightens the tension as we now are going to get to see how those two actually come to play with one another we actually get to see the relationship between adeline and her dad and we might finally get to understand why there is such a big contrast between the emotional state of adeline versus the emotional state of her dad so now that we're meeting dad and he starts talking he immediately shows his power right with those imperatives in the very opening thing he says sit down sit down don't look so scared take a look at this loads of imperatives all in a row and also the fact that he says don't look so scared indicates that he is aware of the impact that he has on her as well so he has power he wields it and he knows it we then have this whole chunk where we find out why it is that he's called her in and that adeline has won this prize so there is a huge release of the tension now because it's like oh okay this is a good thing there's a good reason that she is here actually there's a complete subversion again she was expecting nothing but bad so we were led to expect nothing but bad and then actually twist for once something good has happened and the fact that this is a rare moment that is something that's now really conveyed in adeline's response because we have these repeated interrogators return repeated interrogatives is it possible am i dreaming me the winner so that really begins the shift away from the consternation now now she knows nothing's bad happens we start having that shift to her being much more confident much more hopeful because she cannot believe something good has happened to her so she's not immediately leaping into the confidence and the hope but there is just sort of a shock and surprise because it's such a rare thing for her to have something good happen to her so one of the things that dad says when he is praising adeline is that i was quite pleased now that adverb quite there's quite a restrained pride there so yes we could take that to mean you know dad isn't an overly emotional person but he is saying he's proud of adeline but then what happens next is making us realize actually this isn't just restrained pride this is a man who is rarely positive about his daughter and even when he is positive he's very restrained in that restrained in that positivity so for example you have the adverbial phrase for once that adeline says that shows the rarity of his support for her but also you then have him saying tell me how did you do it how come you won and those italics show his skepticism about it all like he's shocked that she's done well so it's there when he says that where we realize ah okay yeah you're you're a sucky dad because his daughter has done something wonderful and his first response is like to be skeptical about it despite all of that though you know how before we had a juxtaposition between the emotional states of dad seeming really calm and happy and adeline seeming really like nervous and tense we have another juxtaposition here but this time the juxtaposition is between dad still being quite powerful and forceful and dominating and unkind versus adeline not really giving a damn anymore because she's so happy and you see that in these metaphors so she says my whole being vibrated with all the joy in the world so it's very hyperbolic there all the joy in the world my whole being so it shows how much she has been taken over by the happiness and confidence and hope that she's feeling is becoming much much more prominent and she says i only had to stretch out my hand to reach the stars so that's a really key metaphor in showing the hope because we could say that stars could represent could be a symbol of like her destiny or her dream so by her stretching out her hand it's like a metaphor for her reaching for what she really wants in life and those metaphors of her happiness are coming like sandwiched in the middle of the adverbial phrase of dad's rarity of support and the italics of his doubt and his low expectations of her so that's really conveying that juxtaposition there and we're going to keep having that now that juxtaposition between dad's utter lack of belief in her and dad being quite unkind to her and us understanding where all of her consternation came from but actually she's not going to feel that consternation anymore because she's just so happy she's going to feel much more confident and hopeful instead that she can make her dream happen another thing that i think is worth noting about this whole story again if we think about hong kong chinese culture is where dad's pride has come from above uh adeline was saying like i had given him face and now in this last line he laughed approvingly i doubt it very much but that's a good answer what he's praising her for is her modesty and that is another part of that hong kong chinese culture of being very modest being successful but modest in your success as well and so his adverb of approvingly and what he says about that's a good answer shows that his pride is coming from her meeting cultural expectations of giving him face in the family and also being successful and also being modest we're on to the final section now and we continue with this conversation between adeline and her father and we see an increase in that confidence and hopefulness and the confidence comes across really clearly in the dialogue and the adverb here i asked boldly boldly literally means you are you don't have any fear in the face of doing something risky or dangerous which you know the fact that she's viewing talking to her father as being something risky and dangerous and is in itself a comment on her relationship with her dad but also shows her her confidence as well and thinking it was now or never the extremity of that antithesis now never it's like she has this one opportunity so she feels like her confidence is temporary she feels like this positive moment is rare and therefore she has to try and go for it and get what she wants and of course that now or never idea is also communicated by the fact that this is an internal narrative again as well so she is maintaining her deference for her father please father is how she begins she begins with a very well-mannered mode of address but then what she asks is can i go to university in england just like my brother's so she's pushing for what she wants within the sort of respectful confines of her culture and how she should go about doing so she's showing the deference that her father is due dad then asks her to tell him what she would study and we have another analogy here that's really important in showing just how happy she is so first of all you have that metaphor of my heart gave a giant lurch as it dawned on me he was agreeing to let me go so that again shows that happiness that she's feeling there if we think about the heart symbolizing her emotions it's like she's being overwhelmed by her emotions in the moment and then how marvelous it was to simply be alive that exclamatory showing the high joy she's feeling you have the analogy going to england is like entering heaven so that analogy shows how important this dream is to her how much it would mean to her i mean the connotations of heaven are fairly obvious like the perfect place the dream place that you want to be and she compares going to england to that so we then have these interrogatives does it matter what you do after you get to heaven so she's so sort of happy and hopeful about that thought that she doesn't really care about what it will take to get there of course the answer she gives her father about wanting to be a writer is not the one he wants to hear and we have this really harsh and unkind dialogue from dad so first of all we have the hyperbole um you're going to starve we also have the dynamic verb of scoffed showing is like skepticism and doubt we also have the exclamatory sentences for writer and you're going to starve that show his like shock and surprise that she could be so stupid and what she's thinking and then also you have the interrogatives like obviously they are rhetorical questions he's not actually expecting a response so he's just sort of trying to question her in a way that makes her think less of herself don't you see how wrong you are can't you see what a bad idea this is so he's asking all of these questions so all of those different techniques come together to create a really contemptuous tone that he has for his daughter contemptuous means that you don't have any respect for something and you don't like it so in other words all of those techniques come together to show the lack of respect and how much he doesn't really like his daughter he doesn't see true positives in her i mean we got that a little bit before with like how come you won but now it's really hammered home here and how he's essentially tearing down what he thinks is her dream like he asked the question what would you like to study so he thinks he is responding right now to her dream of what she'd like to study and this is how he replies adeline however she's not even going to respond i waited in silence i did not wish to contradict him so she is still showing that deference there and in terms of the reason why she's showing that deference is again about understanding hong kong chinese culture you need to understand that that's just not going to happen talking back to your parents is not going to happen maybe more so now in 2022 but 1950s hong kong chinese culture most definitely not that would be unacceptable by cultural standards at the time dad then has this dialogue telling us what he thinks she should do which again shows his power and also hong kong chinese culture in terms of how they define success because what he says is that you will go to medical school and you will specialize in obstetrics so you will go and become a doctor essentially now the reason i'm saying that we're seeing his power here is first of all you've got like the imperatives now remember imperatives isn't just commands it's also advice and that's well i wouldn't even go so far as advice here this is like borderline command isn't it you will do this you will do this and the fact that he uses those modal verbs of will as well it shows his certainty and what he is saying too it's his certainty that she will have the future he has dictated for her so he's very controlling in deciding what his daughter's future path is when you then have that interrogative at the end don't you agree that is essentially also a rhetorical question she's not going to disagree she can't disagree that would go against everything in hong kong chinese culture of showing respect for your elders but also what he is expressing the views he is expressing is again normal for the place and time that is a normal view for hong kong chinese culture to think that it's a great idea for your children to go and become doctors and to focus on their education and very often to get that education in england as well so all of this he's essentially asking of course you agree with our cultural beliefs right you agree with me and you agree with our culture yes and so she doesn't really have an option to say no that would be a huge deal for a young girl to challenge her father and her entire culture right to his face so all together these techniques really show the power that he has over adeline's life and that serves to explain a lot of that fear and deference that she has for him because he has so much control over her in fairness to adeline though she is still in that stage of confidence and hope agree of course i agree all she cares about is going and studying in england and she is getting what she wants so that's all she cares about so that hyperfora that's when you have a question that you ask and then immediately answer agree of course i agreed she asks and answers the question and again it's the internal narrative you know she knows that he's got it all planned out she didn't know that originally the adverb apparently she didn't know her originally her father had her life planned out for her but she's fine with it as long as she gets to go to england that is what she really wants so it really shows her confidence and hope for the future because she doesn't care what her father will do anymore as long as she's getting her dream the quote that she has is also interesting so bliss was it in that dawn to be alive is of course very obviously showing the happiness and confidence that she is feeling because bliss extreme levels of happiness being alive like she just feels it naturally in her at the moment but it's also interesting to track where that quote has come from so that quote is from a william wordsworth poem as she says called the french revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement just the brief background behind this quote is basically that is a line of what people who were happy about the french revolution first thought at its beginning like oh this is so great everything is going to be so wonderful but of course what happened was without going into too much of a history lesson the french revolution didn't go too well um at least from people like wordsworth's perspective others may have felt it went excellently but from the perspective of wordsworth and part of what is the point that he makes in this poem is that things didn't go well in the french revolution so similar to how the allusion to chinese cinderella was perhaps foreshadowing this much happier ending i think that this quote could also potentially be foreshadowing her naivety and and potentially bad events to come so she's like she's naive in thinking that it doesn't matter what i study in england it's just great i get to go and that potentially there's going to be a bad outcome to her going and studying in england of course we don't know if that's the case because we only have this extract and we haven't gonna read the rest of the book but that is something that i have taken from that line based on the poem that it has come from the dialogue that this extract ends on as well is really important because it ends with her saying father i shall go to medical school in england and become a doctor thank you very very much so it ends on a tone of respect and deference so in some ways the way this text ends there has been a big change because it started with her feeling a huge amount of fear and tension around what was going on and why she was being pulled out of school and has ended with her feeling really happy and hopeful about her future on the other hand we could also say that the way this text ends indicates nothing has changed her father has just as much control over her and power over as he had in the beginning as he does now at the end of this extract so her life situation hasn't fundamentally changed but perhaps how she feels about it has changed a bit because she is going to actually get to live her dream and get to do what she wants to do if you want more help with the nxl igcse language exam text make sure you have a look at my playlist for them but that brings us to the end of looking at chinese cinderella i hope that you now feel that you've got all the notes you need to get the highest grade possible and i will see you again next time bye [Music]