Story: A History of Tea

Conflicts
Internal conflicts
• Author and herself ( when the car was going along the old lane, she found it similar enough to conjure her memory, pg113)
• Beverly and herself (even though she had meet Tien Yee before, she cannot remember when they meet for the second time , pg 115)

External conflicts
• Grandmother and Uncle Raja ( grandmother does not like Uncle Raja because he ‘stole’ her beautiful daughter, pg 111)
• Grandmother and Aunt Sherrie (even on her deathbed, grandmother does not want to forgive Aunt Sherrie, pg 115)

Climax When Reginald Jones died in a shipwreck in World war two, pg 117

Resolution Open ended resolution.


Characters
Narrator
(Tien Yee)
• She is poor (just tall mug with blue on white bamboo pattern and cover to help it brew, beaded on its underside with water, pg 109)
• She is look at Beverly very detail ( pg 109)
• She is very curious about her family

Grandmother
• She is racist ( in grandmother’s eye, Uncle Raja (black man) stole her daughter ( white woman) pg 111)
• She is mean and harsh ( she create story that Uncle Raja is the evil oily man , pg 112)
• She is stubborn ( she does not want to forgive Aunt Sherrie, pg 115)

Beverly
• She is rich ( trimmed at the top and base in a blue and gold pattern – Japanese imitating Royal Doultan pg 109)
• She is boastful ( she say that she studies nineteenth and twenties centuries Chinese history and then take a sip of tea, pg 111)
• She is ungrateful ( she wants to be independent but she say that Tien Yee’s family always controlling her and look after her, pg 112)
• She is ambitious ( she plan to study in Oxford or Cambridge , pg 114)


The most interesting segment is when Beverly told the author that she wanted to get engaged with the guy that she meet in Oxford but her parents do not allow because of his religion, Jewish. This means that her parents are conservative. They do not allow her daughter to marry someone who is from a different religion.