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Jing-Mei (As a child (Had a poor relationship with mother (Never believed…

- - - - This emphasises Suyuan's confidence that Jing-Mei was destined for greatness which created a pressurising and serious environment for her growth as a child.
  - - - "I just played nonsense that sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage bags"(pg 137)
        
        This shows Jing-Mei's could-not-be-bothered attitude towards these piano lessons that her mother had forced onto her.
  - - - "I never thought my mother's Kweilin story as anything but a Chinese fairy tale." (Page 25)
        
        Jing mei doesn't take her mother's backstory, an experience that shaped her to be the way she is, seriously, which causes a rift between the two, with jingmei unable to connect to her Chinese roots and unable to connect to her mother.
  - - - This exemplifies
        how she has stopped living for someone else, and has started to live for her own self; her own expectations and ends
      - One Key moment that happened in Jing-Mei's life as a child, when "the tests got harder" and she started to give up on her prodigy side of her
- - - - "Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everybody else want best quality. You thinking different" (pg 208)
  - - - She doesn't believe that she had any ability or power to change her fate, to become better instead of constant failing. over time, this becomes part of her and she falls short of everything, believing that this has become a part of her as a person, not able to realise her dreams and expectations.
        
        However, this became determination for her own self as she began to understand that she as a person is one that no one should be able to change.
  - - - "Then I wish I wasn't your daughter. I wish you weren't my mother"(pg 142)
        
        Jing-Mei feels that she should not be her mother's daughter. Her mother is often, if not always, expecting the best of Jing-Mei, of which Jing-Mei believes that she is not able to meet, thus she becomes defiant and keeps falling short of her mother's expectations
      - "I didn't get straight As. I didn't become class president. I didn't get into Stanford. I dropped out of college"
        (pg 142)
        
        Jing-Mei doesn't become the "best" in life, the way that her mother expected and wished of her; exerting her own will to decide the path she would go to in life and in the end, getting the "worst" out of life.
  - - - Adamant about asserting her right to fall short of expectations
        and be who she was
- - - - Suyuan gives Jing-Mei a Jade Pendant
        
        Represents Mother's love and acceptance for Jing-Mei
        
        It demonstrates how Suyuan wanted Jing-Mei to realise her own worth and that she has finally accepted Jing-Mei for who she truly was, instead of forcing her to be the "prodigy" she had wanted. This represents how a mother's love can transcend above the dreams and expectations that they originally had.
        
        Though at first, Jing-Mei felt that "the whole effect looked wrong" (Page 197), she eventually decided to "wear that pendant every day" (Page 197). This shows that she has developed somewhat of an understanding towards her mother's words and has started to find out her own worth. Just like the jade that by "[wearing] it every day it will become more green", she begins to discover her own value.
        
        Realisation that her mother did love her
    - - One key moment that happened in Jing-Mei's life was when the aunties in the Joy Luck Club tasked to Jing-Mei to "see [her] sisters and tell them about [her] mother's death" (Page 40)
        
        This is an act of fulfilling her mother's wish which she was unable to fulfil by herself when she was alive.
        
        It serves as a way to resolve the final conflict remaining in Suyuan's life, one that she was never truly able to fulfil by herself. The act of her daughter resolving her conflict shows how a mother-daughter relationship transcend death. It also represents how a daughter can be driven by her mother's hopes and expectations.
        
        This is significant as it paved the way for Jing-Mei to act as a "bridge" between the two generations of mothers and daughters. She begins to discover the connection between mothers and daughters and how one's mother is part of her identity.
    - - One key moment that happened in Jing-Mei's life was when she realised the significance of the two songs, "Pleading Child" and "Perfectly Contented" and that "they were two halves of the same song" (Page 144)
        
        This shows how she has finally understood the lessons that Suyuan had tried to impart to Jing-Mei and is also a sign of the resolution to the conflict that Jing-Mei and Suyuan originally had over her "raised hopes and failed expectations", which thus shows how she has overcome all of her struggles to become the "prodigy" Suyuan wanted her to be.
- - - - She was never able to fulfil any of her mother's expectations for her as she believed that she had her rights to choose how she would lead her life and how she would do things