Waverly wants to go to China for her honeymoon but is afraid that she will blend in so well that she will not be allowed to return to America. Her mother reassures her that there is no chance that she will be mistaken for a Chinese citizen. Waverly is American. Lindo tried to give her children the best of Chinese and American cultures, but she did not realize that the two ingredients did not mix.
In preparation for her wedding to Rich, Waverly has her favorite hairdresser, Mr. Rory, style her mother's hair. While Mr. Rory works, Waverly acts as though Lindo cannot understand English. Her anger flares when Mr. Rory points out how much Waverly looks like her mother. Looking at her daughter's face in the hairdresser's mirror, Lindo thinks about her girlhood, long ago in China.
On the eve of Lindo's tenth birthday, her mother told her fortune from her face. This incident happened before Lindo was separated from her mother and sent away to be married.
When Lindo was preparing to come to America, she paid money to a Chinese woman who had been raised in America and asked her to show her how to "blend in." The woman told Lindo how to answer common questions and then gave her a list of people to contact in San Francisco. For free, the woman advised Lindo to marry an American citizen and have children quickly. That would help her become an American citizen. Lindo wonders why Waverly distorts the facts of her past. Why does Waverly say that Lindo came over "on a slow boat from China" when she took an airplane? Why does Waverly say that Lindo met her husband in the Cathay House when it is not true at all? Lindo recounts the truth in a flashback.
