Instead of being angry with their mothers for abandoning them and for treating them coldly, An-mei, Lindo, and Ying-ying sympathize with them and attempt to excuse their mothers’ actions by portraying a tradition that requires women to sacrifice their daughters. Their mothers’ opinions were never asked, and they had no say in whom they married or in whether their children would be taken from them. This may account for their cold behavior: by acting sternly, they hoped to steel themselves to their pain, and to harden up their daughters, whom they knew would have to face similar sorrows. Lindo notes that her own mother, upon bidding her farewell and leaving her with the Huangs, acted with particular sternness, which Lindo knew to belie great sorrow. The Huangs were wealthier than Lindo’s family, and Lindo’s mother knew that marrying Tyan-yu would considerably elevate Lindo’s social position and provide her with material comfort. When her mother would refer to her as Taitai’s child, Lindo knew that she did not do this out of lack of love. Rather, Lindo explains, she said this only “so she wouldn’t wish for something that was no longer hers.” An-mei’s grandmother, Popo, repeatedly said that she and her brother had fallen to earth out of the insides of a goose, like two unwanted eggs, bad-smelling and bad-tasting. But, An-mei realizes, “[s]he said this so that the ghosts would not steal us away. . . . [T]o Popo we were also very precious.”