Belonging

Belonging is a vital and fundamental aspect in everyone life, in which belonging to family, a group or a cultural community are what we often see. Generally, belonging can be feelings or thoughts of the people with some common things. One of the particular texts that we can easily find some examples about belonging is the novel “The China Coin” by Allan Baillie, in which the composer has used stream of conscious narrative, dialogue, metaphor and first personal pronouns and few other language techniques to explore the aspects of belonging throughout the journey of Lead and Joan to China. This journey to China is to find their lost family, accomplish the last wish of Joan’s father. One example that demonstrates very profoundly the feeling of a person about family identity is Lead. At Good field when Lead and Joan with Grand uncle went to the grave of Dad’s family, the image of the graves with the earth arms opening has evoked in Lead the feeling of welcomed. This image created in Leah a lot of positive feeling about her mother family and also about China, which previously she did not have any good feeling about that. Another example is, when on the way to , the boat getting inside the lift which is blocked four sides by the walls. This event causes Leah to remember the feeling when her Dad died. The door of the lift closing up is an extended metaphor showing the end of hopes. However it also evokes the sense of belonging toward audience. Besides that, the lift lifting Leah and Joan up to a new level of the river also refers to the change of Lead’s sense of belonging to China. In this novel, beside the effect of metaphor to the idea of belonging, Allan Baillie also uses the dialogues of the characters in different situations to represent the aspects of belonging. One of examples demonstrating that is on page , chapter when Li Nan and Leah came to visit Joan in hospital. In this part the understanding between Li Nan and Joan becomes more positive; the realisation of many common points between them causes them to bond, while forgetting the attendance of Leah. This technique precisely shows the understanding of Li Nan and Joan toward each other profoundly, causing them to belong to each other. Besides that, the continuous dialogue also caused Leah to be pushed to a side, and because of that, evokes the sense of not belonging inside Leah. When the change of pronounce in works is used, it sometime also shows the change of emotions inside each characters attending in that situation. For example, on page 60, in the argument between Leah and Joan, Lead said to Joan: “It’s your rotten China”. The use of personal pronouns in here shows the distance between Leah and her mum. It indicates that in this situation China doesn’t have the same meaning to them, as Leah said that is “your”, not mine. It reveals when their notion about China is changing, their sense of belonging also changes. The respond of Leah and Joan to China in this case is entirely opposite, or in another word we could say they are not the people who belong to the same thing. However, in the other situation, the use of personal pronouns shows the idea of belonging. For example in page 112, Ke said: “That’s your - that’s our ancestral village, Leah”. The use of personal pronoun in this case, evokes in audience the sense of belonging. When Ke used “our” to refer to Leah and him, it shows that they are one and they are the people who have the same thought about the village, and the village is the bond linking them together. The language techniques which supposed to be the most powerful to explore the aspects of belonging in the work is the stream of conscious narrative. In the novel, every time Leah thinks about China or about her Dad, the composer usually uses the stream of conscious narrative to voice the sense of Leah toward her identity. And by that, it shows the aspects of belonging in the characters. For example, in Shanghai when Leah studies her reflection in the mirror, she thought about her identity, as she said: “you’re not Chinese. You don’t even look like them”. This conscious narrative shows the conflict in Lead’s thought about her identity.