49 pages • 1 hour read
Gloria ChaoAmerican Panda
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Stinky Tofu”
Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Asian racism and cultural stereotypes, familial pressure and conflict, and identity struggles, including references to body shaming. It also briefly mentions anti-gay bias.
Mei Lu is a 17-year-old college freshman studying premed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mei is having dinner with her parents at their favorite Taiwanese restaurant, Chow Chow. Mei’s traditional Taiwanese mother, whom she calls Mama Lu, criticizes Mei’s behavior and appearance, but Mei endures it. A family friend, Mrs. Pan, comes over to their table and tells Mei that her big nose is a Chinese good-luck omen meaning that she will be wealthy. Mama Lu brags about Mei to Mrs. Pan, which Mei enjoys because it’s the only praise her parents ever give her. Mrs. Pan tries to matchmake Mei with her son Hanwei, but Mei’s mother falsely claims that Mei already has plenty of suitors. Mrs. Pan tries asking about Mei’s brother, Xing, but Mama Lu ignores her until she leaves. Mama Lu tells Mei that she is too good for Hanwei and compares him to Ying-Na, a Taiwanese American “cautionary tale” used by parents to scare their children into obedience. Her mother claims that she is proud that Mei will become a doctor but criticizes her plus-sized body. When Mei defends herself, her mother calls her disrespectful. She tells Mei about a potential love match, Eugene Huang, who is a senior studying premed at Harvard.
While her mother is in the restroom and her father parks the car, Mei spots a classmate whom she has a crush on. He approaches her table and introduces himself as Darren Takahashi. Darren remembers Mei from orientation, where she tried to make an international student feel less awkward about not understanding an American joke; Mei has been the butt of similar jokes in the past. When Mama Lu returns and learns that Darren is Japanese, she politely dismisses him. After he leaves, she reminds Mei that she should not consider non-Taiwanese boys, especially Japanese boys, as potential husbands. Her mother is prejudiced because of Japan’s historical occupation of Taiwan, to which she attributes deaths in their family.
Mei’s father, Mr. Lu, arrives and reminds Mei to make them proud by focusing on school. He makes plans for them to meet every Saturday for dinner at Chow Chow. Mei yearns for independence but resigns herself to remaining under her parents’ watch at MIT.
Chapter 2 Summary: “BB-Hate”
Mei returns to her dorm room to find a new roommate, a replacement for her previous roommate, Leslie. Leslie is also Taiwanese but prejudiced against Mei’s ancestors for fleeing China and “invading” Taiwan in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War. Leslie’s family is native to Taiwan, and she accused Mei of not knowing her own history. Mei’s new roommate, Nicolette, warns Mei that she doesn’t want to be friends, which makes Mei feel awkward.
Later, Mei wanders into the dorm common room hoping to make friends. She tries to join a group of students but feels more awkward when they laugh at her for not understanding a Star Wars reference. They assume that she has lived a stereotypically restrictive Asian childhood. Although this is somewhat true, she feels uncomfortable and defensive, so she leaves.
Mei wanders onto another floor and discovers a large, abandoned room called the Porter Room, which she decides to make her “safe space” where she can dance freely. Her parents don’t approve of dancing, so she keeps her true passion a secret, but she feels lighter as she dances across the Porter Room floor.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Liquid Nitrogen”
Mei began dancing at her parents’ insistence to pad her college applications, and she fell in love with it. Mei has since dreamed of owning her own studio. After college decisions, her parents made her quit, but she kept dancing in secret. Now, Mei teaches dance at a local studio and lies about where she is. The dance program is for Chinese children adopted by non-Asian parents to help the kids learn about their heritage. A little girl named Rose arrives for class, and Mei teaches her Chinese dances. When the studio owner offers Mei more classes to teach, Mei immediately accepts but feels guilty for betraying her parents and their ideas about her future.
When she gets back to her dorm, Mei finds her sobbing mother speaking to the police. Mama Lu panicked after not hearing from Mei for a few hours. Mei realizes that her transition to college has also been rough for her parents. Mei assures her mother that she is fine, and her mother promises to be better. She excitedly accepts Mei’s invitation to tour the campus. In the student center, they eat ice cream made using liquid nitrogen and buy MIT apparel. Next, they stop at benches shaped like parabolas. Mama Lu is amazed at the sounds created by the structure, and Mei feels happy to share this with her. Back at her dorm, Mr. Lu arrives with food and laundry. They have dinner together, and Mei wishes that she could bond with her mother like this more often.
Note: The novel has no Chapter 4 because Mei explains that the number sounds like the Mandarin word for “death” and is considered bad luck.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Rash Decisions”
Because Mama Lu always told Mei that sex before marriage is a crime and a taboo topic, Mei feels ashamed when she experiences a vaginal burning sensation. She tries using a mirror to inspect her body, but a boy walks in on her. At the campus medical center, a male doctor tells her that she has herpes after barely glancing at her. Mei tells him that she isn’t sexually active but is dismissed anyway, leaving her frustrated. In the bathroom, she stumbles upon a young female Asian doctor, Dr. Chang, fishing for gauze in the toilet. After an awkward moment, Dr. Chang leaves in embarrassment, and Mei is confused.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Future Mei”
Mei makes an appointment with the school gynecologist, who turns out to be Dr. Chang. Mei notices that Dr. Chang is subservient and aloof as she diagnoses Mei with an allergic reaction to a pair of new jeans. Mei asks Dr. Chang about her family and her passion for the job. Dr. Chang tells her that the job is stable and well paying, but her reticence and lack of enthusiasm don’t reassure Mei. When Mei asks to shadow Dr. Chang, seeking answers about her future, Dr. Chang reluctantly agrees. Her next patient turns out to be Valerie, the girl who laughed at Mei for not understanding the Star Wars reference. Mei is nauseated when Valerie describes her yeast infection. When the next patient describes her urine in graphic detail, Mei wonders if she is cut out to be a doctor because of her fear of germs. Later, she tries dancing away her fears in the Porter Room but is dismayed when dancing doesn’t calm her.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The first several chapters establish Mei’s sense of humor and personality. The chapter titles describe humorous and memorable moments of Mei’s coming-of-age journey. For example, the first chapter is named after a strong-smelling Taiwanese dish that Mei refuses to try. She complains about the smell, for which Mama Lu criticizes her. Despite the dish and its strong smell, however, Chow Chow is her favorite restaurant: “Chow Chow was my second home, my Taiwanese home away from my Taiwanese home. I knew its calligraphy wallpaper and ceiling lanterns as well as the plastic wrap covering my parents’ furniture” (15). Other chapters, like “BB-Hate” and “Rash Decisions,” are plays on words describing Mei’s humorous or awkward encounters. Thus, each chapter’s title reflects ways in which Mei both loves and hates parts of herself, establishing The Challenges of Navigating Cultural Identity and Assimilation as she simultaneously navigates her college experience at MIT. Even the missing Chapter 4 highlights Mei’s tendency to make jokes and poke fun at her family’s cultural superstitions.
The opening chapters illustrate Mei’s internal conflict between embracing aspects of and connections to her cultural heritage while rejecting her parents’ much more rigid interpretation of cultural traditions. One way that Mei embraces her culture is reflected in her choice of dance. Although she feels as though she’s betraying her parents by dancing in the first place, she is in fact practicing traditional Chinese dances: “The Dunhuang style was my favorite because of the rich history, the movements originating from paintings of gods discovered in ancient caves in the Gansu province” (30). While Leslie accuses Mei of not knowing her history—by which she means the geopolitical tensions between Taiwan and China—Mei proves that she does know her cultural history through her vast knowledge of Chinese dance styles and their origins. She takes this knowledge one step further by passing it onto other Taiwanese and Chinese children through her classes.
Still, teaching dance classes and pursuing her own interests—including her own love interests, such as Darren—is a major source of Mei’s guilt and anxiety. Not only is she betraying her culture by not obeying her parents, but she also feels that she is betraying her parents themselves by lying to them. This is the root of Mei’s conflict surrounding Balancing Happiness With Family Dynamics and Parental Expectations. She tries to live up to her parents’ expectations for her future, but they consider dance superfluous and forbid her from dating a non-Taiwanese boy. Mama Lu would prefer that Mei be a thin, “classic Chinese beauty” with bigger breasts and better eating habits (5-6), but Mei is not thin. Many of Mei’s desires and traits are considered failures by Mei’s family, which gives Mei a fearful outlook on her present and future.
These family dynamics are more complicated because Mei truly does love her parents despite their overbearing nature. She defends them against racist stereotypes implied by her dormmates. Furthermore, her ongoing guilt is a product of not wanting to disappoint them. She especially wants their love and approval, even though she has only seen the stoic and critical sides of their personalities. For example, when Mei takes Mama Lu on the campus tour, she sees her mother’s excitement and wonder: “Where had this side of my mother been my whole life? Had she appeared now because I was in college? Or had she been there all along, but I had been too busy or selfish to spend time with her?” (40). This moment shows the potential for Mama Lu to change and foreshadows her character development into a more supportive parent, eventually strengthening Mei’s idea of family.
