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

by Lisa See

  Although Sissee was half-and-half, she was the daughter of Chinatown’s most important merchant and was expected to marry somone from a good family. The only person who fit that bill was Gilbert Leong. His mother was a powerhouse, teaching the children of Chinatown their home language; his father, Leong Jeung, whose Soochow Restaurant was a success, served as president of the Chinese Benevolent Association. It wasn’t love at first sight between Sissee and Gilbert. After all, they’d seen each other around for years, first as children aboard the Nanking in 1919, and later, when Gilbert, who lived over on Ninth Street in what was called the Market Chinatown, had gone to his mother’s mission school, which was in the same block as Fong See’s store.

  In 1933, when Ticie moved back to Chinatown and before Dragon’s Den opened, Sissee used to go over to Soochow for a bowl of noodles. Now that they were going around together, Gilbert kidded her about it. “You’d sit there absolutely straight-backed, staring into your book. You’d eat your noodles and pretend not to see me, but your book was upside down.” Sissee always laughed at this, because she knew it was at least partly true. She had liked to stare at him when she thought he wasn’t looking.

  Gilbert was still the same skinny kid he’d been on the Nanking, but now he was a sculptor and an aspiring architect. Three years ago, for their first date, Gilbert had taken her to see the James Wong Howe film Viva Villa. Afterwards they’d talked about the lighting in that film, how real the clouds looked, how Jimmy had been able to get such a wonderful sense of atmosphere. Their second date had been a dance at USC. Now Gilbert was a regular visitor at Maplewood. It made Sissee mad, the way her brothers hovered about. When Ming came over, he’d have a couple of drinks, then start dancing and causing a ruckus. All the while, Gil would be trying to get his arm around Sissee and she’d be wanting him to.

  One thing troubled Sissee. She’d been going with Gilbert for three years already. Why hadn’t he proposed?

  Every day since she’d gone to live with Grandma Huggins in Glassell Park, Jessie Copeland—Stella’s mother—sat listlessly at the bedroom window, looking out onto the street. Sometimes she clicked her tongue at the parrot her daughter had given her. Jessie continued to sit and stare, until one day late in 1937 something snapped in her brain. She leaned over, opened the birdcage, and strangled the parrot. Grandma Huggins took Jessie to the County Hospital, where it was determined that she would have to be institutionalized indefinitely. Stella’s brother, Ted, went to live with Stella and Eddy in a house they rented on Kingsley, a few blocks from Ticie.

  Unfortunately for Ted, he was entering a home that was totally incapable of handling another crisis. Eddy—between his responsibilities at the restaurant and trying to rekindle his relationship with Stella—didn’t welcome the child. As for Stella, she was still on a slow burn over Eddy’s affair. In some of the darkest days for the See family, Stella—who had held her anger in check for so long—lashed out at her powerless ten-year-old brother.

  Sometimes Ted would say something and, like her mother, Stella could feel something snap. She had no control over her rage. She beat Ted, hitting him over and over until she was depleted. Then guilt would set in. How could she have done it? He was helpless. It wasn’t his fault. One time as she hit Ted, he looked up at her curiously and asked, “Why do you always hit me? Why don’t you ever hit Richard?” And without even thinking, she turned and slapped Richard. It was only later, in the calmness of release, that she realized Richard had done nothing wrong.

  Stella didn’t like to visit her mother in the hospital, because she never knew what response she’d get on any given day. Sometimes Jessie recognized her daughter, but usually she just stared at the wall. No one ever explained Jessie’s problem. Sometimes Stella heard the word stroke. Sometimes manic depression. Sometimes schizophrenia. Sometimes nervous breakdown.

  It simply wasn’t spoken about, just as no one ever mentioned Stella’s father, because what could they say? “The man’s a wino, a bum.” Occasionally, Stella got a call from a police station where Harvey was being held. Sometimes he showed up at Stella’s door, smelling of vomit, cheap alcohol, and sweat. “Do you have any money I could borrow? I’ll pay you back.” Eddy would pull out a few dollars, and Harvey would go back down to the Nickel.

  The only person who benefited from Ted’s arrival was Richard. Stella allowed him to walk with Ted to the movies, to the market, or over to see Ticie. She permitted the boys to put on capes, pretend they were Superman, climb on the roof, and jump off. Ted was such a boy, not like Richard, who wasn’t good at sports and suffered from asthma, eczema, and allergies. Some days he swelled up until his eyes, cheeks, and lips puffed into an unrecognizable blob. Stella gave him pills to relax him so he could breathe. She rubbed his skin with green salve to relieve his itching. She took him to the doctor for shots. At night, she put a vaporizer medicated with tincture of benzoin in the room that Richard and Ted shared. What she didn’t know was that when the vaporizer was spewing its foul-smelling steam, Ted would climb out the window and sit on the roof; often he was out there all night.

  On February 1, 1938, just months after Ted came to live with her, Stella intercepted a final note from Helen Smith. This time it was a little store-bought card with a schoolgirl on the front. It read: “To my friend. Oh, I had a little dime and I had a little time. So I hunted very hard to find a little card to send to you to say I think of you each day.” On the back, Helen had written, “Couldn’t send you the flowers this year. Sincere wishes and congratulations on your third anniversary of Dragon’s Den.” Stella understood that the affair was really over.

  Shortly after this, a friend asked Stella if she’d like to take a house-sitting job in Pasadena. Realizing that she could finally loosen her grip on her marriage, Stella jumped at the chance to take Richard and get away for a while. (Ted stayed with Eddy.) Stella relished this time alone to temper her anger and try to forgive. At the same time, she earned a small income—her own money, the kind that Ticie so often told her to put aside for herself.

  Richard visited his father on the weekends. One evening when Eddy had to work at Dragon’s Den, he left Richard and Ticie at the house on Maplewood. Richard watched silently when his grandmother started to drink. When Eddy phoned to check in, Richard heard the slur in his grandmother’s words. Twenty minutes later, Eddy pulled up to the house.

  “How could you drink like that when you’re taking care of Richard?” Eddy screamed. “How could you be so irresponsible? You’re a drunk! You’re a lush!” Then he pushed Ticie. Richard watched as his father’s pushing turned to hitting. Ticie cried, but didn’t say a word. Then she left the house and started walking down the street. Even Richard could see that her leaving wasn’t fair. It was her house.

  Eddy sat on the couch with his head in his hands and waited. Finally he stood up and they got in the Plymouth and drove up and down the streets until they found Ticie. She got in the car and they drove home. No one said a word.

  Not long after this, the house-sitting job ended and Stella and Richard returned home permanently. Ticie seemed to stop drinking.

  Since he’d first set foot on the Gold Mountain, Fong Yun had been at the mercy of his brother’s every whim. If Fong See wanted Yun to go to China, he went. If Fong See wanted Yun to lie about a piece of furniture, he lied. But if Yun suffered, he was partly to blame. The family considered him a scholar, since he’d received a full education through the goodwill of his older brother. For this reason, the family thought Yun had his head in the clouds. He wasn’t good at business, they reasoned, because he’d been spoiled by his older brother.

  Yun had come to Los Angeles—young, optimistic, dedicated—only to see his dreams evaporate. In 1923, he’d opened the Fong Yun Company on Seventh Street, and failed. In the early thirties he’d opened another store, and gone bust again. After returning to Los Angeles in 1935, Yun had watched his oldest sons—Kuen, Danny Ho, and Haw—try to make a go of it with Fong Brothers, a five-and-dime at the corner of Seventh a
nd Figueroa. But a curio shop in the heart of the business district in the depth of the Depression could not support three families. Danny Ho took over, leaving his brothers to go back to work for Fong See. They were young. They still had time to find their futures. Yun, on the other hand, felt trapped.

  He had always planned to retire to China once his older sons were situated, but the world seemed to conspire against him. First, it was harder than expected for the boys to get established. Second, Yun had to bring Leong-shee, the younger children, and the older boys’ three new wives back to Los Angeles. These women—who’d led privileged lives in China with servants to dress them, feed them, and clean for them—didn’t easily adapt to life in Los Angeles. American-born wives, who’d seen plenty of hard times, took particular offense at the uppity Fong wives: “Those girls are spoiled. They’ve never worked. They thought they were going to come here and never lift a finger. …” The result of all this was that Fong Yun was burdened with more mouths to feed, at a higher rate.

  Each evening Yun returned home to his rooms in his brother’s compound. Over dinner, surrounded by his wife and younger children, he wept. “My brother is a tyrant,” he’d say.

  “Why don’t you fight back?” Leong-shee inquired. “Why don’t you stand up for yourself?”

  “I owe my life to my brother,” he answered. “When I was young, we were so poor that my brother would go and cut grass in the rain to earn money for food. I owe my education to him. I owe this life to him.”

  As low as he got, Fong Yun never forgot that his brother had brought him to the Gold Mountain. Despite years of menial chores, he remained faithful to See-bok. Yun honored his brother according to filial precepts. When his children asked to go camping or skiing, Yun said, “You must go ask your uncle. You must show the proper respect.”

  The children often speculated on their father’s relationship with their powerful uncle. “Each person has his own personality,” Kuen might offer. “Each person has his way of doing things. If See-bok’s personality wasn’t the way it is, he wouldn’t be making the money he does.” Still, Fong Yun had eight children and a wife here in the United States, and another three children and a concubine in Fatsan. He had the responsibility to care and provide for all of them. The construction of New Chinatown and China City gave Uncle the opportunity to escape what amounted to indentured servitude.

  Fong Yun spoke to his brother: “I can’t make ends meet. I would like to go out on my own again.” Although Fong See didn’t want his brother to leave, he wasn’t angry. Uncle was too close to his heart.

  “We can’t afford new Chinatown,” Fong Yun told Leong-shee. “You need two thousand dollars, maybe three thousand dollars to open there. We’ll go to China City.”

  Fong Yun was among the first to rent space—the largest in the complex—and became the first president of the China City Association. Choey Lau, his eldest daughter, asked her father to buy insurance if the family was going to take on a such a big risk, but he refused. “I am an honest man,” he told her. “I don’t believe in gambling, and insurance is just a way of gambling. It’s more important to spend your money on merchandise.” Which is exactly what he did.

  On June 8, 1938, China City officially opened. A reporter, observing the scene for the Los Angeles Examiner and caught up in the spirit of the day, wrote of exploding firecrackers and “Orientals sputtering the English equivalent of ‘whoopee.’” He went on to describe the lotus pools, temple gongs, curio stands, dance pavilions, and “slim Oriental girls in silk jackets and trousers pattering back and forth.” China City pandered unabashedly to Chinese stereotypes, evoking the “exotic” atmosphere of a Chinese village. The entire one-block complex was enclosed within a miniature “Great Wall of China.” Inside, small cob-blestoned alleyways were filled with leftover sets from The Good Earth. Ducks and chickens pecked the ground outside the Wang farmhouse; tourists rode in rickshaws down the “Passage of 100 Surprises” and nibbled on “Chinaburgers.”

  Just three weeks later, on June 25, 1938, the grand opening of New Chinatown took place a few blocks away. Visitors entered through one of two large gates—the first dedicated to “The Gathering of Best Talents”; the other built with donations from Y. C. Hong, the hunchbacked lawyer, in honor of his mother and all “maternal virtues.” Lanterns, banners, and flags of the United States and the Republic of China festooned the area.

  Lovely maidens dressed in traditional costumes guided visitors through the red-carpeted streets with such topical names as Mei-Ling Way (from the given name of Madame Chiang Kai-shek) and Sun Mun Way (for Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People). Tyrus Wong, Keye Luke, and Gilbert Leong contributed art for an exhibition. After a parade, a lion dance, and musical interludes, the politicians and celebrities, including Anna May Wong, retired to the newly relocated Man Jen Low Restaurant. Late into the night, crowds danced and swayed to music under lantern light.

  With the dual success of China City and New Chinatown, it felt as though the Depression was finally over for the Chinese in Los Angeles. And, for a short time, China City was a beautiful dream for Uncle and a wonderland for his children.

  Not long after China City opened, Choey Lon, Uncle’s five-year-old daughter, stood at her mother’s side in the Sam Sing Butcher Shop, watching and learning. Leong-shee surreptitiously pointed to a center piece of pork. “I want that cut,” she whispered to her daughter, “but it’s not time yet.” Every day, Choey Lon and her mother followed this same routine, walking over from China City several times until the butcher had sliced to Leong-shee’s chosen cut.

  For Choey Lon, China City was a magical place where the fragrant smell of incense wafted from a temple and gentle breezes passed through wind chimes hanging before shops. At one gate were Chinese characters reading, “As China’s Lion Awakens, the City Grandly Opens”; at the other were two larger-than-life door guards painted by her older brother Kuen. The lovely curves of Gilbert Leong’s sculpture of Kuan Yin graced the Court of Confucius, where the cobblestones had been purposely laid unevenly. The streets and plazas—the Court of Lotus Pools and the Harbor of Whang Po—were great places to play tag or hide and seek. Rickshaw boys pulled tourists through the bumpy alleyways for twenty-five cents, yelling, “Coming through! Coming through!”

  Magical characters lived in China City. An Italian fortune-teller. A Buddhist monk, tall and strange-looking. Choey Lon’s mother explained, “He’s from the North. They’re tall like that.” Lo fan women came and chanted with him. Another man acted like a door guard. He had his stall at the very entrance to China City. He was small, dark, and buggy-eyed. Everyone called him Peanut, not just because he sold peanuts but because he looked like one, too. Finally, Choey Lon liked to watch Tom Gubbins, who had moved his shop into China City, because he seemed so different with his English accent, piercing blue eyes, carefully trimmed beard, and cocked hat.

  Queens and princesses came to visit China City: Eleanor Roosevelt, Gene Tierney, Anna May Wong, and Mae West, who was so moved at the Temple of Kuan Yin that she signed a photograph of herself with the words “You must come and see my temple sometime!” Choey Lon thought the actresses were especially exciting, even though her father didn’t approve of Hollywood people. “Beware of easy jobs and easy money,” he said. “Don’t work for the movies. It is a bad business, full of bad types. I know Anna May Wong since she is a baby. But I’m telling you that entertainment is the lowest. You have to make an honest living.”

  Lon wasn’t the only kid who loved China City. Children throughout Chinatown liked to come here. Sometimes Richard and Ted (her cousins? what they were exactly she didn’t know, except they were relatives and white) would come down and act like kid tourists, with their cone-shaped lollipops and snow cones. Other children worked in China City. Lilly Mu Lee, who sold gardenias for fifteen cents and double corsages for thirty-five cents, sang “God Bless America” for a penny.

  Lon believed she lived in a white fairy tale. China City was the huge castle,
and she was Snow White. Like a princess, she didn’t have to study, for nothing was expected of a princess but to be beautiful, reside in a beautiful palace, and be surrounded by delightful things. In her fantasies she conjured up a white prince.

  Her mother and father tried to set her straight:

  “White men drink a lot.”

  “White men beat their wives.”

  “White men are unfaithful.”

  Could these things be true? Lon wanted to find out.

  If Lon thought of herself as Snow White, then she thought of her mother as Cinderella. Leong-shee worked in the back of the store, making food for everyone. Since there was no running water, she washed the dishes in a pan, then carried the bucket of greasy water outside to dump it. Nobody helped her—not Lon, not her father. He treated Leong-shee like a slave.