A Pair of Tickets

Amy Tan uses the journey motif to structure her story. She begins the narrative with June May and Canning leaving Hong Kong and leads the characters through a more inland region of China, Guangzhou, and then ultimately back out to the coastal city of Shanghai, where they will meet the long-lost daughters of Suyuan.

As June May and Canning travel around China meeting with Canning’s family in Guangzhou and ultimately the twins in Shanghai, she learns new things about herself and her mother through the memories of other people. She hears the tale of how her mother became separated from her twin daughters, and through that tale gains access to her mother’s grief, something that was perhaps previously eclipsed by her grief at the loss of her mother. Canning, too, acknowledges his wife’s grief as he tells the story of Suyuan’s difficult decision to leave her babies on the side of the road, and her quiet struggle to find them for the rest of her life.

Suyuan, too, went on a journey from Kweilin toward Chungking in 1944, as she fled Japanese military aggression. After she lost her daughters, she continued to travel around the country searching for them until 1947, visiting such cities as Kweilin, Changsha, and Kunming. She ultimately traveled to the United States with her second husband, Canning, in 1949. The physical distance between her and her daughters increased as time passed. Where Suyuan’s physical journey amplifies her grief and loss, as the separation from her children increases, the journey that June May takes helps her grieve more fully and authentically, and moves her toward healing.