81 pages • 2 hours read
Grace LinWhere The Mountain Meets The Moon
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 21-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
At the Market of Green Abundance, Minli admires the colorful, plentiful produce. She bids goodbye to the buffalo boy and offers him her remaining copper coin in gratitude, but he refuses it. When a poor old man begs a peach vendor to give him something to eat, Minli uses her coin to buy him the biggest peach available. The beggar plants the pit from his peach in the ground and sticks his walking stick in the same hole. It grows into a magnificent peach tree before the townspeople’s disbelieving eyes. Minli notices that the beggar isn’t actually an old man, and when she grabs his sleeve to talk to him, she discovers his gold dragon bracelet, an indisputable sign of royalty.
Chapter 22 Summary
Minli follows the king through a secret door in the Inner City wall that leads to the Palace Garden. In the safety of his home, the king wipes away his disguise and discards his rag clothes. When his servants come running to greet him, the king orders Minli to hide. His servants are worried about him, but the king lies about his recent whereabouts, saying he’s been in the garden the whole time. The king orders his counselor to deliver him two dinners in the Clasping the Moon Pavilion, where he plans to spend time with the moon. Minli understands that one of the meals is actually for her. When she and the king are alone again, he asks Minli to tell her story.
Chapter 23 Summary
Minli and the king feast together in the Clasping the Moon Pavilion on the finest food Minli has ever eaten. Minli believes the king to be the Guardian of the City for whom she’s been looking, and she asks him for the “borrowed line.” He tells her that his city—the City of Bright Moonlight—is the city that belonged to the Imperial daughter who once married Magistrate Tiger’s son.
Story Summary: “The Unknown Part of the Story of the Old Man of the Moon”
Long ago, when Magistrate Tiger read his son’s fate in the Book of Fortune, he tore the page out in anger. When he stared at the Old Man of the Moon’s bright eyes, he grew afraid. The Old Man insisted he keep the page he tore out, saying he had borrowed it anyway and foreseeing that it would be useless to the magistrate who could not read the page.
The king shows Minli that very page, which has gone down through generations. His great-great-grandfather discovered that the paper can only be read in moonlight, which is why he named the city “The City of Bright Moonlight.” The king believes this paper’s single written line could be the “borrowed line” Minli seeks. He explains that he and the kings before him have consulted the paper when they’ve faced a problem, and each time, the written line has changed. When the king looks at the page beside Minli, it displays a message he’s never seen: “You only lose what you cling to” (140). The king decides that since the page has always been borrowed, he does not own it and should gift it to Minli.
Chapter 24 Summary
Dragon misses Minli when she’s away and tiptoes up to the city walls, where he learns that the lion statues guarding the gates can speak. The lion cub statue, Xiao Mao, teases the Dragon. The lions identify themselves as the Guardians of the City and show Dragon their special stone sphere, which comes with a story.
Story Summary: “A String of Destiny”
Long ago, when the king’s father (a.k.a. Magistrate Tiger) led a corrupt city filled with turmoil, a crack appeared in the lions’ stone ball. Seeking a remedy for the turmoil, the lions asked for help from the Old Man of the Moon, who gave them a red string of destiny and advised them to use it when necessary. The lions didn’t need to use the string because the king kicked his father out of the kingdom first and restored peace to the city.
Chapter 25 Summary
Chapter 26 Summary
Minli wakes in the morning, having spent the night in the Imperial Garden pagoda. Beside her is a table with breakfast and a new silk traveling bag from the king with all her belongings inside. The king has also left her a gold silk pouch containing the page from the Book of Fortune. Minli sneaks out of the city gates and finds Dragon sleeping beneath the stone lions. Upon discovering they’ve each acquired a potential “borrowed line,” they hope the Old Man of the Moon will tell them which one is the right one.
Chapters 21-26 Analysis
Minli’s parting with the buffalo boy is a crucial building block in both Minli’s character development and also in theme. The buffalo boy turns down Minli’s offer of a coin, which stumps Minli and illustrates that money doesn’t mean the same thing to every character in the book—its value is mutable and not fixed.
The magical scene with the king of the City of Bright Moonlight in the market is like one of Ba’s stories come to life. Minli sacrifices her coin for the beggar, and she's rewarded by getting a glimpse of the king.
The prank the king plays on the peach vendor makes him a foil for Magistrate Tiger. He’s an example of a leader whose motivation isn’t power or money, but he is rather compelled by his sense of morality. The king of the City of Bright Moonlight becomes Minli’s ally when he gives her tangible gifts and tools and important wisdom about ownership and borrowing, which she'll reference later in the story.
Dragon misses Minli, which demonstrates the deepening of their bond and his newfound attachment to people. He also engages with the lion statues and retrieves their “borrowed line” on Minli’s behalf, which illustrates that he's more than just a passenger on Minli’s journey.
Dragon’s apprehending of a second “borrowed line” creates a sense of mystery. The hero and her sidekick have acquired important tools to achieve their goal, but it’s unclear which tool is the right tool, which adds suspense.
The scene with Ma and Ba back at home is brief, but critical. Their relationship is developing: whereas they used to experience struggle separately, they now share their sadness and attempt to comfort each other. This scene also contains an important instance of theme: Ba imagines the paper with the secret of happiness and, whether he believes this or is just comforting his distressed wife, suggests that the word on the page is faith. This event will appear again later in the narrative when Minli presumes that a different word (thankfulness) is the borrowed line. Together, these events establish the idea that the secret to happiness is subjective and changes based on the person and the timing.
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By Grace Lin
