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As Ying-ying’s white husband, Clifford St. Clair represents the American attitude toward China. He never bothers to learn about Chinese language or culture, content to project his own thoughts and explanations onto Ying-ying. Indeed, he is profoundly incurious about Ying-ying’s background, traditions, or upbringing. Instead, he writes in his mind a narrative in which he is a white savior, and America is a land of opportunity the likes of which Ying-ying could never dream of, never knowing that she comes from the kind of wealth he could never imagine. He acts with misplaced confidence. For example, when the family moves to the new house in North Beach, he mistakes Ying-ying’s worries about the feng shui of the house for “nesting” that he believes is instinctual to pregnant women. Their marriage is essentially lost in translation, which also mirrors the half-understandings the daughters in the book have of their mothers’ lives.
