Thousand Pieces of Gold

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of sexual enslavement, enslavement, sexual assault, death by suicide, anti-Asian racism, gun violence, and lynching.

A picture of a young girl holding a fan precedes this chapter.

Following dinner, Lalu, the novel’s protagonist, washes dishes. She pretends that everything is normal even though it is clear things are different, especially because her family had an extravagant dinner to celebrate a very successful harvest. Her father, Nathoy, counts his earnings from the harvest, and her mother fantasizes about buying more land and a cow. However, Nathoy says he plans to lease land and plant winter wheat. Her mother is upset at Nathoy’s suggestion, primarily because the winter wheat harvest is a gamble, and he may fail and lose all their hard-earned money. He replies that he is tired of toiling and feels lucky. Lalu’s mother encourages her husband to think of their sons, but he waves her off.

Nathoy hires a worker, Chen, to help him prepare for the winter harvest. At home, no one talks about Nathoy’s decision to participate in the winter harvest, but, in town, people talk about it non-stop.