The three main characters in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers”—Mr. Shi, his daughter, and Madam—are all either visitors or immigrants to America: Mr. Shi is only there to see his daughter, while his daughter and Madam have moved there permanently. As the story demonstrates, America is a place where immigrants and visitors are subjected to conflicting pressures and desires: both to assimilate and to maintain their native languages, customs, and traditions. Mr. Shi describes the importance for him and his daughter of living and growing up in a communist country, in particular his excitement and hope as a young rocket scientist in helping his country advance. Yet as an older man visiting America, he describes loving America, a capitalist country, and the opportunities it brings, especially regarding money: he explains that his daughter earns more in a year than he earned in twenty. This shift suggests a profound change of values inspired by traveling across borders.
Many of Mr. Shi’s traditions from his life in China are tested when he comes to America, particularly his ideas about marriage and a woman’s role in society. He clings to the belief that his daughter must feel shame about her divorce and insists that she must be miserable, unable to see the freedom and happiness that her divorce has given her. However, he finds solace in knowing that while his daughter’s lover is not Chinese, he also comes from a communist country and so he can understand aspects of her culture and history. More generally, Mr. Shi struggles with his relationship to the past and to history: he both wants to hold onto traditional values and at the same time he wants to forget his wrongdoings in China and to refuse to dwell on old stories. At the end of the story, he remembers how he was told in his training in China that “It is what we sacrifice that makes life meaningful,” but now he doubts the statement’s value. However, he dismisses this instinct as a “foreign thought,” demonstrating how he feels stuck between living in the moment and valuing the past.
History, Culture, and Migration ThemeTracker
History, Culture, and Migration Quotes in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
“I love America. Good country for everybody.”
“Yes, yes. A rocket scientist I am in China. But very poor. Rocket scientist, you know?” Mr. Shi says, his hands making a peak.
“I love China. China a good country, very old,” the woman says.
“America is young country, like young people.”
“America a happy country.”
“Young people are more happy than old people,” Mr. Shi says, and then realizes that it is too abrupt a conclusion.
America is worth taking a look at; more than that, America makes him a new person, a rocket scientist, a good conversationalist, a loving father, a happy man.
Women in their marriageable twenties and early thirties are like lychees that have been picked from the tree; each passing day makes them less fresh and less desirable, and only too soon will they lose their value, and have to be gotten rid of at a sale price. Mr. Shi knows enough not to mention the sale price. Still, he cannot help but lecture on the fruitfulness of life. The more he talks, the more he is moved by his own patience.
He feels disappointed in his daughter, someone he shares a language with but with whom he can no longer share a dear moment. After a long pause, he says, “You know, a woman shouldn’t ask such direct questions. A good woman is deferential and knows how to make people talk.”
Truly it was his mistake, never establishing a habit of talking to his daughter. But then, he argues for himself—in his time, a man like him, among the few chosen to work for a grand cause, he had to bear more duties toward his work than his family. Honorable and sad, but honorable more than sad.
“It is what we sacrifice that makes life meaningful”—Mr. Shi says the line that was often repeated in their training. He shakes his head hard. A foreign country gives one foreign thoughts, he thinks. For an old man like him, it is not healthy to ponder too much over memory.