The Joy Luck Club Read Online Free PDF

our hands, casting tiles, picking up others at an easy, comfortable pace. The Joy Luck aunties begin to make small talk, not really listening to each other. They speak in their special language, half in broken English, half in their own Chinese dialect. Auntie Ying mentions she bought yarn at half price, somewhere out in the avenues. Auntie An-mei brags about a sweater she made for her daughter Ruth’s new baby. “She thought it was store-bought,” she says proudly.
    Auntie Lin explains how mad she got at a store clerk who refused to let her return a skirt with a broken zipper. “I was chiszle,” she says, still fuming, “mad to death.”
    â€œBut Lindo, you are still with us. You didn’t die,” teases Auntie Ying, and then as she laughs Auntie Lin says ‘ Pung! ’ and ‘ Mah jong!’ and then spreads her tiles out, laughing back at Auntie Ying while counting up her points. We start washing tiles again and it grows quiet. I’m getting bored and sleepy.
    â€œOh, I have a story,” says Auntie Ying loudly, startling everybody. Auntie Ying has always been the weird auntie, someone lost in her own world. My mother used to say, “Auntie Ying is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.”
    â€œPolice arrested Mrs. Emerson’s son last weekend,” Auntie Ying says in a way that sounds as if she were proud to be the first with this big news. “Mrs. Chan told me at church. Too many TV set found in his car.”
    Auntie Lin quickly says, “Aii-ya, Mrs. Emerson good lady,” meaning Mrs. Emerson didn’t deserve such a terrible son. But now I see this is also said for the benefit of Auntie An-mei, whose own youngest son was arrested two years ago for selling stolen car stereos. Auntie An-mei is rubbing her tile carefully before discarding it. She looks pained.
    â€œEverybody has TVs in China now,” says Auntie Lin, changing the subject. “Our family there all has TV sets—not just black-and-white, but color and remote! They have everything. So when we asked them what we should buy them, they said nothing, it was enough that we would come to visit them. But we bought them different things anyway, VCR and Sony Walkman for the kids. They said, No, don’t give it to us, but I think they liked it.”
    Poor Auntie An-mei rubs her tiles ever harder. I remember my mother telling me about the Hsus’ trip to China three years ago. Auntie An-mei had saved two thousand dollars, all to spend on her brother’s family. She had shown my mother the insides of her heavy suitcases. One was crammed with See’s Nuts & Chews, M & M’s, candy-coated cashews, instant hot chocolate with miniature marshmallows. My mother told me the other bag contained the most ridiculous clothes, all new: bright Californiastyle beachwear, baseball caps, cotton pants with elastic waists, bomber jackets, Stanford sweatshirts, crew socks.
    My mother had told her, “Who wants those useless things? They just want money.” But Auntie An-mei said her brother was so poor and they were so rich by comparison. So she ignored my mother’s advice and took the heavy bags and their two thousand dollars to China. And when their China tour finally arrived in Hangzhou, the whole family from Ningbo was there to meet them. It wasn’t just Auntie An-mei’s little brother, but also his wife’s stepbrothers and stepsisters, and a distant cousin, and that cousin’s husband and that husband’s uncle. They had all brought their mothers-in-law and children, and even their village friends who were not lucky enough to have overseas Chinese relatives to show off.
    As my mother told it, “Auntie An-mei had cried before she left for China, thinking she would make her brother very rich and happy by communist standards. But when she got home, she cried to me that everyone had a palm out and she was the only one who left with an empty