Answer to Question 1Although Junes mother haunts the story, her father is also a quiet, important presence. As the title says, this story is about a
pair of tickets. Junes seventy-two-year-old father, Canning Woo, accompanies her on the trip to China. He is returning after four decades. He is Junes physical and psychological link with the homeland, as well as her living link with the family history that she (like most children) only half knows. His revelations teach her about both her mother and herself. Seeing him in China, June gets a glimpse of his past, what he was like as a young man before she was born. Hes a young boy, she observes on the train to Shenzen, so innocent and happy I want to button his sweater and pat his head.
Answer to Question 2
- A Pair of Tickets is a story that grows naturally out of its setting. Junes journey to China is one of both external and internal discovery. Finding China, she also finds part of herself. Tan announces the theme at the end of the first paragraph: I am becoming Chinese. China becomes a spiritual mirror for the narrator, just as her glimpse of her half-sisters faces provides a living mirror of her own and her late mothers face. One might say that A Pair of Tickets is the story of Americanized June May Woo (born, as her passport says, in California in 1951) becoming Jing-mei Woo by discovering her ethnic and cultural roots in her ancestral homeland.
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