Months passed and Tyan-yu still wouldn't touch Lindo. Relieved, she came to love him like a brother, but he turned against her and lied to his mother, blaming Lindo for their lack of children. Huang Taitai confined Lindo to bed, took away all her jewelry, but still Lindo bore no children. By chance, noticing that a servant girl was pregnant by her boyfriend, Lindo devised a plan to make the Huangs think it was their idea to end the marriage. She awakened the entire house, screaming that in a dream, she saw the wind blow out Tyan-yu's end of the marriage candle: Their marriage was doomed. Furthermore, in her dream she saw that Tyan-yu had impregnated a servant girl and, moreover, that the girl had imperial blood.
Lindo was granted a divorce, Tyan-yu married the servant girl, and Lindo traveled to America. Now, every few years when she has extra money, Lindo buys herself yet another twenty-four-carat gold bracelet, and once a year, she takes off all her gold and thinks about the day that she realized that she could be true to herself — as true and pure as twenty-four-carat gold.
The imagery of gold, which opened this section, ends this section, underscoring Tan's theme of faithfulness to one's best self. The soldier in the movie likens his promise to be faithful to his girlfriend to gold. Yet, "his gold is like yours," Lindo says scornfully to her daughter: "It is only fourteen carats." Lindo is emphasizing that the soldier's promise, like her daughter's, will not be honored. Only twenty-four-carat gold, like a sacred promise, is pure.
