The Moon Lady
Ying-Ying St. Clair
This chapter is narrated by Ying-Ying St. Clair. She recalls a memory of when she was four years old, when she attented the Moon Festival with her family. She remembers the day clearly, yet she had forgotten it for many years. She expresses that she has kept so quiet her whole life that her daughter Lena doesn't even know her. The reason for her quietness, Ying-Ying says, is that she was scared of voicing selfish desires.Ying-Ying was hardly raised by her mother. She was mostly taken care of by her nurse, Amah. The day of the Moon Festival, Amah dressed Ying-Ying in a yellow silk outfit that her mother made for her. Amah told her that she would see the Moon Lady who granted wishes, but they must be secret wishes. If she voiced her wishes, they would become nothing more than selfish desires. Amah told Ying-Ying that it is wrong for a woman to voice her needs and that a girl can never ask, only listen. This bit of advice follows Ying-Ying for the rest of her life. Ying-Ying's family's party was held on a boat on a lake. Ying-Ying watches a chef gut fish for the feast, mesmerized, until she notices her nice, new outfit is covered in blood and scales. She tries to hide the fact that she ruined her outfit by smearing turtle blood all over it. Amah finds Ying-Ying, becomes angry, strips Ying-Ying to her undergarments and leaves to another part of the boat. Ying-Ying no longer has her pretty outfit which showed her social stature. During the festival, a firecracker goes off that startles Ying-Ying and causes her to fall overboard into the lake. Luckily, a fisherman caught Ying-Ying in his fishing net and hoisted her onto the boat. After looking for her family, the fisherman left her ashore, figuring her family would find her eventually. Ying-Ying is left cold, wet, and alone. So alone that she feels she has lost herself. She watches the play about the Moon Lady and secretly wishes she will be found.
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| The Lady of the Moon (Chang'e) |
This chapter concludes section one and, though it is short, holds much value. Ying-Ying is seemingly the weakest and most hopeless character of this story. She follows the advice of Amah her enitre life, which is to never voice her own desires, never ask for things, and follow only what she is told. This opresses Ying-Ying her whole life. By the end of this chapter, I reflected on the stories of section 1 all-together. Each story deals with maternal roles in China and role of Chinese women. Each woman told a story of how they learned they would be expected to sacrifice themselves for their husbands. An-Mei learned this because her mother, instead to sacrificing herself for her late husband, was disowned for choosing to become a concubine. Lindo suffered a marraige that seemed more like enslavement because she was punished for not fufiling her one and only duty: to have children. Ying-Ying spends a lifetime of holding her tounge because she was told at a young age to never voice her selfish desires. Yet even through all their suffering, each of the women do not reflect on their mothers with negativity. Rather, they respect their honoring of tradition and sacrifices. They do not view their mother's actions as unfeeling, rather as a teaching lesson. The patriarchal society they were born into would not soon change, and their mother's hardened up their daughters at a young age so they could adequetely deal with the suffering that was to come.
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