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Chapter Summaries: The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates

The chapter "Rules of the Game" is about Waverly Jong, daughter of Lindo Jong. It tells of Waverly, and how she has become a prodigy in chess. She becomes a champion in chess and winning all kinds of chess tournaments. Before she ever starts chess, Lindo has taught her the "art of invisible strength," which, before she starts playing chess, means to not ask for candy, and the candy will come to you. At least, that's what she thinks. When she is playing chess, the "art of invisible strength" means to stay quiet and act innocent which leaves her opponents thinking that she is just a kid who will not know their plays, and will not know how to react. Of course, the opponents are wrong and Waverly triumphs. As her trophies pile up, Lindo starts bragging to people, and Waverly feels that her mom has no right to do this when she is the one doing all the winnings. When Waverly does this, Lindo believes that Waverly is just embarrassed of their Chinese backgraound and culture, and this arouses a heavy emotional battle between Waverly and Lindo. As a result of this fight, Waverly begins seeing her mom as a chess opponent and plotting the "next move."

In "The Voice from the Wall," Lena St.

This chapter is about Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan Woo. Suyuan is forcing Jing-Mei to be some kind of prodigy. She wants Jing-Mei to be like this partly because Lindo'd daughter is a prodigy, but also because she wants her daughter to be successful and bring their family good fortune. Suyuan has Jing-Mei take many different tests to test the prodigy in Jing-Mei. Finally, Jing-Mei becomes bored with it, and Suyuan begins to get bored with it, too. Later, as Suyuan is watching The Ed Sullivan Show, she sees a little Chinese girl playing piano and she gets the idea to have Jing-Mei become a piano prodigy. Jing-Mei is so determined to do badly, that she would have become a decent pianist if it had not been for the fact that she did not try. Her teacher, Mr. Chong is deaf so she becomes lazy and never bothers to correct herself when she makes mistakes. But then things backfire for her. Mr. Chong and Suyuan enter her in a talent show. Suyuan invites all the couples from the Joy Luck Club and their children. Jing-Mei plays practically the whole piece wrong, and she is ashamed. The families of the Joy Luck Club do not say anything about Jing-Mei's performance, and she assumes that she will be done with the piano after the talent-show disaster. The day after the talent-show her mother reminds her to practice, and she refuses. Suyuan drags her over to the piano, looking extremely angry. Jing-Mei then says that she wishes she was not Suyuan's daughter. She says that she wishes she was dead, like the babies Suyuan left in China. Suyuan then leaves her sitting on the piano bench, slack-jawed and looking totally stunned. The chapter reverts back to Jing-Mei at 29 years old and she talks about how she failed her mother so many times after. She tells us that Suyuan is giving her the piano for her 30th birthday. This surprises her greatly. She gets the piano tuned a few months af