On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

by Lisa See

  Finally, after all these years, Fong See agreed to give up the underwear business. The risk was simply too great. Since he no longer needed the sewing machines, he had them packed in crates to be shipped to China with the rest of the family’s luggage. He would give the sewing machines to his mother and the people of Dimtao, who would benefit from the ease of the invention, which required no electricity to operate and little training to use. The former operators, who had for so long made the underwear, stayed in the store. While Fong See was gone, they would look after things as best they could.

  In September 1901, the Sees left for San Francisco, where they boarded the SS China. Ticie was filled with excitement. As a girl back in Oregon, she had never imagined that she would have the opportunity to travel to a foreign country. And China! Yet Ticie anticipated feelings of homecoming and familiarity, for she had been living as the wife of a Chinese man for four years. She wanted to explore the village of her husband’s birth, watch her children experience new sights and sounds, and meet her in-laws and her husband’s other relatives.

  In October the family arrived in Hong Kong. They traveled first to Fatsan, then to Fong See’s home village. It had been thirty years since he left Dimtao. Now he stood before his parents, seeing them together for the first time since his father had left for the Gold Mountain. Shueying wept. Fong Dun Shung immediately turned his attention to Ticie, speaking a few halting words of English called up from memories dusty and worn. Fong See’s youngest brother, Fong Yun, stared openmouthed. Villagers clustered around the bearers, who had carried the family from the thriving little city of Fatsan through the ricefields to Dimtao, and watched as they unloaded the pedal-powered sewing machines.

  With Fong Dun Shung leading the way, Fong See, Ticie, Ming, and Ray walked through the narrow passageways of the village. The house that Fong See had grown up in no longer existed. In its place stood a new house far grander than any of the buildings other than the ancestral temple in the village. As he stepped over the high threshold, Fong See saw that his parents’ home consisted of a large room with no windows. Outside, in the small courtyard, an open-air lean-to served as the kitchen. Almost as reflex, Fong See and Ticie picked their children up off the hard-packed dirt floor. During the coming months, they would not live here, but in another house even more primitive than this one.

  “Don’t worry,” he said quietly to his wife. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried, Suie,” she answered, smiling. “It’s life in the country. We’ll be fine.”

  The following weeks and months bustled with all manner of activity. Ticie’s in-laws took her and the children to the ancestral temple, where she paid her respects to the ancestors of her husband’s family. Fong See had stone plaques carved with her name and those of the children, which were then hung alongside those of the many generations of Fongs from the village of Dimtao.

  They each made courtesy calls: Ticie to her husband’s first wife, Fong See to his extended family. Ticie had been aware within the first week in the Sacramento factory that Suie was loyal to his family, and that each month he sent home a stipend. However, he’d never mentioned a wife. Only in preparation for this trip had he even told her about the woman. “I have been married to Yong since before I left for the Gold Mountain,” he’d said. “But you have given me sons. You are my true wife. You are my American wife.” Ticie had chosen to believe him.

  Out of respect for a foreigner’s strange customs and feelings, Yong had been sent to a neighbor’s house. Stepping into the cool gloom of the house, Ticie was greeted by a shrunken old woman who peered up at her, tilting her head like a bird and looking sideways out of the corner of her eye. It took Ticie a moment to realize that this old grandmother was not a grandmother at all, but her husband’s wife.

  Yong and Ticie could not communicate through words, but as they sipped their tea, the women came to understand each other. Yong, who had left her village as a young girl, had spent her life as a servant to her mother-in-law. Yong only knew the drudgery of the village, and had aged far beyond her forty years. Her face had wrinkled, her hands and feet had hardened, her spine had curled, her womb had never received the seed to create sons. Although her natural inclination was to reach out to the woman, Ticie remained uncharacteristically cool. While only a concubine by tradition, Ticie was the first wife in station. Had she not provided her husband with two sons? She sat ramrod-straight. She ran her hands over her nicely tailored gown. She was the real wife here. Ticie promised that Yong’s monthly stipend would continue until her death.

  Fong See was having experiences of a different sort. To return to the village of his youth was not at all what he had expected. Number One brother had died from opium. Numbers Two and Three had returned to the village after their brother’s marriage to Ticie. Number Two, Fong Lai, had married a no-name girl, and had a son and two daughters. Number Three, Fong Quong, had also married a no-name girl—this one from the neighboring village of Low—and had a son. Fong See’s sister, Lin, had married Jun Quak, from Tee Chin village. Number Five, Fong Yun—who had been born after Fong Dun Shung’s return—was young, ambitious, eager. Fong See had plans for him, but they needed time to unfold.

  Fong See looked for the couple who had helped send him to the Gold Mountain so many years ago, only to find that the old man had died and his wife was ailing. All these years, as the Chinese New Year came and went and others followed the custom of paying back debts, Fong See had not repaid the loan. Overcome by guilt and remorse, he promised to take care of the widow as if she were his own mother. Village gossips would discuss this event for years to come—the good deed, the amount of money that traded hands, the largesse, the honesty. In time it would seem that the whole countryside knew how Fong See had helped the old woman with—could it be true?—a gift of two thousand American dollars. The small kindness to an ailing woman would be the seed of a legend that would be tended and watered with loving care and wishful thinking. It would grow like the giant bamboo—fast and strong—the legend of Gold Mountain See.

  *

  Every precaution was taken to ensure the children’s health, but Ticie fell ill. She had gone to China with smooth white skin. She would go home with the scars of smallpox, or “the flowering-out disease,” as her in-laws called it. When Fong See realized the severity of his wife’s illness, he became distracted with worry. Since their marriage, he had grown to love her in a way that he could only describe as “western.” She was not a no-name girl like the wives of his brothers; he did not view Ticie as a servant or a piece of property. Over the years she had impressed him with her spirit, her independence, her strength. He hoped that these very attributes would help her as she struggled against the disease.

  Yet for all of his anxiety, Fong See could only offer his wife comforting words. He had to trust his father to save her from death. Ticie was vaguely aware of Fong Dun Shung as he hovered over her, murmuring soothing words in a language she didn’t understand. He fought for her life when she herself had ceased to care.

  She was riveted by the sensation of burning followed by numbness as Fong Dun Shung placed a cloth soaked in herbs across her chest and another across her face. She experienced a brief sensation of coolness as her skin met the open air, followed immediately by the crazy, incessant itching of the smallpox, followed by the taming poultice. Time and time again, she thought she would fly out of her skin even as he held on to her hands and spoke softly.

  Fong Dun Shung prepared different medicines for each stage of her illness: sheng ma geng tang to release the muscles during the fever stage; sheng ji da biao tang for the rash; xin xue zhu jiang tang, with its active ingredient of silkworms, for the suppurant stage; hui jiang tang for crust forming; and gu ben xioa du tang for crust loosening. He also brewed teas to restore her overall well-being, including xi jiao di huang tang with rhinoceros horn—which was known to clear heat, relieve fire toxins, cool the blood, nourish the yin, dispel blood stasis, and stop bleeding—and bao yuan tang, the oldes
t smallpox remedy, which strengthened the qi, her life energy.

  Ticie gradually recovered but remained shaky. Every day Fong Dun Shung and Shue-ying walked her to the outskirts of the village and back to build up her strength.

  “You are our true daughter-in-law,” Fong Dun Shung said in his halting English. Shue-ying rattled something in her cackling voice. Fong Dun Shung nodded, then translated, “She say you are Number One wife, not Number Two. She tell Number Four—only one wife, you. He listen. Do what mother say.”

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done.” They were such formal words for what she felt. Her in-laws had embraced her and the boys. They had harangued their son about this wife thing. They had given her back life itself.

  Her father-in-law smiled. “Be careful. Go slow. You still weak.”

  With Ticie well, Fong See—perhaps realizing how close he had come to losing her—insisted on having a formal photographic portrait taken of his family. Ticie thought she was strong enough to get herself and the children ready, but once she had them dressed in long gowns and embroidered caps and shoes, fatigue settled over her. She was too weak to put up her hair in her customary style, so Shue-ying pulled the auburn tresses back into a severe Chinese bun at the nape of her neck. Then her mother-in-law helped Ticie into an embroidered skirt with thousands of miniature pleats, and fastened the frogs of the silk jacket.

  Fong See, attired in a mandarin robe, already posed regally in a carved chair before the photographer. Ticie sat nearby, her hand resting on a decorative table that stood between them. The photographer placed the children next to them. Ticie tried to focus on the table’s mother-of-pearl inlay and the incongruous objects that lay upon it—the covered teacup, the opium pipe with the tassel hanging from its stem, the stack of joss paper, the western-style clock—but the effort seemed too great for her. It seemed, in that captured moment, that she was hardly in her body at all.

  Fong Yun, Number Five, understood that he was fortunate. Fong See had been sending money home for years, always saying that he wanted Fong Yun to have a good education. “Every family should have a scholar,” his brother often wrote through the letter writer. “This will bring us honor.” No one ever spoke of Imperial examinations or the life of a true scholar. They just wanted Fong Yun to be able to read, write, and do sums.

  But even with education, what opportunity did he have? In 1895, when he was twenty, he married a no-name girl from Low Tin village. She assumed the name Leung-shee—simply meaning that she was a married woman from the Leung clan. The following year, Fong Yun went to Guilin to work for a cousin who owned a distillery. He did paperwork and managing. He met the mayor. He thought he was doing well. Then one day he was told to go to a certain mountain to pray to Buddha. People said, “That is a great place to go,” and so he went.

  As Yun traveled by sedan chair, he watched laborers gathering mountain grass to stoke the fire in the distillery. He traveled a long way, up and up, but no matter how far he went, people still cut the grass and carried their oversized loads back down the mountain. “This is a hard life,” Fong Yun said, his voice surprising him in the confines of the sedan chair. He stared at those people and felt pity for them. He said, “I cannot stay here any longer. I will go to the Gold Mountain.” But he was alone and no one heard him.

  When Number Four first returned to the village, Fong Yun said, “Take me with you to Lo Sang.”

  His brother shook his head. “The Gold Mountain is a very bad place. It has bad gambling. It has bad women. It is very wicked.”

  Fong Yun asked many times, but always his brother refused him. “I am worried that if I bring you to the Gold Mountain you will do all those bad things.”

  During the following weeks, Fong Yun watched as his brother met with families and walked away with his stomach full of teas and sweetmeats and his hands full of family heirlooms. Fong Yun wondered at the people who lived in the Gold Mountain. What could they want with these peasant goods—the ceramic pieces, the wooden carts, the musical instruments? Yun followed his brother to Fatsan and watched as he negotiated to export baskets, paper goods, fireworks, pottery, and furniture.

  Yun was young but not stupid. He realized that the way to go to the Gold Mountain was to make himself indispensable. He bought a manual for traders. He could not read the English words, but in one column the editors had placed Chinese characters that phonetically duplicated the English. He started at lesson one: An ox. My ox. Is it an ox? Is it? Is it an ox? No ox. Is so. Is it so? No. Fong Yun practiced phrases: He is a man of his word. That is just what I want. Cock-fighting is mean and cruel. Other things he couldn’t understand. Don’t swallow stones. What did this mean? Was it some foreign-devil habit? Was it a proverb? He couldn’t tell. He also pondered at great length the eighty-three entries under “female.” Adjutrix, administrix, adulteress, amazon, authoress, baroness, begum, belle, bridesmaid, canoness, chaste woman, concubine, countess, cully-lady, dame, damsel, daughter, dignified woman, dissolute woman, doctoress. The list made his head swim. Washerwoman, wench, whore.

  He mastered commercial words for annual income, assets, auction, treaties, tariffs. He learned the rules relating to passengers, luggage, and duty-free goods. He scanned the duty lists for bamboo ware, tin bangles, baskets, clothing, and confectioneries. He memorized duties reported from the U.S. Custom House: chinaware, 55 percent; jewelry, 25 percent; silk, 25 percent. Each of these he reported to his brother. Together they worked out amounts on the abacus to see if these items could still be profitable after packing and shipping costs.

  Fong See said he admired Ming furniture. Yun accompanied his brother to furniture factories and antique shops. Yun watched as Fong See bargained for items for the store, as well as big rosewood armoires and a long, rectangular table in hung-mou wood—both in the Ming style—as belated wedding presents for Ticie.

  Eventually, Ticie joined them on these excursions. Fong Yun listened as Fong See and his wife learned about ceramics and porcelains. Together they looked at ceramic monochromes, ding yaos and powder-blues from the north. From the Ming Dynasty, they studied the brushstrokes of the blue-and-whites—the quality, the refinement, the depth of the cobalt blue in contrast to the white clay. In the south, they bought polychromes—the overglazed enamels of the Ch’ing period. From the T’ang Dynasty, they bought figurines of camels, horses, acrobats, female courtesans, and sages. (When the originals seemed too expensive, they bought reproductions, which Fong See said could be artificially aged without difficulty.) In time they learned to seek out grave robbers who could provide them with tomb figures, porcelains, and ritual bronzes.

  At every stop Ticie asked questions. “How do I know this bowl is good? What should I look for?” Because she was asking, a merchant would answer and they would all learn. “You look at the whiteness of the paste, the whiteness of the clay, the thickness of the sides of the bowl. The thinner the clay, the better the quality of the piece. We use the finest kaolin clay—pure white, with particles that are very fine. A piece made from clay of this quality will have much strength.” The merchant might escort them outside, then say, “Hold this bowl up to the light. See how it has a perfect silhouette? See how the light glows through the porcelain? These elements show you that the piece is good.”

  Ticie made inquiries even when they visited peasant factories. At each place she was respectful, and the men answered as though she were the Empress herself. “There is no tensile strength in these pieces,” a craftsman might venture. “They are of common clay.” Or, “Some people say our work is clumsy and thick. But this is an inspired piece. Yes, it is true this jar is only used for oil, but when the potter held his hands to the clay, it came up to greet him.”

  They learned how glazes were applied, how a craftsman achieved the finest results in his powder-blues from sprinkling a thin dusting of powder onto a clear glaze. They learned what to look for in sang de boeuf pieces, and about all the accidents that would happen when a large draft of air was forced into the kiln and
the flares caused drips to oxidize in blazes of purple and blue. That happenstance, that intentional accident, was highly prized. It created art, made value.

  At the end of his year-long visit, Fong See told his younger brother, “I need a person who is educated to work for me. I will not depend on a stranger. You are family. If you are willing to be honest and loyal, I will bring you to Lo Sang.”

  “Of course, brother,” Fong Yun said.

  In September 1902, Fong See and his family left China on the SS Korea for the month-long voyage to San Francisco. Yun said good-bye to his wife, Leung-shee, and traveled to Hong Kong, where his father set him up in a temporary “branch” of Kwong Tsui Shang, Fong Dun Shung’s old business, selling ginseng and herbs. This, combined with a fictional interest in the F. Suie One Company dating from 1896, established Fong Yun’s merchant status.

  CHAPTER 5