Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua

  My answer, I’m pretty sure, is that everything I do is unequivocally 100% for my daughters. My main evidence is that so much of what I do with Sophia and Lulu is miserable, exhausting, and not remotely fun for me. It’s not easy to make your kids work when they don’t want to, to put in grueling hours when your own youth is slipping away, to convince your kids they can do something when they (and maybe even you) are fearful that they can’t. “Do you know how many years you’ve taken off my life?” I’m constantly asking my girls. “You’re both lucky that I have enormous longevity as indicated by my thick good-luck earlobes.”

  To be honest, I sometimes wonder if the question “Who are you really doing this for?” should be asked of Western parents too. Sometimes I wake up in the morning dreading what I have to do and thinking how easy it would be to say, “Sure Lulu, we can skip a day of violin practice.” Unlike my Western friends, I can never say, “As much as it kills me, I just have to let my kids make their choices and follow their hearts. It’s the hardest thing in the world, but I’m doing my best to hold back.” Then they get to have a glass of wine and go to a yoga class, whereas I have to stay home and scream and have my kids hate me.

  A few days before we left for Budapest, I e-mailed Krisztina, asking her if she knew of any experienced music teachers who could run through the Romanian Dances with the girls as a kind of dress rehearsal, perhaps offering some tips about how to play a Hungarian composer properly. Krisztina wrote back with good news. A prominent Eastern European violin teacher, whom I’ll call Mrs. Kazinczy, had generously agreed to see the girls. Recently retired, Mrs. Kazinczy now taught only the most gifted violinists. She had a single slot available—on the day we arrived—and I grabbed it.

  We arrived at our hotel in Budapest on the day before the concert, around ten in the morning—4:00 A.M. New Haven time. We were groggy and bleary-eyed. Jed and Lulu both had headaches. The girls just wanted to sleep, and I didn’t feel so great myself, but unfortunately it was time for the lesson with Mrs. Kazinczy. We’d already received two messages, one from my parents and one from Krisztina, about where to meet. The four of us staggered into a taxi, and a few minutes later, we were at the New Academy of Music, a magnificent Art Nouveau building with majestic columns facing Franz Liszt Square and taking up almost half a block.

  Mrs. Kazinczy met us in a large room on one of the upper floors. My parents and a beaming Krisztina were already there, sitting on chairs along one of the walls. There was an old piano in the room, which Krisztina signaled Sophia to go to.

  Mrs. Kazinczy, to put it mildly, was high-strung. She looked like her husband had just left her for a younger woman but not before transferring all his assets to an offshore account. She subscribed to the strict Russian school of music teaching: impatient, demanding, and intolerant of anything she perceived as error. “No!” she yelled before Lulu had played a single note. “What—why you hold bow like that?” she demanded incredulously. As the girls began playing, she stopped Lulu after every two notes, pacing back and forth, gesticulating wildly. She found the fingering Lulu had been taught monstrous and ordered her to correct it, even though it was the day before the performance. She also kept turning to the piano to snap at Sophia, although her main sights were set on Lulu.

  I had a bad feeling. I could tell that Lulu found Mrs. Kazinczy’s orders unreasonable, her reprimands unjust. The madder Lulu got, the more stiffly she played, and the less she was able to concentrate. Her phrasing deteriorated, followed by her intonation. Oh no, I thought, here it comes. Sure enough, at a certain point an irritated look came over Lulu, and suddenly she was no longer trying at all, no longer even listening. Meanwhile, Mrs. Kazinczy had worked herself into a frenzy. Her temples were bulging, and her voice got shriller. She kept saying things in Hungarian to Krisztina and getting alarmingly close to Lulu, talking in her face, poking her in the shoulder. At one moment of exasperation, Mrs. Kazinczy thwacked Lulu on her playing fingers with a pencil.

  I saw the fury rising in Lulu. At home, she would have exploded immediately. But here, she struggled to hold it in, to keep playing. Mrs. Kazinczy wielded her pencil again. Two minutes later, in the middle of playing a passage, Lulu said she had to go to the bathroom. I got up quickly and went out with her into the hall, where after storming around a corner she burst into tears of rage.

  “I won’t go back in there,” she said ferociously. “You can’t make me. That woman is crazy—I hate her. I hate her!”

  I didn’t know what to do. Mrs. Kazinczy was Krisztina’s friend. My parents were still in the room. There were thirty more minutes left to the lesson, and everyone was waiting for Lulu to return.

  I tried to reason with Lulu. I reminded her that Mrs. Kazinczy had said Lulu was incredibly talented, which is why she was demanding so much of her. (“I don’t care!”) I admitted that Mrs. Kazinczy was not good at communicating, but I said I thought she meant well and begged Lulu to give her another try. (“I won’t!”) When all else failed, I scolded Lulu. I said she had an obligation to Krisztina, who had gone out of her way to arrange the session, and to my parents, who would be horrified if she didn’t go back. “You’re not the only one involved, Lulu. You have to be strong and find a way to get through this. We all take a lot of things, Lulu—you can take this.”

  She refused. I was mortified. Unjustified as Mrs. Kazinczy may have been, she was still a teacher, an authority figure, and one of first things Chinese people learn is that you must respect authority. No matter what, you don’t talk back to your parents, teachers, elders. In the end, I had to go back to the room alone, apologizing profusely and explaining (falsely) that Lulu was angry with me. I then made Sophia—who wasn’t crazy about Mrs. Kazinczy either and who wasn’t even a violinist—take the rest of the lesson, ostensibly getting tips about playing as a duo.

  Back at the hotel, I yelled at Lulu, and afterward Jed and I got into an argument. He said that he didn’t blame Lulu for leaving and that it was probably better that she had. He pointed out that she’d just been through the Juilliard audition, that she was exhausted with jet lag, and that she’d been whacked by a total stranger. “Isn’t it a little strange for Mrs. Kazinczy to be trying to change Lulu’s fingering the day before the concert? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that,” he said. “Maybe you should try being a little more sympathetic to Lulu. I know what you’re trying to do, Amy. But if you don’t watch out, everything might backfire.”

  Part of me knew that Jed was right. But I couldn’t think about that. I had to stay focused on the concert.The next day, I was very severe with both girls, shuttling back and forth between their practice rooms at the New Academy.

  Unfortunately, Lulu’s outrage at Mrs. Kazinczy had only increased overnight. I could tell that she was replaying the episode in her head, getting more and more incensed and distracted. When I’d ask her to drill a passage, she’d suddenly burst out, “She didn’t know what she was talking about—the fingering she suggested was ridiculous! Did you notice that she kept contradicting herself?” Or: “I don’t think she understood Bartók at all; her interpretation was horrendous—who does she think she is?”

  When I told her that she had to stop dwelling on Mrs. Kazinczy and wasting time, Lulu said, “You never take my side. And I don’t want to perform tonight. I don’t feel like it anymore. That woman wrecked everything. Just let Sophia perform alone.” We fought all afternoon, and I was at wit’s end.

  In the end, I think Krisztina saved the day. When we arrived at the Old Music Academy, Krisztina rushed up to us, smiling and ebullient. She hugged the girls excitedly, gave them each a little gift, and said, “We are so very happy to have you. You are both so very talented”—she accented the second syllable. Shaking her head, Krisztina casually mentioned that Mrs. Kazinczy shouldn’t have tried to change Lulu’s fingering and that she must have forgotten the concert was the next day. “You are so talented,” she repeated to Lulu. “It’s going to be a wonderful performance!” Then she whisked them off—away
from me—to a back room, where she ran through parts of the program with them.

  Up until the very last second I didn’t know how things would go—and whether I’d have one or two daughters performing that night. But somehow, miraculously, Lulu pulled it out, and the concert ended up being a spectacular success. The Hungarians, a warm and generous people, gave the girls a standing ovation and three bows, and the director of the museum invited them to come back anytime. Afterward, we took the Pogánys, my parents, and Sy and Harriet, who had flown in just in time, out to a celebration dinner.

  But after that trip, something was different. For Lulu, the experience with Mrs. Kazinczy was infuriating and outrageous, violating her sense of right and wrong. It soured her on the Chinese model—if being Chinese meant having to take it from the likes of Mrs. Kazinczy, then she didn’t want any part of it. She’d also tested what would happen if she simply refused to do what her teacher and mother told her to do, and the sky hadn’t fallen in. On the contrary, she’d won. Even my parents, despite everything they’d drilled into me, sympathized with Lulu.

  For my part, I felt that something had come loose, like the unmooring of an anchor. I’d lost some control over Lulu. No Chinese daughter would ever act the way Lulu did. No Chinese mother would ever have allowed it to happen.

  Part Three

  Tigers are capable of great love, but they become too intense about it. They are also territorial and possessive. Solitude is often the price Tigers pay for their position of authority.

  23

  Pushkin

  My two beautiful snow dogs

  “Which one’s ours?” Jed asked.

  It was August 2008, and Jed and I were in Rhode Island. For reasons mysterious to everyone, including myself, I had insisted that we get a second dog, and we were at the same breeder’s where we’d gotten Coco. Pacing around a rustic room with a wooden floor were three large, regal Samoyeds. Two of them, we learned, were the proud parents of the new litter; the third was the grandfather, worldly and magisterial at the venerable age of six. Scampering around the big dogs were four boisterous puppies, each an adorable yelping cottonball.

  “Yours is the one over there,” the breeder said, “under the stairs.”

  Turning around, Jed and I saw, standing in a different part of the room by itself, something that looked quite different from the other puppies. It was taller, leaner, less furry—and less cute. Its hind legs were two inches longer than its front legs, giving it an awkward tilt. Its eyes were narrow and very slanted; its ears, oddly protuberant. Its tail was longer and fuller than the others’ , but maybe because it was too heavy, it didn’t curl up, but instead swung from side to side like a rat’s tail.

  “Are you sure that’s a dog?” I asked dubiously. This wasn’t as preposterous a question as it may sound. If anything, the creature most resembled a baby lamb, and given that the breeders raised some farm animals on their property, one easily could have wandered in.

  But the breeder was sure. She winked at us, and said, “You’ll see. She’ll be a great beauty. She’s got that great high Samoyed rear, just like her grandmother.”

  We brought our new puppy home and named her Pushkin—“Push” for short—even though she was a girl. When our family and friends first met her, they felt sorry for us. As a puppy, Push hopped like a bunny and stumbled over her own feet. “Can you return her?” my mother asked at one point, as she watched Push bump into walls and chairs. “I know what the problem is—she’s blind,” it dawned on Jed one day, and he raced her to the vet, who concluded that Push’s eyesight was fine.

  As Push grew bigger, she remained awkward, often tripping as she came down stairs. The trunk of her body was so long that she didn’t seem to have full control over her back half, so she moved like a Slinky. At the same time, she was strangely limber; to this day, she likes to sleep with her stomach plastered against a cold floor and all four limbs splayed out. It’s as if someone dropped her from the sky and she landed splat on the floor—in fact we call her “Splat” when we see her like that.

  The breeder was right about one thing. Push was an ugly duckling. Within a year, she had transformed into a dog so breathtakingly magnificent that when we took walks cars constantly stopped short to marvel at her. She was bigger than Coco (who, due to the oddities of breeding, was actually Push’s grandniece), with snow-white fur and exotic cat’s eyes. Some dormant muscles had clearly developed because now her tail curled high up over her back like an enormous, lush plume.

  But in terms of talent, Push stayed solidly in the lowest decile. Coco was not especially impressive, but compared to Push she was a genius. For some reason, Push—while even sweeter and gentler than Coco—couldn’t do things that normal dogs could. She couldn’t fetch and didn’t like running. She kept getting stuck in funny places—under the sink, in berry bushes, halfway in and halfway out of the bathtub—and needing to be extricated. At first, I denied that there was anything different about Pushkin, and I spent hours trying to teach her to do things, but all to no avail. Oddly enough, Push seemed to love music. Her favorite thing to do was to sit next to Sophia’s piano, singing (or in Jed’s view, howling) along as Sophia played.

  Despite her shortcomings, the four of us adored Push, just as we did Coco. In fact, her failings were what made her so endearing. “Oh-h-h, poor thing! What a cutie,” we’d coo when she’d try to jump onto something and miss by a foot, and we’d rush to comfort her. Or we’d say, “Aw-w-w, just look at that. She can’t see the Frisbee! She’s so cu-u-ute.” Initially, Coco was wary of her new sibling; we saw her testing Push in cagey ways. Push, by contrast, had a more limited range of emotions; wariness and caginess were not among them. She was content to follow Coco around amiably, avoiding any moves that required agility.

  As sweet as Push was, it made absolutely no sense for our family to have a second dog, and no one knew it better than me. The distribution of dog responsibility in our household was 90% me, 10% the other three. Every day, starting at six in the morning, I was the one who fed, ran, and cleaned up after them; I also took them to all their grooming and vet appointments. To make matters worse, my second book had just been published, and in addition to teaching a full course load and working with the girls on their music, I was constantly flying around the country giving lectures. I’d always find ways to compress trips to D.C., Chicago, or Miami into one day. More than once, I got up at 3:00 A.M., flew to California and gave a lunch talk, then took the redeye home. “What were you thinking?” friends would ask me. “With so much on your plate already, why on earth would you get a second dog?”

  My friend Anne thought there was a conventional explanation. “All my friends,” she said, “get dogs the moment their kids become teenagers. They’re preparing for the empty nest. Dogs are substitutes for children.”

  It’s funny that Anne would say that, because Chinese parenting is nothing like dog raising. In fact it’s kind of the opposite. For one thing, dog raising is social. When you meet other dog owners, you have lots to talk about. By contrast, Chinese parenting is incredibly lonely—at least if you’re trying to do it in the West, where you’re on your own. You have to go up against an entire value system—rooted in the Enlightenment, individual autonomy, child development theory, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—and there’s no one you can talk to honestly, not even people you like and deeply respect.

  For example, when Sophia and Lulu were little, what I used to dread most was when other parents invited one of them over for a playdate. Why why why this terrible Western institution? I tried telling the truth once, explaining to another mother that Lulu had no free time because she had to practice violin. But the woman couldn’t absorb this. I had to resort to the kinds of excuses that Westerners find valid: eye appointments, physical therapy, community service. At a certain point, the other mother got a hurt look on her face and began treating me icily, as if I thought Lulu were too good for her daughter. It really was a clash of worldviews. After fending off
one playdate invitation, I couldn’t believe it when another one would immediately come along. “How about Saturday?”—Saturday was the day before Lulu’s lesson with Miss Tanaka in New York—“or two Fridays from today?” From their point of view, Western mothers just couldn’t comprehend how Lulu could be busy every afternoon, for the whole year.

  There’s another huge difference between dog raising and Chinese parenting. Dog raising is easy. It requires patience, love, and possibly an initial investment of training time. By contrast, Chinese parenting is one of the most difficult things I can think of. You have to be hated sometimes by someone you love and who hopefully loves you, and there’s just no letting up, no point at which it suddenly becomes easy. Just the opposite, Chinese parenting—at least if you’re trying to do it in America, where all odds are against you—is a never-ending uphill battle, requiring a 24-7 time commitment, resilience, and guile.You have to be able to swallow pride and change tactics at any moment. And you have to be creative.

  Last year, for instance, I had some students over for an end-of-the-semester party, one of my favorite things to do. “You’re so nice to your students,” Sophia and Lulu are always saying. “They have no idea what you’re really like. They all think you’re nurturing and supportive.” The girls are actually right about that. I treat my law students (especially the ones with strict Asian parents) the exact opposite of the way I treat my kids.

  On this occasion, the party was upstairs in our third-floor Ping-Pong room, which was also where Lulu practiced her violin. One of my students, named Ronan, found some practice notes I’d left for Lulu.

  “What in the world—?” he said, reading the notes in disbelief. “Professor Chua, did you—did you write this?”