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Feng Meihui
Pengsi is a florist. His brother, Wang Pengfei, operated the tank that stopped in front of the Tank Man instead of rolling over him and killing him. After the government executed Wang Pengfei for his compassion, Pengsi immigrated to America illegally. Pengsi deflects Joe’s questions to the best of his ability, but when Joe attacks him, Pengsi tells him about his brother and insists that he was a hero. At the end of the play, it seems very likely that Pengsi and his wife will be deported as a result of Joe’s loud questioning.
Pengsi Quotes in Chimerica
The Chimerica quotes below are all either spoken by Pengsi or refer to Pengsi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 4, Scene 11 Quotes
ZHANG LIN: [Wang Pengfei] was a hero.
JOE: He’s not a fucking hero, he was on the side of the Party, how / is that a –
ZHANG LIN: Sides? What does sides have to do with anything, he was a, he was a good man, even the Party saw that, you know how they used your picture? As a portrait of their humanity, look, we went around him! Did you know you were in the propaganda business? But it wasn’t them, it was Wang Pengfei. And I don’t know what happened to him.
JOE: His brother said he was shot.
’
ZHANG LIN: I’m sorry I wasted your time. I thought it was a good story. Sometimes a uniform makes it much harder to be a hero. And I thought you were interested in what happened that day.
JOE: I was interested in the Tank Man.
ZHANG LIN: Yes. I misunderstood.
Related Characters:
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Pengsi Character Timeline in Chimerica
The timeline below shows where the character Pengsi appears in Chimerica. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 2, Scene 7
...up since they’ve been visiting florists nonstop for three days. This is their last stop. Pengsi, the florist, enters. Joe asks him if he knows anyone named Jimmy Wang, and Pengsi...
(full context)
Act 4, Scene 9
Joe arrives at the florist and presses Pengsi about Jimmy Wang again. He believes Pengsi is the Tank Man, and that he uses...
(full context)
Pengsi’s wife rushes back into the room, hits Joe in the face with a wrench, and...
(full context)
Act 4, Scene 11
...tells Joe that he’s been released on bail. Joe asks him what will happen to Pengsi and his wife, and Officer Hyte implies that they’ll be deported unless they somehow have...
(full context)
...on the plane, not because of his work. She softly recounts the horror of seeing Pengsi and his wife being taken into jail and leaves.
(full context)
