Late that night, Canning explains that his wife's name, "Suyuan," has two different meanings, depending on how it is written. Written one way, it means "Long-Cherished Wish"; written another way, it means "Long-Held Grudge." He further explains that Jing-mei's name means that she is, first, a pure essence, and second, that she is a younger sister. Her name makes her the essence of her two sisters. He then tells her the story of how her mother, Suyuan, abandoned Jing-mei's half-sisters.
Suyuan walked for three days, hoping to escape the Japanese invasion. Her hands began to bleed from the weight of her heavy possessions and that of her daughters. She dropped her possessions one by one, continuing to trudge on until she was delirious with pain and fever. She finally fell by the side of the road. Despite her entreaties, no one would take the babies.
Having no other choice, she stuffed jewelry under the shirt of one baby, money under the shirt of the other. Then she put in family pictures and a note and left her daughters to see if she could find food. Soon she fainted and awoke in the back of a truck filled with sick people who were being tended by American missionaries. When she arrived in Chungking, she learned that her husband was dead. She met Canning Woo in the hospital.
The abandoned babies were found by a kindly peasant couple, who raised the girls as their own. When the girls were eight years old, their foster parents tried to find their parents. They located the address of the children's home, but now it was a factory. Meanwhile, Suyuan and Canning had returned to try to find the girls, but their attempts proved fruitless. In 1949, they left for America, but Suyuan never abandoned hope. After she died, a schoolmate saw the twins in a department store and tried to contact Suyuan in America.
