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

by Lisa See

  Choey Lon knew her father thought he was a high-class merchant. He had aspirations, but even Lon could see they didn’t gel. His shop was beautiful, well done. He had good antiques left over from his Seventh Street store, but mostly he carried cheap curios—backscratchers, little teapots, and ashtrays. And her mother was not a woman of leisure.

  Lon adored her father and felt he loved her best of all. He gave her lots of attention—not the western kind, with hugging and kissing—but it was true and pure anyway. He called her teasing names—“sugar dumpling” and “turtle egg.” When she asked him for something, he gave it to her. He didn’t believe in discipline. “Children understand who you are,” he said. “If you call it bad, then a child will gravitate toward it. They must learn by observation.” As a result, all harsh words and punishments came from Leong-shee.

  Today, as the late-afternoon shoppers made the last of their purchases, Leong-shee once again took her daughter to the Sam Sing Butcher Shop. Lon could see that the piece of meat her mother had picked was ready for slicing. Lon knew she was here to watch and learn, but she saw more than just her intended feminine lessons. She saw that her mother was the provider in the family. Leong-shee watched out for her children. She was an ideal Chinese mother who followed Buddhist philosophy, taught tradition and reverence, and obeyed the rules for being a good wife in her day-to-day living. At her mother’s side in the meat market, Lon learned about perfection. She saw how well her mother did her job. She saw how women did things in the world that didn’t show and weren’t acknowledged.

  Lon promised herself she wouldn’t grow up to be like that. She didn’t want to get married. She didn’t want to have children. She was convinced her father wouldn’t mind. “There’s no use trying to beat children into something,” he said, “because they will follow what they want to follow. Little dumpling, you will just have to be who you are.” She believed him.

  CHAPTER 14

  ANNA MAY SPEAKS (FROM THE GRAVE)

  DURING my lifetime, nobody asked me what I thought. Nobody asked me if I liked it when one of my brothers used to brag to his classmates about me, hoping my fame would rub off on him. Nobody explained that even after I was dead, my family would try to keep me a secret. Nobody told me that practically the only thing people would remember about me was that I had created “bad stereotypes,” and that only a few people would cherish me in their “fanzines” and their fantasies. Nobody ever asked me what I thought. But you go ahead. Ask me where I belong, who I am. I’m going to tell you, and you can believe it or not. I don’t care. Because whatever I say, you will change anyway.

  You ask me, What is your home? Is it California? I ask you back, How could it be the United States, where I cannot buy property? Where I cannot marry a white man? You ask me, Is your home Los Angeles, where you were born? Is it Chinatown? Surely you must be comfortable there. Of course I loved Dragon’s Den. I was there almost every night. But the rest of Chinatown? The people didn’t want me unless they could profit from me. So, when they wanted to raise money for China Relief, they held a Moon Festival. They said, “We need a grand marshal. We need a star.” They knew in their filthy hearts there was only one person to ask. “We will ask Anna May.” Naturally I went, knowing that the day after the Moon Festival they would go back to their old ways and I would go home alone.

  What of Europe? You must have been happy there. That is where you had so much fame.

  This is what I know. I couldn’t get a decent job in America and I wanted to be a star. When I went to London, someone asked me, “Why did you leave America?” This is what I said: “I left America because I died so often. I was killed in virtually every picture in which I appeared. Pathetic dying seemed to be the thing I did best.”

  Another time a reporter asked me that same question and I answered, “When I left Hollywood I vowed that I would never act in films again. I was so tired of the part I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always a villain? And so crude a villain—murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass! We are not like that. How could we be, with a civilization that is so many times older than that of the West? We have rigid codes of behavior, of honor. Why do they never show these? Why should we always scheme, rob, kill? I got so weary of it all—of the scenarists’ conception of the Chinese character. You remember Fu Manchu? Daughter of the Dragon? So wicked!”

  I’m telling you this because I knew I was creating bad stereotypes. That’s why I wanted the part of O’Lan so badly. The Good Earth showed Chinese people in a good light, but Thalberg wanted white actors for the leading roles. Today, when they say I perpetrated those stereotypes, I wonder.

  I couldn’t take any more of America. So, in 1928, I sailed for Germany to make Schmutzies Geld. Someone told me that means Dirty Money. Then I went to Paris, then London, then back to Berlin. I learned to speak German and French. At least I said I learned those things. Perhaps I just learned how to pronounce the words before the camera. Perhaps I had no idea what I was saying. Perhaps I learned my lines by typing out my scripts. It doesn’t matter, because I was a star. In 1929, I was in A Circle of Chalk with Laurence Olivier. At night, at the stage door, people waited for me. Did they wait for Olivier? Never. I would walk outside into the fog or rain, and they would be there—young men in their tuxedoes, young women with their bangs cut straight and blunt. Those young men lusted for me. Those young women tinted their faces ivory with ocher powder, hoping to duplicate my complexion.

  In 1931, Sessue Hayakawa said, “Come back to America to star in Daughter of the Dragon.” I told reporters, “It is good to be home. I’m glad they want me back here to make a picture. I must confess I was discouraged when I left Hollywood. But I wasn’t bitter. Everyone had been kind to me. And I’m grateful now; it wasn’t easy at the start. It makes me appreciative of good fortune.” The next year I was in Shanghai Express.

  Is China your home country?

  The Chinese have their own ways of being cruel. When I went to China after I lost the part in The Good Earth, I thought, Ah, perhaps this is my home. In Nanking, officials held a four-hour state dinner for me. I spoke Cantonese. They spoke Mandarin. Let me tell you something about these two languages. It’s not like the difference between Spanish and Italian. Mandarin and Cantonese are as different from each other as German and English.

  I told my interpreter, “Tell me everything they say. I want to know everything.” Through the dinner he whispered quietly in my ear what the others were actually saying as they stood to make their “toasts.” “Does she know that her films are banned in our country? What of this courtesan in Shanghai Express? Is this how she wants the world to view Chinese women? Does she realize how she degrades our mothers and sisters and wives and daughters?” I sat there. I smiled. I listened. I told them in English, “When a person is trying to get established in a profession, he can’t choose his parts. He has to take what is offered. I came to China to learn.” When I was done, they gave me a standing ovation. And in America they wrote, “She was received like a princess.”

  I stayed in China for ten months. All my life I had been homesick for China, even though I had never been there before. The rhythm of life there harmonized with something in me that had been out of tune. I was no longer restless. It’s hard to explain. Our Chinese expression “being in harmony with heaven and earth” is the essence of it. I went to Toishan to visit my home village. The women came out. They didn’t believe I was real. They thought I was machine-made on the movie screen.

  When I returned to America, I worked hard to raise money to help the people of China. I spoke everywhere. Paramount didn’t mind. The studio was helpful. Publicists wrote press releases for me: “In view of current events in the Orient, anything Japanese annoys Anna May Wong, Chinese actress.” I had an apartment overlooking a Japanese garden. When I looked at it I got angry. I wasn’t soothed. I kept a bowl of goldfish. I always had fish, because it calmed me to watch them swim, and I could forget whatever bothered me. But I couldn’t stop thi
nking about that garden. Paramount sent out another release: “Last night Miss Wong moved to a furnished home in another part of Hollywood, far from any landscaping suggesting Japan.”

  And you ask, Was it enough not to look at a Japanese garden? Of course not. I had one of the largest and most expensive wardrobes in Hollywood. I’d bought gowns in Paris, New York, Hollywood, and China. I auctioned off more than two hundred gowns, ensembles, wraps, accessories—including fans, jewelry, and headdresses. All the money went to relief funds.

  This is what I know: When I kissed Jameson Thomas in Piccadilly, British censors cut it. When I was courted on screen by a Russian duke in Haitang, Hungarian officials banned the film. No film lover could ever marry me. If an American actress was made up with slanted eyes and eyebrows, and wore a stiff black wig and dressed in Chinese costumes, it was all right. But me? I was full Chinese. I always died in the movies, so that the white girl with the yellow hair could get the man.

  My answer to all of your questions? I never belonged anywhere, because no place was home to me.

  My father was a laundryman. You know what this is like—nonstop work, and people treating you badly and not paying the proper amount. My parents sent me to Chinese school after regular school, but I hated it. Instead, I went to the movie theater to see The Perils of Pauline. Do you remember, Stella, how we used to laugh about that, how you saw the same things in Waterville and wished you were somewhere else and I was in Los Angeles and wished I were someone else?

  I was born Wong Liu Tsong. It means something like Frosted Yellow Willows or Frosted Willow Blossoms or Hoarfrost of the Willow Trees. All my life I wished for something different. I remember coming home from the serials and standing in front of the mirror and acting out all the parts. I remember walking to school and holding my eyes wide open so that I would look Caucasian.

  When I was ten years old, I worked for a furrier. Sometimes I was a model. Once they dressed me in a mink coat and brocaded ankle-length pantaloons and took my picture for the rotogravure section of the newspaper. My father was so impressed by my elegance that he cut out the picture and sent it to my half-brother in China. My brother wrote back, “Tsong is indeed very beautiful, but please send me the dollar watch on the other side.” You know what I say to that? A fur coat doesn’t tick.

  One day I heard about a movie they were making about the Boxer Rebellion—The Red Lantern. I went to a casting agent. Was it Tom Gubbins? No. It was Reverend Wang, the Baptist minister. He said, “Well, you got big eyes, big nose, big ears and mouth. I guess you’ll do.” He changed my name to Anna May Wong. I was twelve years old and I wanted to be in pictures. For two more years I went after school to work on different movies as an extra. My brothers, my sisters, they kept it a secret. They knew how mad my father would get. One day, one of my sisters said she had to tell Father, to soothe her own conscience.

  My father was angry with me. He said people in Hollywood used harsh words. He said acting was not an honorable profession. He said things about white men: “They will take advantage of you. They will compromise you.” My father got so angry he tried to arrange a marriage for me. He didn’t ask me what I thought. But I’ll tell you. I thought, I don’t want a husband to boss me around. I don’t want to live my life in Chinatown. I don’t want to marry a cook or a laundryman. I don’t want a husband who will take all my money, even if he lets me keep working. Besides, no Chinese man will marry me. I’d become too American to marry one of my own race.

  My father gave up and I never got married. And when I was in The Thief of Bagdad my costume was so see-through that my family never forgave me. In their eyes, I was like a courtesan. Only my brother Richard remained faithful to me. Still, did my father complain that I brought home money? Did he complain when I supported the whole family? Did he complain when I bought one brother a typewriter and helped another to learn photography? Did he complain when I put all my brothers through private school? And here is the truth: I was beautiful as the slave girl.

  After The Thief of Bagdad, the press began to call me “the celestial maiden.” They called me “sloe-eyed.” They called me “exotic.” They called me “the Oriental Siren,” “the China Doll,” “the Lotus Girl,” “the Chinese Flapper.” They called me “the Queen of the B-films.” They said I’d never cut my hair, never worn eyeglasses, never worn wool underwear, never curled my hair, never eaten lobster, never been on a bicycle, never owned a radio. They said I had the longest nails in Hollywood—which was true. They made it news when I cut my nails for Daughter of Shanghai. It was news again when I grew them back two inches and protected them with gold nail guards for Dangerous to Know.

  Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be beautiful? In 1938, Look magazine called me “The Most Beautiful Chinese Girl in the World.” I remember once in London I stopped a debate in Parliament when I walked into the visitors’ gallery. They stopped everything just to watch me walk, watch me sit down. When I came back from my “Triumph Abroad,” they said I was the “Toast of the Continent.” They said my complexion was like “a rose blushing through old ivory,” that my face shone on the screen like a Ming vase. But when Hollywood wanted a “Chinese,” they hired Luise Rainer, Sylvia Sydney, Dorothy Lamour, Myrna Loy, and Sigrid Gurie.

  Behind my back, people talked about how lonely I was. Even today, some say, “Didn’t Anna May have tuberculosis?” “Didn’t Anna May drink?” “Didn’t she have sad love affairs?” “Didn’t she become a virtual recluse?” “Didn’t her brother have to take care of her?” Did any of them ever ask me?

  This is what I want to ask you: What would you do if your family was ashamed of you? What would you do if you were their worst secret? This is what I did: It was the end of 1930 and I was on Broadway doing On the Spot with Wilbur Crane, when my mother crossed a street in Los Angeles and was hit by a car. My brothers called and told me. They left nothing out. Fracture of the skull. Broken leg. Internal injuries. They called later to say that our mother had died. Can you imagine how I felt to be so far away? Do you know how I felt when the police let the driver go free? But look, he was a white man. I filed a lawsuit. My father and my brothers and sisters joined me. What would they have done if I wasn’t there?

  So I say let people gossip all they want. Does it change my life? Does it make me disappear? When I returned from China, I found here a restless seeking for something that couldn’t be found. The Chinese found it many years ago—a sort of serenity, an inner calm that comes from the understanding of life. This is such a short life. And mine was truly short. Only fifty-four years.

  People say, Oh, she died of a broken heart. She died of disappointment. She died of too much bitterness. She died to pay for her sins against the Chinese people. But I say nothing matters one way or the other. I have learned not to struggle, but to flow along with the tide.

  CHAPTER 15

  SECOND CHANCES

  1939–41

  ON February 21,1939, less than a year after it opened, a fire leveled China City. Officials blamed the fire on smoldering firecrackers used in celebration of Chinese New Year. Most of the shopkeepers, including Fong Yun, had no insurance. For a few unfortunates, it meant the loss of all their worldly possessions; beaten, they simply walked away. But many of the inhabitants dipped into savings or borrowed money from relatives to reopen; Fong Yun once again went to his brother for help and received it.

  Three months later, on May 17, 1939, Union Station—built over the ruins of Apablasa Street—opened and was billed as “the most modern terminal in America.” Angelenos were already producing more than half of the country’s airplanes, and the most incredible traffic jams in the history of mankind. To combat the latter, a proposal for a four-hundred-mile network of freeways had been introduced.

  On August 2,1939, China City reopened amid great fanfare. A troupe of actors performed selections from famous Chinese operas. Lion and dragon dancers gyrated and shimmied through the alleyways. Magicians, musicians, and devil dancers worked their
charms. Fireworks—carefully monitored this time—were set off. Café owners doled out souvenir chopsticks, while the proprietors of stalls and shops handed out lichees. But business would never be quite the same. China City would stumble along year after year, becoming more rickety and rundown as New Chinatown continued to prosper and grow.

  Soon after China City burned, Stella discovered she was pregnant. Both Eddy and Stella regarded this as a chance to start their marriage afresh. But Stella sensed that there’d be problems with the pregnancy. Her doctor reinforced her foreboding by calling on weekends and at odd hours. At the end of December he began calling every day to ask when she was going to come in and have the baby. Stella always answered, “It’s not time yet. I’ll go to the hospital on January fifteenth.”

  On the day Stella finally went to the hospital, she stopped to see Ticie and Sissee at the house on Maplewood. “Take care of Richard if some thing happens to me,” she said, so convinced was she that she was going to die. The last thing she remembered was her doctor talking softly, reassuringly, as the anesthesiologist put the mask over her face. When she woke, Sissee was sitting next to the bed. “The baby?” Stella asked.

  Her sister-in-law’s eyes brimmed with tears. “He’s alive, Stell, but he’s not going to make it.”