All Four Quarters of the Moon
by Shirley Marr (Author)
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Booktalk: The night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, making mooncakes with Ah-Ma, was the last time Peijing Guo remembers her life being the same. She is haunted by the magical image of a whole egg yolk suspended in the middle like the full moon. Now adapting to their new life in Australia, Peijing thinks everything is going to turn out okay as long as they all have each other, but cracks are starting to appear in the family.
Five-year-old Biju, lovable but annoying, needs Peijing to be the dependable big sister. Ah-Ma keeps forgetting who she is; Ma Ma is no longer herself and Ba Ba must adjust to a new role as a hands-on dad. Peijing has no idea how she is supposed to cope with the uncertainties of her own world while shouldering the burden of everyone else.
If her family are the four quarters of the mooncake, where does she even fit in?
Snippet: The Guos were also a very traditional Chinese family who didn’t believe in touching or hugging each other because it wasn’t an honorable thing to hug or touch each other. But sometimes, as Peijing discovered, there were cracks in the rules for those who were very young and very old.
Out through the arched doorway that looked into the living room, where all of Peijing’s aunts and uncles had come to play mahjong, she could hear the shrill voice of Second Aunty saying that she had to leave already. Second Aunty cleaned the airport for a living and had to wake up at five in the morning.
This was followed by the sound of crying. Peijing peered through the doorway, and there was Ma Ma with her face in her hands, looking vibrant in her new green housedress, but sounding as sad as a piece of tinkling jade.
It was definitely forbidden to cry during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although Peijing was eleven years old now and considered herself far from being a child, she still didn’t understand why adults would tell others not to do a thing and then do it themselves.
But it was no good–Second Aunty still had to wake up at five in the morning. Second Aunty told Ma Ma to stop crying. To think about how Ma Ma and her family were moving to Australia the next day. The move would improve Ma Ma’s yin energy. It would be a lucky life. Not like Second Aunty, waking up at five in the morning, six days a week, to pick up disgusting things travelers left behind on airplanes. They didn’t forget to take just their magazines, you know.
Peijing felt the nerves in her stomach. Block 222, Batu Bulan East Avenue 4, was the only home she had ever known.
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