How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[….] staring up at the tall buildings whose smooth glossy sides reflect clouds—the din of traffic all around him, the mysterious words of unknown languages, strange music—Stan would feel like some kids in a fairy tale, a kid who'd been asleep inside a mountain for a hundred years and then woken in some foreign, unfamiliar land. (21.8)
While we can't condone his attitude, insofar as coming back to the place where you grew up and finding it overtaken by businesses and people you don't recognize has to be pretty hard, we feel a tiny bit badly for Stan here. But again, racism is never cool.
Quote #5
Now it was Marigold's voice he heard in his ear, Marigold on what he always thought of as the Night of the Chooks' Feet—May's birthday, when Marigold had taken them to a big Chinese restaurant in town. She'd ordered the Banquet. Stan's fork—he'd refused the chopsticks—had hovered over his bowl. "But they're feet!" he'd protested. "Something's feet. I'm not eating feet!" (23.4)
Ever eat at a foreign restaurant and try something that just sounded bizarre, like snails, caviar, or frog legs? Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's kind of gross. In the case of Stan's experience, though, his refusal to eat feet or use chopsticks seems to point to fear of the different or unknown. Unfortunately, this fear translates not just to cultural traditions, but people from different cultures as well.
Quote #6
[Rose] wasn't born yesterday. The kind of childish insult Rose remembered from her primary school because all the kids back then thought if you were Chinese, you ate cats […] Well, that was then and this was now, and the old bigot wasn't going to get away with it! She'd had enough: this was the twenty-first century, and she should be able to stroke a cat like anyone else, without having some backward old fool suggesting she was sizing it up for dinner. (23.35)
Ouch. We know Stan didn't meant to say, "Watch out, puss!" out loud, but getting an inside look at Rose's reaction shows how hurtful racist remarks can be when you're on the receiving end of them.