By living with her mother, Meimei has learned how to be silently manipulative in order to control her environment and be successful. This reveals how practicing self-control can allow someone to succeed in their environment. By “yanking [her mother’s] hand toward” salted plums in a store, she let her mother know she wanted them, but her mother refused to buy them for her, telling her to “bite back [her] tongue” (1). The following week, by exercising self control, not saying anything as they passed the plums, and using silent manipulation, her mother relented and Meimei was able to succeed in her goal of getting the salted plums (1). This is when Meimei learned the art of "invisible strength" and how it could be used to her advantage (1). Additionally, instead of telling her mother that she was hurting her one morning while combing Meimei's hair, Meimei posed the question: “What is Chinese torture?”(2) Getting Meimei’s message across without becoming susceptible to punishment for complaining allowed Meimei to succeed in her environment through silent manipulation that would later come in handy while playing…show more content… Furthermore, even though Meimei “desperately wanted to go” to a local chess tournament, she decided to tell her mother that she “didn’t want to play in the local tournament” (4). Her mother, afterward, let Meimei go to the chess tournament (4). This further demonstrates the manipulative capabilities of humans in unique environments, such as those Meimei deployed, in using psychological tactics to achieve what she wanted; in this case, going to the local chess tournament. Lastly, Meimei manipulated her environment by shouting “guts and duck feet and octopus gizzards” at a random tourist when asked what a certain restaurant served (1). In doing this, she was trying to impress her friends and regulate her environment by ensuring that her friends thought she was ‘cool’, brave, spontaneous, and/or mischievous, as shown by her spontaneity in this
