For the foreign citizens with Chinese origin, especially the writers, cross-culture has long been a high-lighted but sensitive topic. On the one hand, they have Chinese blood and typical Chinese appearance features, which are quite distinguishable from pure western faces. On the other hand, they live in the environment with foreign language and cultures, and for those second generation of the immigrant families who are born and grow up in immigrant countries, they know very little or even nothing about China. So under such an embarrassing situation with the collision between Chinese and American cultures, the Chinese American people are curious about their cultural identities and eager to figure it out, so is Amy Tan. With personal experience and understanding of her mother, Amy Tan wrote her first novel The Joy Luck Club to tell a story about four immigrant families, the success of which lies in its incisive manifestations of the collision and integration between Chinese and American cultures, which, rely on the interaction and changes of relationship between the mothers and daughters, under the background of cross-cultural communication. To a certain degree, the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club represent Chinese and American cultures respectfully. Amy Tan upgrades the conflicts and fusion between the mothers and daughters to a level of cultural collision and integration between China and America under cross-cultural background.
Cross-culture refers to the cultural phenomenon, customs, habits, etc. which has differences and conflicts between different nations and countries, and the cross-cultural perspective is an innovative way originating from the objective reality of the existence of cultural differences, which demands exploration of the specific differences between different cultures from an objective point of view, as well as an elaboration of it, so as to have a clear and better understanding of the differences of inpiduals’ behavior and thinking pattern with different cultural backgrounds. Cross-cultural perspective is a vital theoretical perspective to study the change of the mother-daughter relationship in The Joy Luck Club, investigating the causes of why their relationships turn from conflict to fusion through the intensive study of the mothers and daughters who are influenced by different cultures.