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

by Lisa See

  Following his mother’s advice, Milton continued to improve the merchandise. He turned up his nose at the “backscratcher trade,” preferring expensive and unusual antiques of better quality to the curios and souvenirs that still served Fong See well. “How do you set value on a piece of art?” Ming would ask rhetorically. “By how much you paid for it? By the trouble you went to find it? By how long it took to bargain for it? By how rare it is? Art is not like a can of peaches. You determine the market. You determine the scarcity. You look at the clumsiness, the delicacy. You consider how much straw it will take to cushion the piece in a packing case.” In August 1930, to prove his expertise, Milton traveled to China for a four-month buying trip.

  The See family appeared to be doing well. Stella and Eddy lived with Ticie and Sissee on Maplewood. On July 4, 1930, Stella gave birth to a boy, whom they named Richard. Ray and Leona bought a house in Nichols Canyon. Bennie and Bertha, and their daughter, Shirley, settled in Beverly Hills. Ming and Dorothy had also moved out west. Sissee went to UCLA to study business.

  But just like Leong Jeung with his Chinese Garden Café, the Sees discovered the Wilshire store to be an elusive dream. The nightclub never came to pass, as the grip of the Depression took hold of the city. Instead, a wrought-iron business rented a portion of the deserted space. And as customers’ discretionary income declined and was diverted to more pressing living expenses, the climbing lease jumped relentlessly from five hundred to seven hundred to one thousand dollars, then into the thousands.

  After so many years of living without financial stress, the Sees had to tighten their belts. Each family member continued to put his or her earnings into the family pot to be redistributed. For many months, each household got as little as five dollars a week. Sissee, who dropped out of school to take a job at a weatherstripping company, brought in the largest share, at ten dollars a week. This meant that the See Manufacturing Company and the two branches of the F. Suie One Company were clearing as little as fifteen dollars a week combined. At the same time, the family was saddled with considerable expenses—four separate households, salaries for other employees, the leases on the two stores and the factory, and maintaining the quality of the stock.

  In early 1933, Ticie called her children together. “The stores have been very profitable,” she said. “We’ve had the market all to ourselves. We’ve had a luxury business. But people don’t want antiques when they need to eat. I think we’re bust.”

  “What can we do?” Ray asked. “We’re locked into the lease on the new building.”

  “The lease must be unlawful,” Milton said.

  “We’re not using all of the space,” Ticie went on. “We’re not even living upstairs. We don’t even go up there to sleep. We simply have to get out.”

  Having reached a consensus, the brothers all drove into town, each with his own truck. They packed up the Wilshire store under cover of darkness, driving goods out to the ranch in La Habra, over to Ticie’s on Maplewood, and to back bedrooms and garages at each of the boys’ houses. Within days, Ticie returned to Chinatown and rented a store at 528 Los Angeles Street, at the corner of Marchessault, across the street from Fong See’s compound in the old Water and Power building, and a few doors down from where Fong See still had his store at 510. Ray, Eddy, and Bennie worked in the factory, while Ming and Ticie set up shop. To evade bill collectors, the store was put in Sissee’s name alone. Like the Leong family, the Sees had gone home to Chinatown.

  This move nearly broke Ticie emotionally. She had kept everything and everyone together for so many years, reaching into herself and drawing upon reserves she hadn’t known she possessed. The separation. Starting up a new store. Worrying about whether the factory was a good idea or not. She’d made it through all of those things, but now, at fifty-seven, she faced the defeat of the Wilshire store, the sense that she had nowhere to go, the humiliation before her old neighbors, and her desire to be with Suie. She felt completely drained, weak, unable to put a brave face on things and persist, again.

  She thought wistfully that if she couldn’t be married to Suie, if he couldn’t protect her, if they couldn’t be together, at least she could see him from afar. Every day she sat in a wicker chair at the back of her store on Los Angeles Street, looking out the window and wondering if Suie would stop by on his walk either to or from his compound. Probably not. Perhaps not ever in her lifetime. Nevertheless, not a day passed that she didn’t hope she would hear the tinkle of the bells that hung on the door and look up to see him. It hadn’t happened yet. Could it ever happen? It almost didn’t matter. She was sustained by her slim faith that it might.

  Her anger at him had long burned out, to be replaced by grief, then a final, horrible emptiness. She was a ghost of herself. She went through the motions of conducting business, but she pushed Ming to take on more responsibility. She did her duty as a mother, knowing that none of her children really needed her anymore. She acted the part of a good friend, but she could be in a roomful of people and feel the deepest loneliness.

  She tried to accept the hollow sensation—the feeling that there was nothing but a black void under her skin. Only alcohol warmed the cold desolation.

  On an early morning in January 1934, Fong See left his compound at the Water and Power building and looked across Marchessault Street to Ticie’s store. Most mornings, and in the evenings when he returned, he could see his Number Two wife sitting in the back of the store near the window, waiting for him to walk by. It was a western concept—love—but he knew that she still loved him.

  Little had changed on Los Angeles Street in the twelve years since his first family had left Chinatown, but now, on their return, he saw it as they might. Looking to his left as he crossed Marchessault, he glanced down to August Alley, behind his wife’s store, where the block’s small businesses had warehouses. Just across August Alley on the downhill side was the Sam Sing Butcher Shop, which had been in the business of supplying pork to Chinatown’s residents and restaurants for as long as anyone could remember. No point in looking any farther down Marchessault. Too much destruction down there.

  He paused to gauge the merchandise in his wife’s windows. The large, narrow storefront had the same dimensions as his, but with plate-glass windows fronting both Los Angeles and Marchessault streets. Ticie and her sons would be competition, he thought. Their new place had a mezzanine and a basement—both unused, as far as he could tell. Upstairs, the Methodist Church rented several rooms where Fong See’s young sons attended Mrs. Leong’s Chinese-language class.

  Next to Ticie’s store was a curio shop, but most people knew that the real wealth in that establishment came from the gambling den in the basement. Then came the Lugo House, with the Canton Bazaar on the street level and the Hop Sing Tong upstairs. After the Lugo House there was another curio shop and an herb store. His store, the F. See On Company, stood in the middle of the block and to his mind was still the most prominent, with the name of the company painted in giant letters on the side of the upper story. The Chinese Professional Building, where a Chinese dentist, a lawyer, and others had set up practices, was upstairs.

  Just beyond lay Tom Gubbins’s Asiatic Costume Company, marked by two large paper lanterns that cast a pale glow on the street. Brightly colored kimonos shimmered and glittered in Gubbins’s windows, attracting customers. Like Ticie and Fong See, Gubbins had become increasingly reliant on the film industry, renting out costumes and props, and acting as a middleman when studios required Chinese extras. He rented the upstairs to Leong Jeung, who had just opened a new restaurant, Soochow.

  The Leongs claimed to have the number-seven restaurant in Chinatown. For their white customers, they also claimed to have invented the “family-style” dinner. Wealthy Chinese families also took advantage of the low prices, using Soochow for banquets for up to 150 guests. Finally, at the corner of Ferguson Alley was Jerry’s Joynt, a bar that had once housed four gambling dens, but now catered to the City Hall crowd for lunch and Hollywood film people
for dinner. All of these businesses faced the old Spanish Plaza.

  Chinatown had always wakened slowly. Old men were the first to rise, emerging sleepily from dark doorways. Gradually, shopkeepers would take down the heavy boards that protected their store windows. Grocers would bring out crates of onions, rutabagas, and winter melon, stalks of sugar cane, and the freshest baby bok choy, to set about in attractive displays along the sidewalk. Next, their wives might bring out bean sprouts grown in the family bathtub. Down the street, another enterprising soul might set out a tub containing terrapins or snails. Soon runners from neighboring restaurants would be bustling back and forth, delivering tea and covered dishes of steaming food to busy citizens. By ten o’clock in the morning, doors would be propped open and business begun. But this activity belied the fact that business was slow for everyone.

  Fong See did not hold with introspection, but sometimes he looked at his life and considered. Now, twelve years after his separation from Ticie, he knew he had ceased to be a driving force in his first family. He was only peripheral in importance to those children—Ming, Ray, Bennie, Eddy, and Sissee. They hadn’t come to him when their business had turned sour. They hadn’t sought his counsel when they’d decided to move back to Chinatown. Over time, they had become closer to their mother, adopting her values.

  In many ways he had also ceased to be a driving force in Chinatown. At seventy-seven, he had evolved into a patriarch to whom people came for help and advice, for blessing and permission. Although his customers still called him a variety of names, in Chinatown he was now called See-bok, an honorific title for a man of his age and station.

  But at home, See-bok was the important man he had always aspired to be. His marriage to Ngon Hung was far more traditional than the one to Ticie. He could communicate in Chinese with Ngon Hung, though never about business affairs. He could tell Ngon Hung what to do and she did it—she had to. It was her duty. She understood it was her role to be subservient. Ngon Hung waits on me hand and foot and doesn’t complain, he thought. When I am sick and in my final years, she will still be young and strong. And he had his new children—Jong Oy, Ming Chuen, Ming Yun, and May Oy—all full Chinese.

  He ran his household in an old-fashioned Chinese way. Ngon Hung stayed in the compound and took care of the children. She never walked about on the street where single men could stare at her. She sent servants or the children out to do shopping. (Sometimes even Fong See picked up fresh pork or chicken on his way home from work.) In 1932, he’d finally been able to bring Jong Oy over from China, and now Ngon Hung worked hard to train this daughter—as she would teach their new daughter, May Oy, once she was old enough—how to be a good wife and mother, how to run a household, how to embroider, how to obey.

  Ticie had never obeyed him. She’d walked wherever she wanted to go. She’d said whatever she wanted to say. She’d done whatever she wanted. She’d tried—an American expression again—to crow like a rooster. Fong See could treat Ngon Hung the way he wanted, showing off his wealth and prestige through her. Since he’d married Ngon Hung, he’d seen how pleasant it was to have a young wife. So, in China in 1929, he’d married again. Si Ping, a girl about Ngon Hung’s age, was a concubine in the normal tradition. He had no intention of bringing Si Ping to this country.

  See-bok had the life of a respected father and gentleman that he felt he deserved, but, like so many others, the Depression was hitting him. In 1932, he received only five shipments from China. In 1933, only two shipments arrived. Like Ticie, he closed his shop on Seventh Street and consolidated back on Los Angeles Street. For the first time in thirty years, he had only one store. The value of the stock held steady at fifty thousand dollars, but the store didn’t make a profit. In fact, in the last two years Fong See had lost approximately ten thousand dollars. As he told Inspector Nardini, “Of course, nobody knows that. It is between me and the government.”

  Everywhere in Chinatown, business slowed. Fees for washing and ironing shirts dropped from fifteen cents apiece to only five cents. Men were lucky to make twenty-five cents an hour. Most were happy if they could earn a dollar a day. They considered themselves fortunate if they also got room and board. Even work in Mexico dried up, leaving countless Chinese stranded there. See-bok had heard that as many as three hundred Chinese a month sent their pitiful earnings home, walked across the border to be deliberately caught by U.S. Immigration officials, then allowed themselves to be deported back to China, getting a free trip home and thus the nickname of “free trippers.”

  By 1933, what inroads had been made in terms of expanding opportunities were dashed. Wives and families were sent back to China, where living was cheaper. Uncle’s family—his wife and all her children, as well as his concubine and her daughter—had already set sail, and See-bok knew it was just a matter of time before he would send Ngon Hung and the children back to China to wait out the Depression. (Which wasn’t to say that Fong See didn’t have money. He had plenty of cash secreted away that he could use for buying gifts, merchandise, or more property in China.)

  Chinatown was once again becoming an enclave of single men, the only sounds their low, murmuring voices, the clackety-clack of freight and passenger trains, and the rattle of trucks along Alameda. There were no soup lines, no people on the dole, just a mental depression as men squatted on their haunches in doorways, staring listlessly into their folded hands, waiting. None of them would beg; they’d rather go hungry and weaken. The Chinese Benevolent Society, tongs, and district associations did the best they could. If a man was in trouble, he could go to his tong or association house, where at certain hours meals were laid out.

  When it seemed things couldn’t get any worse for Fong See’s neighbors, they did. See-bok found it ironic that the railroad was the culprit again. Back in 1913 there had been talk about demolishing Chinatown to build a railroad terminal on the site of Juan Apablasa’s old vineyards—the whole dilapidated area east of Alameda Street, which made up the majority of Chinatown. For the next twenty years the plan was entangled in one lawsuit after another. First the Apablasa family and the City of Los Angeles argued over who owned Chinatown’s streets. Once that was settled, the Apablasas sold the land to an entrepreneur, L. F. Hanchett, who said he wanted to develop it for commercial purposes and at the same time build a “Chinese colony.” When it was discovered that he’d planned a railroad terminal all along, his land demolition plan was thrown out of court. In 1928, the Southern Pacific Railroad bought the land, consolidated it with other purchases made over the years, and, with the Union Pacific, began planning a terminal that would be a monument to both train travel and the importance of the burgeoning city. On May 19, 1931, the California Supreme Court upheld a decision to condemn the land east of Alameda and begin construction for the station. Fong See hadn’t been concerned, because his store was in a block just west of Alameda.

  Two years later, eviction notices were distributed, giving tenants thirty days to vacate; this was extended to forty-five days. The city disconnected water, gas, and electricity. The few sidewalks that had been put in were pulled up. Some shopkeepers and families moved away, but many others stayed on—suspicious, ignorant, afraid. As one man told a newspaper reporter, “We no like to leave home where we have lived so long. We just wait.” Another said, “Yes, we will move on. We don’t know just where. Some say a new and better Chinatown will be built. Yes, we will move there.” Since many of the Chinese couldn’t read English—some reports suggest that residents confused the eviction notices with deportation threats resulting from tong activity—the wrecking crews came as a surprise. See-bok wondered how many Chinese were dislocated. Twenty-five hundred? Five thousand? Who could tell, when the inhabitants had shunned census takers, avoided immigration officials, and hidden friends and relatives for so many years?

  On December 22, 1933, the actual demolition began. By the end of the month the old Chinese School, the original produce market where for so many years vegetable wagons had parked in the square and hardwork
ing men had eked out a living, the old joss house at the corner of Marchessault and Juan, the blacksmith shop, the Apablasa Playground, as well as noodle shops, meat markets, and tea shops, had been razed. In their haste to abandon their homes and businesses, longtime residents left behind both the detritus and the precious. Tractors buried jewelry, clothing, rice bowls, chopsticks, soup spoons, fan-tan buttons and other gambling chips, cleavers, portable stoves, oil, wine and soy sauce containers, glassware, medicine and cosmetic jars, toothbrushes, shoes. Children left behind marbles, dolls, and other toys.

  Overnight, hundreds were left homeless. Most scattered to the Ninth Street area, by the City Market. Some moved in with relatives or business associates living in the remaining part of Chinatown west of Alameda, which included Fong See’s block on Los Angeles Street. Anyone who had a brain—both Chinese and Caucasian—began to dream of what a new Chinatown or new Chinatowns could look like, and how they would make their fortunes building them. In this new year, See-bok decided he wouldn’t worry about all that.

  “Come on, stay,” Tyrus Wong said one final time, as he walked over to the table to help with dinner.