An-mei was raised the Chinese way; she was taught to desire
nothing, to swallow other people's misery, and to eat her own
bitterness." Although she tried to raise her daughter in the exactly
opposite way, Rose still turned out the same way: passive and
unassertive. An-mei reasons that she, her mother, and Rose are all the
same, like stairs going the same way, because mother and daughter are
part of each other. Like Rose, An-mei was also her mother, her mother's
mother, and so on. An-mei realized this when her mother, at Popo's
deathbed, made soup containing her own flesh for Popo to drink so that
she might be cured. This was a sign of deepest respect that a daughter
could show to her mother, since they were of the same flesh.
When An-mei was a child, her mother told her a story about an old
turtle living in the pond and the magpies who fed on her mother's tears.
Her mother was trying to tell An-mei that it was useless to cry about
anything, to swallow her tears because they would only feed someone
else's joy. She taught An-mei to hide her feelings and pain as she had
hid her own suffering, to become passive and unprotesting like her.
However, An-mei's mother struck back against Wu Tsing and Second Wife
in her own way, by killing herself two days before the lunar new year
in order to give her daughter a better life and a stronger spirit by
destroying her own weak one. Because Wu Tsing was fearful of her mother's
ghost, at her funeral, he promised to revere her spirit as if she'd been First Wife,
and to raise An-mei and Syaudi as his honored children. On that day,
An-mei found the nerve to crush the fake pearl necklace in front of Second Wife,
defying her. On that day, she "learned to shout," and her
spirit became strong.
Like her mother, An-mei wanted Rose to have a strong spirit. She told
Rose to speak up, to stand up for herself, something that An-mei could
never have done if it weren't for her mother's suicide. However, Rose
did not listen to An-mei at first, and instead, she poured out her
tears to a psychiatrist, her sorrow feeding someone else's happiness.
But finally, she listened to her wise mother, An-mei, and her spirit
became strong.
