A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan

"A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan was written in 1989, a year after the author's trip to China with her mother. The story takes place in the cities of China, such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai - in modern China, perhaps around the late eighties or early nineties. The story mainly takes place in downtown Guangzhou, and there are occasional descriptions of Chinese life in the story, such as when June May Woo's (the protagonist) father looked out the train window to gaze at a Chinese countryside with its low rising hills, green and brown fields, and people in blue jackets riding in an ox-driven cart. When June and her family were at the train station, the landscape was described to be gray, with many low flat cement buildings and old factories. The Chinese people are mostly dressed in Western clothes and the old ladies wore gray tops and pants that stopped mid-calf (probably traditional Chinese clothes). Downtown Guangzhou, where June and her family stayed in, is more modern and looks like a "major American city (126)" from afar, but the congested part of the city contains many little shops crammed next to each other, and there is an traditional-looking Chinese building where its front has scaffolding made of bamboo strips. It was October in the story and the heat was sweltering (123). These settings are very important to the story as the protagonist feels very much like a fish-out-of-water, having lived in America all of her life and never being able to truly get in touch with her Chinese roots and culture.

 

This is the Guangzhou train station entrance/exit. I thought this picture of the train station fit the image of the station the protagonist described in the story perfectly. There are streams of people with boxes, plastic bags, and other belongings, the landscape is gray, and there are low, flat buildings in the background, just like how June described it. It is perfect how the people in this photo are dressed in "drab Western clothes (123)" - drab as in plain-looking. The majority of them are dressed in drab colors like white and gray.

This is downtown Guangzhou. From far away, it looks just like "a major American city, with high rises and construction going on everywhere (127)." I picked out this picture not only because of the high rises against the gray sky, but because of the construction going on in the middle of the picture. It was as if I was looking through June's eyes when I found this.

 

This is the actual Garden Hotel that June and her family stayed in. I was quite excited when I found this on Google, because I initially thought that the author just made up the name of the hotel. I was surprised at just how huge and grand it looked in this picture! June is right when she described the hotel to be a "grander version of the Hyatt Regency (127)."

This is the Garden Hotel lobby, which I found in one of the tourism websites on Google. I wanted to see what the lobby looked like because it was described to be "magnificent (127)."

Finally, this is the countryside that June's father looked at through the train window. This picture suits the image I have in my head of what he saw the best, because there are sectioned fields with low-lying hills in the distance. I wanted to find a picture where there were people riding in an ox-driven cart, but the backgrounds in the pictures were not nearly as picturesque as this one. The author painted a romantic picture of the countryside, so I wanted this sentimental view to be reflected in the photo.