Connections with Immigration

There were a lot of family stories that had people fleeing China because of the communist government or because of the ruler, Mao ZeDong. This seemed somewhat consistent with the stories that my families had told me. For example,  my father would sometimes tell me stories about how good China was back then and that the only reason that he had moved was because of the little job opportunities that they had they had in China. However, my mother usually talked about how bad some of the living conditions there were in China and how glad she was they they immigrated.

So, my uncle’s father was a mayor in Zhongshan, a big city in Grangzhou. During the Cultural Revolution in China during 1966 to 1976, under Mao’s leading, the upper-officers tried to find out the corrupt in every city with every kind of torture. So, they not spared to get information from different city and people, to find out the Corrupts. As I know, many loyalty workers also die during that period, because the governors did not give so much patients or trustings on them. Unfortunately, my uncle’s dad got attention from those people, and getting into a big trouble—those people wanted information of how people corrupted each one no matter you did it or not—of course everyone would say they never did so, which the officers would use torture on the mayors, until you make something up and they have enough evidences to “kick” you into jail. This is what really happened to my uncle’s family, when he was a teenager. It was impossible for his father to escape anyway, at the end; his father asked one of his best friends brought them away as far as he can because he feared that his family would get involved into it. Thus, my uncle follower his two brothers, from China, then shipping to Macau, to Hongkong, and lastly took airplane to United States.

This seemed to be a consistent reason of why people had moved out of China and immigrated to the United States or to other areas, Mao ZeDong was a iron fisted ruler that not a lot of people liked. he was disliked by a lot of people, and the people that he had wronged usually left the country. This was from Peter’s blog, and it talked about how even in present times, the influence of Mao ZeDong is still far reaching.

In 1951, about six years after World War II, my great grandfather passed away but not because of natural causes. After the world war, Communism was on the rise in China and Mao Zedong became the first chairman of the communist party of China. During his rule, one of his terrible actions is that he ordered the imperial army to arrest all of the wealthy people, in which one of them was my great grandfather, and placed them in jail to rot. The jails had horrible living conditions and eventually, my great grandfather died of starvation because the food there was unbearable. The family wealth was never returned and the family had basically dropped from the elite class to the poor class within a few years.

This was a quote from David’s blog that talked about how Mao ZeDong and communism basically screwed his family over and over. It seems consistent with Peter’s blog post because it talks about how Mao ZeDong was a ruler that somewhat brutalized his people and deprived them of the things that they had achieved in their lives.

At the time, there were people in China who believed that he was a great leader, while there were also people who despised him and wanted to get rid of him. Personally, my mom stated how she thought Mao was a good and just ruler because he brought positive change and was helping China move forward technologically, militaristically, and in other ways. My mom stated how she does not understand why almost all Americans view Mao Zedong as an evil dictator. She believes that the people used propaganda to show all of Mao Zedong’s negative aspects and hid his numerous accomplishments as leader.

This was a quote that I found on Andy’s blog. This interested me because his mom’s views were similar to my dad’s views on the issue of Mao ZeDong. Andy basically talked about his mom and how his mom thought that Mao ZaDong was a pretty good ruler/ governor, and that the only reason that people think that he is such a bad person is because people use propaganda to make his bad deeds outshine his good deeds.

The thing that connects all of these family stories together is that they all talk about relatives that fled China and Mao ZeDong, no matter if he was a good ruler or not.

Cycles in Travel

One thing that I feel is cyclical in the Joy Luck Club are the journeys that the mothers and daughters take throughout the story. For example, in the beginning of the story, the mothers come from China to the United States, the beginning of the cycle.

“This was the year my mother and father left China with one stiff leather trunk filled with only fancy silk dresses and nothing else.” “When they arrived in San Fransisco, my father made her hide those shiny clothes. She wore the same brown-checkered Chinese dress until the Refugee Welcome Society gave her two hand-me down dresses all too large in size...” (Pg 20) This is when Jing-Mei’s mother an father initially came from China to America. It is the beginning of the immigration and vacation cycle. The reason that the mother had come was because she wanted to escape her past, and wanted to make at least some part of her past become a forgotten part of history that no one would ever remember.



The end of the cycle, or at least, a part of the cycle was when Jing-Mei went back to China after her mother died to go and see her older, never before seen, twin sisters. “At the airport, I am exhausted. I could not sleep last night. Aiyi had followed me into my room at three in the morning, and she instantly fell asleep on one of the twin beds” (Pg 286) “Wake up, we’re here,” says my father. And i awake with my heart pounding in my throat. I look out the window and we’re already on the runway, It’s gray outside.” (Pg. 287) This is sort of the end of the cycle because this is when the daughter goes BACK to China FROM America. It was the opposite of what her mother had done, and one of the only reasons that she did it was to “bring an end to something”. She wanted to go and end her curiosity about her mother’s past, and she wanted to figure out all of the unknowns that she had about her mother’s past, such as the two twin sisters that Jing-Mei had that her mother left behind in China.

Blog Post: Family Story

When my mother was young, she went to an “advanced” math class at her school. She was an extremely studious and hardworking student that never slacked off or screwed around in class, (according to her anyway). She was apparently so hardworking that she was a well respected person in her village. They respected her as a student and as a hardworking member of society. One day, there was a competition or a test between all of the people in her school district. It was somewhat like an Advanced Placement test, as it was only for people that had a certain class placement, which were the “high achievers” at the school, and the test had everyone in the Chinese equivalent of a school district taking it. She was excited because she was one of the only people in her school that were chosen to compete in that contest and/or test. She felt special and honored that she was one of the few people that were chosen to be able to participate in such an activity that was only available to certain people. She had scored second out of everyone who had competed in the contest / test, and everyone cheered for her. Apparently, the school principal had personally given her an award and had announced to the whole school that she had scored the second highest out of all the people on the school district that were allowed to take the test. They had celebrated a lot because she had achieved such a “high position”, second out of all the people who had competed. The whole school had cheered her on and had a huge celebration because of her “grand” achievement/s. She told me however, that even though she was the second highest scoring person, she had only scored sixty out of a hundred, and the person that was in first place had scored only seventy out of a hundred. She said that even though she had scored so low on the test / exam, she had still felt extremely proud because it was still an extremely hard test on an extremely high level math course that few people were allowed to take.
To me, she had sounded somewhat conceited and / or extremely proud of the fact that she could achieve such a thing. However, I can understand where her pride comes from, and why she wanted to tell me about this kind of story. It was an exciting and memorable event that happened in her childhood, and she wanted to share it with me because, experiences are to be shared, and if you do not share your experiences with someone else, then what it the point of having that experience? It becomes something meaningless, because you cannot talk to any one else about it, and the only person that will know it happened would be you.

She told me this because she was proud of her past school experiences and wanted to motivate me to do better. I was complaining of how school was stressful and how it was a lot of work, and she told me about her past school experiences. She told me about how she used to be a very good student and home work she was a very studious person that was excelled at a lot of the things that she attempted to do. Either she was bragging about her past scholastic achievements, or she was very proud of what she had done and wanted to motivate me to do just as well or even better than what she had previously achieved.

I had a feeling that it was a story told to help encourage me to have a better work ethic in school. They might have also been telling me that you should make your best effort at everything, because you never know what might end up happening. They could have been telling me to try be best at everything, because even if I fail, then they will still feel proud of me. It might relate to how she was praised and admired even though she scored a D- on the “test”. However, it might have been the fact that she had scored second place that made everyone respect and praise her, so that may not have been one of the messages that she was trying to get across to me.

It seemed to highlight my laziness and tendency to procrastinate things. She may have been comparing her studious habits with my procrastination, and wanted to make me see how different I am and what I had to change about my life in order to be more like someone that she admire more. It was either that or she wanted to shame me into doing well in class, as if she were saying “If I can do it, then so can you!”. It is a story that is used to motivate family members to go and put more effort into the things that are going on in their lives. It is significant to my family because my family really values hard work and personal success. Because they value personal success and hard work so much, they have a lot of stories that inspire my family members to go and put a lot of effort into things like jobs, education, etc. They also want us (the children) to go and make something of ourselves, even while we are still minors and cannot achieve many things that adults could achieve.

I learned that my parents had expected that my role in the family was to do whatever they told me to do because it was “good for me” and that it was my duty as a son. I had to be obedient, and I had to be a studious person, just like how my mom was in her story, and overachiever, not an under achiever. Sadly, that has not happened so far in my life, and I am still a procrastinator that does not put a lot of effort into the work that I do unless I feel that it is something so extremely important that I could not afford to avoid doing it. I believe that my parents have already realized how much of a lazy person I am and are trying to motivate to procrastinate less, to be more hardworking, and to manage my time better, especially since I am already in my sophomore year of high school. It may be a last ditch attempt for her to try and motivate me, or it may be the beginning of a long series of talks and lectures telling me to get my life together and to plan out what I want to do in my future, because my future is near, and I have to get my life together before it is too late.

My parents have also talked about the American schooling / education system and how unfamiliar they are with it, and so they have to rely on outside information from relatives and friends in order to plan out “my” future. They cannot rely on their own personal educational experiences to help them, because with my mom’s experience, her being able to compete district wide and being ranked for it, is not that similar to the American educational system. Because of that, they have tried to use their own educational experiences to go and motivate me to learn more and to focus on my future.

In my mother’s case, she tells me about all the things that she has done and how I should do just as good as her or even better, while my dad talks about how he never really got a higher education. He then goes onto talking about how he would have probably had a better life if he did, and how he would have an easier job. He then tells me about all of the hardships that he has to face in his life, and how he hopes that I would avoid a lot of them since I would have more educational opportunities than he ever did.

This may be why my parents tell my family and I  “educational stories”, and why they have so many hopes and dreams for us, because they have both lived a hard life, know how / what it feels like, and never want their children to go through the same things that they have gone through.

They sometimes act as if they have a moral obligation the tell me about their lives since it is so different from mine. They used to be farmers and villagers, and so education was different for them. It was optional, and it was full of other kids that were also farmers. Here in American however, we have people from all different types of backgrounds, mandatory schooling, and it is always emphasized that you can not achieve anything in life if you do not first have a good education as the foundation of your “life”. The change from optional schooling in China to the mandatory schooling here may have been a huge change for my parents and they did not know how to address it.

Twenty-Six Malignant Gates Post

There are a lot of similarities between the “Tiger Mom” article, and the chapter/section “The Twenty Six Malignant Gates”. For example, in the tiger mom article, the mother talks about how she made her daughter do everything until they got it right, and she would spend hours upon hours forcing their children to practice and practice until they did what they were doing correctly.

“I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.”  

It is similar to what happens in the Joy Luck club. For example, in the story, “Two Kinds” Jing-Mei is forced by her mother to go and practice the piano over and over to become successful at it, and her mother brags about it.

“Our problem is much worser than yours. If we ask Jing-Mei was dish, she hear noting but music. It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.” (Pg. 138)

The two stories are very similar because in both of them, the mother tires to get their daughter to play the piano, and does it until the daughter knows how to play the piano well.

“My mother slapped me. “who ask you be genius?” She shouted. “Only ask for you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you to be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!” (Pg. 136)

This is where the mother in Joy Luck club hits her daughter and forces her to practice even though the daughter does not want to, and has no motivation to go and practice the piano at all. This is also true in the Tiger Mom article, when the mother hits her daughter and forces her to work and work at the piano until she gets the song right and plays it perfectly. She does not let her daughter go or have a break until she does what the mother asks her to do perfectly.

“Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.”

The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates

What is Amy Tan's purpose behind this introductory piece? What thematic elements, characterization, or plot foreshadowing connect it to the stories that follow, particularly "Rules of the Game" and "The Voice from the Wall"?

There are a lot of things that Amy Tan foreshadows in her introductory piece. In the introductory piece, a little girl is told by her mother to not do something, but the girl is too headstrong and does it anyway. Because of that, they girl got hurt and has to learn things the hard way instead of the easy way. In the story “Rules of the Game”, Waverly Jong acts like the girl in the introductory piece. In the beginning of the chapter, she does almost everything that her mother tells her to do, 

“The next week, I bit back my tongue as we entered the shop with the forbidden candies. When my mother finished shopping, she quietly plucked a small bag of plums from the rack and put it on the counter with the test of the items.(Pg 89). 

This was a time when she listened to her mom, and so she did not get hurt and she got treats for what she did. However, later on in the story, she disobeys her mom and things get bad for her. For example, in the later parts of the story, she decided to run away from home because she is so angry about how her mom controls everything that happens in her life. Later during the day, she eventually decided to come back come and meet her family again. 

“Standing there waiting for my punishment, I heard my mother speak in a dry voice. “we not concerning this girl. This girl not have concerning for us.” Nobody looked at me. Bone chopsticks clinked against the insides of the bowls being emptied into hungry mouths.” (Pg 100) 

However, the damage had already been done to her family relationships and she had to learn the hard way that there were some things, if they happen, then they will hurt your life and your relationships irrevocably, and your life will never be the same again.