power in the family went together. We wanted to show that, to us, Ye Ye was still the head of the family, not Niang. Lydia was the first to change her mind. Within two weeks, I noticed that she was arriving home from school earlier. I knew that she had given in to Niang. When winter came, the walk to school became too difficult for my brothers. One by one, they made their apologies and received their tram fares Through all my years in Shanghai, I could never make myself go to Niang and ask for the tram fare. I continued to walk to school and had to listen to the cruel things the other schoolchildren said as they got into waiting cars at the end of the day They whispered that I took my own private"number eleven tram daily to school, meaning that my legs carried me.