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Chairman Mao
Xiao Laizi is a young apprentice in Master Guan’s opera school when Xiao Douzi joins the cohort. He is always crying for his mother and wishing for his own death. He even once tries to run away when a street performance goes wrong the day Xiao Douzi enters the school. A few months into Xiao Douzi’s apprenticeship, on the day the students are auditioning for their traditional roles, someone discovers that Xiao Laizi has hanged himself in the school’s storage room. His suicide has a big impact on the students, especially Xiao Douzi, who fears Xiao Laizi will return as a ghost to haunt him. It also prompts Master Guan, who is very strict and physical, to start to take it a little easier on the boys.
Xiao Laizi Quotes in Farewell My Concubine
The Farewell My Concubine quotes below are all either spoken by Xiao Laizi or refer to Xiao Laizi. 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:
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Chapter 1 Quotes
As the children started to crawl quietly out of bed, Master Guan was seized by cold terror when he thought of Xiao Laizi’s suicide and all the beatings he had given him. He recalled as well as the many beatings he had received as a child, innocent of any wrongdoing but still held accountable, judged. His teachers had treated him and his classmates even more harshly than he treated his own students—it was to toughen them up for their demanding careers.
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Xiao Laizi Character Timeline in Farewell My Concubine
The timeline below shows where the character Xiao Laizi appears in Farewell My Concubine. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...the audience to take it easy on his students, but internally he furious. One boy, Xiao Laizi , tries to run away.
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...for their terrible performance and then beats several of them with a cane, beginning with Xiao Laizi , the boy who ran away. He finishes with a lecture on the importance of...
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...Xiao Shitou forces them to. Soon, everyone is asleep, except Xiao Douzi, who listens as Xiao Laizi cries for his mother and wishes for death in his sleep. Xiao Shitou awakens, annoyed...
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...his splits against the wall, which requires another boy to stacks bricks on his legs. Xiao Laizi has been on the wall since before Master Shi’s arrival. He is in pain and...
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...students runs in screaming. He leads everyone to the storage room, where they discover that Xiao Laizi has hanged himself. That night, Xiao Douzi cannot sleep. He has wet the bed and...
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The next morning in the courtyard, as the police cart Xiao Laizi ’s body away, the students are training their eyes. Now that they have been cast...
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