|
Hagyományos
Dél-Shaolin Kungfu Iskola
Hung Kuen
www.hungkuen.hu
1926-1941 közötti
kiadásai olvashatók Online! 
Irodalom
-
Literature
Dusting Off a Family
Heirloom
By Michel Hockx
Do you enjoy reading Amy Tan, Gish Jen, and other
Chinese-American or American-Chinese authors? Are you
interested in the history of Chinese communities in the
USA? And do you, like me, occasionally enjoy escaping from
the pressure of having to keep up with "what's new" on the
book market and sit down with a slightly dusty volume that
was last borrowed from your local library more than ten
years ago? If your answer is "yes" to all of the above,
you might want to have a look at Chinatown Family by Lin
Yutang (1895-1976).
Lin Yutang was a unique figure
on the Chinese literary scene of the 1930s. Whereas most
Chinese literary publications of that decade were, in one
way or other, deeply involved with pressing political
issues of the time, such as the conflicts between
Nationalists and Communists, or the mounting Japanese
invasion, Lin Yutang made his name as editor of and
contributor to a number of literary magazines that
featured stylish personal essays and advocated, before
anything else, a good sense of humour (youmo in Chinese).
Meanwhile Lin, who had studied at Harvard and whose
English was impeccable, regularly published in English and
obtained best-selling author status in the USA after the
publication of My Country and My People in 1935. Lin moved
to the US in 1936 and continued to publish books in
English, most of them intended to foster understanding for
China and Chinese culture among the American people.
Chinatown Family was first published in English in 1948
and recounts the life of a Chinese laundryman (Tom Fong)
and his family, living in New York's Chinatown in the
1930s. The story begins with the arrival in the US of
Mother Fong (although she is a central character in the
book, she is never given a first name) and her two
youngest children (Tom Jr. and Eva), where they join Tom
Sr. and his two oldest sons, Daiko ("Big Brother") and
Yiko ("Second Brother", who calls himself "Freddie"). Tom
Sr. has been in the States for years, having arrived in
the years of the goldrush, worked on the railways, and
finally settled down as a laundryman in New York. The
story focuses on the experiences of the younger children,
especially Tom Jr., as they slowly find their place in
American society.
Although the family goes through various ups and downs,
including the tragic death of Tom Sr. halfway through the
book, the narrative remains generally upbeat and in the
end, the family's (especially the mother's) hard work and
frugality pay off: the Fongs are able to get out of the
laundry business, open a restaurant in Chinatown and
become respected members of the Chinese community.
Moreover, Tom Jr. gets to marry his beloved Elsie Tsai,
the young Mandarin teacher in the Chinatown school.
Lin Yutang shows a keen eye for cultural differences,
illustrated by the different ways in which members of the
Fong family adjust to their environment. Tom Jr., for
instance, even though soon after his arrival he learns
English and comes to appreciate much of what his new
country has to offer, continues to represent throughout
the novel the traditional Chinese gentleman's virtues of
politeness and non-violence, as in the following scene,
where he is accosted by a classmate at school:
"You're not going to get away like this. You Chinaman."
Tom turned round. "What's wrong with Chinamen?"
"You're a furriner."
"And you?"
"I'm an American."
"And your father, Hruschka?"
"I won't let you say anything about my father. He came to
America."
"So did I, like your father."
Ziffy was furious. But Tom was out of reach already.
Holding Eva's hand, he walked out of the school yard, to
the amazement of all the boys.
"What was the matter?" asked Eva.
"It's nothing. He called me Chinaman. I don't see what's
wrong with that. It's like Englishman, Frenchman,
Dutchman, laundryman. I don't see what's wrong with the
word."
In contrast, Tom's older brother Freddie appears to do his
best to become a perfect American, to the extent that he
even speaks to his siblings in English (with a mixture of
a Chinese and New York accent faithfully reproduced by the
author). Freddie's reaction to the scene above is typical:
"De trouble wit' us Chinese," said Yiko, speaking now in
English to them, "is dat we don't stand up for ourselves.
You stand up and fight, dey like you. If you don't fight,
dey don't. Hold your chin up and face de world. Dat's what
I do. I see an Amelican. I go up to him and slap him on
the shoulder and say hello. He act kinda scared and wonder
who you are. See? If you stand up for your right, he
t'inks you're right. If you don't stand up for your right
and say nutting, he t'inks you're wrong. So long as you
don't hit a lady, it's all right."
In Tom Jr.'s courtship of Elsie Tsai, the greatest
stumbling block is also of a cultural kind: Elsie is from
a scholar's family in Shanghai and fascinates Tom with her
speech and behaviour, but at the same time makes him
ashamed of his laundryman's background, which leads to a
number of misunderstandings. Tom's oldest brother, Daiko,
is married to Clara, who is Italian and a Catholic, which
leads to some more amusing scenes, such as Mother Fong
putting sacrifices in front of an image of the Virgin Mary
to thank her for blessing Clara with a son. The family
also has an absurd yet funny run-in with the iconic Mayor
of New York Fiorello La Guardia.
All in all, Chinatown Family, though thoroughly
melodramatic and certainly not the greatest of literature,
provides an interesting, at times funny, and generally
sensitive picture of Chinese-American life in the 1930s,
written by a gifted author who knew both cultures inside
out
Copies of Chinatown
Family can be purchased online through Bookfinder.com.
Michel Hockx teaches modern Chinese literature and
language in the East Asia Department of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is
the author of A Snowy Morning: Eight Chinese Poets on the
Road to Modernity (Leiden: CNWS, 1994) and editor of The
Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China (University of
Hawaii Press, 1999). He can be reached via email at:
mh17@soas.ac.uk |
