Joy Luck Club

By Amy Tan

在这部作品中，旅美华裔女作家谭恩美描写了四对华裔母女近百年来的生活经历。母亲一代因不同的原因离开中国，怀着各自的辛酸屈辱，飘洋过海踏上美利坚国土，并重新建立家庭，养育儿女。然而母亲的过去和故国的文化并未在新的国土上抹去，甚至影响到她们各自的女儿以及她们的婚姻，于是上演了一系列母女之间因代沟和文化差异引起的冲突。

喜福会是这些母亲们在美国生活后建立的一个麻将俱乐部，小说围绕着这个麻将俱乐部展开。琼曾跟母亲有很深的误会，母亲去世后，她替代母亲坐上了麻将桌。麻将桌上父母们讲述往事议论当下，在这里琼深深感受到了上一代的苦难和割断不了的亲情。为了实现母亲的遗愿，琼准备回中国寻找在抗战逃难时失散的两个双胞胎姐姐。

My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club. I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong（麻将） table has been empty since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.

“She had a new idea inside her head,” said my father.“But before it could come out of her mouth, the thought grew too big and burst（爆发）. It must have been a very bad idea.”

The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm（大脑动脉瘤）. And her friends at the Joy Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit: quickly and with un finished business left behind. My mother was supposed to host the next meeting of the Joy Luck Club.

The week before she died, she called me, full of pride,full of life: “Auntie Lin cooked red bean soup for Joy Luck.I’m going to cook black sesame-seed soup.”

“Don’t show off,” I said.

“It’s not showoff.” She said the two soups were almost the same, chabudwo（差不多）. Or maybe she said butong（不同）, not the same thing at all. It was one of those Chinese expressions that means the better half of mixed intentions. I can never remember things I didn’t understand in the first place.

My mother started the San Francisco version of the Joy Luck Club in 1949, two years before I was born.

作者谭恩美

《喜福会》电影剧照

Joy Luck was an idea my mother remembered from the days of her first marriage in Kweilin （桂林）, before the Japanese came. That’s why I think of Joy Luck as her Kweilin story. It was the story she would always tell me when she was bored, when there was nothing to do, when every bowl had been washed and the Formica（福美家家具塑料贴面） table had been wiped down twice, when my father sat reading the newspaper and smoking one Pall Mall cigarette （波迈牌香烟） after another, a warning not to disturb him. This is when my mother would take out a box of old ski sweaters sent to us by unseen relatives from Vancouver（温哥华）. She would snip（剪掉） the bottom of a sweater and pull out a kinky（扭结的）thread of yarn（纱线）, anchoring it to （把……固定在） a piece of cardboard. And as she began to roll with one sweeping rhythm, she would start her story. Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker,casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.

……

“I thought up Joy Luck on a summer night that was so hot even the moths fainted to the ground, their wings were so heavy with the damp heat. Every place was so crowded there was no room for fresh air. Unbearable smells from the sewers（排水沟） rose up to my second-story window and the stink（臭味）had nowhere else to go but into my nose. At all hours of the night and day, I heard screaming sounds. I didn’t know if it was a peasant slitting （切割） the throat of a runaway pig or an of ficer beating a half-dead peasant for lying in his way on the sidewalk. I didn’t go to the window to find out. What use would it have been? And that’s when I thought I needed something to do to help me move. ”

“My idea was to have a gathering of four women,one for each corner of my mah jong table. I knew which women I wanted to ask. They were all young like me, with wishful（渴望的）faces. One was an army of ficer’s wife, like myself. Another was a girl with very fine manners from a rich family in Shanghai. She had escaped with only a little money.And there was a girl from Nanking who had the blackest hair I have ever seen. She came from a low-class family, but she was pretty and pleasant and had married well, to an old man who died and left her with a better life. ”

“Each week one of us would host a party to raise money and to raise our spirits. The hostess had to serve special dyansyin（点心）foods to bring good fortune of all kinds—dumplings shaped like silver money ingots（钱锭）, long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons （怀男孩）, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life. ”

……

It is Auntie Ying who finally speaks. “I think your mother die with an important thought on her mind,” she says in halting（断断续续的，不流畅的）English. And then she begins to speak in Chinese, calmly, softly.

“Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother.She loved you very much, more than her own life. And that’s why you can understand why a mother like this could never forget her other daughters. She knew they were alive, and before she died she wanted to find her daughters in China.”

The babies in Kweilin, I think. I was not those babies.The babies in a sling（吊带袋）on her shoulder. Her other daughters. And now I feel as if I were in Kweilin amidst the bombing and I can see these babies lying on the side of the road, their red thumbs popped out of their mouths,screaming to be reclaimed（抱回去）. Somebody took them away. They’re safe. And now my mother’s left me forever,gone back to China to get these babies. I can barely hear Auntie Ying’s voice.

“She had searched for years, written letters back and forth,” says Auntie Ying. “And last year she got an address.She was going to tell your father soon. Aii-ya, what a shame.A lifetime of waiting.”

Auntie An-mei interrupts with an excited voice: “So your aunties and I, we wrote to this address,” she says. “We say that a certain party, your mother, want to meet another certain party. And this party write back to us. They are your sisters, Jing-mei.”

My sisters, I repeat to myself, saying these two words together for the first time.

Auntie An-mei is holding a sheet of paper as thin as wrapping tissue. In perfectly straight vertical（垂直的）rows I see Chinese characters written in blue fountainpen（钢笔） ink. A word is smudged（弄脏的）. A tear? I take the letter with shaking hands, marveling at how smart my sisters must be to be able to read and write Chinese.

The aunties are all smiling at me, as though I had been a dying person who has now miraculously recovered.Auntie Ying is handing me another envelope. Inside is a check made out to June Woo for $1,200. I can’t believe it.

“My sisters are sending me money?” I ask.

“No, no,” says Auntie Lin with her mock exasperated（激怒的） voice. “Every year we save our mah jong winnings for big banquet at fancy restaurant. Most times your mother win,so most is her money. We add just a little, so you can go Hong Kong, take a train to Shanghai, see your sisters. Besides, we all getting too rich, too fat.” she pats her stomach for proof.

“See my sisters,” I say numbly（麻木地）. I am awed（敬畏的） by this prospect, trying to imagine what I would see. And I am embarrassed by the end-of-the-yearbanquet lie my aunties have told to mask their generosity（慷慨）. I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother.

“You must see your sisters and tell them about your mother’s death,” says Auntie Ying. “But most important, you must tell them about her life. The mother they did not know,they must now know.”

“See my sisters, tell them about my mother,” I say,nodding. “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything. She was my mother.”

……

The aunties are looking at me as if I had become crazy right before their eyes.

“Not know your own mother?” cries Auntie An-mei with disbelief. “How can you say? Your mother is in your bones!”

“Tell them stories of your family here. How she became success,” offers Auntie Lin.

“Tell them stories she told you, lessons she taught, what you know about her mind that has become your mind,” says Auntie Ying. “You mother was a very smart lady.”

I hear more choruses of “Tell them, tell them” as each Auntie frantically（疯狂地）tries to think what should be passed on.

《喜福会》小说

《喜福会》电影海报

“Her kindness.”

“Her smartness.”

“Her dutiful nature to family.”

“Her hopes, things that matter to her.”

“The excellent dishes she cooked.”

“Imagine, a daughter not knowing her own mother!”

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant（无知的，愚昧的）, just as unmindful （漫不经心的，不留意的） of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured （断裂的，不连续的） English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed Americanborn minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist.They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.

“I will tell them everything,” I say simply, and the aunties look at me with doubtful faces.

“I will remember everything about her and tell them,”I say more firmly. And gradually, one by one, they smile and pat my hand. They still look troubled, as if something were out of balance. But they also look hopeful that what I say will become true. What more can they ask? What more can I promise?

They go back to eating their soft boiled peanuts,saying stories among themselves. They are young girls again, dreaming of good times in the past and good times yet to come. A brother from Ningbo（宁波）who makes his sister cry with joy when he returns nine thousand dollars plus interest. A youngest son whose stereo and TV repair business is so good he sends leftovers to China. A daughter whose babies are able to swim like fish in a fancy pool in Woodside. Such good stories. The best. They are the lucky ones.

And I am sitting at my mother’s place at the mah jong table, on the East, where things begin.