In the same way, Tan suggests, women must rise up and beat back oppressive systems, especially male-dominated ones. An-mei's daughter, Rose, has been defeated by her marriage to Ted, but there is no need for such misery today, her mother says. Rose should stop pouring out her tears to the psychiatrist — just as An-mei should not have cried to the turtle. Such tears only feed someone else's joy. Instead, Rose should assert herself, as An-mei has done. As we know from the section entitled "Without Wood," Rose does indeed stand up to Ted. "You just can't pull me out of your life and throw me away," she says. She refuses to sign the divorce papers and move out of their home.
In a sense, both An-mei and Rose have remade themselves, invented new identities to survive. Tan reinforces this concept of strength by having the trip to Tientsin take seven days, the same number of days as in the Hebrew myth of creation. Notice also how she interweaves the theme of appearance and reality. It appears that An-mei's mother is a "fallen woman," but in reality, she was trapped by rape and a vicious social system. An-mei believed that Second Wife was kindly, but she is full of evil. The child assumed that the pearls were real; they were but glass. Tan inverts the symbol of the magpie to reinforce this theme. "Magpie" is the common name for members of the crow family. The birds are found in North America, Asia, Europe, and northwestern Africa. Chinese people traditionally regard the bird as a symbol of joy. Tan, however, inverts the symbol, using it in the Western sense as a harbinger of evil. The birds destroy crops and must be beaten back. So also must women cry out against evil and fight for what is right for them.
