Among Ts'ai Yen's writings is the lamentation "Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," in which Ts'ai Yen relates her life among her captors and her return to her own people. The title of The Woman Warrior's final chapter, based on Ts'ai Yen's title, suggests that Kingston identifies herself as living among "barbarians." More significant, however, is the symbolic relationship between Ts'ai Yen and Kingston's parents: Ts'ai Yen was physically forced to leave her village, and Kingston's parents, especially her father, because of depressed economic conditions in China, had no choice but to leave their homeland and seek employment in America; Ts'ai Yen characterizes her captors as barbarians, and Brave Orchid thinks all Americans are "barbarians"; and Ts'ai Yen, held captive for twelve years, sings about China and her Chinese family as a means to remember her cultural past; Brave Orchid's many talk-stories are her means of preserving her cultural past.
Although Ts'ai Yen eventually is reconciled with her family in China, Kingston only briefly notes the former captive's return to her homeland. Instead, she focuses on Ts'ai Yen's recognizing the validity of the barbarians' culture rather than on Ts'ai Yen's lamenting over her separation from her native culture. Because the barbarians and their culture symbolize Brave Orchid's perceptions of America, had Kingston dwelled on Ts'ai Yen's separation from her family and village while disparaging the nomads' culture, she would have validated the superiority, or supremacy, of a Chinese identity over an American identity; she would have justified Brave Orchid's belief that American culture is barbarous. However, by concentrating on Ts'ai Yen's recognition of and reconciliation with the nomads, Kingston suggests an ability to live harmoniously in both American and Chinese cultures. The talk-story implies not only Brave Orchid's recognition of American influences on her daughter, but also Kingston's own eventual acceptance of her Chinese past, which, after all, "translated well."
