American-born daughters can't understand the amount of pain their mothers felt, so they don't realize their problems could be very worse. The daughters relate to their mothers as they are all dealing with their biggest issues. No matter how trivial or significant the problems may seem, for one it may be the worst they have ever experienced and for another it may be less worse than what they have experienced. Immigrant mothers grew up with much more pain than their daughters, so they have thicker skin and are less ignorant. Because daughters grew up “swallowing more Coca-Cola than sadness” (Tan, 17), they feel pain over seemingly insignificant problems compared to their mother's difficulties. The mother's good intentions and struggles go unrecognized by her daughters. Tan writes of this misfortune when describing an elderly Chinese woman who immigrated to America early in the novel: “But when she arrived in the new country, immigration officials tore off her swan, leaving the woman with flapping arms and only one swan feather for a souvenir. And then she had to fill out so many forms that she forgot why she came and what she left behind” (Tan, 17). This immigrant's story represents the four Chinese-American immigrants and how their hopes and dreams collided with reality when they arrived in America. For example, Lindo describes how America has some secret rules that you need to discover. "These American rules... Every time people go out of a foreign country, they have to know the rules. Don't you know, the judge says: Too bad, go back. They don't tell you why, so you can use their way to go ahead. They say: I don't know why, you find out yourself. They always know. Lindo obviously believes it