by Amy Chua
It was especially hard to help Lulu prepare, because she was still maintaining that she would never in a million years do the audition. She hated everything she’d heard about it from Kiwon. She knew that some of the applicants would fly in from China, South Korea, and India just for the audition, which they’d been working toward for years. Others would have auditioned before and been rejected two or three times. Still others were already taking private lessons with Pre-College faculty members.
But I hunkered down. “It will be your decision in the end, Lulu,” I lied. “We’ll get prepared for the audition, but if in the end you really don’t want to do it, you don’t have to.” “Never not try something out of fear,” I would pontificate at other times. “Everything I’ve ever done that’s valuable is something I was terrified to try.” To improve productivity, I hired not only Kiwon for many hours a day but also a lovely Yale undergraduate named Lexie, whom Lulu came to adore. While Lexie didn’t have Kiwon’s technical ability, she played in the Yale orchestra and genuinely loved music. Intellectual and philosophical, Lexie was a wonderful influence on Lulu. She questioned things. She and Lulu would talk about their favorite composers and concertos, overrated violinists, and different interpretations of Lulu’s pieces. After their conversations, Lulu would always be motivated to practice.
Meanwhile, I was still teaching my courses at Yale and finishing up a second book, this one about history’s greatest empires and the secret to their success. I was also traveling continuously, giving lectures about democratization and ethnic conflict.
One day, when I was in an airport somewhere waiting to fly back to New Haven, I checked my BlackBerry and saw an e-mail from the sponsors of Sophia’s piano competition. For a few minutes I was paralyzed, terrified of bad news. Finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I clicked the button.
Sophia was a first-prize winner. She was going to play at Carnegie Hall! There was just one problem: Sophia’s Carnegie Hall performance was the evening before Lulu’s Juilliard audition.
21
The Debut and the Audition
Sophia at Carnegie Hall, 2007
It was the big day—the day of Sophia’s Carnegie Hall debut. This time I’d really gone wild. I’d spoken to Jed, and we decided to forgo our winter vacation for the year. Sophia’s dress for the event was a charcoal satin floor-length gown from Barneys New York—no David’s Bridal for this one! For the reception afterward, I’d rented out the Fontainebleau Room at the St. Regis New York, where we also took two rooms for two nights. In addition to sushi, crab cakes, dumplings, quesadillas, a raw oyster bar, and iced silver bowls of jumbo shrimp, I ordered a beef tenderloin station, a Peking duck station, and a pasta station (for the kids). At the last minute I had them throw in Gruyère profiteroles, Sicilian rice balls with wild mushrooms, and a giant dessert station. I’d also printed up invitations and sent them to everyone we knew.
Each time a new bill came, Jed’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, there goes our summer vacation too,” he said at one point. My mother, meanwhile, was horrified by my extravagance; growing up, we’d only ever stayed in a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn. But Carnegie Hall was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I was determined to make it unforgettable.
For analytical clarity, I should probably point out that some aspects of my behavior—for example, my tendency to show off and overdo things—are not characteristic of most Chinese mothers. I inherited those flaws, along with my loud voice and my love of big parties and the color red, from my father. Even when I was growing up, my mother, who’s very muted and modest, would shake her head and say, “It’s genetic. Amy’s a clone of the oddball.” The latter referred to my father, whom it’s true I’ve always idolized.
Part of the deal I’d arranged with the St. Regis was that we’d have access to a piano, and the day before the recital Sophia and I practiced on and off throughout the day. Jed worried about me going too far and tiring out Sophia’s fingers; Wei-Yi had told us that Sophia knew her pieces inside out and that being calm and focused was more important than anything. But I had to make sure that Sophia’s performance was flawless, that she didn’t leave out a single brilliant tiny nuance Wei-Yi had taught us. Contrary to everyone’s advice, we practiced until almost 1:00 A.M. the night before. The last thing I said to her was, “You’re going to be great. When you’ve worked as hard as you have, you know you’ve done everything you can, and it doesn’t matter now what happens.”
The next day when the moment came—while I could barely breathe, clutching the armrest of my seat in near rigor mortis—Sophia played brilliantly, jubilantly. I knew every note, every silence, every witty touch like the back of my hand. I knew where the potential pitfalls were; Sophia blew past them all. I knew her favorite parts, her most masterful transitions. I knew where thank goodness she didn’t rush and exactly when she began to bring it home, allowing herself to improvise emotionally, knowing it was already a total triumph.
Afterward, when everyone else rushed to congratulate and hug her, I hung back. I didn’t need the clichéd moment where “Sophia’s eyes sought out mine in the crowd.” I just watched my cute little grown-up girl from afar, laughing with her friends, piling up with flowers.
In moments of despair I force myself to relive that memory. My parents and sisters attended, as did Jed’s father, Sy, and his wife, Harriet, and many friends and colleagues. Wei-Yi had come down from New Haven for the performance and was clearly proud of his young pupil. According to Sophia, it was one of the happiest days of her life. I had not only invited her entire grade, I rented a van to transport her schoolmates both ways between New Haven and NewYork. No one applauds as loudly as a bunch of giddy eighth-graders let loose in NewYork—and no one could possibly eat as much shrimp cocktail (which the St. Regis charged for by the piece).
As promised, here’s the ending of Sophia’s essay on “Conquering Juliet”: I didn’t quite understand what was happening until I found myself backstage, petrified, quaking. My hands were cold. I couldn’t remember how my piece started. An old mirror betrayed the contrast between my chalk-white face and my dark gown, and I wondered how many other musicians had stared into that same glass.
Carnegie Hall. It didn’t seem right. This was supposed to be the unattainable goal, the carrot of false hope that would keep me practicing for an entire lifetime. And yet here I was, an eighth-grader, about to play “Juliet as a Young Girl” for the expectant crowd.
I had worked so hard for this. Romeo and Juliet weren’t the only characters I had learned. The sweet, repetitive murmuring that accompanied Juliet was her nurse; the boisterous chords were Romeo’s teasing friends. So much of me was manifested in this piece, in one way or another. At that moment, I realized how much I loved this music.
Performing isn’t easy—in fact, it’s heartbreaking. You spend months, maybe years, mastering a piece; you become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you. Playing for an audience is like giving blood; it leaves you feeling empty and a bit light-headed. And when it’s all over, your piece just isn’t yours anymore.
It was time. I walked out to the piano and bowed. Only the stage was lit, and I couldn’t see the faces of the audience. I said good-bye to Romeo and Juliet, then released them into the darkness.
Sophia’s success energized me, filled me with new dreams. I couldn’t help noticing that the Weill Recital Hall, where Sophia played—while quite charming with its belle epoque arches and symmetrical proportions—was a relatively small venue, located on the third floor of Carnegie Hall. I learned that the much larger, magnificent hall that I’d seen on television, where some of the world’s greatest musicians had played to audiences of nearly three thousand, was called the Isaac Stern Auditorium. I made a mental note that we ought to try to make it there someday.
There were a few shadows on the day. We all felt Florence’s absence, which left a hollowness that couldn’t be filled. It also stung a little that Sophia’s old piano teacher Michelle didn’t come; our move to Wei-Yi had
not been taken well, despite our efforts to maintain a relationship. But the worst thing was that Lulu got food poisoning the day of the recital. After practicing her audition pieces all morning with Kiwon, they’d gone to a deli for lunch. Twenty minutes later, Lulu was sick to her stomach, convulsing with pain. She managed to make it through Sophia’s performance before staggering out of the hall; Kiwon took her by taxi back to the hotel. Lulu missed the entire reception, and during the party Jed and I took turns running up to our hotel room, where Lulu vomited all night, with my mother attending to her.
The next morning, with Lulu white as a ghost and barely able to walk, we took her to Juilliard. She was wearing a yellow and white dress and a big bow in her hair, which only made her face look more drawn. I thought about canceling the audition, but we’d poured so many hours into preparing that even Lulu wanted to do it. In the waiting area, we saw Asian parents everywhere, pacing back and forth, grim-faced and single-minded.They seem so unsubtle, I thought to myself, can they possibly love music? Then it hit me that almost all the other parents were foreigners or immigrants and that music was a ticket for them, and I thought, I’m not like them. I don’t have what it takes.
When Lulu’s name was called, and she walked bravely into the audition room by herself, my heart almost broke—I almost gave it all up right then. But instead, Jed and I plastered our ears to the door and listened as she played Mozart’s Third Concerto and Gabriel Fauré’s Berceuse, both as movingly as I’d ever heard her play. Afterward, Lulu told us that Itzhak Perlman and Naoko Tanaka, the famous violin teacher, had been among the judges in the room.
A month later we got the bad news in the mail. Jed and I knew the contents of the thin envelope instantly; Lulu was still at school. After reading the formal, two-line rejection letter, Jed turned away in disgust. He didn’t say anything to me, but the unspoken accusation was, “Are you happy now, Amy? Now what?”
When Lulu came home, I said to her as cheerfully as I could, “Hey, Lulu, honey, guess what? We heard from Juilliard. They didn’t accept you. But it doesn’t matter—we didn’t expect to get in this year. Lots of people don’t get in their first time. Now we know what to do for next time.”
I couldn’t bear the look that flashed over Lulu’s face. I thought for a second that she was going to cry, but then I realized she would never do that. How could I have set her up for such a disappointment? I thought to myself. All those hours we put in were now big black stains on our memory. And how would I ever get her to practice—
“I’m glad I didn’t get in,” Lulu’s voice interrupted my thoughts. She looked a little angry now.
“Lulu, Daddy and I are so proud that—”
“Oh stop it,” Lulu snapped. “I told you—I don’t care. You’re the one who forced me to do it. I hate Juilliard. I’m happy I didn’t get in,” she repeated.
I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t received a call the next day from—of all people—Naoko Tanaka. Miss Tanaka said that she thought Lulu had auditioned wonderfully, showing unusual musicality, and that she herself had voted to accept Lulu. She also explained that a decision had been made that year to downsize the Pre-College violin program; as a result, an unprecedented number of applicants had competed for unprecedentedly few spots, making it even more difficult than usual to get in. I was just beginning to thank Miss Tanaka for her considerate call when she offered to take on Lulu as a student in her own private studio.
I was stunned. Miss Tanaka’s private studio was famously exclusive—almost impossible to get into. My spirits soared, and I thought quickly. What I really wanted was a great teacher for Lulu; I didn’t care that much about the Pre-College program. I knew that studying with Miss Tanaka would mean driving to New York City every weekend. I also wasn’t sure how Lulu would react.
I accepted on Lulu’s behalf on the spot.
22
Blowout in Budapest
Lulu and Sophia on stage at the Old Liszt Academy
After all those excruciating hours preparing for the Juilliard audition, and then the food poisoning and the rejection letter, you’d think that I would have given Lulu a break. I probably should have. But that was two years ago, when I was much younger, and I didn’t. Easing up would have been selling Lulu short. It would have been the easy way out, which I saw as the Western thing to do. Instead, I jacked up the pressure even more. For the first time, I paid a real price, but nothing like the price I would eventually pay.
Two of the most important guests at Sophia’s Carnegie Hall recital were Oszkár and Krisztina Pogány, old family friends from Hungary, who happened to be visiting New York at the time. Oszkár is a prominent physicist and my father’s close friend. His wife, Krisztina, is a former concert pianist who is now very involved with the Budapest music scene. After Sophia’s performance, Krisztina rushed up to us, raved about Sophia’s playing—she’d especially liked her “Juliet as a Young Girl”—and said she had an inspiration.
Budapest, Krisztina explained, would soon be celebrating Museum Night, when museums all over the city would host lectures, performances, and concerts; for the price of a single ticket, people could “museum hop” late into the night. As part of Museum Night, the Franz Liszt Academy of Music would be presenting a number of concerts. Krisztina thought it would be a big hit to have a “Prodigy from America” concert, featuring Sophia.
It was a breathtaking invitation. Budapest is a famously musical city, the home of not only Liszt but Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Its stunning State Opera House is said to be surpassed acoustically only by Milan’s La Scala and Paris’s Palais Garnier. The venue Krisztina proposed for the concert was the Old Music Academy, an elegant three-story neo-Renaissance building that once served as the official residence of Franz Liszt, the founder and president of the academy. The Old Academy (replaced in 1907 by the New Academy of Music, located a few streets away) was now a museum filled with Liszt’s original instruments, furniture, and handwritten musical scores. Krisztina told Sophia that she would perform on one of Liszt’s own pianos! Also, the audience would be a large one—not to mention Sophia’s first paying audience.
But I had a problem. So soon after the fanfare of Carnegie Hall, how would Lulu feel about another big event with Sophia as the center of attention? Lulu had been pleased with Miss Tanaka’s offer; somewhat to my surprise, she immediately said she wanted to do it. But that did only a little to dull the sting of the Juilliard disappointment. To make matters worse, I hadn’t thought to keep her audition a secret, and for months Lulu had to deal with people asking her, “Did you get the audition results yet? I’ m sure you got in.”
The Chinese parenting approach is weakest when it comes to failure; it just doesn’t tolerate that possibility. The Chinese model turns on achieving success. That’s how the virtuous circle of confidence, hard work, and more success is generated. I knew that I had to make sure Lulu achieved that success—at the same level as Sophia—before it was too late.
I came up with a plan and enlisted my mother as my agent. I asked her to call her old friend Krisztina and tell her all about Lulu and the violin: how she had played for Jessye Norman and then for the renowned violin instructor Mrs. Vamos, both of whom had said Lulu was terrifically talented, and finally, how Lulu had just been accepted as a private student by a world-famous teacher from the world-famous Juilliard School. I told my mother to feel out the possibility of having Lulu perform with Sophia as a duo in Budapest, even if only for one piece. Perhaps, I told my mother to suggest, that one piece could be Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances for Piano and Violin, which the girls had recently performed—and which I knew would appeal to Krisztina. Along with Liszt, Bartók is Hungary’s most famous composer, and his Folk Dances are sensational crowd-pleasers.
We lucked out. Krisztina, who had met Lulu and liked her fiery personality, told my mother that she loved the idea of having Sophia play a piece with her little sister and that the Romanian Dances would be a perfect addition to the program. Kr
isztina said she would arrange everything and even change the billing of the event to “Two Prodigy Sisters from America.”
The girls’ concert was set for June 23, only one month away. Once again, I bore down.There was a staggering amount of work to be done. I had exaggerated when I told my mother that the girls had recently performed the Romanian Dances; by “recently” I meant a year and a half ago. To relearn the Dances and get them just right, the girls and I had to work around the clock. Meanwhile, Sophia was also frantically practicing four other pieces Wei-Yi had chosen for her: Brahms’s Rhapsody in G Minor, a piece by a Chinese woman composer, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and of course, one of Liszt’s famous Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Although Sophia had the difficult repertoire, my real concern was Lulu. I wanted with all my heart for her to be dazzling. I knew that my parents would be at the concert; by coincidence, they were going to be in Budapest for the month of June because my father was being inducted into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I also didn’t want to let Krisztina down. Most of all, I wanted Lulu to do well for Lulu. This is exactly what she needs, I thought to myself; it will give her so much confidence and pride if she does well. I had to deal with some resistance from Lulu: I had promised her time off after her audition no matter what, and now I was breaking that promise. But I steeled myself for battle, and when things got intolerable, I hired Kiwon and Lexie as auxiliaries.
Here’s a question I often get: “But Amy, let me ask you this. Who are you doing all this pushing for—your daughters”—and here always the cocked head, the knowing tone—“or yourself ?” I find this a very Western question to ask (because in Chinese thinking, the child is the extension of the self). But that doesn’t mean it’s not an important one.