This chapter we are introduced to Jing-Mei Woo who serves as the focus of the main quest thought this story. Her quest is to find her two sisters who were abandoned in China when her mother was fleeing the Japanese invasion and was forced to leave them by the side of the road just to survive. This is told both powerfully and quickly with the simple fact of “You are not those babies” (Tan 26) being told to Jing-Mei. This delivery serves to hide her and to show her underlying resentment towards Jing-Mei’s inability to live up to the mother’s expectation of her. Which leads to misunderstandings like the fact of [[1 - Ref#^6d2705|“translate[ing]”]] meanings each changing what the other said in their head. This conflict between Jing-Mei and her mother is just a part of the struggles of the mothers with relating to their daughters. They worry that the things they hold dear do not matter to the daughters, and the daughters do not know the meaning of ‘joy luck’.