Food is an integral part of the Joy Luck Club, which consists of four women, meets every week, and is centered around food, mahjong, and investing in the stock market. The club opens with the women and their families meeting and eating. June's mother started the San Francisco Joy Luck Club and modeled it after one she'd belonged to in Kweilin. Now that her mother has passed, June has been invited to fill her role. The first time June goes, she watches Auntie An-mei make wonton: “Forty wonton, eight people, ten each, five row more…” They eat “piles of food on the table, served buffet style, just like at the Kweilin feasts.” June had heard of the Kweilin version of the Joy Luck Club, where each dish that was served was deliberately chosen by the hostess and represented something: “long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life.” June is surprised, and maybe disappointed, by the food rituals in San Francisco, which seem less civilized than those she’d heard about from her mother. “They are not like the ladies of Kweilin, who I always imagined savored their food with a certain detached delicacy.”