In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Tan
tells the stories of four mothers and their four daughters. One of the mothers is
Ying-Ying. As a child and a young woman, she was pampered, somewhat reckless, greatly
loved by her mother, and an innocent. The night after her youngest aunt's wedding,
Ying-Ying "began to know a thing before it happened."
After
most of the wedding guests had left, and Ying-Ying's half-sisters were asking her about
who she wanted to marry when...
...a large wind blew in from the north and the
flower on the table split from its stem and fell at my feet...Right then, I knew I would
marry this man.
There are
other occasions when knowledge comes to Ying-Ying before it happens, before anyone else
knows. When she becomes pregnant the first time, she knows it is a boy. Ying-Ying knows
before she reads her youngest aunt's letter that her first husband is dead, and she
knows when she meets Saint ("Mistah Saint Clair") that she will marry
him.
It seems that Ying-Ying's ability to know the future
(as she believes) came to her on the north wind that first night. It brought her the
knowledge to know who she would marry. It also (she believes) was the same strong cold
wind that would eventually carry her first husband away from her—which happens when he
leaves her for another woman.
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