My Mother, My Ocean, My Dalian
Tokyo, Japan
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I was but 5,
he was too.
not yet old enough to know, not to swim so close.
or perhaps they had not learnt that, what was once theirs was no longer.
Watching as they held his little body, I wondered, of his dreams to swim and hunt-
dried up on the shore just as i had dried my swimsuit
I turned seven,
crying on the pavement after falling off my bike, a scraped knee and bruised elbows.
calling for my mother. she did not come. instead, the soothing hand of flowers and grass hugged me from cracks in the asphalt.
then when I was just shy of ten,
did I truly understand who I am.
born with seawater for blood, how my people swim as one with the kelp,
perfumed with the smell of rotting fish, we preserve in porcelain.
learn of the mountains, of the sand, of the fruit orchards
yet you still will not know of me, nor will you know who i am.
That is the way many of us still live,
learning
to gut fish before we learnt to write,
of the best way to deshell clams,
the stab-twist-flick motion,
i still carry to this day
my people, perhaps do not know the word “conservation”,
yet we know to leave out guts for seagulls,
we know to reward the fish with urchins,
the gold of the sea.
not quite a “minority”,
just those who learnt to survive,
selling for their living,
each dime earnt with each catch.
finally, I am thirteen,
sitting in a biology room and watching,
as the teacher cuts up a fish.
“the stomach, the spine” she points out. then throws it all away.
i wince,
what a waste,
and mourn the fish paste
that my grandmother would’ve made
just like that, i realized,
my people are special.
not protected as indigenous, but unique.
we know of the secrets of the sea,
descended from the whispers of the ocean,
the salt in our veins dancing to the song of the waves.
now im fifteen,
crumbling, fracturing and drying out,
like that little shark, like the asphalt under the grass,
yet when I hear that familiar lullaby,
the ocean still sings me to sleep.
Reflection
As the judges read my piece, they might think of some remote island with indigenous peoples. That is the stereotype that I feel has become associated with the ocean, and the image when people talk of “their traditional customs”. Yet, the place and people I talk about are in Dalian, a popular vacation destination for many people in China. Boosting skyscrapers and theme parks, nothing about my hometown resembles the stereotype of a traditional village reliant on the ocean. Despite this, when I think back on the salty smell that always permeated the air, I am reminded of my grandparents, from another generation who lived there before it became a tourist destination, relying on fishing and the ocean for their money. It is for that older generation that I write this poem, whose customs and traditions are fading, no longer teach children to gut fish or fish for clams. These traditions are not “indigenous”, yet they are essential to the preservation of the ocean, which we have relied on for so long. I wrote my piece in the form of a free verse poem as a reflection of the free-flowing waves of the ocean, and how my people have swum with the currents, not against them. And through writing this poem, I was able to truly stop and reflect on how blessed I was to be born on the cusp of modernization. I was still taught to gut fish, to dig for clams, and to swim in the ocean, not a pool. Through this, I realized that the next generation may become like the little baby shark I mentioned at the start, who was stranded on land, much like the sacred relationship between humans and the ocean is fading, trapping us on land. After all, perhaps traditions in danger are not only of the indigenous, but of those all around us as well.