Seeking high marks-the influence of geomantic omen on the creation of the novel The Joy Luck Club!

China Cultural Complex of Recommending Overseas Chinese —— Cultural Nostalgia in The Joy Luck Club

Zhang Dongmei

(School of Foreign Languages, Henan Agricultural University)

In the second half of the 20th century, cultural root-seeking became a worldwide trend. Many ethnic groups seek their own cultural roots from different fields, and so does China culture. In particular, overseas Chinese have devoted great enthusiasm to China culture. The most representative is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, a China writer. Since the novel The Joy Luck Club was published on 1989, there have been many comments and opinions, and experts and scholars have analyzed the work from different angles. In the novel, Amy Tan criticizes the cruelty and long-term influence of male centralism by portraying the female images of old China oppressed by feudal traditional culture. At the same time, through the image of "mother" in the novel, readers can also see the dilemma of the marginal China discourse system in the mutual recognition of "the other" and "the self". An important reason why Amy Tan's novels have unique charm in theme and art lies in the appeal of the mother image in her novels and the profound cultural connotation reflected by the relationship between mother and daughter. ③ The conflict between mother and daughter highlights the contradiction between the China youth who accept the strong culture (American culture) and the older generation who still stick to the weak culture (China culture) in American society; It is like a mirror, showing the conflict and integration of Chinese and American cultures. ⑤ With the acceleration of globalization, a new generation of China people with dual cultural identities began to show curiosity and interest in the weak local culture, and gained a new understanding of their own cultural identity. ⑥ They tell the story of China in English context, which to some extent reflects the overseas Chinese's acceptance of local culture and their cultural root-seeking complex.

As a second-generation Chinese, Amy Tan is deeply influenced by China's traditional culture in the constant conflict with her Chinese mother. Although Amy Tan claims to be an American, the China blood flowing in her body will never be erased. As the mother said to her daughter at the last moment of her life, "As a woman, she needs to get acquainted with her mother and never forget that our motherland is China." Therefore, Tan's literary creation is rooted in the story of China, showing a strong attachment to the ancient culture of China. The novel The Joy Luck Club is a typical story of China. Four Chinese mothers set up the Joy Luck Club before emigrating overseas. After arriving in the United States, they still maintained this activity with the characteristics of China's traditional culture to bring their spirits back. They insist on Chinese family education, such as asking their children to absolutely respect and obey their elders, so as to inherit and develop the culture of the motherland. Amy Tan, a Chinese-American writer, expresses her homesickness for the motherland in her novels and seeks spiritual and cultural roots in China folk stories and traditional customs.

First, the collision between spirit and flesh: a difficult cultural journey

1949 Amy Tan's parents immigrated from China to San Francisco. Amy Tan 65438-0952 was born in Oakland, California. Tan's childhood was full of gloom, and the hard life and poverty far from home made her mother's character very strange. Born in the United States, Amy Tan knows very little about her mother, so it is difficult to understand her mother, or even what kind of person she is. Therefore, the mother and daughter were always in conflict until her mother got Alzheimer's disease in her 80s, when her condition became more and more serious. Realizing that her mother's days were numbered, Tan had to silently make a wish to the Western God and the Oriental Buddha: As long as her mother can survive this, she will accompany her back to China. Mother miraculously recovered. In order to fulfill her wish and realize her mother's last wish, Tan accompanied her mother across the Pacific Ocean in 1987 and came to China to see where her mother once lived and understand what happened there. This is the first time Amy Tan has spent three whole weeks with her mother. Through this trip, she not only got to know her hometown she had never met before, but also got to know her mother's inner world again. More importantly, the identity problem that has been bothering her suddenly has an answer. So she regarded this trip to China as a turning point in her life. Tan explained: "This is to realize a dream. Before that, my mother was seriously ill, and I thought she was going to die. Before, my mother and I were not on good terms. Every time, when she talks about her experience in China, I always don't want to hear it. In order to protect my mother, I swear to God that as long as my mother is still alive, I will know her better. God bless, my mother survived, so in order to fulfill my wish, I accompanied her to China. This is a good opportunity to get to know myself and my mother. I stayed with my mother for three weeks, and in the past 20 years, we spent no more than a few hours together. The most important thing about that trip to China was that I finally realized that I was an American and a China. I found that I belonged to that period of history, which I didn't feel in American history. I like history. History has something to do with everything that happens. You can see change from it, that is, history, which is a testimony of behavior, purpose and consequences. " ⑧ "... I finally set foot on this country, and its geography, scenery and history are closely linked with me. I used to hate history when I was studying, but now I suddenly like it. I suddenly realized that many things in my personality that I didn't want to admit before were so important to me. "Pet-name ruby later, she said in an interview more than once, if she hadn't been to China, it would be impossible to feel something that goes deep into the soul, there would be no novel The Joy Luck Club with China as a distant background, and of course there would be no later novel The Bonesetter's Daughter. In Shanghai, Tan met her long-lost half-sister, and saw the house where her mother once lived, on Julu Road and Changle Road. Only in China did Amy Tan realize that she was so Americanized and felt like a foreigner in China. However, at the same time, she found that she still has a very China side: "... I think my mother is an amazing person created by a specific historical period and place. I want to know more about that period and that place and my mother. I want to know her history, so I came to the place where this history began. " ⑩

In the summer and autumn of 2006, due to the publication of the Chinese version of the new work "Saving the Sink Fish" in China, Amy Tan came to China for the first time 15, and came to the place where her mother once lived, and learned about her ancestors' life footprints. In a sense, isn't this Amy Tan's root-seeking journey?

Second, look for the cultural genes of "mother" and "mother"

Family is a social organization formed on the basis of consanguinity, in which consanguinity has an irreplaceable sacred position. "For China people, family is everything", {1 1} is an important cornerstone to maintain our national traditional culture, a link to continue the cultural spirit of China, and mother is the intermediary to continue the family. As the second generation of China people, Tan's understanding of China mainly comes from his mother's experience and narration. With her mother, Amy Tan formed a subjective understanding of China's tradition, etiquette and history. She has an umbilical cord in her heart and a mother who provides her with rich writing materials. Amy Tan once said, "Sometimes, the muse I create is my mother. This woman gave me DNA and gave me some views on the world. " {12} was born in Shanghai, and her mother deeply influenced her writing. She spent most of her life exploring the story of her mother and her family, exploring her mother's life experience and appreciating the traditional culture of the motherland, which became the source of Amy Tan's writing. In her later years, her mother told her a secret: she had three half-sisters in Chinese mainland. This secret deeply shocked Amy Tan and became the theme of her creation. 1987, Amy Tan wrote the story of grandma and mom into the novel The Joy Luck Club, and wrote on the title page: "Dedicated to mom, in memory of mom."

Under the oppression of traditional marriage and family in China, Amy Tan's mother finally made a painful choice to immigrate to the United States. Mother's marriage experience appeared in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. For example, Gong Linda recalled an arranged marriage when she was a child, and Xu Anmei recalled a series of unfortunate life experiences such as being cheated after her mother lost her husband. Amy Tan's mother was actually married twice. Her ex-husband who punched and kicked her lives in China with his three daughters. In the novel, she has a pair of half sisters in Shanghai, China. In real life, Amy Tan dreamed that her mother picked up her half-sister and kicked her out, because those children from China could speak Chinese and listened to her mother's reprimand. This reality vividly appeared in The Joy Luck Club. This exquisite mother imposed her will on her daughter, hoping that her daughter would become a genius like Shirley Temple. In the face of her daughter's resistance, the mother shouted in Chinese. { 13}

Home is the root. The Joy Luck Club revolves around four mothers and daughters who immigrated to the United States, and the family is the main activity place for the story characters. It is the author's personal growth history and his mother's painful family history, and it is the excavation of memories. The lines between the lines are full of lingering maternal feelings for China culture, which naturally reveals the psychological process of Chinese groups seeking the root of maternal culture. It is not difficult to see that this is a family root-seeking story based on mother.

Confucian culture, which has a great influence on China's traditional culture, attaches great importance to group consciousness and finds its own sense of belonging in the group. China people living abroad need groups that can depend on each other, help each other and care for each other, so as to seek spiritual belonging. The "Joy Luck Club" in the novel is the embodiment of the interdependence of the four families in China. Fourth Mother has always regarded herself as a native of China. They meet regularly, play Chinese mahjong, eat Chinese food, speak half broken English and half their respective dialects or Putonghua, abide by the tradition of China and comfort their floating hearts. Under the special social and historical background of the United States at that time, they tried their best to keep their roots. "I have always wanted to train my children to adapt to the American environment, but retain the temperament of China." I use China's virtue to educate my daughter, "How to obey my parents, listen to my mother, keep a straight face in everything, don't be sharp-edged, the easy things are not worth pursuing, we should recognize our true values and let ourselves strive for perfection ..." {14} Mothers try to protect their values and try to influence their daughters with their past sufferings, so that the cultural values of the motherland can be continued. Although they are overseas, they are closely linked to the motherland and try their best to pass on the cultural traditions of the motherland from generation to generation, so as to comfort their wandering hearts and realize refuge. This is a conversion and attachment to China culture, a manifestation of the will to survive, and an effort to eliminate strangeness and insecurity in a heterogeneous environment, thus building a spiritual home {15}.

The daughters in the novel finally realized the return of their hearts. In the fable at the beginning of the novel, the old woman hopes: "When I come to America, I will have a daughter who will be like me. However, she doesn't have to look into her husband's eyes and live with a low eyebrow. She was born in the United States, and I will let her speak beautiful American English without being looked down upon. " {16} The mother has always loved her daughter in the traditional way of China, but the daughter has tried her best to get rid of the tradition of China and the influence of her mother. But the daughters didn't find so-called happiness in America. After a series of failures, they began to get to know their mother again and understand their good intentions. Wu Jingmei finally decided to go back to Shanghai to recognize her long-lost half-sister and comfort her mother's soul in heaven; Ruth, who usually turns a deaf ear to her mother's words, recognized her mother's advice in the marriage crisis and took active actions to safeguard her own interests. Lively, who always hated his mother's "showing off", learned "an invisible force" from her mother and realized the stupidity of fighting with her. Lena changed from denying to appreciating her mother's ability to predict the future and plan ahead. Finally, the daughters returned to their mother in different ways, and found the strength of life, their roots and their spiritual home from their mother's "China suffering".

Third, pursue tradition and convert to cultural tradition.

China's traditional Confucian culture especially emphasizes "returning leaves to their roots", which strengthens the centripetal force of overseas Chinese towards the motherland and the concept of hometown in China people's bones. In their eyes, hometown will always be hometown, and other places will always be other places, not the final harbor where their hearts are anchored. Although Amy Tan did not live in the mother culture environment, the Confucianism she came into contact with was unique in the Chinese community. Although she has always only admitted that she is an American, there is China's blood in her bones; Although it is impossible for her to live in China subjectively and objectively, her roots are in China. The writing style of The Joy Luck Club, with the east as the starting point and the east as the end point, embodies the author's idea of "returning to the original".

The mothers of the Joy Luck Club follow the ancient oriental tradition. They want their children to understand and accept their mothers, so as to find and admit the roots in their own blood. In order to squeeze into the mainstream white American society, daughters always try to cover up the China in their natural blood. However, although they fully accepted American culture, they could not change their China ancestry. In this way, they have the same sense of identity crisis as their mothers, and live in confusion about their identity all day. This confusion of "who am I" and the sense of identity crisis that leads to their split personality make them depressed, bored and confused. After a long stalemate, mothers let their daughters re-examine their mothers, understand their past and understand their present through "telling stories" at the right time and occasion. Daughters finally understand that only when they finally accept their ancestral culture and China ancestry can they build a complete and unified cultural identity and face life with a positive attitude. As a result, daughters began to look for things related to their mothers and began to accept their mothers and the oriental culture they represented. At the end of the story, Wu's exquisite trip to the mainland symbolizes his understanding and acceptance of his mother and oriental culture, and his acceptance of "roots". Wu Linglong felt greatly lost because of her mother's death. She felt like a rootless duckweed. In the last chapter of the novel, Half-step, Wu Linglong finally returned to China instead of her mother to visit a pair of twin sisters who have never met before. When the train started to enter Shenzhen from Hongkong, Linglong realized that she had "become" a China native:

My blood vessels are beating, and I feel a deep pain from the depths of the bone marrow. I think my mother is right. I think only in this way can I become a China person completely. You will feel it one day, my mother once said. This feeling melts in your blood, waiting for the moment of boiling. { 17}

When I set foot on the land of my motherland beautifully, I saw my sister China, and at the same time, I also saw "an indescribable kindness and affection. I finally saw my China blood. Oh, this is my home. The gene that melted in my blood, China's gene, finally began to boil after so many years. " {18} From the snapshots of the three sisters, they saw that their mother was "surprised to see that her dream began to come true ...", which made her feel that she and her sister were the continuation of her mother's blood and the root of culture.

Amy Lin, a famous Asian American literary scholar, once commented on The Joy Luck Club: "The delicate loss of mother has gradually fled to the point where all daughters have lost their motherland." {19} Wu's exquisite trip to China and her sister China, who can replace her mother, obviously symbolize her recognition of her cultural roots. As Wu Jiuyuan's mother said, "The East is the origin of everything, the place where the sun rises and the origin of the wind direction." {20} This is the place where life begins, where leaves take root, and where the soul belongs. The novel ends in the way of "return", realizing the mother's dream of "returning to the roots".

"Literature is a subsystem of culture, and the development of literature is ultimately subject to the mode of culture" {2 1}. For China writers who live in the context of language, culture and history, although they can only understand China in the cultural sense, the cultures of China and China are the main spiritual resources and cultural wealth for them to survive in foreign countries and the inexhaustible source of their creation. China's traditional culture "is the sum total of spiritual achievements handed down from China's history and refined by thinkers, which in turn affects the whole society's way of thinking, value orientation, national character, ethical concept, ideal personality and aesthetic taste." {22} Amy Tan, a descendant of Chinese, saw the irreplaceable advantages of her cultural communication. At the Joy Luck Club, she boldly planted symbols representing China's traditional culture and customs, such as mahjong, red candle, concubinage, cheongsam, and the goddess Chang 'e of the moon. , and involves China's traditional Feng Shui thoughts, eating habits, holiday customs, etiquette and so on. She tells the story of China in the western context, using the traditional culture and folk customs of China.

Mahjong is a "specialty" of China traditional culture, and it is still a very popular recreational activity in China. The mothers in The Joy Luck Club only use mahjong to cover up the panic caused by the war and the loneliness, helplessness and even despair of drifting overseas. As Wu Suyuan said: "We are not insensitive and turn a blind eye to suffering. We are also in fear, and the war has left us an unforgettable page. What is disappointment? The so-called disappointment is an expectation of something that has long since ceased to exist, expecting its return, or unnecessarily prolonging an unbearable torture. " {23}

Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional folk festival in China. As early as the Three Dynasties, China had the custom of "Twilight in Autumn". The moon at night is to worship the moon god. In the Zhou Dynasty, every Mid-Autumn Festival night, activities to welcome the cold and offer sacrifices to the moon were held. In the Tang Dynasty, it was quite popular to enjoy and play with the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival. In the Southern Song Dynasty, people gave mooncakes to each other, which meant reunion. In the evening, there are activities such as enjoying the moon and swimming in the lake. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the custom of Mid-Autumn Festival has become more popular. Nowadays, the custom of playing under the moon is far less popular than in the old days. However, feasting and enjoying the moon are still very popular. People drink to pray for the moon, celebrate a better life, or wish their distant relatives health and happiness. In the novel, Amy Tan used a long space to describe in detail the festive atmosphere of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which symbolizes reunion: it embodies the family's leisurely breakfast; Father and uncle recite poems to explain words; Children enjoy delicious moon cakes; The whole family went to Taihu Lake by rickshaw, boarded a boat to enjoy the moon, ate a boat banquet, worshipped the goddess of the moon and so on. How can such a scene not arouse the homesickness of overseas Chinese during the festival? While enjoying the moon on a cruise ship in Taihu Lake, Yingying was rescued from the water. On her way home, she met a shadow play performance. A graceful woman appeared on the curtain. She rang the pipa and sang: My concubine lives in the middle of the month and in the sun, and the sun and the moon are relatively far away. I miss you every day, but I can only get together on the Mid-Autumn Festival. Now, Yingying, who is already old, clearly remembers the Mid-Autumn Festival that year. "She re-experienced innocence, frankness, anxiety, curiosity, terror and loneliness, and in this way, she lost herself." {24} Isn't it the same for overseas Chinese in reality?

The novel also uses a lot of space to render the China folk culture embodied in Chinese mothers-Feng Shui thoughts, Yin and Yang elements, divination and so on. When Lena was ten years old, her father became the sales manager of the clothing factory where she worked. The whole family moved out of Auckland's messy basement and bought an apartment on a hill on the north shore of San Francisco Bay, an Italian-inhabited area. This is a good thing, but Yingying's mother, who can predict the bad omen in everything, is not satisfied with her new house. First, the new house cannot "hide the wind and gather gas." If the house is built on a hillside, the yin is too heavy, which will lead to the imbalance between yin and yang and lead to disaster, so she is worried, "This house seems to be too narrow and too high. A strong wind blowing from the top of the mountain rushed all your strength back and offset it. Therefore, it is difficult for you to develop. " Second, the new house is "poorly ventilated". When you open a narrow door with glass embedded in it, it will give off a musty smell. "The aisle is too narrow, just like getting stuck in the throat." Lena's narrow aisle is not smooth, which is not conducive to the entry of "local gas" and the inflow of wealth. Third, the interior design of the new house is guilty of "fire and water are incompatible". Lena's "kitchen faces the bathroom, so all the hard-earned things are washed away by the toilet tank." {25} According to the concept of Yin and Yang, the toilet is dominated by Yin, and the kitchen is dominated by Yang. The bathroom is a place with heavy yin, which may wash away the yang or exuberance of the kitchen. Therefore, Yingying's mother thinks that the kitchen and bathroom location of the new house violates the principle of geomantic omen, so all the values will be washed away. The fear brought by the bad feng shui of the new house makes Yingying worry all the time. During a shopping trip a week after they moved into their new house, Yingying and her mother met a crazy person in China. He regarded Yingying as the "Su Sihuang" and they were frightened. Mother thinks this is a sign of bad feng shui in the new house. After moving into the new house for more than a week, she began to make up for the imbalance of the new house environment. First of all, move a large round mirror in the living room from the wall facing the front door to the wall next to the sofa {26} in order to make the local gas be absorbed by itself smoothly, so that the turbid "gas" and Yin gas can be discharged smoothly, so that Yin and Yang Can can be balanced and the gas can flow in the room. Then, "she began to move all the furniture: sofa, chair, coffee table, and a Chinese painting with goldfish." {27} Through story readers, it is not difficult to see the hardships and helplessness of overseas Chinese. Faced with the hardships of life, mothers have to turn to the culture of their motherland to solve them.

Confucian culture especially emphasizes "filial piety", but in the family, China people often have a strong sense of "filial piety". Filial piety, as a symbol of respect for adoptive parents and ancestors, is a traditional virtue of China people and the mother of family spirit, which maintains the harmony of the whole family. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan moved out of the scene of filial piety in ancient China. When her grandmother was seriously ill, Xu Anmei saw "Mother cut off a piece of meat on her arm ... Mother put the piece of meat cut off on her arm into the medicine soup, hoping to do her last filial piety for her mother with unknown magic." {28} The daughter was so filial to her mother that she rewarded her "parents who suffered greatly from skin and flesh". This filial piety has been deeply imprinted in the bone marrow, although it is an ignorant filial piety and an irrational filial piety.

China cultural tradition is the internal identity symbol and spiritual sustenance of China people. Without this symbol and sustenance, they will become people without cultural homes and duckweeds without roots. The Joy Luck Club is a work with a strong flavor of China traditional culture, which shows the author's pursuit of self-belonging, including a faint nostalgia for the national root culture.

Precautions:

① Liu Yi: The Joy Luck Club: Subversion and Deconstruction of Androcentrism, Journal of Southeast University, No.4, 2005.

② Aihua Ma: the meaning of "the other" from the marginal perspective —— The image of "mother" in Amy Tan's novels, World Chinese Literature Forum, No.3, 2002.

③ Cheng Aimin: On the image of mother and the cultural connotation of mother-daughter relationship in Amy Tan's novels, Journal of Nanjing Normal University No.4, 200 1.

④ Liang and Jingchu: the spiritual world of the dreamer —— An analysis of the cultural conflict in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Journal of University of Science and Technology Beijing No.4, 200 1.

⑤ Huang Yulan: A Mirror of Cultural Conflict and Integration between China and America, Exploration, No.8, 2005.

⑥ Hu Yamin: The New Role of Immigrants —— On the New Cognition of China People's Cultural Identity in The Joy Luck Club, Foreign Literature No.3, 200 1.

All landowners southern weekend, April 2, 2007.

⑧ ⑨ ⑩ Bund Pictorial April 5, 2007.

{1 1} Li: zhina Zai, Yilin Press, 2004, p. 245.

{12} Amy Tan. The opposite of fate: the book of meditation. New york: Putnam's Son, 2003, p. 250.

{ 13} { 14} { 16} { 17} { 18} {20} {23} {24} {25} {27} {28} [

{15} Jin Dai: At the Turn of the Century: Novel and Cultural Interpretation, Guangdong People's Publishing House, 2002, p. 475.

{19} Amy Ling. Chinese women writers. New york: Pegmont Press. 1990，P 132。

{2 1} Leng: the tension between literature and culture, Press, 2002, p. 2.

(22) Li Zonggui: "An Introduction to China Traditional Culture", Guangdong People's Publishing House, 2003, p. 14.

Original: Jianghan Forum, No.9, 2008

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