My Chinese Friend

This is a long one. When I have questions about something I’ve read, I look some source of verification. Last week I heard a real life story very similar to one I read about in a novel. I hope you find the comparison of real life and fiction as interesting as I did.

Last year I read “Shanghai Girls”, a novel about two sisters who were the pampered beauties of Shanghai. After the Japanese invaded China, they escaped to the U.S. as “paper daughters” to be married to men they had never seen.

At the time of the Alien Exclusion Act, the only way for a person from China to be admitted to the U.S. legally was for a Chinese man living in the U.S. to issue a sworn statement (a paper) claiming that this son or daughter was born to him before he left China. When the Japanese invaded China, Chinese-American citizens suddenly remembered children they had left behind in China.

In the novel when the girls arrived in San Francisco, they were detained on Angel Island for over a month, interrogated every day about where they supposedly lived in China. Finally released, they were forced to marry,. one to a man who was a “paper son” and the other to a retarded child.
The story was so fantastic I wondered how much was based on actual events. The author was a young woman born in Los Angeles. How much did she really know about the experience of the Chinese who came to the U.S. in the 1930's?

Then a couple of weeks ago I received a call from Pittsburgh from my friend Joanne. I met her on the Elderhostel to Prague and Vienna. We’ve kept in touch by phone and e.mail ever since.

Joanne grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She told me she was researching her family history. Most of the documents are in Chinese, which she cannot read. Her grandparents paid “a great deal of money” for her to escape the Japanese and come to the U.S as the “paper daughter” of a man who claimed to have eight children born in China.

Joanne obtained a transcript of her mother’s interrogation at Angel Island Like the girls in the novel, Joanne’s mother was detained for over a month. Joanne told me, “Day after day of questioning, horrible questioning, like the gestapo in World War II.”

“Describe the house where you lived.” “How far was the well from the house?” “Which direction was the well from the house?” Her mother had never seen the house of her supposed family. Asked about her seven “brothers and sisters”, she kept getting mixed up as to their names and ages.

After a month of questioning, the authorities said she was an illegal immigrant and decided to send her back to China. Someone was paid off with a bribe, and Joanne’s mother was allowed to board the ferry to take her to San Francisco. She stepped ashore, a free woman, only to be met by the man she was pledged to marry. She was dismayed to discover he was twenty years older than she was.

They were married and had five daughters. Then the old man had a massive stroke and was unable to work. At age 49 her mother, who spoke no English, went to work as a seamstress in a lingerie factory.

At age 10 Joanne went to work, ironing pillowcases and handkerchiefs in a Chinese laundry for 30 cents a hour. Of every penney she earned, she gave half to her mother and saved the other half.

The family moved to Oakland, and Joanne found a better job in a hospital kitchen. Working full-time, she could not keep up her grades. No scholarships for Joanne, but by the time she graduated from high school she had saved enough to pay for her college tuition. She commuted from Oakland to Berkeley and obtained a degree from the University of California. I can’t remember her major, but it was some kind of science.

Joanne married another Chinese-American, had a daughter, and was divorced. Offered an excellent job in Pittsburgh, she moved east. When she retired, her sisters urged her to return to California to care for their mother, but Joanne now feels at home in Pittsburgh.

She plays bridge at the senior center and ushers at a theater. She also travels. She went to China where in Beijing she had as much trouble finding her way around as any other American. She can’t read Chinese characters, and she speaks Cantonese, while in Beijing the spoken language is Mandarin, as different as English and Greek.

When I talked to her, she said this year she is seeing more of America. She went on an Elderhostel to the Grand Canyon, and next week she drives to West Virginia. She said, “I love the sound of Appalachian Music and want to learn more about it.”

Her mother died last year in California at age 96. Their lives are very different from mine, but theirs are true stories of perseverance and overcoming the odds. I admire this Chinese-American friend.