Bitter Sweet

Throughout Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo, we are faced with the contrasting characters of the Chen family and those descended from the Hung Dynasty, the Triad. The Chen family, while ambitious and with a drive to be successful in their restaurant business, go about their work peacefully, while the Triad strives to make a large profit while manufacturing drugs. They are more violent in their means of success; when things do not go their way and people they are associated with step out of line, there is justice to be served. When people oppose them, they strike back, as shown in chapter 18 when the Triad raids another gang, injuring and killing many people.

That being said, an aggression in Lily comes out in chapter 23 when she is chasing a turkey given to them for the Chinese New Year, she ends up capturing it and chopping it's head off. The bird doesn't die immediately, and commences running around without it's head (I don't know if this is impossible and the author was actually just adding humor to the book or this does happen and this is where the phrase "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off" came from). Any-who, the headless turkey doesn't phase Lily, and she creates a makeshift lasso-type contraction and captures it, kills it, and cooks it. Spoiler alert: the end product tastes vile and appears green. The turkey didn't want to be eaten, that should've been evident when it refused to die, karma.

Lily is part of the family that's meant to contrast with the Triad, yet the main contrast points were in the ways they achieved their success and in their use of aggression. In this chapter, she seemed very similar to the Triad's own Night Brother. Up until now, Lily has been known to use means of persuasion and mind games to get what she wants (which obviously won't work with a bird, birds don't speak English/Cantonese and don't understand the mind games of women). I pose this question: no matter how peaceful one seems to be, how far can people be driven until they break from their usual methods and adapt more barbaric means to get what they want? Or, do we all have an inner warrior?

(p.s. not that "embrace your inner goddess warrior", more "Hung Dynasty" "drug-pusher" "I kill people in 3 minute raids" type of warrior)