Clearly, however, this admirable selflessness also has a destructive side. She does not think herself worthy of the best. Not being fond of crab, she nonetheless, automatically, reaches for the least desirable crab - the one with the missing leg - during the New Year's dinner. Jing-mei, like many people, is satisfied with less than "best quality." She is so self-effacing that she sacrifices for others without even thinking about her actions. We see this illustrated best in Jing-mei's experiences. In part, this novel's richness comes from its ability to make the specific general. The tenant's cat appears at the window, and Jing-mei realizes that her mother did not poison it, after all. She hears the tenants upstairs and now understands her mother's former complaints. Jing-mei is cooking dinner for her father, who has not been eating well since his wife's death. Note that the last section of this chapter is set in the present. Then she gives to Jing-mei her "life's importance," the jade pendant necklace. She cooked it merely because she thought that it might still be good and because she knew that only Jing-mei would pick it, because Jing-mei would never choose the "best quality." She sees this virtue as one of Jing-mei's best qualities. Her mother tells her that it was already dead before she cooked it, and thus it was not edible. Later that night, after everyone has left, Jing-mei asks her mother why she did not eat her crab. Jing-mei goes to wash the dishes she is no longer angry at Waverly - she simply feels tired and foolish. Auntie Lindo comes to Jing-mei's rescue, pleading with Waverly to let Jing-mei rewrite the material.
Waverly retorts that Jing-mei hasn't been paid because her work was not acceptable - a retort that reduces Jing-mei to tears. Jing-mei retaliates by teasing Waverly about her firm's finances because the bill that Jing-mei submitted for her ad copy has not been paid. Waverly subtly insults Jing-mei during the dinner, mentioning her choice of hairdresser. Woo ends up with the maimed one, which she doesn't eat. At dinner, Waverly takes the best crab for her child, and Mrs. When she sees the extra person, she decides to cook the eleventh crab, the one missing a limb. Woo hadn't counted Waverly's daughter, Shoshana, and so she purchased only ten whole crabs. There are eleven people at the New Year's celebration. Woo begins to boil the crabs she cannot bear to see them die. When they return home, Jing-mei watches her mother cook, but she leaves the room when Mrs. After a lengthy discussion, the fishmonger threw it in for free. Woo refused to accept it because a maimed crab is bad luck for the New Year. As she was spearing the live crabs from the tank, one of them lost a limb. Jing-mei listened patiently to her mother as she poked the crabs to find the liveliest ones. She was especially bothered by their cat, which Jing-mei and the tenants suspect that she poisoned. That day, her mother was annoyed about the tenants living in the second-floor apartment of a six-unit building that she owns.
Jing-mei had helped her mother shop for the crabs that she served at the New Year's dinner. Later, Jing-mei will notice other Chinese wearing similar pendants and will ask one of them what the pendant signifies. After her mother's death, however, the pendant will begin to assume great importance to her - even though she does not really understand the meaning that her mother assigned to it. After a Chinese New Year's dinner, Jing-mei's mother gave her a jade pendant which she said was her "life's importance." At first, Jing-mei did not like the pendant it seemed too big and ornate.
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