“Should I be wearing white?” Ah Cheng murmured. Dolly’s eyes burned. She knew Ah Cheng’s question wasn’t referring to the traditional red that Chinese women wore on their wedding days. The mission home provided white wedding gowns to its women in order to symbolize their purity. Whatever Chinese women had experienced during their captivity, their escape cleansed the old darkness and provided new life and new light. “You, of all people, are the purest soul I know.” Dolly pulled Ah Cheng close. “Jun Ling knows this, and I know this. You deserve to wear white as much as any other woman.”
The joy of a wedding day was indeed joyous, but it was also fraught with second-guessing and doubts. This scene highlights Ah Cheng and her possible doubts that were uncovered from various stories from through my research. I applied them to Ah Cheng's wedding, knowing that it was a possible emotion for her to experience. In another vein, a wedding day of one resident might have also been traumatic for other residents who may have been hurting in their own ways because their dreams of marriage had never come true.
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