The Great Grandfather of the Sandalwood Mountains Summary

The chapter begins with three short anecdotes and then proceeds to a longer biographical section. The author sends a small sum of United States of America money to her cousin in China to enable the relative to purchase a bicycle. The author's mother informs her that the cousin is not really a cousin, but only a distant relative. The cousin's father then corresponds with the author and demands his own money, and threatens to murder the cousin, his own child, if the money is not received quickly. The author ignores the threat.

The author receives a letter from an educated Chinese emigrant, who had lived in the same village as her ancestors. He characterizes the village as Communist and rural and notes there are rusting automobiles and other abandoned relics of...