Language does, indeed, play an enormous role in Amy Tan's
short story, "A Pair of Tickets," from her collection The Joy Luck
Club.
When Jing-Mei meets their family in China,
they are separated to some extent by language. While her father and his great-aunt,
Aiyi, can speak Mandarin, the rest of the family speaks Cantonese. Jing-Mei herself
cannot speak either language, though she understands Mandarin moderately well. With this
first meeting, the exchange of information takes place using Mandarin, Cantonese and
English.
Because of Jing-Mei youthful resistance to all
things Chinese in terms of her own life, it is not surprising that she did not try
harder to learn the language of her parents, of her "people," and her
heritage.
When Jing-Mei begins to talk about her mother's
experience in China in 1944—when she was forced to leave her twin baby girls, and almost
died herself—questions come to this daughter that she had never thought to ask her
mother while she was alive. Jing-Mei asks about the names of her half-sisters, her
mother and herself, and the translations are beautiful, not only showing the loveliness
of the language, but also an elegance she may not have associated with her mother, the
knowledge of her mother's love for her twins, and a connection her mother felt between
her twins and Jing-Mei, who was born later.
The twins'
names mean "Spring Rain" and "Spring Flower" (the first twin to arrive, the "rain," and
the second twin, the "flower," which follows the "rain"). Jing-Mei's mother's name,
given to her by her mother, means "Long Cherished Wish" or "Forever
Never Forgotten." The meanings of these names provide a deeper dimension for Jing-Mei's
consideration as she seeks understanding of this new world she is
in.
When her father translates her own name, he tells
Jing-Mei that it, too, is special. "Jing" means something more than just good:
"something pure, essential, the best quality." "Mei" means younger sister. Jing-Mei
thinks on this:
My mother's long-cherished wish. Me, the younger
sister who was supposed to be the essence of the
others."
Her own self-doubt
makes her believe her mother must have been disappointed with
her.
The most striking reference to language is the pivotal
moment when Jing-Mei asks her father to tell her her mother's entire story, of her
running away. However, when he begins in English, Jing-Mei
insists:
'No,
tell me in Chinese,' I interrupt. 'Really, I can
understand.'
Somehow, it is
at this point, that Jing-Mei's resistance to her own connection to her Chinese heritage
melts. Now it is not a chore to listen to the Mandarin Chinese, but her wish, and it is
worth the extra effort to hear it and understand it in her parents' native
tongue.
When Jing-Mei and her sisters meet, the awkwardness
Jing-Mei had feared does not exist at all, and they embrace with love, while Jing-Mei
not only sees her mother's face in her daughters' faces, but senses her mother's
presence there as well.
Jing-Mei's father takes the
Polaroid picture of the three girls—as they study it, their faces appear before their
eyes, similar to their mother's. Perhaps this is when Jing-Mei's sense of being a
disappointment to her mom disappears as she finally sees the three of them through her
mother's eyes:
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.
That
wish, of course, was the three of her daughters reunited.
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