We meet our narrator, who remembers his boyhood with his mother in the Middle Kingdom (or "China," if you don't want the Chinese to English translation) while his father worked in the Land of the Golden Mountain (the USA, "the demon land," etc.).We learn that the narrator's father is working overseas to earn money.The racial tension and violence in America is immediately addressed when we learn that the narrator's grandfather was lynched thirty years ago (1.1).The narrator's mother pulls the weight on the family farm in China. Her mad busy schedule also doubles as a convenient excuse to avoid the narrator's questions about his father and America.Not only is she busy with the chickens, the rice fields, and the pig, the narrator's mom also prays and burns incense for her husband in the village temple.We also learn that the narrator has never met his father. He and his mother cannot live in the Land of the Golden Mountain with his father because of political reasons both on the American front and the Chinese side. We learn that this affects many families, the narrator's being one.The narrator refers to his race of people as people of the Tang, not as Chinese (1.5). This specificity alludes to the long history of what we know as China and the multiple dynasties that have ruled its people.We learn that the narrator's mother and grandmother are illiterate, much like the majority of the people in their village. The family relies on the village schoolmaster to read and take dictation to write letters to Father. We learn that Father's letters arrive on a weekly basis (1.6).The narrator knows very little about his father, but he is thrilled by this one thing his mother has told him: his father makes amazing kites. Not like the kind you get for a couple bucks at the grocery store, mind you – but kites that "were often treasured by their owners like family heirlooms" (1.7).The narrator recounts moments when he and his mother would go out flying his father's kites. One of these kites was a swallow, an especially fast kite. Another was of a caterpillar.We learn that the narrator is seven years old (to an American catalogue of time); he shares that the Tang people include the gestation period of a baby as its first year, so by his count he's eight.Mother comes alive whenever the narrator and she go fly kites, chattering away about the times she and Father would go kiting together.Grandmother tells the narrator about the Land of the Golden Mountain, explaining that the name for the land abroad comes from the huge mountain there where gold is plentiful. She tells the narrator that "the demons" (that seems a fair way to refer to Americans, eh?) patrol the mountain and beat up anyone who does other than they're told (1.16).
