Carol is one of Eleanor’s Bible study girlfriends—and the only one, it seems, interested in actually studying the Bible. She’s married to billionaire financier Dato’ Tai Toh Lui and they have one son, Bernard. When Bernard and Kitty Pong are caught having sex at the wedding tea ceremony, Carol is distraught. She hires a Chinese preacher from Texas to go through her home and destroy supposedly satanic items, which means nearly all the priceless Chinese art she and Dato’ Tai Toh Lui own.
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Carol Tai Character Timeline in Crazy Rich Asians
The timeline below shows where the character Carol Tai appears in Crazy Rich Asians. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1, Chapter 2
Though the Tai family fortune was originally made “the dirty way,” Carol Tai has spent the last few decades making the family name “respectable.” This is why...
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...pictures of her daughter Francesca, the “Shaw Foods heiress.” They discuss the magazine’s coverage of Carol’s latest charity gala and how much weight one of their peers has gained—as well as...
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Just then, a pretty maid enters the room with a chest filled with Carol’s latest jewelry acquisitions. Eleanor and Lorena admire the rubies from “Burma,” while Daisy notes that...
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Just then, Carol’s husband, Dato’ Tai Toh Lui, saunters in and says Taiwanese girls are great—they “know how...
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Part 1, Chapter 13
At the next Bible study luncheon, as Carol’s friends organize her black pearls by color grade, Eleanor laments that Nick is going to...
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...can meet this source, and they can shop and visit spas. They can even borrow Carol’s plane.
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Part 2, Chapter 7
...teases Eleanor for scorning a traditional Chinese breakfast while complaining that Nick is too Westernized. Carol enters and says she has a top-secret shopping spot to take her friends to before...
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...tourists—“Mainlanders only want the real thing.” Eleanor thinks the Mainlanders have the right idea, but Carol notes that if either of them carried one of these fake purses, nobody would suspect...
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Part 2, Chapter 18
...and she, Nick, Rachel, and Philip return to the living room. There, Rachel meets Lorena, Carol, and Daisy—and she notes that Daisy is the first person to hug Nick this evening....
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Part 3, Chapter 4
Across the aisle, Daisy, Nadine, and Carol whisper that Annabel Lee has certainly made it: the Lees were nothing when they arrived...
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Part 3, Chapter 8
...in a vast banquet hall, an elaborate glass building that looks over a manmade lagoon. Carol Tai asks if the Lees built this for the wedding, but Dato’ Tai Toh Lui...
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Part 3, Chapter 19
Eleanor can’t believe her eyes when she enters Carol’s house and finds Carol and Dato’ Tai Toh Lui watching as Sister Gracie, a Pentecostal...
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...while they could. Daisy says that this is what happens when you give kids everything. Carol spoiled Bernard, and now they have Kitty as a daughter-in-law. Nadine muses that they at...
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