Jigsaw to Be Pieced
I remember the day when I picked up the first piece of this jigsaw and examined it with my long-lost curiosity. “…for a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, ‘ this feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.’ …” I was imagining what a loving feather it must be when I got a call from my mother.
“Really you should go to see a doctor.”
“Trust me, mom. It takes time. You know it’s not like an injection.” I answered, in the same unassailable tone.
“But… you are not a real practitioner after all. How can you test the home-make prescriptions on your own body?”
“No, that’s not the case.” I said lightheartedly, as always, trying to intensify my firmness and to lessen her worry. “I’m feeling better. I add more Bie Jia（鳖甲，一种中药材，清虚热）in today’s prescription and I shall be fine soon. …You know what? the amount of Qing Hao（青蒿，鳖甲的辅药）should not be too much when combined with biejia! I didn’t know that before! No wonder the tea failed to wash down my Nei Re（内热）…”
“All right all right.” My mother finally gave in, “Down drink your tea and see whether it works... But remember to keep an eye on the coating on your tongue（舌苔）and adapt your prescription !”Sure.
I drank down the tea later and I was fine the next day—not thanked God, but thanked to the magic Chinese herbs.
I begin with this mini drama, not to demonstrate what I’ve read out of The Joy Luck Club about mother-daughter relationship. Clearly as many readers see it, the mother-daughter bond is the most distinguished theme of this fiction. I can feel that from the overwhelming majority of sentences throughout the book. Some others focus on the conflict between Chinese culture and American culture. And yes, I can see their reflections from the very beginning of the story.
I shall be glad that I’m having a very good relationship with my mother. So I don’t feel as much strongly about Amy Tan’s delicate feelings. And the fact that I’ve never experienced culture shocks abroad saves me from feeling the frustration.
What fascinate me most are the scattering pieces of Chinese philosophy in The Joy Luck Club. Some are tales Chinese mothers used to tell their kids; some are teachings Chinese mothers inculcate in their kids as important life lessons. When pieced together, I suppose, they will surely make a work of stunning beauty.
I’m blessed to read this story at this point of my life, when I feel so strongly I am losing some important connections, being a foreign language major and a Chinese at the same time.
During the past two years, I have made English learning my priority. It’s not the kind of painful, struggling process you are likely to imagine, but a fascinating journey to a new world. In a sense I’m learning English for the sake of a promising future. In a larger sense, the opportunity of mastering a foreign language and getting familiar with a foreign culture is what I will be grateful to for the rest of my life, because it grants me the same good opportunity to learn to see things differently. So I have been feeling frustrated since the beginning of this semester, thinking that I’ll soon have much less access to the English language.
Somehow I got badly sick. I followed my doctors’ instruction and took several biopsies. Nothing happened except that my cough became severe every time when the weather changed. I decided to see a Chinese medicine practitioner. After the mysterious Wang-wen-wen-qie” process（望闻问切）, he said, “well, no big deal. You are just having Han Qi（寒气）inside your body.” You know what happened afterwards. Again it was the Chinese herbal teas that finally relieved me from the pain. Something shameful began to dawn on me, that this glorious culture receives my attention only when I am in need. Truth be told, I had had a good acquaintance with the traditional Chinese medicine in my family all these years. Yet I never had the sense that I should learn more.
Months ago I set up a blog to write English diary. Since then I seldom write a diary in English or in Chinese. The reason was awkwardly plain: my writing course teacher once said keeping a diary is a good way to improve English writing. I perfectly understood what he thought there was no need to say—write less in Chinese if you want to improve English writing. When I didn’t figure out how to write down what happened in English, I quit the whole diary thing. That day when I was handing my sick leave to our department head, I realized for the first time how ugly my Chinese handwriting had become. I once wrote an adorable hand.
It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem right. I am an English major at the moment, yet I’ve been a Chinese all along.
I became lost.
That was when I read into The Joy Luck Club. I felt I could understand perfectly what each sentence each tale was trying to convey. At first I was holding a pencil to make marks anywhere. Later, I sort of, could not tell which sentence was not a sentence of my own. I became Amy Tan reading her own diary.
And that was when all came back to me. The sense of identity. The sense of belonging. The belief in my beloved land and her remarkable philosophy.
Chinese immigrants in foreign lands are not the unique group of people who are going through a loss of their identity, their root. Foreign language learners who make foreign language the largest part of their routine life, when they begin to show great interest in the American Civil War without ever starting to learn something about the civil war in China in the 1940s, when they begin to quit writing something rather than writing it in Chinese, they are actually piecing up the fragments of foreign culture to make a visa to the “wonderland”. Owing to their unyielding effort, they succeed. They can now speak perfect American English, British English, French, German, Italian, whatever. They are now proud of their rich knowledge of foreign culture. They, too, are immigrants. But they are different from immigrants like Amy Tan. These immigrants were born to speak and write authentic Chinese. They were brought up being told what an awesome culture they had. They have just, consciously or unconsciously, chosen to leave it behind.
I pick up every piece of The Joy Luck Club jigsaw, appreciating every detail on it. When I finally piece them up, it must be a breathtaking masterpiece, just like the one I’ll no longer leave behind, as a Chinese foreign language learner.
Recommendations
1.detailed information about Amy Tan on Academy of Achievement:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0pro-1
2.BBC World Book Club—Amy Tan discusses The Joy Luck Club with readers around the world(video):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/ondemand/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_amy_tan_one?bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=1&size=au&bbwm=1
“Really you should go to see a doctor.”
“Trust me, mom. It takes time. You know it’s not like an injection.” I answered, in the same unassailable tone.
“But… you are not a real practitioner after all. How can you test the home-make prescriptions on your own body?”
“No, that’s not the case.” I said lightheartedly, as always, trying to intensify my firmness and to lessen her worry. “I’m feeling better. I add more Bie Jia（鳖甲，一种中药材，清虚热）in today’s prescription and I shall be fine soon. …You know what? the amount of Qing Hao（青蒿，鳖甲的辅药）should not be too much when combined with biejia! I didn’t know that before! No wonder the tea failed to wash down my Nei Re（内热）…”
“All right all right.” My mother finally gave in, “Down drink your tea and see whether it works... But remember to keep an eye on the coating on your tongue（舌苔）and adapt your prescription !”Sure.
I drank down the tea later and I was fine the next day—not thanked God, but thanked to the magic Chinese herbs.
I begin with this mini drama, not to demonstrate what I’ve read out of The Joy Luck Club about mother-daughter relationship. Clearly as many readers see it, the mother-daughter bond is the most distinguished theme of this fiction. I can feel that from the overwhelming majority of sentences throughout the book. Some others focus on the conflict between Chinese culture and American culture. And yes, I can see their reflections from the very beginning of the story.
I shall be glad that I’m having a very good relationship with my mother. So I don’t feel as much strongly about Amy Tan’s delicate feelings. And the fact that I’ve never experienced culture shocks abroad saves me from feeling the frustration.
What fascinate me most are the scattering pieces of Chinese philosophy in The Joy Luck Club. Some are tales Chinese mothers used to tell their kids; some are teachings Chinese mothers inculcate in their kids as important life lessons. When pieced together, I suppose, they will surely make a work of stunning beauty.
I’m blessed to read this story at this point of my life, when I feel so strongly I am losing some important connections, being a foreign language major and a Chinese at the same time.
During the past two years, I have made English learning my priority. It’s not the kind of painful, struggling process you are likely to imagine, but a fascinating journey to a new world. In a sense I’m learning English for the sake of a promising future. In a larger sense, the opportunity of mastering a foreign language and getting familiar with a foreign culture is what I will be grateful to for the rest of my life, because it grants me the same good opportunity to learn to see things differently. So I have been feeling frustrated since the beginning of this semester, thinking that I’ll soon have much less access to the English language.
Somehow I got badly sick. I followed my doctors’ instruction and took several biopsies. Nothing happened except that my cough became severe every time when the weather changed. I decided to see a Chinese medicine practitioner. After the mysterious Wang-wen-wen-qie” process（望闻问切）, he said, “well, no big deal. You are just having Han Qi（寒气）inside your body.” You know what happened afterwards. Again it was the Chinese herbal teas that finally relieved me from the pain. Something shameful began to dawn on me, that this glorious culture receives my attention only when I am in need. Truth be told, I had had a good acquaintance with the traditional Chinese medicine in my family all these years. Yet I never had the sense that I should learn more.
Months ago I set up a blog to write English diary. Since then I seldom write a diary in English or in Chinese. The reason was awkwardly plain: my writing course teacher once said keeping a diary is a good way to improve English writing. I perfectly understood what he thought there was no need to say—write less in Chinese if you want to improve English writing. When I didn’t figure out how to write down what happened in English, I quit the whole diary thing. That day when I was handing my sick leave to our department head, I realized for the first time how ugly my Chinese handwriting had become. I once wrote an adorable hand.
It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem right. I am an English major at the moment, yet I’ve been a Chinese all along.
I became lost.
That was when I read into The Joy Luck Club. I felt I could understand perfectly what each sentence each tale was trying to convey. At first I was holding a pencil to make marks anywhere. Later, I sort of, could not tell which sentence was not a sentence of my own. I became Amy Tan reading her own diary.
And that was when all came back to me. The sense of identity. The sense of belonging. The belief in my beloved land and her remarkable philosophy.
Chinese immigrants in foreign lands are not the unique group of people who are going through a loss of their identity, their root. Foreign language learners who make foreign language the largest part of their routine life, when they begin to show great interest in the American Civil War without ever starting to learn something about the civil war in China in the 1940s, when they begin to quit writing something rather than writing it in Chinese, they are actually piecing up the fragments of foreign culture to make a visa to the “wonderland”. Owing to their unyielding effort, they succeed. They can now speak perfect American English, British English, French, German, Italian, whatever. They are now proud of their rich knowledge of foreign culture. They, too, are immigrants. But they are different from immigrants like Amy Tan. These immigrants were born to speak and write authentic Chinese. They were brought up being told what an awesome culture they had. They have just, consciously or unconsciously, chosen to leave it behind.
I pick up every piece of The Joy Luck Club jigsaw, appreciating every detail on it. When I finally piece them up, it must be a breathtaking masterpiece, just like the one I’ll no longer leave behind, as a Chinese foreign language learner.
Recommendations
1.detailed information about Amy Tan on Academy of Achievement:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0pro-1
2.BBC World Book Club—Amy Tan discusses The Joy Luck Club with readers around the world(video):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/ondemand/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_amy_tan_one?bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=1&size=au&bbwm=1
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