CHAPTER2
Origins, Storytelling, and the Warrior Song
Narrator reflects on traditional Chinese stories told by her mother: women could be heroines or swordswomen, not just wives or slaves. Swordswomen lash back at injustice and protect their families.
A central origin story: white crane boxing was invented by a woman about years ago. She was a pole fighter, daughter of a teacher trained at the Shao-lin temple. An encounter with a white crane (the bird sits outside her window; she tangles with it; the crane breaks her pole) leads to a spiritual apprenticeship: she asks the spirit of the white crane to teach her to fight; the crane answers with a cry imitated by modern white crane boxers. The bird later returns as an old man who guides her boxing for many years, creating a new martial art for the world.
Maternal storytelling creates a bridge between myth, memory, and the child’s waking life: the mother’s tales become dream-parts of the daughter’s identity. The mother’s voice becomes the heroine’s own voice in sleep.
Sundays at Confucius Church: screenings of swordswomen jumping over houses; the daughter gradually recognizes she has been in the presence of great power through her mother’s storytelling.
The chant of Fa Mu Lan – the girl who took her father’s place in battle – resurfaces when the narrator grows up. The narrator recalls singing Fa Mu Lan with her mother as a child and realizes the chant’s power to remind her of a warrior legacy she was given but could forget.
The mother’s warning about becoming “a wife and a slave” contrasts with the gift of a warrior song; this creates a tension between domesticity and heroic potential.
Visual motif: a bird over the roof, wings like the ideograph for “human”, guiding the imagination toward ascent and struggle.
The Dragon-Woman Apprenticeship Begins: The Mountain Training
The narrator is drawn to a path of training that seems to transcend ordinary life: a vision of becoming a warrior woman who can avenge her village.
She is taken to a hidden place where an autumn wind moves through pine needles arranged as a map of the mountains; she is cared for by two old people (the old woman and old man) with whom she will stay for fifteen years.
The old couple explain the training’s scope: quietness, balance, and bodily control; they transform the hut into a martial arena: a rock becomes their table, benches are fallen trees, ferns and mountain flora decorate walls; the roof opens like a basket lid via a rope tied to a branch.
The first lessons emphasize stillness and balance:
“The first thing you have to learn is how to be quiet.”
Training through observing streams, animals, and the deer’s water needs; if one is too noisy, water and life are disrupted.
Exercises from dawn to sunset to observe shadows growing and shrinking; learning to move every part of the body in circles; walking with the heel down to form the ideograph for “eight,” and a steady, square step into battle.
The body becomes their primary instrument: after years, the narrator’s muscles and even iris dilations become controllable; she learns to imitate owls and bats (homonyms for words like “bat” and “blessing”).
Animal kinship as martial pedagogy: the deer teach speed; the birds teach balance; the fox, the turtle, and other creatures inform stealth, timing, and fearlessness.
The two old people’ presence is neither fully human nor fully supernatural; they appear at different ages (the old man/woman sometimes appear as younger versions) to signal the dragon’s multiplicity and the dragon’s many forms of wisdom.
The climb to the mountains of the white tigers (in the seventh year, when the narrator is about age ) is a harsh survival trial:
The old couple lead her blindfolded to the mountains and shout commands: “Run. Run. Run.”
The trial tests endurance: surviving in cold, climbing, finding food, and learning to read the terrain as a battlefield.
The trial culminates in a ritual of survival and self-reliance: the narrator builds a fire, gathers wood and edible roots, and learns to live on water for up to fifty days (the old people assert this as possible): days on water, if necessary.
The experience pushes the narrator into a dreamlike test of vision and memory: hunger fractures ordinary perception; rabbits become meat; the narrator recognizes the sacrifice embedded in survival.
The Dragon’s Eye: Dragon-Wisdom and Mountain Metaphor
After surviving the mountains, the old couple teach her to see the dragon in the landscape: mountains, rivers, and weather become parts of the dragon’s body and breath.
The mountains are the dragon’s head; trees are the dragon’s hair; the rock and soil are its flesh; the tongue is lightning; the dragon’s breath includes rain and fire. This cosmology reframes geography as a living, martial, and spiritual organism.
The dragon’s anatomy is explored through sensory experience:
The resin under pine bark resembles dragon’s skull and bones; the old couple explain that the mountains are the top of the dragon’s head, and the dragon’s veins are the earth’s minerals.
The old woman teaches the mind to expand so there is room for paradoxes: Pearls are bone marrow; pearls come from oysters; the dragon lives in sky, ocean, marshes, and mountains; and the mountains are its cranium.
Practical skills tied to this cosmology:
Collecting resources from protected tree spots; understanding which trees store fire and energy (red-flowering trees, leaf changes).
Building a fire, storing fuel in the scarf, and preparing for long climbs with nuts and roots. The aim is self-sufficiency in extreme terrain.
Immortality and longevity myths surface:
The dragon’s sap (from a pine over three thousand years old) could grant a hundred extra years of life if one drinks ten pounds of it, but the old couple urge caution: “You’re too young to decide to live forever.”
The old couple’s wisdom sessions include: making the mind large enough to accommodate paradox, and the idea that the mind can see through time and space in ways ordinary people cannot.
The dragon imagery also anchors a broader meditation on time, history, and power: the dragon’s breath is the source of red, the color of life, blood, and energy; the dragon’s transformations mirror social and political transformations.
The Water-Gourd Vision: Family, Roots, and a Call to Action
The old man uses a water gourd to reveal family: the mother and father appear at the gourd’s bottom, scanning the sky, indicating the narrator’s birth and parental origin are in a different realm while she stays in the mountains.
The gourd becomes a vessel of memory and possibility: the question arises whether to stay in the mountains to train as a warrior or to return to the family and village to fight barbarians or bandits.
The elder couple present a decision: stay to avenge the village, recapture harvests held by thieves, and gain a name among the Han people for dutifulness, or return home to pull potatoes and live a conventional life.
The narrator chooses to stay: the hut becomes a home, and the old woman’s role includes orchestrating the hut’s interior design through natural processes (roof opening, needle patterns) and guiding the narrator toward quietness and disciplined practice.
The old woman and man reveal that their plan is long-term mentorship, culminating in a transition from child to warrior: fifteen years of training culminating in the ability to fight with a bequerying blend of quiet power and animal instinct.
Dragon Lessons and Warrior Identity: The Dragon’s Parts
After the mountain survival, the old couple begin training the narrator in “dragon ways,” which takes another eight years:
The narrator learns to infer the whole dragon from observable parts; the topography of the mountains is the dragon’s head; the dragon is everywhere in the landscape: its veins, teeth, bones are the earth itself.
Through climbing, she experiences the dragon as a living system: the earth as its flesh, soil as its nerves, trees as its hair, the thunder as its voice, the wind as its breath, and the tongue as lightning.
The dragon’s red essence appears in multiple forms: poppies, roses, rubies, red feathers, carp, cherry trees, peonies, and theMallard eye markings; red is the color of life, power, and destiny.
The old couple teach a pedagogy of observation and embodiment:
Eye training to see danger and potential; the body learned to move with precise, martial intention.
The narrator practices sword-work and body control, eventually modeling a human onto the dragon’s vast scale.
The old people’s pedagogy includes a spiritual dimension: the dragon is sometimes one, sometimes many; the sky and ocean are its territories; the dragon’s breath and voice are audible in thunder and wind; the dragon’s tongue is alive with lightning.
Tools and immortality lore:
The pine resin and bark are connected to dragon’s bones or marrow.
The old man and woman want the narrator to drink dragon sap to gain longevity, but warn against premature decisions about immortality.
The old couple emphasize self-mastery over mere violence: to be a dragon is to comprehend scale, to sense a broader order beyond straightforward combat.
“Becoming a Warrior”: Public Return, Family, and Motherhood
After the dragon lessons, the narrator departs the mountains with fifteen beads given for use in danger. They provide a moral/financial security in dangerous moments.
Return to the village and family:
The narrator’s parents have aged; she helps them carry tools and returns as a warrior-soldier, blending domestic duty with martial prowess.
She marries a childhood friend who becomes her ally and husband; she and he have a son later in the story; the husband appears both as suitor and as companion in battle.
The “white horse” sign: a white horse arrives in the courtyard, signaling a call to action. The horse carries saddlebags with salves, herbs, dried peaches, etc.; she equates the gifts to wedding presents and takes armor and masculine dress to prepare for public life as a general.
The narrator’s armor and equipment: her back bears the words carved by her parents, a literal inscription of a family oath; the mother and father carve the husband’s name onto her back as a symbol of oath and memory.
The village’s response: the community celebrates her transformation; she is prepared for public life as a general, wearing a wedding coat and armor, riding a powerful white horse; the horse’s hooves bear the ideograph “to fly.”
The calling: a young man steps forward to join her army; more families lend their sons; the army grows into a formidable force—millions of peasants mobilized to march north toward the capital.
The Long March North: Peiping, the Emperor, and the Beheading of Empire
The narrator’s army advances toward the capital (Beiping, now Beijing), gathering forces as they move. They cross the land that the dragon has “withdrawn” moisture from, sharpening hoes as instruments of power and mass labor turned into war power.
The peasants aim to crown a new emperor: a farmer or someone who understands hunger is favored to lead; the old woman/old man express hope that a leader with agricultural wisdom will govern more justly.
The emperor in Peiping is confronted by the massed peasantry. The army beheads the emperor and clears the palace, inaugurating a peasant as the new ruler. The narrator explains to the people that they are free to return home, but they also invite others to join her in the march toward further conquests.
After subduing the capital, the army proceeds to the Long Wall, tracing its edge with their hands and crying in unified chorus; the crowd’s immense scale is the new order’s symbol.
The Giant, the War Goddess, and the Swords: Battles, Strategy, and Power
The narrator’s army marches onward, besieging fiefdoms and defeating enemies. She personally confronts a giant adversary, a figure who grows taller as he advances. She cuts off the giant’s leg, then his head; the giant transforms into a snake, which slithers away, revealing that he was an illusion or a spell-caster controlling soldiers. The giant’s wives witness the battle and mourn their loss.
The narrator’s leadership consolidates power: she is credited with extraordinary throwing feats that topple enemies, while observers claim hailstones and lightning strike on the other side but never at her army.
Fairy-tale certification: the narrator is proclaimed as a legendary figure in myth and popular memory. The mythic frame—“Kuan Kung,” the god of war, guides her alongside her soldiers.
The narrative tension: the emperor’s beheading and the peasant-turned-emperor are framed in a way that critiques dynastic legitimacy and elevates popular sovereignty.
Return, Parenthood, and the Weight of Duty
The narrator’s return to civilian life is complicated by family obligations: she returns with her husband and son; she assumes the role of mother and general, choosing to balance motherhood with public leadership.
The mother’s back is a map of the life she’s led: the words carved into her back become the family’s saga and the village’s legend; the villagers will remember her as “the soldier mother” who avenged the people.
The narrator’s son is born during wartime; she designs a sling to carry the baby safely in her armor, blending maternal care with martial duty. They name and christen the baby, wrap him in red and purple, and sew a quilted triangle at the nape of the child’s neck for luck.
The child’s presence alters the narrative: she must navigate love, duty, and the possibility of a quiet life in which she is both mother and sword-woman; she wears a male disguise in order to protect the child and maintain strategic advantage on the battlefield.
The family’s sacrifice and memory: the father and mother acknowledge the debts to the village and to each other; the infant’s life becomes a symbol of continuity and future generations.
The Diaspora and the Search for Self: America, Language, and Memory
The narrative shifts to life in the United States, particularly in Berkeley during the 1960s; the speaker studies, protests, and continues to confront gender and racial oppression.
The emigrant village’s disconnections: letters from China bring news of executions and confiscations; the aunt and uncle, brothers and cousins are subjected to various forms of repression under the communist regime.
The text contrasts the mythic swordswoman with the contemporary world: the speaker stresses that “my American life has been such a disappointment” and acknowledges the pressure to conform to Western feminine ideals (the demand to be “American-feminine”).
The speaker recounts instances of racism and exploitation in the workplace, including humiliating language and demeaning behavior from bosses who use coded racism and sexism to keep women subservient. These anecdotes illustrate the continued oppression of women, particularly of Chinese American women.
The struggle to reconcile two identities: the daughter of a village of swordswomen and the modern American woman who must negotiate professional life, family obligations, and personal autonomy.
The role of language and rumor: “chink” and “gook” words; the speaker asserts that words themselves become weapons and that naming is a form of vengeance and resistance. She argues that “the reporting is the vengeance,” not the beheading or the gutting, highlighting the power of storytelling as a form of resistance and memory.
The final meditation: the swordswoman’s legacy persists in the narrator’s memory, but she recognizes she cannot perfectly emulate the myth. She vows to understand and translate the ancestral calling into a modern life; she seeks to honor her heritage while adapting to new circumstances.
The closing line emphasizes the burden and possibility of language: the speaker possesses many words—“chink” and “gook”—that do not fit on her skin, signaling both racialized injury and the potential to reframe those words through witness and storytelling.
Key Concepts, Symbols, and Motifs
Swordswoman as a cultural ideal and feminist symbol: represents agency, power, and the tension between traditional gender roles and the call to resist oppression.
Fa Mu Lan as a linchpin: a mythic memory from which the narrator derives courage, identity, and a sense of destiny.
The two old people as guardians/mentors: embody ancestral wisdom and provide a cryptic, transformative pedagogy that blends spirituality, ecology, and martial arts.
The dragon and the dragon-state analogy: mountains, rivers, weather, and rock are all implicated in a single cosmic dragon; mastery requires seeing the world as a living system.
The water gourd as memory vessel and prophetic tool: a conduit to family, past lives, and future action; symbol of how memory travels with the warrior.
The Long Wall and the beheading of the emperor: a radical reordering of power that foregrounds popular sovereignty and mass political action over dynastic legitimacy.
The baby sling and motherhood: how motherhood interfaces with martial duty; the child becomes both a personal and political symbol of continuity.
Language as weapon and healing: the author’s final meditation on “reporting” as vengeance and the contested uses of language in diasporic communities.
Ethical tensions: violence versus protection, loyalty to village versus personal autonomy, and the cost of power for women who must navigate patriarchal and imperial structures.
Notable Details, Numbers, and Formulas (LaTeX)
Origins age reference: white crane boxing originates about years ago.
Training durations and ages:
Fifteen years of mountain training: years.
Dragon training period: additional years.
The narrator is fourteen when the seventh year on the white tigers occurs, leading to the mountain survival trial.
The survival test mentions up to days of water-only survival as a theoretical limit.
Key durations and milestones:
Training culminates with the narrator’s readiness to leave after fifteen beads given for danger.
She becomes an adult during the training; one of the first menstrual episodes occurs during the mountain training years and is acknowledged by the old woman.
Geography and place-names:
Peiping (Beijing) is named as the capital to which the peasants march; the Long Wall is physically touched and cried over in reverent homage.
Symbolic numbers and lists:
The mother’s beaded necklace of life; the fifteen beads given by the old couple; the battle at the giant’s lair where the army is formed as a mercenary group of female fighters; the dyeing of eggs for the baby’s first month party.
Connections: Foundational Principles, Real-World Relevance, and Ethics
Feminist critical lens: the text juxtaposes traditional gender roles (wives, mothers) with a counter-norm of female martial prowess; it critiques the gendered expectations that confine women to domestic labor, while also highlighting the costs and violence of power.
Interplay of myth and history: Kingston fuses Chinese myth (Fa Mu Lan, dragon imagery) with historical upheaval (beheading of emperors, peasant uprisings) to examine how memory shapes identity across generations and through diasporas.
Memory vs. belonging: the narrator’s story moves between China and America, raising questions about belonging, legitimacy, and the role of storytelling in shaping identity for diasporic communities.
Violence and justice: the narrative treats war, beheadings, and executions as morally complex; vengeance is framed not only as retribution but also as communal memory and the legitimization of a social order grounded in justice for the oppressed.
Language and power: the author’s final meditation centers on language as both weapon and bridge; words can wound or empower, and the act of naming can resist oppression.
Real-world relevance: the text speaks to immigrant experiences, gendered labor, and the politics of representation in both China and the United States; it interrogates the pressures of assimilation, poverty, and the legacies of colonial and nationalist violence.
Quick Reference: Chronology of Major Events
The mother’s storytelling about swordswomen and Fa Mu Lan sets the aspirational frame for the narrator.
The narrator is taken to the mountains by the old couple for a fifteen-year training, learning quietness, body mechanics, and dragon lore.
Seventh year: the narrator endures the mountains, surviving through hunger and hard climate, aided by the dragon metaphor and the fungus of immortality.
After fifteen years: the narrator leaves the mountains with the beads, armor, and a mission; she returns to the village and fights to defend her people.
She forms and leads a large army, travels north, conquers and dethrones the capital’s ruler, and ushers in a new order