Phew..... Ginny, your posts have left me a bit overwhelmed, and the need to give some of your questions a lot to think about. I have tried to compartmentalize these four women and their daughters. I finally finished the sections of Ch. 1, and now am trying to remember the points that resonated most with me. I have used a highlighter throughout my reading because I know I could never go back and find what I wanted to comment on later. Needless to say, my book will not be in a resale condition when I have finished it. I do best when I make lists, so let me try this:
The Four Stories told:
Suyuan and Jing-mei "June"
Suyuan's husband, an officer with the Kuomintang, brought her and their two babies to Kweilin because he thought they would be safe. They knew the Japanese were winning, "An army officer came to my house early one morning," she said, "and told me to go quickly to my husband in Chungking. I knew he was telling me to run away from Kweilin." I packed my things and my two babies into a wheelbarrow and began pushing to Chungking. By the time I arrived in Chungking I had lost everything except for three fancy silk dresses which I wore one on top of the other." "What do you mean by 'everything'?" I gasped at the end. I was stunned to realize the story had been true all along. "What happened to the babies?"
June, "I never thought my mother's Kweili story was anything but a Chinese fairy tale. pg. 25
The aunts have given June money to find her sisters in Hong Kong, so she can get to know them and tell them all about their mother.
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An-mei and Rose "Scar"
An-mei is raised without her mother. "To say her name is to spit on your father's grave." pg. 43 Auntie shouted that our mother had married a man named Wu Tsing who already had a wife, two concubines, and other bad children." Her mother has become ni, a traitor to our ancestors. She is beneath other that even the devil must look down to see her."
pg. 46 I was four years old. And then with one shout this dark boiling soup spilled forward and fell all over my neck. It was as though everyone's anger were pouring all over me. pg. 47 In two years time, my scar became pale ans shiny and I had no memory of my mother. pg. 48 I worshipped this mother from my dream. But the woman standing by Popo's bed was not the mother of my memory. Yet I came to love this mother as well. Not because she came to me and begged me to forgive her. She did not. She did not need to explain Popo chased her out of the house when I was dying. This I knew. Here is how I came to love my mother. How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones. My mother took her flesh and put it in the soup. She cooked magic in the ancient tradition to try to cure her mother this one last time. She opened Popo's mouth, already too tight from trying to keep her spirit in. She fed her this soup, but that night Popo flew away with her illness.
Rose,pg. 48 This is how a daughter honors her mother, It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
I so agree with Rose, you must peel back all the scars and let go of the pain in order to allow yourself to feel and know the true nature of yourself and your mother and her mother. When I witnessed my mother standing at the bedside of her mother dying my heart hurt so deeply for knowing the love between the two of them, and how the loss would effect my mother. I do believe that is the very day I became the woman I am today, knowing I would always honor my mother and grandmother, and hope to see this in my daughter and grand daughters.
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Lindo and Waverly
Lindo pg. 49 I once sacrificed my life to keep my parent's promise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, if she has a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on TV, she no longer has a promise. To Chinese people, fourteen carats isn't real gold. Feel my bracelets. They must be twenty-four carats, pure inside and out. It's too late to change you, but I'm telling you this because I worry about your baby. I worry that someday she will say, "Thank you, Grandmother, for the gold bracelet. I'll never forget you." But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother. pg. 50 the village matchmaker came to my family when I was just two years old. No, it's not true what some Chinese say about girl babies being worthless. It depends on what kind of girl you are. In my case, people could see my value. I looked and smelled like a precious buncake, sweet with a good clean color. This is how I became betrothed to Huang Taitai's son, who I later discovered was just a baby, one year younger than I. His name was Tyan-yu. In other cities already, a man could choose his own wife, with his parent's permission of course. But we were cut off from this type of new thought. My life changed completely when I was twelve, the summer of the heavy rains came. My father said we had no choice but to move the family to Wushi, to the south near Shanghai, where my mother's brother owned a small flour mill. My father explained that the whole family, except for me, would leave immediately. I was twelve years old, old enough to separate from my family and live with the Huangs. When I was sixteen on the lunar new year, Huang Taitai told me she was ready to welcome a grandson by next spring. I wiped my eyes and looked in the mirror. I was surprised at what I saw. I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. He had no desire for me, but it was his fear that made me think he had no desire for any woman. He was like a little boy who had never grown up. I made the Huangs think it was their idea to get rid of me, that they would be the ones to say the marriage contract was not valid.
Lindo was brilliant to come up with the idea of blowing out the end of the red candle, and then tell Huang Taitai the wind blew it out on their wedding night, so she would see it was a bad omen, and Tyan-you would die, if he stayed in the marriage. She was able to keep her family's honor and promise, yet free herself from a loveless marriage.
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Ying-ying and Lena
pg. 67 All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me. She sees a list of things to buy, her checkbook out of balance, her ashtray sitting crooked on a straight table. And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others. I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
pg. 68 In 1918, the year that I was four, the Moon Festival arrived during an autumn in Wushi that was unusually hot, terribly hot. When I awoke that morning, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon... pg. 69 "What is a ceremony?" I asked as Amah slipped the jacket over my cotton undergarments. "It is a proper way to behave. You do this and that, so the gods do not punish you," said Amah as she fastened my frog clasps. "What kind of punishment?" I asked boldly. "Too many questions!" cried Amah. "You do not need to understand. Just behave, follow your mother's example. Do not shame me Ying-ying."
pg. 72 Suddenly I saw a dragonfly with a large crimson body and transparent wings. I leapt off the bench and rand to chase it..
Standing perfectly still like that, I discovered my shadow. I ran to the shade under tree, watching my shadow chase me. It disappeared. I loved my shadow, this dark side of me that had my same restless nature.
pg. 82 For many years, I could not remember what I wanted that night from the Moon Lady, or how it was that I was found again by my family. I never believed my family found the same girl.pg. 83 But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day because it has happened many time in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness, the wonder, fear, an loneliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so ling ago. I wished to be found.
This made me feel very sad, because if I am understanding this correctly, Ying-ying will die feeling she was never heard, seen or found. A life with so little meaning, that she feels she needs to make her daughter understand, before she dies, to not be so wrapped up in material things, and so busy she has lost sight of herself.
After reading and learning each woman's story, I have to say I don't have one that resonants more than the other. With each woman I found a strength and a weakness that I find in myself. Suyuan touches me more than the others as being the closest to who I see myself, and who I am as a mother and grandmother. They are all survivors in their own rights. I feel sad that none of the daughters seem to understand and appreciate their mother's history, and who they really are. I loved how Lindo refuses to wear nothing but twenty-four carat gold, to show she is worthy of more than fourteen carat. She is determined to hold herself in high regard, and wants to remind her daughter and grand daughters to do the same. I see sadness surrounding each of these women. As I grow older, I am finding, I do feel as if my daughter and grand daughters are losing sight of who I am. We are not as active in each others lives, and I see how their lives move on, and they have so little time to squeeze me in. The same little girls, who made me feel like I hung the moon, and set the stars in their sky.
Sorry the post is so long.
