Midnight at the Dragon Cafe (Bates)

Discussion Questions 
1. With Midnight at the Dragon Cafe, Judy Fong Bates produces a work that is both quintessentially Canadian and yet powerfully conveys the Chinese immigrant perspective. What makes the novel feel as classically Canadian as anything by Margaret Laurence or Alice Munro? Consider setting (where the story unfolds) and character.

2. What details does Bates use to allow the reader to fully enter the particular point of view of a newly settled Chinese family? How does the mother, Lai-Jing, view her new surroundings? How does she feel about her neighbours, the lo fons (white people), of Irvine?

3. How does Su-Jen see her new community? The school, the river,the stores, her father's restaurant and her schoolmates? Are your feelings about small-town Canada modified in any way by experiencing it through the eyes of the Chou family?

4. What overt acts of racism does Su-Jen endure among her female peers? What are the more subtle forms? Consider the school play: Was it realistic or racist for Su-Jen's friends to dissuade her from auditioning for the lead role? Why? How do name-calling and racist assumptions affect Su-Jen?

5. In what ways is Su-Jen a child caught between two cultures? How does this affect her world view?

6. By what means do Su-Jen's father, Hing-Wun, mother, Lai-Jing, and Uncle Yat keep Chinese culture alive in Canada? Consider their beliefs, values, and daily activities.

7. What role do the arts—stories and music—play in the novel, particularly in the lives of Hing-Wun and Su-Jen?

8. Sacrifice is an important theme in the novel. How does each character's understanding of sacrifice affect the lives of Su-Jen's father, mother, and brother? How does Su-Jen's own understanding of sacrifice change over the course of the novel?

9. How are the events in the story influenced by the Chou family's isolation from the larger urban Chinese community?

10. Why do the Chinese characters in the novel seem so obsessed with money? Give some examples from the novel of the characters' absorption with money and status. Consider Aunt Hai-Lan and also the Chongs (the family interested in arranging a marriage for their daughter). What does this tell the reader about how the Chou family sees itself in their new home?

11. What are some of the ways in which the Chou family reveals their preoccupation with money? How do these concerns shape their lives? Are their fiscal and social concerns realistic? Is the Chou family more money conscious than their Canadian-born neighbours? To what extent are the residents of Irvine also conscious of money and status?

12. What qualities draw Su-Jen to Charlotte Heighington? What does this tell us about Su-Jen?

13. Su-Jen is attracted not only to Charlotte, but to the entire Heighington household, particularly Charlotte's mother. Why might the Heighingtons be considered odd by the rest of the town? In what ways does Mrs. Heighington differ from Su-Jen's mother? What qualities, if any, do the two women share?

14. A love affair between a married woman and her stepson would be shocking regardless of the circumstances. What makes it feel even more so in Midnight at the Dragon Café? How does the inclusion of Lai-Jing and Lee Kung's affair allow the novel to transcend the category of "immigrant story"?

15. Does the affair cause you to identify more with the family, or less? Do you sympathize with Lai-Jing's behavior? How do you feel about Lee-Kung? Is anyone to blame? Does Hing-Wun deserve a portion of the blame?

16. Did the affair cause you to question Lai-Jing's love for Su-Jen? Are these two separate but parallel kinds of love, or two competing ones? Is Lai-Jing really as trapped as she feels?

17. In what very specific ways do politics and history influence the Chou family? Consider World War I, World War II, Canada's immigration policies, and Japan's 1937 Invasion of China. Has coming to Canada freed the Chou family from its past? Is anyone ever free of the past?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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