Two Kinds

Two Kinds Summary | Detailed Summary

Jing-Mei Woo's mother arrives in the United States in 1949 after losing her entire family including her first husband, their infant twin daughters, and her parents. Once she settles in America, she never looks back. She thinks that if you live in America, you can do and be anything you want. Not only can you open your own business, but you can buy a house and become rich.

When Jing-Mei is nine years old, her mother tells her that she can become a child prodigy. Initially, Jing-Mei's mother struggles to determine the type of prodigy her daughter can become. She attempts to transform Jing-Mei into a Chinese Shirley Temple. To accomplish this, she makes her daughter watch old movies and takes her to a beauty salon to get sausage curls. Instead of curls, the girl ends up with crinkly black frizz and has to have the hair cut off.

At first, Jing-Mei is just as excited as her mother about becoming a famous child prodigy. She imagines herself as Cinderella or a ballerina. She thinks that she will be perfect and her parents will adore her. Every night, she sits at the kitchen table while her mother shows her magazine articles about remarkable children. One story is about a three-year-old boy who knows all of the state capitals and the capitals of most European countries. Her mother tries to quiz her on capitals, but Jing-Mei doesn't know the answers. Her mother also tries to get her to do card tricks, stand on her head, predict the temperature in major cities, and remember passages from the bible.

After a while, Jing-Mei begins to hate seeing her mother's disappointment when she can not produce prodigy-like results. One night, while looking in the mirror, she sees her own ordinary face and starts to cry. As she cries, she sees something that she has never seen before: her face looks strong and defiant. At that moment, she decides she will never let her mother change her. From this point on, she becomes listless when her mother gives her the tests. Out of boredom, she starts to count the bellows of the foghorn in the bay. Instead of answering her mother's questions, she makes a game of counting the number of bellows she hears before her mother gives up.

A few months later, Jing-Mei's mother is watching The Ed Sullivan Show on television. She is surprised to see a little Chinese girl who is dressed like Shirley Temple and playing the piano. Jing-Mei is relieved because she knows that her family cannot afford a piano and a lot of sheet music. When her mother criticizes the little girl's abilities, Jing-Mei defends her, thinking that it won't affect her situation. Three days later, her mother tells Jing-Mei that she has signed her up for piano lessons and piano practice. A downstairs neighbor, Mr. Chong, has agreed to let her play the piano every day for two hours. In exchange, her mother will clean his apartment. When Jing-Mei hears the news, she feels as if she has been sent to hell. She screams at her mother, "Why don't you like me the way I am? I'm not a genius!" Her mother slaps her and says she is not asking Jing-Mei to be a genius. She only wants her to do her best. She then calls the girl ungrateful.

Jing-Mei secretly calls Mr. Chong "Old Chong" because of his decrepit appearance, but isn't sure how old he really is since he is not married and still lives with his mother. Jing-Mei has only met his mother once and says that was enough because the old woman smelled like a dirty baby and her fingers felt dead. Jing-Mei is surprised to learn that Old Chong is a retired music teacher, and doesn't teach anymore because he is deaf. During their lessons, he points to places in her book and shouts out commands. Then he tells her to repeat after him and plays a complicated piece of music. Jing-Mei starts by playing scales and then pounds out nonsense. Old Chong applauds and tells her that she is doing well but needs to learn to keep time. Jing-Mei figures out that Old Chong's eyesight is too poor to catch the wrong notes that she is playing. Old Chong puts her through all kinds of exercises, but she quickly learns that if she keeps a steady pace, he will not be able to hear or see her mistakes. Jing-Mei suspects that she can become a good pianist, but she never gives herself the chance. Instead, she focuses all of her energy on trying not to learn.

She practices like this for a year, until one morning she hears her mother and her mother's friend, Lindo Jong, bragging about their children. Jing-Mei has known Auntie Lindo's daughter Waverly her whole life and thinks she is snotty. Waverly has gained some recognition as Chinatown's youngest chess champion. Jing-Mei hears Auntie Lindo saying that Waverly has brought home so many trophies that she must spend the whole day cleaning them. Jing-Mei's mother, not to be outdone, says that her daughter can do nothing but think of her music. She claims the girl has natural talent that can not be stopped. Jing-Mei decides that she is going to put an end to her mother's pride. A few weeks later, Old Chong and her mother sign her up for a talent show. Her parents have saved up enough money to buy a used piano. Jing-Mei is going to perform a simple Schumann piece that sounds more difficult to play than it actually is. While practicing, she never listens to what she is playing. Instead, she spends her time daydreaming and practicing the curtsy she will give after her performance.

Her parents invite all of the couples from the Joy Luck Club to see her play. When it is Jing-Mei's turn, she confidently takes the stage, sure that she really is a prodigy. She sees her parents, Auntie Lindo, and Waverly in the audience. She starts to play and is so involved in thinking about how beautiful she looks in her white dress that she doesn't worry about how she sounds. She is surprised when she hits the first wrong note. Then she makes one mistake after another, but she can't stop playing. She waits for her hands to get back on track, like a train, but she only produces a strange jumble of sounds. When she stands up, she thinks that perhaps no one has noticed her mistakes. She curtsies, but when she looks up, the only person who is clapping is deaf Old Chong. Her mother looks stricken. The audience finally applauds weakly. As she leaves the stage, trying not to cry, she hears a boy tell his mother that her performance was awful. Jing-Mei feels her parents' shame as they sit through the rest of the show. Although they could have left during the intermission, pride keeps her mother and father in their seats. After the show, the families gather around and Waverly tells Jing-Mei matter-of-factly that she is not a genius like she is. Waverly's comment makes her angry, but her mother's expression devastates her. The woman wears a blank look as if she has lost something very important to her. When they get home, Jing-Mei expects her mother to yell at her, but her mother says nothing.

Jing-Mei assumes that she'll never have to play the piano again, but two days later her mother tells her when it is four o'clock and time to start practicing. Jing-Mei refuses to turn off the television. Several times, her mother warns her to get up. When the girl won't budge, she grabs Jing-Mei's arm and drags her to the piano. Jing-Mei sobs and says that her mother wants her to be something that she is not. She says that she will never be the type of daughter her mother wants. She screams that she wishes she had never been born and then, wanting to hurt her mother, screams that she wishes she was dead like her mother's first children.

"It was as if I had said the magic words, Alakazam! - and her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms when slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless."

Jing-Mei believes that she causes her mother many disappointments as the years go by. She doesn't get straight As, or get into Stanford, and she dropped out of college. Unlike her mother, she says she never believed she could be anything she wanted to be. She never asked her mother why her dreams were so big that they made failure certain. After their disagreement, her mother never mentioned the piano again. The lessons and practicing had stopped and piano remained untouched in the corner of the room.

When Jing-Mei is about to turn thirty, her mother offers to give her the piano for her birthday. Jing-Mei says that she probably can not play anymore, but her mother tells her that she picks things up quickly and still has natural talent. Jing-Mei denies her ability, but her mother insists that she could be a genius if she would only try. Jing-Mei doesn't take the piano. It is enough that her mother offered it. Not long afterwards, her mother dies. Jing-Mei hires a tuner to go to her parents' house and recondition the piano. She is surprised at how good it still sounds. She plays the Schumann piece that she had performed at the recital and it easily comes back to her. The song is called "Pleading Child." For the first time, she notices the piece next to it in the book is called "Perfectly Contented." She plays it without difficulty. After playing both pieces, she realizes that they are two halves of the same song.