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1. "Cannot be helped," my mother
said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied that I had any Chinese
whatsoever below my skin. I was a sophomore at Galileo High in San Francisco,
and all my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they were. But my
mother had studied at a famous nursing school in Shanghai, and she said she knew
all about genetics. So there was no doubt in her mind, whether I agreed or not:
Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think
Chinese. "Someday you will see," said
my mother. "It is in your blood, waiting to be let go."
And when she said this, I saw myself transforming like a
werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously
into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my
mother did to embarrass me—haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a
toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale
pink are not good combinations for winter clothes.
2. "What were they named?" she asks. I listen
carefully. I had been planning on using just the familiar "Sister" to address
them both. But now I want to know how to pronounce their names.
"They have their father's surname, Wang," says my father. "And
their given names are Chwun Yu(躔殡)and Chwun Hwa(躔)."
"What do the names mean?" I ask.
"Ah." My father draws imaginary characters on the window. "One
means 'Spring Rain,' the other 'Spring Flower,' " he explains in English,
"because they born in the spring, and of course rain come before flower, same
order these girls are born. Your mother like a poet, don't you
think?"
I nod my head. I see Aiyi nod her head forward, too. But it
falls forward and stays there. She is breathing deeply, noisily. She
is asleep.
"And what does Ma's name mean?" I whisper.
" 'Suyuan(庠甏/昝),' " he says, writing more invisible characters on
the glass. "The way she write it in Chinese, it mean 'Long-Cherished Wish.'
Quite a fancy name, not so ordinary like flower name. See this first character,
it mean something like 'Forever Never Forgotten.' But there is another way to
write 'Suyuan.' Sound exactly the same, but the meaning is opposite." His finger
creates the brushstrokes of another character. "The first part look the same:
'Never Forgotten.(庠冤)' But the last part add to first part make the whole word mean
'Long-Held Grudge.' Your mother get angry with me, I tell her her name should be
Grudge." My father is looking at me, moist-eyed. "See, I
pretty clever, too, hah?" I nod, wishing I could find some way to comfort him. "And what about my
name," I ask, "what does 'Jing-mei' mean?" "Your name also special," he says. I wonder if any name in Chinese is
not something special. "'Jing' like excellent jing. Not just good, it's
something pure, essential, the best quality. Jing is good leftover stuff when
you take impurities out of something like gold, or rice, or salt. So what is
left—just pure essence. And 'Mei,' this is common mei, as in meimei, 'younger
sister.'
3. My sisters look at me, proudly. "Meimei
jandale," says one sister proudly to the other. "Little Sister has grown up." I
look at their faces again and I see no trace of my mother in them. Yet they
still look familiar. And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so
obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can
finally be let go.
My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughing and
wiping the tears from each other's eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and
my father hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager
to see what develops.
The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three
images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I
know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same
mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.
QUESTIONS
1. Why is the
opening scene of A Pair of Tickets— the train journey from Hong
Kong
to Guangzhou—
an appropriate setting for June May’s remark that she is “becoming
Chinese”
(par. 1)?
2. When June
May arrives in Guangzhou, what are some details that seem familiar
to
her, and what
are some that seem exotic? Why is she so preoccupied with comparing
China to
America?
3. June May
says that she “could never pass for true Chinese” (par. 35), yet by the
end
of the story
she has discovered “what part of [her] is Chinese” (par. 143). How
does
the meaning
of “Chinese” evolve throughout the story?
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