Short Story Jing Mia Woo

Jing Mia Woo is a thirty-six-year-old Chinese woman. The story starts off by telling us that she is on a train from the Hong Kong border to Shenzhen. When she is going through the border of Hong Kong she talks about how she is feeling she says, “I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar pain” (263). Before her journey from San Francisco to China had begun Jing Mia Woo talks about the conversations she would have with her mother. She told her mother that there was no part of her that was Chinese. Her mother told her, “someday you will see, it’s in your blood” (263). She talks about the Chinese behaviors her mother had that she did not see in herself such as, “haggling

The next day she and her father are headed to Shanghai where she will meet her sisters. She has finally met her sisters, Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa. Her father tells her that their names mean Spring rain and Spring flower. Jing name, Mei also means something that she was not aware of. Her father told her it meant the youngest sister. She had never questioned what her name meant and now it has come together that her mother 's dreams were for all three of her daughters to be together. Jing now realizes that she has upset her mother by not accepting herself as being Chinese in the beginning. Now Jing realizes her Chinese roots. At the end, the three sisters take a picture together and Jing says, Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished moment” (277). During Jing’s pilgrimage, she gets to learn more about her family and culture. She learns that China is not the way that it used to be before such as the different city names. She also learns there are other ways of communicating even if she can’t speak the same language. She finally learns that she is of Chinese blood and no matter how much you deny it you will see it in yourself later on as her mother had once told her. In the beginning, she didn’t see herself as being Chinese and didn’t think much about her name, but she later learns the deeper meaning of her name and the story behind it makes her appreciate her family and