It is meaningful that Lindsey's ongoing struggle to understand herself has to do with her grandmother. Because it is a grandmother, the elderly quality of the mother figure shows that what Lindsey is really up against is a decision about how much she should work to preserve her Chinese culture even though she was born in America. Should she let the heritage die? Her grandmother will not live forever, and when she passes, how much of the Chinese way of life should Lindsey continue?
This conflict is clearly the thematic question of the novel, and it has two sides. The first side is the side of filial piety. That means honoring one's family by accepting the filial duty that a culture might impose on the children to own the family culture as their own. However, the other side is the romantic abandonment of filial piety. Nothing is more American than melding into the culture of the nation. Lindsey feels herself being culturally absorbed into the American way of life every time she goes out on the town or on a date with her white coworker, Michael.
The gravity of her personality and her career and life are fairly potent, and Lindsey leans that way, often mourning the way she feels, wondering if she will offend her grandmother when her grandmother finally sees that she is Americanized. That is why the journey to China is such a beautiful response to the theme, because the experience Lindsey has with her family and culture in China is not inherited from the grandmother; it is her own experience, and it is enough for her relationship to Chinese culture to be permanently added to what will inevitably drift toward American tendencies.
