My sister and I were sitting and waiting. We were finally going to meet our baby sister. What if she did not like us? What if we did not like her?…
A young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei “June” Woo, recalls, after her mother's death, her mother's sadness at having left her twin baby girls in China in 1949. June has used her mother's regret as a weapon in a battle of wills focusing on what her mother wants her to be and what she wants. June wins, leaving her mother, Suyuan, stunned when she says she wishes she were dead like the twins. Although this scene characterizes the common struggle for power between mother and daughter, the story also illustrates…
Furthermore, as she comes to the realization of her connection to Chinese culture. The use of irony “but today I realize what it means to be Chinese. I am 36 years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train… I am going to China” exhibits her attempts to rekindle her ties with her culture. There is a sense of isolation evident as her mother was her last correlation to her heritage and in order…
taking her to China so quickly after her father's death. However, as the two travel…
In the short story "A Pair of Tickets," by judging from the title one might think that this is a simple story more about adventure than anything else. In “A Pair of Tickets” The author Amy Tan uses a symbols to help us understand the theme the story. Family and Culture are the most important topic in this story therefore; it gives us a better understanding of the story. As stated in the context of the story “Jing-mei is on a train to China, traveling with her seventy-two-year-old father, Canning Woo. As the train enters Shenzhen, China, Jing-mei begins to "feel Chinese." Their first stop will be Guangzhou. After her mother's death, a letter arrived from China from her mother's twin daughters from her first marriage. These were the two children whom she was forced to abandon on the side of the road On the hand, the internal conflict that the narrator faced while find her true identity is what helps to present the main theme of this story is ultimately love, the sacrifices that people make for love.…
This story focuses on the experience of a man, Chen Xin (pronounced "Chen Zin") who is returning to the city of Shanghai after an absence of ten years. He has spent that time in a rural area and has looked forward to being reunited with his family, which consists of his mother, his elder brother and the brother's wife and child, and his younger brother. The family lives together in cramped quarters and the introduction of the middle brother into this space creates something of a crisis.…
The point of view focuses on the grandmother. The story begins by talking about her background. It is arranged in chronological order. First, the narrator¡¦s granddaughter is introduced and then her family background. The narrator describes herself as ¡§fierce¡¨. Everyone is afraid of her. Her daughter is somewhat like her mom at least she is also ¡§fierce¡¨ because she is a bank vice president, but her granddaughter is wild, not like her daughter or herself. In the grandmother¡¦s opinion, if her granddaughter Sophie does not act like other Chinese girls, she is wild. In other words, the narrator seems to think people coming from a different culture are weird. After that, the narrator talked about her son-in-law. She thought she did not understand him because he could neither find a job nor look after Sophie. Grandmother said,¡¨Plain boiled food, plain boiled thinking. Even his name is plain boiled: John¡¨ (206). At this point, she somewhat despised her son-in-law, John. He is a white person who can speak English. There is no way he can not find a job. Besides, the grandmother always felt the culture gap. ¡§In China, we talk about whether we have difficulty or no difficulty. We talk about whether life is bitter or not bitter. In America, all day long, people talk about creative¡¨ (208). She did not understand why the ex-babysitter let Sophie get naked and run around. Creativity did not mean anything to her. There was no such a word in Chinese. In addition, she told her daughter ¡§We do…
In Amy tans short stories Rules of the Game, Fish Cheeks, and Two Kinds use themes concerning the boundaries and relationships between mothers and daughters. Asian culture, particularly Chinese culture plays an important role in all three short stories, giving the traditional conflicts an interesting plot. Amy tans short stories mainly describe the troubles and tension between Chinese immigrant mothers and their Americanized daughters through their shared adventures in an entertaining way. The daughters ignore the Chinese aspect of their identity and embrace the American side. They reflect on their childhood up with strong discipline and expectations that most of them have not met leading to future guilt. Now as grown women with their own families, the…
5. As the family works and begs in the city, they think the foreigners are impatient and ill-tempered. When they first arrived, Wang Lung and his family could not understand them under their accent, and the men make fun of him for being a country man. The author includes these descriptions to convey the difference in lifestyles and societies throughout China in this era.…
Suyuan had to make the hard decision to leave her twin babies on the side of the road in hopes some kind stranger would take them in, that way she would not have to see them die. Suyuan searches for her babies all through her life in America, sending multitudes of letters; they finally get in touch with her two months after she has died. Because her mother is not alive to meet her children, Jing Mei takes her place and the trip enables her to finally recognize her Chinese ancestry. The minute she enters China she "feels different" and can realize that she is "becoming Chinese" (306). At fifteen Jing Mei believed she was only as Chinese as her "Caucasian friends" (306). Yet her mother counters thoughts, telling her: "Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese" (306). Once in China Jing Mei decides her mother was right and she "has never really known what it meant to be Chinese" (307). She has never understood her mother or her heritage. This trip is the connecting link to understanding her life. She begins to feel natural in China, thinking to herself on the train: "I am in China It feels right" (312). Jing Mei sees the landscape, the people, the histories, and the families in China and sees where her mother was speaking from all of those years. She knows a "little percent" of her mother know (15). It becomes "obvious" to Jing Mei to see what "part of [her] is Chinese"; it is "in her family, in her blood"…
Her stepmother struck her hard in the face, her father whipped her multiple times, and her siblings blamed her for their mother’s death. Just wonder she felt, Adeline Yen Mah, with her horrid family, separation from her only loved ones; her aunt and single grandfather, and her genius mind that only her beloved Aunt Baba treasured. As it seems, this depressing novel, Chinese Cinderella, by Adeline Yen Mah, the one who lived through it all, was the most unfortunate girl in all of eastern China.…
In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan County developed their own secret code for communication called nu shu or “women’s writing”. Some girls were paired with laotongs, "old sames," in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs to communicate their feelings and emotions to each other. “Footbinding” became a social tradition for all women and showed their social status. Lily and Snow Flower were two laotongs who established their friendship at a young age. They get their foot bound on the same day at the same hour for two laotongs must be alike in every way. Once they get their foot bound, they must never leave the “upstairs women’s chambers” where no man can enter. Through the painful ordeal of getting their foot bound, the two laotongs strengthened their friendship by understanding each other’s pain and suffering. Lily and Snow Flower become acquainted with each other’s lifestyle and they slowly learn about the differences within…
Tan identifies herself with the protagonist of the story sharing with the readers her mixed feelings and her relationship with her mother. After the death of Jing-mei's mother, she went to China with her father to meet her family and her twin sisters. Jing-mei met her family for the first time while arriving to China. Because of the family reunion, Jing-mei's father talks about her mother and the story about how she left her twin sisters behind. He also explained the power she put in to look for the twins, and how she never gave up. Therefore, Jing-mei realizes she is fulfilling her mother's dream; she is meeting up with her sisters after many years. When meeting with her sisters, she finally understands why her mother always said she had Chinese in her. Tan uses photographs as a symbolism, Jing-mei takes pictures of the family and later of her sister making her realize the three of them made her…
The short story, "A Pair of Tickets", by Amy Tan is about a Chinese-American girl named Jing-Mei, raised in San Francisco, which struggles with identity early in her life. Jing-Mei can be similar to a banana, yellow on the outside but white on the inside. Now 36 years old, she is on a train going back to China to meet her twin sisters that she never knew until her mother pasted away. She suffered from a blood vessel that busted in her brain. This secret has been kept from her until the family received a letter from China. Her father Canning Woo explained the whole situation to her and why her mother left the twins back in China. Throughout the story, she remembers and has flashbacks of her mother Suyuan, expressing the important history of their heritage that she doesn't understand. Now that she has the opportunity to go back and appreciate the importance of her Chinese heritage, it brings back a lot of memories of her mother and the struggles of understanding who she truly is.…
In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", there was quite a bit of mother daughter conflict. The mother and daughter had very different views on what the daughter's destiny should be like and that led to many disagreements.…
