A Pair of Tickets

Amy Tan’s short story “A Pair of Tickets” is a tale about Embracing Multicultural Identity, processing The Complexity of Grief, and understanding the connection between Memory and Loss. As June May Woo, the protagonist and narrator of the story, travels to and through China with her father, Canning Woo, she grapples with her mixed identity as a Chinese American. The narrative begins with June May reflecting on how, growing up, she never identified with her Chinese heritage. The opening lines of the story read:

The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, My mother was right. I am becoming Chinese (293).

These opening lines reveal a major conflict within the narrator. June May further explains that her Caucasian friends in San Francisco agree that she is no more Chinese than they are; however, this journey through China is releasing something “familiar” and “old” that has been lurking in her blood, as June May’s mother Suyuan predicted, just “waiting to be let go” (293).

In the past, June May feared her Chinese identity, associating it with a “mutant tag of DNA” that could be “suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome” (293); however, through her journey in China, June May also experiences a personal journey that leads her to better understand, and ultimately embrace, her Chinese identity. Subtle internal shifts in the character can be noted as she moves from the border or periphery of the country in Hong Kong, a unique administrative region that is much more Westernized than the rest of the country, toward more inland regions like Shenzhen and Guangzhou (Canton), and finally arriving in Shanghai where she meets her half sisters.

One important signal that lets the reader know that June May is beginning to embrace her Chinese identity is her assessment of her American passport photo at the customs station in Guangzhou (Canton). June May worries “if the customs people will question whether I’m the same person as in the passport photo” (296). She goes on to detail the woman in the photograph wearing Western makeup, with “false eyelashes, eye shadow, and lip liner […] cheeks hollowed out by bronze blush” (296). In the customs station, she wears no makeup, and her hair is not styled as it is in the passport photo. The customs agent has no hesitation in stamping the passport, signaling to the reader that the woman in the photo looks very much like June May in person; however, June May perceives a change in herself. She does not identify with the American version of herself captured in that photograph. Yet, there are still limits to June May’s identification with her Chinese heritage. She says, “Even without makeup, I could never pass for true Chinese. I stand five-foot-six and my head pokes above the crowd so that I am eye level only with other tourists” (296). She explains that her height is rumored to have come from her grandfather, who may have had Mongol blood.

Another moment in the story that reveals June May’s journey toward accepting her Chinese identity happens in the hotel in Guangzhou. Her father tells the story of how Suyuan was separated from her twin daughters as they fled Kweilin. When he begins the story in English, June May interrupts her father, saying, “No, tell me in Chinese […] Really, I can understand” (302). Earlier in the story, June May notes that she can understand the Mandarin dialect that her parents speak, though she does not speak it herself. It is clear that her father is accustomed to speaking to June May in English, so her request that he tell the story of her mother’s painful separation from her children in Chinese shows the reader that June May is coming to embrace that part of her identity.

This is also the first time that June May has heard the story in its entirety. She explains that she has “heard parts of this story from my mother’s friends” (300), but she has never heard the whole story. Even Canning did not realize that his wife continued looking for her daughters after all these years. He explains, “Naturally, I did not discuss her daughters with her. I thought she was ashamed she had left them behind […] and I talk to Auntie Lindo, all the others. And then I knew. No shame in what she done. None” (301-02).

This revelation, that even Suyuan’s husband didn’t know the full story of how she came to be separated from her twins, highlights the sense of grief that Canning and June May have at the loss of a woman whom they didn’t fully know. Earlier in the story, June May confesses to Auntie Lindo that she is afraid her sisters will blame her for their mother’s death “because I didn’t appreciate her” (296). Only in their loss and grief do Canning and June May come to understand Suyuan more fully and appreciate the grief she must have felt all those years.

Ultimately, June May acknowledges her transformation. When she finally meets her sisters, she thinks, “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go” (306). This acceptance of “letting go” stands in contrast to June May’s earlier fear that her Chinese identity would release in her an undesirable set of characteristics she notes in her mother: “haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter clothes” (293).

When Canning takes a Polaroid of June May with her sisters on their first meeting, the photo helps June May see her mother again and anew. She thinks, “Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish” (306). Here June May is willing to see her mother in herself in a tender way, and Tan leaves the reader with the suggestion that this meeting with her sisters helps heal June May’s grief over her mother, whom she can now access through her sisters.