In the novel Spilled Water, Si-yan met many hardships and difficulties. Some of these were minor. Others were major. However, at last she managed to overcome them all with the help of other people who she met in her travels. Here we consider what these difficulties were, how she coped with them, who helped her, and what she learned from her difficult experiences. In the beginning of the book, her father is portrayed as a kind man, who does his best to keep them all happy and fed. Despite Uncle Ba trying to convince him to go and work in a factory, he refuses to leave his farm, despite hardships. He often played games with Si-yan; sometimes they made funny noises together while playing mahjong! He was the ‘happiest soul on earth’; when he died, Si-yan compared his dying to the sun passing out of their lives. The first main difficulty occurred when Si-yan’s father was killed by a taxi which hit him in not hitting a child. He asked Uncle Ba to look after Si-yan, Li-hu, and their mother; however, Uncle Ba seems to not enjoy his responsibility very much, as he seems to expect them to fail, and in fact, doesn’t like that he is being proven wrong when they manage to …show more content…
Xiong Fei was the cook for the Chens. He was kind to Si-yan; he helped her overcome her difficulties. He helped her and comforted her when she was sad. However, Mrs Chen, the ‘wicked witch’ as Xiong Fei called her, fired him for daring to stand up for Si-yan. This clearly shows the personality of Mrs Chen – she was angered that he would dare to contradict and criticize her. The other lifeline was Mrs Hong who was a lovely old lady, kind and friendly, who did all she could to help Si-yan. She gave her some money, asked Si-yan to read to her, and did not mind Si-yan making mistakes. She was a kind old lady, but Mrs Chen did her best to stop her from ‘interfering’. Si-yan learned that there were kind people in the world, despite the many unkind people that there