Summary
The second section of the novel is narrated by Jung-Sum, the second brother. He has recently turned 12, and has been living with his adopted family for 8 years. He is fascinated with boxing, and trains and practices regularly. Jung-Sum has overheard Grandmother (referred to here as "Poh-Poh") telling her friend Mrs. Lim that Jung-Sum is somehow different from other boys, and has a more feminine energy.
One day in the autumn, Dai Kew (a close family friend who works as a cook on steamships) brings a large turtle to the family home. He won it while gambling on the ship, and has kept it with him. Jung-Sum takes on the role of caring for the turtle, which lives in the woodshed. Grandmother will not let the turtle live in the house, but she does concede that the turtle may bring good luck. The family is also preoccupied with caring for Stepmother, who is pregnant with her third child (after Jook-Liang and Sek-Lung).
Jung-Sum is delighted with his pet, and takes good care of it. He also invites several friends, who are not Chinese, to see the turtle. One of the other boys, Bobby Steinberg, asks about the turtle's name, saying that since it is a Canadian turtle, it should not have a Chinese name. Jung-Sum names the turtle King George. When Dai Kew comes to visit, Jung-Sum asks to be allowed to keep the turtle through the winter, and explains his plans to take good care of it. Dai Kew is puzzled by the name Jung-Sum has chosen, but ends up seeing the outcome as a good omen. He gives Jung-Sum some money so that the young boy can go to a movie, and Jung-Sum rushes off in delight. It is implied that this is the last time that Jung-Sum sees the turtle, and that the money was given to him as a distraction so that he would not be there when the turtle was taken away.
The next chapter begins a few weeks later, as the fall has progressed and winter is coming closer. Father sends Jung-Sum to collect rent money from a man known as Old Yuen. Before he goes, Jung-Sum thinks back on his earlier childhood. When he was 4 years old, he travelled by train from Kamloops to Vancouver to meet his new family. Grandmother met him at the station, and was quite stern with him. Jung-Sum imagined her as the Fox Lady, a mythical figure he had heard about in stories. Mr. Chang, an official, was facilitating the adoption, and Grandmother agreed to adopt Jung-Sum. He went home with her to meet his new family, including Jook-Liang, Father, and Stepmother.
Jung-Sum was assigned to share a room with Kiam, who is the eldest son, and 8 years old at the time that Jung-Sum is adopted. Kiam was brusque with Jung-Sum, and Jung-Sum thought longingly about whether his parents might come back for him. Even though his parents had been dead for 6 months when he was adopted, Jung-Sum continued to hope that they might come back for him. Jung-Sum had marks on his body indicating that he was physically abused either by his parents, the people he lived with prior to being adopted, or both. On his first night with his new family, he thought back to the morning when he woke up in bed next to his mother's body. Although Jung-Sum was too young to understand, Choy implies that Jung-Sum's father killed his wife and then himself. Jung-Sum was found by neighbors named Mr. and Mrs. Chin and initially taken in by them. Although they intended to help him, they also reinforced the idea that Jung-Sum had to repress his emotions.
Although he was often frightened or overwhelmed at first, Jung-Sum gradually adjusted to his new life with his family. He recounts how the Great Depression meant that Father had to work very hard to provide for the family; Grandmother cared for the children, but after Sek-Lung was born, she was mostly attentive to him, and largely ignored the older children. Jung-Sum gradually integrated into the family, and also made friends with both Chinese and non-Chinese boys from the neighborhood. Along with his older brother Kiam, and another boy named Frank Yuen, Jung-Sum began to visit a local boxing gym, where a man named Max took an interest in him, and began teaching him to box.
Jung-Sum became good friends with Frank Yuen, who is the son of Old Yuen. When Old Yuen tried to pass down a coat to his son, Frank refused to take it, and offered it to Jung-Sum instead. Jung-Sum loved the coat, and various members of his family contributed to tailoring it and fixing it to make it suitable for him. When the coat still did not fit well, Grandmother took Jung-Sum to visit Gee Sok, who runs a dry-cleaning and tailoring business. Gee Sok is an elderly, unmarried man, and Grandmother often spends time gossiping with him in his shop. Gee Sok contributes a great deal to the community, and is always very kind and caring to the children in particular. Gee Sok cleans and alters the coat so that it fits Jung-Sum perfectly, and he feels great pride in his appearance.
Jung-Sum also reflects on something that happened shortly after Dai-Kew took the turtle back. Stepmother gave birth to a stillborn baby boy, which would have been her third child. The family grieved the loss together, and Jung-Sum reflected on how calm and brave Kiam was. As the eldest son, Kiam has both a lot of privilege and a lot of responsibility; Father expects him to behave more like an adult than a child. Of all the children, Kiam is the only one to have been born in China, and Jung-Sum has heard stories from Grandmother about how happy everyone was when he was born. After the stillbirth, various members of the community rallied to help the family, and Stepmother seemed to quietly accept her loss.
Analysis
While the first section, narrated by Jook-Liang, followed a fairly linear and chronological retrospective narrative, Jung-Sum's section is more episodic and fragmented. Jung-Sum recounts various episodes and incidents from his childhood, but not always in chronological order. Sometimes, recounting one episode will trigger memories of other events, and the narrative will digress to cover that material. This narrative technique allows Choy to highlight the importance of memory and storytelling as contexts for the novel. All of the children have various memories of Grandmother telling stories about her childhood in China, and it seems that they are influenced by the practice because the narrative is constructed out of stories they recount about their own childhoods. As would be the case if someone was looking back and remembering, the stories are not always well-organized, and sometimes they leave out details in favor of what is most vivid. While Jook-Liang's narrative focused on a single aspect of her childhood (her friendship with Wong-Suk and his eventual departure), Jung-Sum's section describes multiple different episodes that were formative for him in some way, and contributed to his coming of age.
The first incident that Jung-Sum shares from his memories is the story of his turtle, which functions as a close parallel to Jook-Liang's story. Like his sister, Jung-Sum forms a strong bond with an unexpected visitor, and then has that companion abruptly vanish from his life. While the turtle is an animal and not human, it functions as a similar embodiment of the rich world of stories and mythology that the children inhabit. Jook-Liang is drawn to Wong Suk because of his resemblance to her vision of the Monkey King, and turtles also sometimes play a role in traditional Chinese stories and myths. The turtle also creates an opportunity for Jung-Sum to begin to explore tensions between his Chinese and Canadian heritage because of the conflict over what to name it. Names are important throughout the novel (Jung-Sum himself receives a new name when he is adopted by the Chen family) and the debate over whether to give the turtle a Chinese or an English name reflects how Jung-Sum will often be caught between two cultures.
Throughout the novel, many of the episodes narrated by the children involve encountering and forming relationships with individuals outside of their family. Part of growing up is stepping outside of the close-knit family structure, and developing bonds elsewhere. Jung-Sum's affection for the turtle foreshadows other relationships he will form, and also parallels friendships that his siblings will develop. Another common feature of many of these relationships is that the children end up losing the person or animal that they have bonded with; the experience of loss is also part of what causes these relationships to be impactful, since the realization that nothing lasts forever marks a progression from a childish to a more adult way of seeing the world. Much like Jook-Liang, Jung-Sum experiences a very abrupt loss and does not understand that the turtle will be disappearing until it is gone. While Jung-Sum has a strong attachment to the turtle, the narrative does not describe what he felt after it was taken away, and does not mention it again once it is gone. Throughout the novel, many characters choose to bury their relationships to the past and to losses because they are too painful to bear discussing.
While Jung-Sum does not discuss the emotions that surround the loss of the turtle, he does provide some insight into the painful experience of losing his biological family and being adopted. Jung-Sum's fragmentary and unclear memories about the circumstances of his life with his biological family provide only partial hints, but show the impact of poverty, abuse, and isolation. Part of why Jung-Sum will form such a deep bond with Frank Yuen is because the two have endured similar things. However, this section also reveals strong community bonds that show Jung-Sum being immediately cared for, and eventually relocated to a new family. Jung-Sum's transition into life with the Chen family is relatively smooth because they provide a caring and nurturing environment, but also don't put too much pressure on him, and let him adapt at his own pace. Jung-Sum's successful adoption offers a model of how change and integration can occur, which is important in a novel where characters are often not successfully welcomed or integrated into a new culture. The adoption functions as a kind of microcosm for how these transitions could occur, and an optimistic possibility about integration and acceptance.
While Jung-Sum is happily integrated into the Chen family, Grandmother in particular shows a keen observance of how he is somewhat different. She notes a more feminine energy to him, foreshadowing how Jung-Sum will eventually experience attraction to another boy. This foreshadowing is also developed through Jung-Sum's interest in the coat, and the episode describing Gee Sok's role in the community. Clothing and fabric would traditionally be more associated with femininity; combined with Jung-Sum's toughness and interest in boxing, this section of the novel suggests that binaries around gender and sexuality do not need to be rigid. While it is never explicit, Gee Sok's role as a man who never married or had children might also hint at his sexual orientation, or simply provide a model of how someone who did not pursue traditional family structures remains integrated in the community. While the Chinatown community can be quite rigid and strict in some ways, Grandmother only ever speaks about her observations of Jung-Sum in a caring and compassionate way. While his status as an adoptee and as a boy who might experience attraction to other boys could brand him as an outsider, Jung-Sum seems to be truly welcomed and accepted.
