The Tiananmen Square Massacre
Text Profile: The China Coin
Title: The China Coin
Composer: Allan Baillie
Intended Audience:
Readers who like mysteries, with secrets and some historical events
Readers who are interested in China’s history
Purpose:
To entertain readers
To raise questions about identity and our sense of belonging to a place / to people
Context: The historical context of the novel concentrates on the student protests of 1989, particularly the occupation of Tiananmen Square in Beijing which led to the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Content and its significance:
Leah is the main character in the novel. Her mother was born in China and her father (who is now dead) was English, but she sees herself as Australian.
In the novel, Leah and her mother Joan travel to China to find the other half of a coin that Joan’s father sent her before he died.
While they are looking for the coin in China, they find their extended family and learn about their family’s history.
At the beginning of the novel, Leah does not really want to go to China and only goes to try to find the other half of the coin that her father was so interested in. However, as Leah learns about China and its history, and her extended family and their history, she begins to understand more about herself and her mother. This contributes to her sense of identity and feelings of where and to whom she belongs.
The novel helps readers to understand what it means to belong through its representations of:
Relationships
Accepting your identity
Understanding China
Challenging your own society
Barriers to belonging
Language features:
The novel represents these ideas through the language features of:
First person (inner monologue), second person and third person narration
Dialogue
Descriptive language (imagery and adjectives)
Flashback techniques
Symbolism
Short sentences
Rhetorical questions
Read more about these in the information from the 2009-2012 HSC English ESL Study Guide on The China
Title: The China Coin
Composer: Allan Baillie
Intended Audience:
Readers who like mysteries, with secrets and some historical events
Readers who are interested in China’s history
Purpose:
To entertain readers
To raise questions about identity and our sense of belonging to a place / to people
Context: The historical context of the novel concentrates on the student protests of 1989, particularly the occupation of Tiananmen Square in Beijing which led to the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Content and its significance:
Leah is the main character in the novel. Her mother was born in China and her father (who is now dead) was English, but she sees herself as Australian.
In the novel, Leah and her mother Joan travel to China to find the other half of a coin that Joan’s father sent her before he died.
While they are looking for the coin in China, they find their extended family and learn about their family’s history.
At the beginning of the novel, Leah does not really want to go to China and only goes to try to find the other half of the coin that her father was so interested in. However, as Leah learns about China and its history, and her extended family and their history, she begins to understand more about herself and her mother. This contributes to her sense of identity and feelings of where and to whom she belongs.
The novel helps readers to understand what it means to belong through its representations of:
Relationships
Accepting your identity
Understanding China
Challenging your own society
Barriers to belonging
Language features:
The novel represents these ideas through the language features of:
First person (inner monologue), second person and third person narration
Dialogue
Descriptive language (imagery and adjectives)
Flashback techniques
Symbolism
Short sentences
Rhetorical questions
Read more about these in the information from the 2009-2012 HSC English ESL Study Guide on The China