Cutting down trees
Having heard the rumor that all forests were to become state property, the Hus had cut down their carefully preserved pine trees, citing a family emergency. Ironically, it turned out that the state had decided merely to monitor them, not to appropriate them, so they lost their trees for nothing.
Taiming's pigtail
The irony of Taiming’s desire to follow modern trends is visible when he cuts off his pigtail. However, “the village elders, who believed it was unethical to damage any part of one’s body, were scandalized, as though he had lopped off his own head” because “a traditional, private means of bringing justice against adulterers was to shave their heads.”
Taiming's introduction
When Taiming introduces himself to the students at the new school he is working at, he is so anxious that he cannot deliver a coherent speech. As he left the hall, the headmaster said to him ironically, “What energy, what eloquence!”
Hisako's barbaric manners
When Hisako and Taiming eat a roasted chicken at a restaurant, Hisako leans toward Taiming and whispers, “Are we barbarians or what?” However, she then proceeds to chew it “like a pig, succumbing to the exquisite, artless taste born of that people’s wisdom that she had just now ridiculed as barbaric,” completely unaware of the irony of her words.
Mr. Lin's sons
Mr. Lin sent two of his sons to Japan because he hoped that they would get a good education there and become successful. Ironically, he achieved the opposite: "The eldest had failed every examination for Taiwan’s secondary schools and, as a last resort, had been sent to Japan. In his ten or so years in Tokyo, all he had learned was how to play pool and seduce waitresses. He, his eldest son, had come back bored and broken. The second son, who also had to be sent to Japan for schooling, joined a political movement and was never heard from again."
