Turtle Soup
Marilyn Chin
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Fall 1991, Vol. XIII, No.4
for Ben Huang
You go home one evening tired from work,
and your mother boils you turtle soup.
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth,
(who knows what else is in that cauldron).
You say, “Ma, you’ve poached the symbol of long
life;
that turtle lived 4,000 years, swam
the Wei, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.
Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,
grazed on splendid sericulture.”
(So, she boils the life out of him.)
“All our ancestors have been fools.
Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles
to kill a famous Manchu and ended up
with his head on a pole? Eat, child,
its liver will make you strong.
“Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the
sacrifice.”
Her sobbing is inconsolable.
So, you spread that gentle napkin
over your lap in decorous Pasadena.
Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.
The golden decal on the green underbelly
says, “Made in Hong Kong.
Is there nothing left but the shell,
and humanity’s strange inscriptions,
the songs, the rites, the oracles?
The Turtle No Longer Swims in the
Soup *
With mirth and impeccable
diction, in her whimsically serious poem, “Turtle Soup,” Marilyn Chin explores
the incongruity, the dying traditions, the roles of the sexes, and the
persistence of meaningless rites in the reluctant assimilation of Chinese
Americans in a new land. With the voice of someone who straddles two cultures
and in the varying tones required for the poem, Chin points to artifacts (the
cauldron, toy turtle) that reinforce the persistence of culture however vacuous
they have become in the new land. In this short narrative poem featuring
dialogue as well, in second person plural and in third person omniscient, Chin
deftly encapsulates Chinese civilization, history, religion, and filial piety
with a critical eye. She does not do this out of self-contempt but with a sense
of resignation. For their bitter-sweet sacrifice for economic survival, Chin is
sympathetic to the older immigrant generation and their sense of becoming a
burden for the young and their trying to matter. In this sense, the Chinese
assimilation in the United States, with some serious bumps along the way, is still
in progress, not unlike the assimilation of some other nationalities. While
this poem touches quite a few immigrant nerves, it remains that the unsaid is
the real poem.
Chin, in the very first line of the poem in conversational tone,
presumably addressing a Ben Huang, possibly a colleague, for whom this poem is
dedicated, “You go home one evening tired from work” occupies a strategic
placement because historically, the Chinese came to America for economic
survival in the 1800s, China was devasted by the Manchus who set up the Qin
Dynasty, and built the Forbidden City in Beijing (formerly Peking) that
excluded entrance to the Chinese. So, it is not surprising that in strophe
three, an Uncle Wu “rode ten thousand miles to
kill a famous Manchu…” Because of war, bandits, pestilence, and
drought, and the availability of a gamble in the United States for survival,
especially work building the railroads (my great-grandfather immigrated to the
US for that very reason), Chinese “coolies” came to the US as “indentured
servants.” Indentured servants were
explicitly barred from citizenship and for this reason, many Chinese came to
risk their lives for a fortune and go back to China for retirement.
So, this very first line of the poem
can mean (but I doubt) as far reaching as returning to China after a long labor
contract. See Koon Woon, Paper Son Poet
https://www.amazon.com/Paper-son-Poet-When-rails-young/dp/0692689168
The last two lines of the first strophe have the mother spending twelve
hours “hunched over the hearth” cooking turtle soup in a cauldron with
dedication and maternal love. The word “cauldron” is important as it serves
both as a cooking pot, a vessel to drink from, as well as an urn for incense
offerings. Yet the second strophe irreverently, after Ben Huang presumably
telling the significance of the turtle as a symbol in Chinese history, Chin mocks
it as something one “boils the life out of…”
The mother does this out of ignorance of Chinese history herself, for
Chinese women of her generation are seldom educated, and this tells us that she
is not from a Mandarin or upper class in China, but most likely of peasant
heritage as most of the Chinese in the US of that generation were. But the
belief that eating turtle will increase one’s longevity is a myth since ancient
times in China. One might note here too that sometimes people confuse the
symbol for a thing for the thing itself, as in the very first line in the
second strophe, the “you” addresses the mother like this: “Ma, you’ve poached
the symbol of long life;” presumable, the
mother believes that eating turtle
is efficacious to health, thus what the turtle symbolizes is taken to be the
case literally. Notwithstanding, the mother in strophe three rather thinks of
self-preservation at the expense of honor in her calling “Uncle Wu” a fool who
set out to kill a particular famous Manchu. Perhaps “Uncle Wu” did not eat
enough turtle soup and consequently was not strong enough and the Manchu
slaughtered him as a consequence and paraded his head on a pole? The role of
the mother, from the mother in the poem, is to obey husband and sons and try to
make them “strong,” because, as the first line of strophe four summarizes her
duty as to preserve the patriarchal lineage through the son, and therefore, the
mother’s concern is this filial piety.
The second strophe, Ben Huang enumerates the geography of the life
giving and sustaining rivers and accomplishment of the Chinese civilization
over four-thousand years, including the Silk Route via central Asia to as far
as Greece. But how he knows these histories is not explained. The Silk Route
was so named for the heavy trading of silk, which came from the sericulture in
China. The Bronze Age also reached its peak and so did the Tang Dynasty reach a
cultural peak. But the mother was not impressed and retorts with, “All our
ancestors have been fools,” implying that trade, travel, and high culture was
not valued by her, especially when she betrays her defeatist attitude by
saying, “(an Uncle Wu) traveled four thousand miles to slaughter a high-ranking
Manchu only to have his head chopped off and exhibited on the top of a long
pole. She attributes this to his not eating enough turtle liver. It is unkind
here that Chin mocks peasant stupidity unless she is just being realistic and
protesting that ancient China and China
under its patriarchal society failed
the women by not educating them and in this way, keep them in intellectual
bondage as it were.
Furthermore, when the mother
sobs, “Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice,” the mother is
trapped by her mentality of being subjugated by filial piety and the
patriarchal system for so long that sacrificing for her children is the normal
duty in life, especially to the one, the oldest son, who carries the family
line. She sees the self-sacrifice being completely obligatory and natural. Chin
up to now has been addressing s certain “Ben Huang” who at this time feels
guilt that he is the cause of his mother’s suffering and so he “…spread that
gentle napkin / over [his] lap in decorous Pasadena.” Pasadena is the part of
Los Angeles that is his life which is full of Victorian décor. One sees the
incongruity of the world views here between mother and son. And then in the
fifth and final strophe, Chin speaks but this time to her peer “Ben Huang” in
the jargon today’s youths speak and with a feminist slant. Chin calls “Ben” baby and refers to a high
“priestess” rather than a priest who “got it all wrong.” The turtle in the rite
is fake! It’s got a “golden decal on the green underbelly / [which says] made
in Hong Kong.” Chin then angrily bemoans that everything has been lost of the
genuine culture and probably berating herself for hanging on when there is
“nothing left but the shell, … strange inscriptions, / the songs, the rites,
the oracles.” Chin is upset because the true culture of China is reduced to
empty gestures and meaningless motions.
Ostensibly, there are three speakers in this poem, Ben Huang, the
mother, and Chin herself. But basically
we see everything through Chin’s eyes. It is her voice and tone that gives this
poem
its power and subtlety. On the one
hand, she is only talking about one immigrant family, but in doing so, she
makes oblique references to the historical weaknesses as well as the strengths
of China. One such weakness is the secondary role of women in its patriarchal
system, as when the mother “[sobs inconsolably] / Sometimes you’re the life,
sometimes the sacrifice.” This can refer to sacrificing for her son or that
women in general were “sacrifices.”
The complex tone of this poem carries the problematics of transplanting
in a vastly different culture as in the mother sobbing while the son “spread
that gentle napkin / over your lap in decorous Pasadena,” showing both respect
and guilt toward the mother’s sacrifice.
* Turtle in Wudang Tai Chi form
Wudang Sanfeng Taiji Quan 28
by Master Zhong Yunlong (slo-mo) - YouTube
** Oracle Bones by Keith Holyoak from Goldfish Press
https://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Bones-Poems-Time-Misrule/dp/0978797523
Koon Woon,
Paper Son Poet
https://www.amazon.com/Paper-son-Poet-When-rails-young/dp/0692689168
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