Demons
“Demons” are the name by which the Chinese characters refer to whites in America. The foremost symbolic attribute of a demon is, of course, evil. Demons are usually portrayed as malevolent agents of lesser power working the service of the Devil. Attributing this symbolism to white Americans is directly the result of behavior. That behavior is inherently racist in origin. Thus, the term demon to describe whites is at its most basic level a symbolic incarnation of racial prejudice and discriminatory bias on the part of the whites toward the Chinese than an inherently evil characteristic.
Land of the Golden Mountain
The “Land of the Golden Mountain” is described within the dialogue in the text as being “a thousand miles high and three thousand miles wide.” Of course, these dimensions are a rough estimation of the distance from coast to coast in America and from the Mexican to the Canadian border. The calculation is precise, naturally, but the point is to put across the general idea that the Land of the Golden Mountains corresponds to the dimensions of the country. The idea is that the hope expressed by Chinese immigrants in finding riches waiting in the Land of the Golden Mountains symbolizes America as a land of opportunity.
Kites
Flying kites play a significant symbolic role in the story. The narrator’s father is exceptionally skilled at creating kites. The difference is distinguished by the narrator who asserts that the view of a kite as nothing more than a “bunch of paper and sticks” is woefully misguided. Artful construction of those raw materials can turn a kite from something caught by the wind and crashes down to earth into an object that masters the effects of the natural world. Thus, kites—specifically those constructed by the narrator’s father—are symbols of technological mastery of nature which, at its more extreme levels, allows man to go to the moon and back.
Dragons
Central to the narrative is a story-within-the-story told by the narrator’s father. In this story, the father claims to have been a dragon his former life. This previous existence encourages his father on a lifelong odyssey to regain his dragon status and the narrator is fully committed to his father’s story and his quest. The book is actually ambiguous on the bigger picture of whether dragons actually exist and therefore it also raises questions about whether the father literally believes his story or whether it is a parable requiring faithful commitment. In this way, dragons become a complex symbol within the narrative representing the question of whether a literal truth is required for a mythic message to be worthy of inspiring faith.
The Big One
Central to the story is the representation of an actual historical event that took place on April 18, 1906. The devastating earthquake which destroyed over three-fourths of San Francisco that day becomes a major symbolic event as well as a literal one in the novel. The narrator’s father touches upon the symbolic significance when he explains that the cause of the earthquake is not what matters, but what one learns from it. Earlier he points out a man carrying a wooden plank over his shoulder and notes that this man has learned nothing because he is intent on rebuilding things exactly as they were and thus setting them up to be destroyed with the next quake. By contrast, the lesson he takes from the devastation is that life is wasted by not pursuing dreams. The earthquake symbolizes those deeply traumatic moments in life in which a brush with death causes some people to re-evaluate their entire perspective while others take their own survival as confirmation that they don't need to make any changes at all.
