The Jade Peony

Jung is 10 years old. He opens the chapter by recalling the day that he discovered a hissing turtle in his home’s outbuilding. It was brought there because a family friend named Dai Kew, who had been keeping the turtle as a good luck charm while he worked in a hellish kitchen on a steamship, was no longer allowed to keep it. Jung also reveals that all of the old men who visit his home see Jung as spoiled and weak: their hands bore callouses by ages 6 and 7, while his are flawless at age 10. 

Stepmother is pregnant with her third child, and has been warned that the baby could be even weaker than Sekky, who had a persistent cough that dogged his early life. Poh-Poh, therefore, focuses on making Stepmother as warm as possible in their drafty clapboard house, and Jung must often haul in sawdust for the fireplace. It is on one of these runs that he discovers the turtle. 

Drawn to the box by the turtle’s hissing, Jung looks inside and finds it. He considers the creature beastly and splendid at the same time. While Poh-Poh chides that the animal bites and stinks, she also concedes that it is good luck, because turtles have long lives.