An-mei Hsu

Rose sees a flash back of her mother going to America with seven children. When Rose is fourteen she and her family go to the beach. An-mei's youngest child Bing, falls into the sea. An-mei begs God to return her son, and also throws her ring into the sea so that the Coiling Dragon who lives in the sea wont eat her son. After some time she gives up hope, and Rose's flash back ends.

An-mei Hsu

"And before I could cry to stop her, she put the necklace under her shoe and stepped on it."

pg. 231

"This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones."

pg. 48

"She did so many pretend-suicides, we servants began to suspect she no longer bothered to eat the opium. Her acting was potent enough."

pg. 235

Yan Chang tells An-mei about how the second wife controls Wu Tsing by doing a number of pretend suicides. An-mei hears how the Second wife manipulated An-mei's mother into becoming a concubine. An-mei's mother later bore Wu Tsing a son, which the second wife claims as her own. Two days before the lunar new year, An-mei mother commits suicide in order to give her children a better life. Wu Tsing, who is afraid of death, surrounded by angry house wives', claims that An-mei's mother was his first wife so that her spirit wouldnt come to haunt him, and that he would raise An-mei and her little brother as his honored children.

An-mei has a flash back that when she was nine, her mother came and took her away to Tienstin to serve as a concubine at a wealthy man's home named Wu Tsing. An- mei knows that her mother is not happy. Two weeks after they arrive the second wife gives An-mei a pearl necklace and she is in raptures. Later that evening, An-mei's mother warns her about the second wife's tricks. When she notices that An-mei isn't listening, she grabs the necklace and breaks one of the beads and that's when they find out there made out of glass. An-mei wears the necklace as a punishment, at the week, the mother gives her a ring.

1923

An-mei has a flashback

Popo gets ill. An -mei finds out that her mother is a concubine for some guy. When she comes to see the family, the relatives see her mother as a traitor. she has arrived to tend of her sick mother. The mother sees the scar and rubs it, leading An-mei to have a flash back with the hot pot of soup, her mother trying to take her away and that Popo nurses her back to health and the scar heals. The flash back ends. An-mei sees her mother prepare a soup, adds a piece of her flesh to help her mother and to nurse her because she cares

An-mei as a little girl

who lives with her uncle, aunt, her grandmother; Popo, and her little brother.

When An-mei was a little girl in China her grandmother told her that her mother was a ghost. Popo said this on purpose so that An-mei could forget her mother.

"Never say her name," she warned. " To say her name is to spit on your fathers grave."

pg. 43

"A ancestor of ours once stole water from a sacred well. Now the water is trying to steal back. We must sweeten the temper of the Coiling Dragon who lives in the sea. And then we must make him loosen his coils from Bing by giving him another treasure he can hide."

An-mei said that her mother had no choice, no control over her fate, but nowadays, women can control their own destiny.

pg. 129

Thaily Diez, Manuela Tampied and Faith Lemus

The Joy Luck Club