The protagonist is baffled and overwhelmed by his new home, and everything around him is strange. He is lost and frustrated by the unfamiliarity of the environment and surroundings. The words and characters that appear around the city in this new world are confusing and make no sense. Tan does this so that we understand the protagonist’s experience and bewilderment. The letters look like symbols that resemble hieroglyphics, but could also be a combination of multiple languages. Tan includes somewhat familiar aspects in the new world that can be connected to something that we understand. For example, some of the letters look like letters from the Latin alphabet but they are upside down, mirrored, or in another orientation.
The most interesting part regarding words and symbols is one poster that a man is carrying in chapter three. The protagonist is waiting for the flying boat in the same way he would if he were waiting for a train. On the platform a man in the corner is carrying a sign with visible Chinese characters. These are the only clear cut symbols that we can recognize throughout the graphic novel. Those characters mean Tan in Chinese, but even more striking, they are the same characters for my last name in Chinese.
