Part 4, An-Mei Hsu, "Magpies" Summary

Rose Hsu tells her mother, An-Mei, that her marriage to Ted is falling apart, and she cannot save it. An-Mei was raised the Chinese way - to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, and to eat her own bitterness. She teaches her daughter Rose the opposite, but she comes out the same. Rose can still hear what happened to her more than sixty years ago when her grandmother Popo died and she left to live with her mother.

An-Mei is at her uncle's house in Ningpo, where her grandmother Popo has just died. Her natural mother is there, the woman who dishonored her widowhood by becoming the third concubine to a rich man. The night before An-Mei's mother is to leave, she tells her about the turtle in their courtyard pond. The turtle is...