

Jing's name ( traditional Chinese: 靜 ? simplified Chinese: 静 pinyin: jìng) means "calm", "quiet" and "still" this is in stark contrast with her personality, while also in reference to her future ability.Jing wears her version of a homemade military uniform, complete with hand-made medals and badges. While trying to understand the reasons for her mother wanting Jing-Mei to be great, Jing-Mei discovers the real meaning of two kinds. Her chi power specifically allows her to heal others and to pacify others of aggression. There are many reasons causing the conflicts among Jing mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan Woo, such as the different attitudes of Jing mei and her mother towards American dream and their generation gap. Jing has White Tiger chi and is a master in modified tiger style kung fu. Although she has a hard exterior, and a one-woman-army mentality, she learns to rely on others and trust her friends. She's lovably odd and most likely to say something completely out of left field, and sometimes her offbeat way of looking at the world can even come in handy.

The relationship of Suyuan and Jing-mei can be described as loving but distant and aloof. Jing has the heart of a soldier and is always on alert, ready for any situation. This fight ended Suyuan demanding Jing-mei play piano. Jing absorbs the chi of the White Tiger, a healing chi that also teaches her the power of kindness over aggression.


One message of Tan’s ‘Two Kinds’ is that you cannot force someone to be free: they have to embrace it and define it in their own way, otherwise it is not worthy of being called freedom.Jing is a little offbeat and unconventional, but these qualities can come in handy for a kung fu warrior. See Joy Luck Club, The Johnny, character in Food for All His Dead, 3536 Loewen, James W., 6 Lone. Except, of course, Jing-mei doesn’t want them, because they’re not her ambitions. See also Typical American Jing-Mei, character. An-mei applies her nengkan to cooking, to starting a life in America and raising seven children there, and even searching for her drowned son, Bing.
Jing mei personality free#
Instead, she had to live out her own thwarted ambitions through someone who is, now, free to pursue them. One of An-mei’s strongest personality traits is her belief in her nengkan her personal ability to accomplish anything she sets her mind to. Her journey mirrors her mother’s, oddly, in that they have both had to struggle out of situations where they were not allowed to be free, but the difference is that Jing-mei embraces her freedom whereas her mother didn’t know what to do with hers. Jing-mei realises that doing your best and making yourself proud is the key to a happy life: trying to win talent shows or outdo other people (or, worse, other people’s children through your own child) is only going to leave you trapped in a perpetual cycle of goal-chasing and ambition-pursuing.Īnd yet, Amy Tan has Jing-mei point out that the latter was dependent on the former: in order to be fully content as an adult, she had to plead and fight for her own independence while growing up. These are the ‘Two Kinds’ of person she has been: she had to struggle slowly through the years as a pleading child longing for independence and the right to choose what she pursued, but now she has reached adulthood, she is indeed perfectly contented, in a way that her mother never could be. Yet Tan’s title ‘Two Kinds’ does itself have two kinds of meaning: it can also refer to the final section of the story, in which Jing-mei discovers the other piece of music from the talent show, and realises – in a moment laden (perhaps too conveniently) with symbolism – that ‘Pleading Child’ is complemented by ‘Perfectly Contented’. Ironically, her mother has fled a totalitarian state only to set up a petty tyrannical regime in her own home (you can take the girl out of Communism, but …). The story’s title, ‘Two Kinds’, is ostensibly explained by the mother’s comment to her daughter that there are two kinds of daughter: obedient and free-thinking. She wants an opportunity to confront her mother and air her frustration at having to live out her mother’s own fantasies by becoming a child prodigy. It is significant that, after the talent show, Jing-mei is disappointed that her mother doesn’t shout angrily at her when they get home. 3: The Synchronized Intellect Nation, SIN: Yu Mei-ren, Red Hare. This becomes obvious when Jing-mei overhears her mother boasting to a friend, Lindo Jong, about her daughter’s natural talent for music, and she realises that her mother is only making her learn the piano so she can brag to other mothers about how talented her daughter is. both Jing Ke and to a lesser extent Spartacus for S.I.N., Sessyoin Kiara.
