Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Author of Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002) and Dwarf Bamboo (1987) to name a few, has received numerous awards including four Pushcart Prizes, the Patterson Prize and Fulbright Fellowship.

Turtle Soup 

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 four thousand 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?

Copyright © 1993 by Marilyn Chin 

Published in: Chin, Marilyn. 1993. The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty. Milkweed Editions. 

1. Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in line 4. What images or connection does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than “pot”?

I actually think why the word  “cauldron” was used because the writer wants to embrace her Chinese heritage. Cauldron is commonly used by Chinese to boil soup especially the herbal soup. As turtle soup is consider a herb in the Chinese community therefore it is only right to cook in it in a cauldron.

Another way of seeing it is by using cauldron, it show motherly love. The mother cooked it for a long period for her child (him /her ) as the soup gives strength to one.

2.   Chin refers to “the Wei “, “the Yellow,” and “the Yangtze”. Why does she reference these  rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?

This is simply because  the poet is actually a Chinese- American. She wants to feel the root / origin by knowing her origin country. It gives her a sense of belonging towards her heritage.

3.  What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem is actually quite melanchony and somber. For example , in stanza 4 line 2 .

“ Her Sobbing is inconsolable”

This line suggest that the mother is actually crying about being an immigrant who is in a foreign land.

I do think that the poem is reflective on the Chinese tradition. For example , there are words such cauldron , Wei, Yangtze , Uncle Wu .