Unfortunately, since Jing-Mei's mother does not have a lot of knowledge about the American culture she is not able to critically evaluate the information she receives from the media, so in her interpretation of the American dream everything is easy and achievable, and she thinks that her daughter is just not trying hard enough. Mother wants her daughter to have both: the Chinese obedience, and the American opportunity. Jing-Mei, on the other hand, understands that she cannot become somebody else. She struggles to understand who she is, an obedient Chinese child, or a self-minded American. This conflict creates a lot of frustration for Jing-Mei, and as a result she chooses to passively rebel against her mother by not doing what she is supposed to do.
Jing-Mei's mother is not only demanding, she is ready to make sacrifices for her daughter as well. Mother was cleaning houses, and did not make a lot of money, so she dreamed about her daughter having a better life in the future, to go to college, and have a prestigious job. Since her mother did not have money for the piano, she traded in her cleaning services for piano lessons for Jing-Mei, but her daughter does not seem to appreciate it because she feels like her mother forgot to ask her opinion on the piano lessons, instead her mother just comes one day and lets Jing-Mei know that from this day she will be taking piano classes in order to become a musical genius. It makes Jing-Mei so angry because she knows that the only reason her mother wants her to do this is because earlier she has seen a nice Chinese girl on the TV show, and she is trying to turn Jing-Mei in that perfect Chinese child that she is not.
The fact that Jing-Mei's mother is from China plays an important role in this text. Jing-Mei herself mentions it a couple of times: "proudly modest like a proper Chinese child," "This wasn't China," etc. Jing-Mei knows that in China the child has to be obedient, but at the same time she is old enough to understand that this is not the way it works in the United States, she wants to have her own opinion and the ability to make her own decisions and choices.
