Carpe Biblio

Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan, offers a unique story telling experience.  The primary narrator, Bibi Chen, has recently died under mysterious circumstances shortly before she was to leave on trip to China and Burma with eleven of her eclectic artist friends.   Bibi is compelled to make the trip with them in her spiritual form – since the trip was her idea and she convinced her friends to join her.   The trip would have progressed well, if only her friends had followed instructions, and stuck to the itinerary.  

Tour groups have a tendency to go astray unless the tour guide maintains strict discipline.   Unfortunately Bibi’s replacement, Bennie, did not prove to be a good herder of  high strung, artists types that had no intention of coloring between the lines.   Their trials and trepidations include food poisoning, desecrating a Chinese shrine, and getting kidnapped.  

Amy Tan provides a social statement with Saving Fish from Drowning.  She leaves no doubt as to her views of organized tour groups, and American tourists in foreign lands.  Her story brings to mind tourists being herded through a milking process. Get them in, get them out, and charge as much for the experience as you can.   At the same time, she does not let the tourist off either.  She exemplifies tourists’ disregard for local customs and rules that can land them in embarrassing situations and in trouble with the law.  

Once the tourists become kidnapped, Tan takes her shots at the various idiocies of government, journalism, and the viewing audience.   She makes sport both with the ruling Junta of Burma.  She displays their inadequacy for running a country, and the corruption that exists.   She also pokes fun at cable news networks, and the thirty second sound bites that can turn into a feeding frenzy. 

Of course, I could be reading way more into the story than Amy Tan intended.  Saving Fish from Drowning could be nothing more than a humorous story poking fun at a group of oddball tourists that go traveling in a country where they have no business being, and are inadequately prepared to be there.  Not only is this group of tourists inadequately prepared to tour Burma, but they are so dysfunctional that they probably would need to have their hands held no matter where they chose to travel.