The Rules of the Game

Waverly is a young Chinese girl who lives in China. She lives with her family above a Chinese pastry shop. One Christmas, she and her brothers receive gifts from a nearby church. She sat on a obviously fake Chinese Santa, and chooses a gift. Her present contained candy called Life Savers. Her brothers, on the other hand, receive a chess game. The chess set is missing two pieces, and their mother tells them to throw it out because she does not want to use other people’s trash that no one wants. The kids think differently. They just want to play the game. Waverly wanted to play the game too. She exchanged life savers for each time she lost. One day, she went to the park and saw people playing. She met an old man named Lou Pao, and he thought her how to be a better chess player. She ends up becoming a national champion. People called her a prodigy. One day, her mother took her to the markets and as usual bragged about her. Waverly did not like this. She tells her mother, but the mother thinks she’s ashamed to be her daughter. Waverly ends up running down the street away from her mother and doesn’t come home until the evening. The mother, from that moment on, did not give Waverly any special treatment in her house.