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The paper consists of four parts. The first part is the introduction; the second part introduces the conflicts between Chinese and western culture; the third part mainly discusses the fusion of Chinese and western culture; the fourth part is the conclusion.
Ⅱ. Cultural Conflicts in The Joy Luck Club
2.1 Conflicts over Educational Conception
There is always some tension in the communication between and their daughters, between Old China and the new American environment. In the process of getting along with their daughters, Chinese mothers have experienced the process of cultural conflicts, understanding and integration. While it is a painful and long process, mothers in The Joy Luck Club mothers spare no efforts to communicate with their daughters by their past experiences in China. They share their growth and marriage experiences to encourage their daughters to do better in their career and marriage. Daughters don’t understand Chinese filial piety status, so they feel mothers have limited their pursuit of equality and freedom. At the same time, mothers think that daughters are not filial, and their behavior is unforgivable, which should be condemned. It becomes a prelude to repair the mother-daughter relationship.
The first-generation Chinese was educated under the entrenched influence of Chinese education which has been expelled from the mainstream of American culture, but they often firmly grasp the traditional Chinese culture, besides, few people go out of Chinatown and accept American culture. They fear that their children’s American education is far from Chinese traditional culture, so they are eager to let their children understand and accept Chinese cultural traditions. But the children grow up in the United States influenced by American culture and white discrimination against by white. So they also refuse accept to a large extent, they can not change their color and naturally can not get rid of their identity and status. After encountering setbacks in their career and marriage, they will reflect, re-examine the understanding of Chinese culture. Although rejecting Chinese culture at first, they gradually accept it. The process from rejecting Chinese culture to accepting Chinese culture is actually the process from conflict to reconciliation. Meanwhile, mother-daughter relationship becomes more harmony in this procedure.
The four mothers have their own experiences in China, which help them form different views of life, and they are willing to convey all their experiences to their daughters. However, they seem to ignore their daughters’ rejection and persity of cultural backgrounds in different countries and generations. But they never give up to attempt to construct connection between themselves and their daughters with their material love of perse manners. The existences of conflicts are filled in many aspects in daily life and even the whole progress of growth. The most obvious difference is the philosophy of education. Influences by cultural environment in China, Mothers want their daughters to live according to their wishes no matter how their daughters resist. Suyuan forces her daughter Jingmei to play piano and ignores what she really likes to do. When Jingmei refuses to go on playing piano after a frustrated performance, Suyuan loses her temper to Jingmei and says: “only two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house, obedient daughter.”(Tan 26) In Suyuan’s opinion, children should obey their parents unconditionally as she always keep her mothers’ words in her mind and she can feel maternal love and happiness each time when she think of these simple words. So she wants her daughter Jingmei to play piano, because from her perspective of view, her daughter has great talent in music and she hopes her to be a brilliant pianist. Suyuan dose cleaning work very hard to support Jingmei for have piano lessons every weekend and even buys one piano for her so that she can practice playing the piano at home more conveniently.