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

by Lisa See

  Ngon Hung and Leong-shee also spent many hours together commiserating about how their husbands had taken concubines. “I have a better life in America, where I don’t have to see Si Ping,” Ngon Hung might complain.

  “Your husband is someone people can come to,” Leong-shee answered. “You don’t realize how powerful he is. It is true our lives are hard, but they could be harder.”

  “I am strong in many ways,” said Ngon Hung, her belly swelling with yet another child. “Still, I am more than hurt that the old man”—as she called her husband—“has taken a Number Four wife.”

  “Si Ping is not going to America,” said Leong-shee, who had suffered the humiliation of having her husband take a servant as a concubine, bring her to Los Angeles, sire three children with her, and return them all to China to live in the same house with Leong-shee and her children. “You are secure. I know how much it hurts. No matter how you are raised—whether you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor—it is still painful for your husband to need more than one wife.”

  Woman’s talk—even if it included gossip about concubines—held no interest for See-bok’s younger sons, all of them younger than ten. See-bok could see that they fidgeted at the restraints put upon them by village life. They had to wear peasant clothes. They had to go to school and learn their calligraphy. They had to sit quietly and attentively when the villagers came to pay their respects. The boys’ only excitement came with holidays, festivities, and the scary stories of fox spirits and ghosts that old women told under the village’s ancient banyan tree.

  During these long, easy days, See-bok allowed himself the pleasure of enjoying village life. Lounging on his balcony, listening to Enrico Caruso on his Victrola, See-bok could survey his domain—the luscious grounds, the activities of the peasants who tilled the fields for his benefit, the domestic squabbles of his wives, the children underfoot. See-bok thought that he would remain here and live out his last days.

  In early 1932, the film producer Irving Thalberg bought the motion-picture rights to Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth. “I would rather scrap every inch of film and every cent invested than to show a film which might give rise to ill-feeling between the two countries,” he announced. “The whole object is to produce a film which shall establish a clearer and more sympathetic relationship between the peoples of two nations.” Hearing these words and tired of the roles she’d been cast in over the years, Anna May Wong approached MGM Studios.

  “I’ll be happy to take the test,” she said. “If you let me play O’Lan, I’ll be very glad.” But the studio only wanted her for the part of Lotus, the singsong girl who served as Wang’s concubine and the villainess of the piece. “You’re asking me—with my Chinese blood—to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture, featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters.” Indeed, for all of Thalberg’s intentions, Caucasians got the plum parts: Paul Muni as Wang, and Luise Rainer as O’Lan. Shattered, Anna May left Hollywood and traveled to China.

  In America, a call went out through Pacific Coast newspapers and radio stations to enlist players for the other sixty-eight speaking parts. Three hundred tests were made. Accents proved to be a problem. Given that Chinese can be found in any part of the world, many were excused owing to their Australian or Spanish accents. Some, born in America and eager for parts, were dismissed because their English was too good. Others, with appropriate accents, often wouldn’t leave their businesses to take part in the film. Still, Ching Wah Lee, the editor of the Chinese Digest, became Wang’s Friend; Keye Luke, a former art student from Chouinard, was given the role of Elder Son: Caroline Chew, the daughter of Dr. Ng Poon Chew, the famous editor and economist, played a teahouse dancer. Jennie Chan, Sissee’s old friend, worked on the movie for six weeks as a nonspeaking extra. Ray See did a screen test, but was rejected because his voice was too “soft.”

  While casting decisions were being made, Thalberg sent director Sidney Franklin and a crew to China to collect a total of 390 packing cases of Chinese needles, cooking and farming utensils, doors and windows, water wheels, baskets, and clothes. Franklin also saw to the crucial mob scenes that would dominate the film. He recruited four thousand “refugees” from the countryside, each of whom was paid $1.50 a day. Another four thousand soldiers from China’s Twenty-fifth Infantry and Artillery Division performed whatever other duties Franklin could conceive.

  In 1936, production returned to California, where the studio had purchased five hundred acres in Northridge to create a working Chinese farm. Under the keen eye of a Santa Barbara grower, Yee On, a hillside was terraced, plowed, and planted with onions, leeks, bok choy, mustard, chard, red cabbage, water chestnuts, and China peas. On the floor of the valley an artificial river was constructed and decorated with stone bridges, water wheels, and other irrigation devices. A few weary water buffalos made the trans-Pacific trip to lend further authenticity. In the end, the farm was deemed so realistic that the Department of Agriculture sent a representative to study it for Chinese erosion-control techniques. In this setting, Wang and O’Lan fought desperately against the locusts. Between shots, Luise Rainer hunted rabbits with her dog, Johnny.

  A walled “city” was built, with more than two hundred “shops” where roast duck hung in windows, barbers tended to queues, antique dealers plied their wares, and peddlers walked the streets with salted fish or sausages on poles. Extras spent days sitting on overturned straw baskets, waiting, gossiping. For some, it brought back memories of their youth—of the rich in silken robes, looking down from balconies glowing from the light of many lanterns, and of the poor in tattered clothes, sitting below with beggars’ bowls. To others—many of whom had been born on the Gold Mountain—it was their first glimpse of the “real” China.

  Practically everyone in Chinatown had a piece of the action. People were hired to make sure that extras were dressed in the right costumes: jackets that closed down the side for women, jackets that closed down the front for men. Women with short hair wore blunt-cut wigs; those with permanents wrapped their curls in black cloth. Even with those 390 packing cases of goods, MGM sent set decorators to Ming See at the F. Suie One Company for additional props. Ming checked the list of desired goods and found them either at his shop or at his father’s store, the F. See On Company. In this way, Ming kept all of the business within the See and Fong families. The two stores rented out wheelbarrows, rickshaws, lanterns, and furniture for the peasant scenes being shot at the Wang farmhouse, as well as screens, embroideries, and carvings for the wealthy city sets.

  Tom Gubbins of the Asiatic Costume Company hired extras and worked as a translator on the big location shoots. When MGM ordered three hundred or more extras, the studio got a discount. But most extras were paid a standard “five dollars a chink” for nonspeaking parts. As a proper “Chinese” comprador, Tom Gubbins made a fortune, skimming a fee from every extra who worked on The Good Earth. When the movie premiered, on January 29, 1937, it was hailed as the most authentic view of Chinese life ever filmed.

  Five months later, on July 7, 1937, Japan suddenly mobilized its impressive war machine, attacking and seizing nearly all coastal cities and industrial areas, effectively closing off China from the sea. These events persuaded Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek to put aside their own bitter disagreements temporarily and work together against their common foe. Fong See abandoned his idea of remaining in China, packed up his family—leaving his fourth wife, Si Ping, behind—and returned to Los Angeles. Yun’s wife, Leong-shee, her children, and the wives of her three eldest sons also traveled with Fong See; Ngan Fa, Yun’s concubine, and their three children stayed in China.

  The Chinatown that Fong See came home to was in a state of flux. Ever since old Chinatown had been leveled, everyone knew there had to be a new Chinatown. But what form would it take, and where would it be? After several aborted plans, two viable projects emerged: China City and New Chinatown. China City was developed under the auspices of Christine Ster
ling, a socialite who had created Olvera Street, a touristy Mexican marketplace just off the old Spanish Plaza. With significant help from a handful of Caucasian businessmen, including Tom Gubbins and Harry Chandler, the scion of the Los Angeles Times, the money was raised for China City’s site, which was bordered by Spring, Ord, Alameda, and High streets.

  A few blocks to the northeast, New Chinatown was developing under the inspiration of Peter Soo Hoo, the first Chinese to be hired by the Department of Water and Power as an engineer. He thought that North Broadway—the area of the old French and Italian quarters, and currently the storage yards for the Santa Fe Railroad—was an ideal place for a Chinatown that would be owned and operated by the Chinese themselves. In many ways, New Chinatown would be as different from Old Chinatown as humanly possible: the buildings would be constructed strictly to code, with all earthquake, fire, and sanitation regulations adhered to. The streets would be wide, open, and airy, creating a safe ambiance. Prostitution, gambling, and opium would be forbidden. Only a few ideas would carry over from Old Chinatown: each building would have apartments upstairs for shopkeepers, and the buildings themselves would have Chinese motifs.

  As these plans went ahead, the last section of Old Chinatown along Los Angeles Street remained the heart of the city’s Chinese community. Ironically, Dragon’s Den, which was owned by a half-Chinese family, attracted the most customers—for lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks. Now that Eddy finally had his liquor license, Dragon’s Den closed at two in the morning. On Saturday and Sunday nights it stayed open until four in the morning—not as a place to drink, but as a place to hang out. After locking up for the night, Eddy, Sissee, and whoever else wanted to tag along went to the City Market to buy provisions for the next day.

  Sissee knew that the responsibility of the restaurant was giving her brother Eddy ulcers, but she loved the unpredictability of the place: the way the chefs fought with their cleavers or got in foul tempers if they lost the lottery; the way her brother hustled to get water chestnuts as imports from China dwindled (recently the chef had begun substituting jicama for water chestnuts); the way Eddy had to fire Benji for going out to fill the wine kegs and not coming back because he was too busy drinking the merchandise (and all with no hard feelings).

  Sissee loved the customers. James Wong Howe, the cinematographer, and his writer-girlfriend, Sanora Babb, were regulars at Dragon’s Den. Since Jimmy’s career was governed by the morals clause in his contract, he couldn’t marry Sanora, a white woman; because he was a traditional Chinese man, they wouldn’t live together. For several years, then, they took two apartments in the same building. Going out in public always posed problems. One woman, incensed by seeing a white woman with a Chinese man, banged Sanora’s head on the ground. Another time, Jimmy and Sanora thought they’d try a restaurant in town; one wouldn’t serve them, another turned them away at the door. As they drove downtown to Dragon’s Den, a woman started shouting from her car at Sanora, “You must be a whore.” The woman followed them clear to Marchessault Street, where she parked her car and got out. As Jimmy stood at the entrance to Dragon’s Den, Sanora went back to the woman, took her hat, and threw it in the gutter. “Oh, my hat!” the woman cried. “My hundred-dollar hat!” Sanora just laughed, took Jimmy’s arm, and walked down the stairs to their one sure refuge in the city.

  But no single person held customers in thrall as much as did Anna May Wong. Seductive, sultry, beautiful. A curvaceous figure. A “wicked” past. A family that disapproved. On many nights—except for the ten months she was in China after the debacle surrounding The Good Earth—Anna May, dressed in silk cut on the bias, with a full-length ermine coat draped over her shoulders, could be found holding court at her own table. She would seductively extend her hand to those who came to pay respects—even those Chinese who scorned and ridiculed her behind her back.

  Eddy got along famously with Anna May, for she liked a dumb joke as much as he did. Every time she came to the restaurant, Anna May would treat him to a tale or two. “One day a fisherman throws out his line,” Anna May might have begun as Sissee’s brother pulled up a chair to her table. “He catches this beautiful mermaid with long blond hair. He reels her in. She’s a gorgeous-looking thing. The fisherman picks her up, examines her all over, then tosses her back into the sea. His friend, another fisherman, asks, ‘Why?’ The first fisherman responds, ‘How?’”

  Eddy might laugh and return a joke in kind. “An old guy loses his potency. He goes to a Chinese herbalist who says that the gland of the monkey will do the trick, but it’s very expensive. The doctor says, ‘But don’t worry. I’ve heard that rye bread works just as well.’ So the man goes to a Jewish delicatessen and asks for twelve loaves of rye bread. The woman behind the counter asks, ‘Are you having a party?’ ‘No,’ the man says. The woman says, ‘Then it will get hard before you finish.’ The man says, ‘Why does everyone know about this bread but me?’”

  Anna May might smile, then say, “You know, Eddy, the Japanese don’t have jokes like that.”

  To Sissee, Dragon’s Den was an oasis of culture, fun, and tolerance. Chinatown, conversely, was still a rough place. Toughs—and those who weren’t so fierce, but knew a good opportunity when they saw one—loved to venture down to Chinatown on a Saturday night to get in trouble, knowing that there would be little if any recourse for their victims. These were known as “rambunctious Caucasians.” “Sometimes they throw their plates on the floor. Sometimes they go in the bathroom and put linen in the goddamn toilet,” the son of the proprietor of Man Gen Low complained. And sometimes the waiters would take ice picks, go find cars on the street that looked unfamiliar, and “do the tires.”

  “We can’t fight them any other way,” the proprietor’s son said. “Hell, they’re six feet tall and we’re only …”

  If George Wong, who now supplied fish and poultry to most of the restaurants, was around, he’d add a thing or two: “If there’s a problem in your restaurant, you have to run out and holler. We’ll come and try to get that thing straight. If there’s any trouble, fight. You know if the policeman comes, he’ll just tell those people, ‘Get out of here. Get out of here.’ He won’t arrest that guy. That Caucasian guy? He won’t have to pay.”

  If Sissee and Eddy were there, someone would be sure to add, “There are a lot of nice Caucasians, too.” But even that elicited smiles, because everyone in Chinatown remembered the time Sissee’s second brother, Ray, had drunk too much, said some “snotty” things, and gotten into a fight with the waiters at the Grandview Gardens. “They beat the shit out of him,” people said in recalling the incident.

  Dragon’s Den wasn’t immune from these shenanigans. Eddy confronted a couple of troublemakers on the stairs as they were leaving without paying their bill. Words were exchanged. Suddenly the toughs were on top of Eddy, pressing their thumbs on his eyes. Sissee dashed out from behind the cash register, climbed on top of the pile, and squealed, “Let go of my brother! You can’t do that to my brother!” Then Tyrus—who had recently taken a job filling in cartoon backgrounds at the Disney Studios for $2.50 a day—edged his way into the scuffle, yelling, “Don’t kick them too hard. They’re friends of George Stanley’s. He just designed that statuette for the Academy Awards.”

  On another night, Sissee looked up from her desk into the muzzle of a nickel-plated revolver. The Mexican man holding it spoke in a low voice. “Empty the cash register,” he ordered. When she refused, another man stepped behind the counter, put a gun to her back, pushed her aside, and took one hundred dollars. She didn’t yell or scream. As the Times reported later, the robbery occurred as “a score of patrons remained oblivious.”

  Now when Eddy went to the restaurant, he looked like a gangster in a movie. He wore double-breasted pinstripe suits over which he sported a big black coat belted at the waist. He also carried a couple of guns—a .22 automatic and a .32 revolver—for protection against the “rowdy element” and for when he was carrying paper bags full of cash. The latter remin
ded Sissee of the old days, when Pa used to come home from the Pasadena store with his paper bag full of money.

  So Sissee worked. She tootled around town in her Plymouth. She stayed out late with her friends, going down to the City Market at two o’clock in the morning after the restaurant had closed to buy produce and laugh. And at dawn she’d roll back to the house on Maplewood. This level of freedom made Sissee one of the most independent young women in all of Chinatown, and some would say in the larger city as well.

  On the other hand, Sissee spent as much time as possible with her mother. In Chinatown it was said that Sissee and her mother were so close you couldn’t put a piece of paper between them. Sissee banked for her mother. She lived with her mother. She drove her mother wherever she wanted to go. Everywhere Sissee went, her mother was usually with her. Sometimes, after the restaurant closed, Sissee would pick up her mother and go driving until three or four or five in the morning—anything to keep Ticie from focusing on her loneliness. “My mother’s a real good scout,” Sissee told boys who came to pick her up for dates. “Anything I want to do, she’ll do.” So, for all her gadding about, Sissee’s life was, in many ways, a sheltered one.

  Sissee, at twenty-eight, was still unmarried, though several men had their eye on her. Jack, a jeweler in the same block as the F. Suie One Company, taught Eddy how to make rings and set stones, in the false hope of making an impression on Sissee. Down at City Market, a grocer who operated his own stall had a bad case on her. Another guy, “Accordion Joe,” who owned a restaurant in Hollywood, “sparked her up,” but lost his chance when he took her to a boxing match. One of the waitresses at Dragon’s Den had a brother who wanted to marry Sissee, but he also wanted to open a funeral parlor. “That’s as bad as the squeeze box,” Sissee confided to Stella.