Waiting Between the Trees

Tiger Lady

Focusing on: Waiting Between the Trees

This chapter gave me a much different view of Ying-Ying compared to how she was portrayed in the Moon Lady chapter. Despite the fact that both chapters described her as a innocent, playful child, in this chapter, she was also shown to have the ability to "[know] a thing before it [happened]."Her gift was not limitless however, for though she knew what would happen, she was unable to stop it...One scene that made me want to gag was the scene in which Ying-Ying's first husband told her to "cut the watermelon." I felt sorry for Ying-Ying who had to both marry, and watch this perverted jerk leave her for another woman. On the other hand, Ying-Ying's relationship with Mister St.Clair caused me to have a totally different reaction. When the book described that he was "anxious and eager" whenever he gave her cheap gifts, I found it really cute, despite his ignorance of Ying-Ying's childhood riches. I also found it really sweet when it was said that he "rubbed [her] feet," "praised the food that [Ying-Ying] cooked," and basically treated her like a queen...One scene that made me depressed was when Ying-Ying gave up her chi and let St.Clair marry her. Though I had nothing against Mister St.Clair, I felt that Ying-Ying had more potential and power.

One adjective to describe the relationship between Ying-Ying and Lena is "unseen." As Ying-Ying said herself, "her eyes will see nothing...where I am waiting between the trees." Though she uses symbolic language, what Ying-Ying is trying to say is pretty clear. She is basically expressing the fact that Lena cannot see her because she has no chi, or in other words, spirit, a will to fight back and challenge her circumstances. Another reason why Lena is unable to "see" her mother is because she has become too Americanized. As described in the scene when Lena offers her mother the "guestroom" instead of the master bedroom, Ying-Ying is described as being disappointed and saddened that Lena's " wisdom is like a bottomless pond.[Someone may] throw stones in [but] they sink into the darkness and dissolve." Lena's wisdom can be expressed to mean her overall wisdom or her knowledge of the Chinese culture. Ying-Ying is "unseen" to Lena in that she had once lost given up her defense, become a "ghost", and also because Lena is oblivious to her Chinese background, which is what makes up Ying-Ying's identity.

One writing technique that Amy Tan used in this chapter was metaphor. An example of this was shown on page 285 in which Tan wrote, "Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees." Even though she had not used this direct comparision in the beginning of the story, she turned the phrase "I was born in the year of the tiger," into Ying-Ying literally becoming a tiger. Tan's use of metaphor helped create more emotion, more specifically sorrow. Instead of simplying saying that Ying-Ying had lost her chi, she said that a tiger, Ying-Ying, had "let [herself] become a wounded animal. [She] let the hunter come and turn [her] into a tiger ghost." The image of a tiger becoming pale and ill created more sadness in my heart, in that it was easier for me to imagine a tiger losing its strength then a woman losing hers strength. I believe that her choice of portraying Ying-Ying as a tiger was very useful in that both were extremely powerful, fearless, but had become vulnerable and weak because of the "hunters," or the unbearable difficulties in life.

One thing that I learned about Chinese culture, that was mentioned in previous chapters was that "quality" was the most important factor to the Chinese people. When Lena proudly escorted her mother to the guestroom, Ying-Ying was displeased because her thoughts were not the same as those of her Americanized daughter. She thought differently from her daughter in that she believed that "the guest bedroom [was] the best bedroom," the master bedroom. Their contrasting views showed how this aspect was a part of the Chinese custom.