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s in the mother-daughter relationship. The conflicts are embodied in 3 aspects. First, the mothers and thedaughters are in different cultural backgrounds, and the daughters cannot understand their mothers. At the beginning, Jing-Mei fears that she cannot tell her mother’s story to her half-sisters, which, in fact, reflects the fear of other daughters of the Joy Luck Club members. They have identified themselves with Americans. Jing-Mei’s fear also reflects the mothers’ common feelings. They offer the chance to go to America to their daughters, and make them self-sufficient; they wonder whether they have their daughters away from tradition. So in the story “The Joy Luck Club” Jing-Mei feels puzzled,“What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything.”(Tan 26)The way in which the mothers express their love cannot be accepted by the daughters. Jing-Mei believes that her mother’s constant blame is the embodiment of lacking of affection. However, in fact, the mother’s severity and high expectations are expressions of love and faith in her daughter. Other mother-daughter pairs experience the same misunderstanding. In some ways, this misunderstanding comes from cultural differences. The Chinese traditional concepts such as filial obedience, criticism-enveloped expression of love are all different from the American concepts such as the individualism, freedom, self-esteem and direct expression. The mothers in the The Joy Luck Club hope that their daughters can get close to them as they were so close to their own mothers in China. For instance, Am-mei’s Popo tells her that her mother is a ghost to make Am-mei forget her mother. Although Am-mei hasn’t seen her mother for years, she gets to love her mother when her mother combs her hair, and all these things they do are as natural as they do them everyday. And Am-mei says,“This is how a daughter loves her mother. It is so deep it is in your bones.”(Tan 41) when she has seen her mother cutting her flesh to cook soup for her Popo. But in America, children always do not follow all that their parents tell them and behave what they want to. They emphases their individuality and do not think they have so deep relationship with their mothers. So when Lindo asks her daughter Waverly to finish her coffee, Waverly says:“Don’t be so old fashioned, Ma. I’m my own person.”(Tan 227) However, Lindo thinks she is always beside her daughter, and she never gives her daughter up. Perhaps Lindo experiences the largest crisis of cultural identity among the characters. She regrets having given Waverly the American context, at the same time, given her Chinese character, but the two can never be combined. In the story of “Double Face”, Lindo says: “… I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstance and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught [my daughter] how American circumstance work: If you are born poor here, it’s no lasting shame…In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. She learnt these things, but I couldn’t teach her about Chinese character… How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities…Why Chinese thinking is best.” (Tan 227) She thinks since she gives her daughter the American name (the name of the road they live in), she lets her daughter be too American, and this becomes the barrier between them.