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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the neighborhood called where Jing-Mei’s family lives when she’s a child?
(a) Little Italy
(b) Chinatown
(c) SoHo
(d) Nob Hill

2. Jing-Mei describes Mr. Chong when she began piano lessons with him as “very strange, always tapping his fingers to the silent music of” what?
(a) His wife’s heartbeat
(b) An invisible orchestra
(c) An imaginary guitar
(d) An era long passed

3. What does Mr. Chong live in relation to Jing-Mei’s family when she’s growing up?
(a) In the basement of the apartment building
(b) On the top floor of the apartment building
(c) On the first floor of the apartment building
(d) Next door to Jing-Mei’s apartment on the second floor

4. How does Jing-Mei’s mother respond when Jing-Mei throws a fit when she’s told she’ll be taking piano lessons?
(a) She slaps her
(b) She weeps
(c) She calls her father
(d) She laughs at her

5. What U.S. President signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law?
(a) Chester A. Arthur
(b) James McCarthy
(c) Franklin D. Roosevelt
(d) Teddy Roosevelt

6. How does Jing-Mei say she felt every time she saw the piano in her parents’ living room at the end of the story?
(a) Proud
(b) Angry
(c) Sad
(d) Ashamed

7. Jing-Mei soon learns after beginning her piano lessons with Mr. Chong that he is deaf. He compares himself to what composer, saying “We’re both listening only in our head”?
(a) Beethoven
(b) Chopin
(c) Mozart
(d) Berlioz

8. What does Jing-Mei kick under her feet as her mother drags her to the piano for practice after the talent show?
(a) Throw rugs
(b) The piano bench
(c) The bedspread
(d) The cat

9. Jing-Mei describes her mother having given her a Bible page to study and then report everything she could remember when she was a child. What does Jing-Mei tell her mother is all she can recall from the passage?
(a) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
(b) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith
(c) Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundance
(d) And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose

10. How many days after the talent show is it when Jing-Mei is surprised that her mother insists she practice piano?
(a) 3
(b) 4
(c) 2
(d) 5

11. What does Jing-Mei say she put the sweaters her mother knitted in after she died in the end of the story?
(a) A garbage bag
(b) An air-tight bag
(c) Moth-proof boxes
(d) A wooden chest

12. When was Shirley Temple born?
(a) 1959
(b) 1911
(c) 1928
(d) 1937

13. What sensation does Jing-Mei describe as she begins hitting one wrong note after another during the talent show?
(a) I felt a wave of terror and then everything went black
(b) A burning sensation in my heart and then an inability to breathe
(c) A shiver of excitement started in my hands and spread up my arms
(d) A chill started at the top of my head and began to trickle down

14. Of her childhood and the ambitions that Jing-Mei and her mother felt for her at this time, she says in the beginning of the story, “In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become” what?
(a) Worthwhile
(b) Free
(c) Beautiful
(d) Perfect

15. What does Jing-Mei’s mother die from?
(a) Tuberculosis
(b) Cancer
(c) A car accident
(d) A brain aneurysm

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the Schumann piece that Jing-Mei is to play at the talent show?

2. Jing-Mei says in the beginning of the story that at first her mother thought she could be a Chinese Shirley Temple. “We’d watch Shirley’s old movies on TV as though they were” what?

3. What does Jing-Mei do with the Chinese silk dresses she finds when sorting through her mother’s things at the end of the story?

4. After Jing-Mei’s performance at the talent show, she says, “We could have escaped during intermission.” What does she say “must have anchored my parents to their chairs”?

5. How does Jing-Mei say her academic career ended in “Two Kinds”?

(see the answer keys)

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