Narrator and point of view

The short story “Everyone Talked Loudly in Chinatown” by Anne Jew is a first-person story told in the present tense, as it happens, by one of the characters, teenage Lin. Consequently, the narrator has a limited knowledge of the events and other characters:

My father says the reason for this is there were two Junes in the Chinese calendar this year. I wonder if that makes this year thirteen months long or if one month is left out to fit it into the regular calendar. But I don't ask.

The narrator only knows what she can observe, her own inner thoughts and what the other characters tell her: “My mother can't wait for my grandmother to die. She is always telling my brother and me how she was treated like a slave by Grandmother when she first married my father.”

This helps make the climax as unexpect...