The story of Bing's death parallels Rose's condition. The Hsu family, like Rose and Ted early in their marriage, believed that luck and fate were on their side. Mrs. Hsu strongly believed that she could prevent the tragedies detailed in "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates" by simply being constantly aware of all of them. Ted believed that he could guide the course of their marriage by making all the right decisions. But Rose and Ted both realized, at last, that life was not as simple as that. There was fate to consider.
Mrs. Hsu mispronounces "faith" as "fate." She attributes their good luck to "faith," only she pronounces it "fate." Rose comes to believe that it was fate — not faith — all along. Their good luck was nothing more than an illusion. Evil is arbitrary and non-preventable. The imagery of the scene of Bing's death reinforces the power of fate's arbitrary hand.
The beach is described as being "like a giant bowl, cracked in half, the other half washed out to sea." This is what will happen to the Hsu family after Bing's death. Moments before the accident, he was sitting "just where the shadows ended and the sunny part began." Like Rose and Ted, he was caught between "half and half," the title of the story.
At the end of the story, Rose concludes that fate "is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention." What remains after tragedy? Faith. This is Mrs. Hsu's reaction to loss, and it is the path that she advises Rose to take. It remains to be seen if Rose can harness the "invisible strength" of the wind that powers Waverly Jong and her mother — or if the wind will sweep her off her feet, off balance.
