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Patriot Number One

Page 33

by Lauren Hilgers


  “Worry about what?” asked Little Yan.

  “Jack says that sometimes kids grow up here, and they’re confused. They don’t know whether they’re Chinese or American. He says you have to tell them from the very beginning that they’re American. As soon as they’re born, you have to tell them. And then you tell them over and over again.”

  Little Yan considered the question. “Well, if your child is born in the United States, are they American? Or do they have the same immigration status as you do?” she asked.

  “They’re already citizens,” said Karen.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  Little Yan didn’t see what the worry was. “Then it’s simple,” she said. “They’re Americans.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of nonfiction, reported over five years in China and New York City. I began reporting in 2012, intending to write a magazine story about Wukan Village in the aftermath of the protests. As events unfolded in the village, and I continued to push back my deadline, it became clear that I was working on something much bigger than a magazine piece. And then in 2014, Zhuang and Little Yan arrived in New York, and the story I was working on split in two—it was impossible to tell one without the other.

  Although I had lived in New York City for almost two years by the time Zhuang and Little Yan arrived, I had visited Flushing only once before—to eat at a Chinese restaurant. I discovered the neighborhood alongside them, documenting the process with notes, recorded interviews, photographs, and video.

  Zhuang is a complicated figure, heroic and sometimes frustrating. When he agreed to participate in this book project, he generously allowed me to write both about his accomplishments as a dissident in Wukan and about his struggles as an immigrant. Little Yan was, at first, bewildered by my desire to include her, but she gamely agreed to my presence and interviews and became a valuable guide to the nuances of life in Flushing.

  I owe a great debt to all the men and women in Flushing and Wukan Village who took time out from their overloaded days to welcome me into their homes. All the events described in the book were either witnessed by me or reconstructed through interviews. While I spent hundreds of hours in Flushing, in people’s homes, on the street, and in Tang Yuanjun’s office, some spaces were off-limits to me. Little Yan and Karen both asked that I not visit them at their workplaces, worried that their association with a non-Chinese person would raise suspicion. I relied on their own accounts of their workplace experiences, visits to other Chinese-run salons, shops, and offices in the city, and interviews with other nail salon, restaurant, and home care workers.

  Where possible, I corroborated the stories Zhuang and Little Yan told me about Wukan through repeated interviews of their fellow villagers. I spent many hours interviewing Zhuang’s fellow village committee members, including Old Lin, Yang Semao, Hong Ruichao, and Xue Jianwan. When it became impossible for me, much like Zhuang, to travel back to Wukan, I relied on the accounts being sent over WeChat. Zhuang is an expert collector of documentation, and particularly when Wukan erupted in protests again in 2016, he was an invaluable co-investigator, collecting photos, documents, and films from the village.

  I used no hard and fast rule for transliterating Chinese names. Where full names are present, I use the pinyin system of Romanization and follow the traditional Chinese practice of putting surnames first, given names second. In the case of Zhang Jianxing, I chose to refer to him by his first name to avoid confusion between Zhang and Zhuang. The majority of the names used in the book are real, save for a few notable exceptions. Karen is an alias, and she asked that I change the names of her friends and acquaintances as well. She also requested that I use English names to reflect the fact that, even among her Chinese friends in Flushing, she goes by her chosen English name.

  I use the words “arrest” and “detention” interchangeably throughout the book. Although, in China, someone can be detained by security forces for up to thirty days before they are formally arrested, I have chosen to use the conventional English definition of “arrest” to indicate the moment when a person is taken into custody.

  So much of immigrant life in the United States is based on myth and legend: a country drives people to move across oceans, and they then send rose-tinted stories back home. But almost no one I spoke to in Flushing was prepared for the challenge of upending their lives and building new ones in a strange country. The people who participated in this book were eager to discuss the disconnection they felt between the perception of life in the United States and the reality. Karen, Tang, Little Yan, and Zhuang all bent themselves to fit the responsibilities, sacrifices, and opportunities that Flushing presented. They grappled daily with what it meant to be rebuilding their lives in the United States and imagining their adopted country anew. And all of them met the challenges of their new lives with ingenuity, generosity, and an enormous capacity for hope.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest gratitude is for the patience and bravery of Little Yan, Zhuang, Karen, Tang Yuanjun, and all the men and women featured in this book. In addition, I am indebted to the following people and organizations:

  In China: Natasa Huliev, Sean O’Rourke, Aritz Parra, Maxim Duncan, Yang Xifan, Zhang Jieqian, Barbara Demick, Deb and James Fallows, Ian Hanks, Micah Lewis-Kraus, Sydnie Reed, Rachel Sussman, Kerin Lanyi, and Sanushka Mudaliar. In the U.S.: Riley Lipschitz, Jess Benko, Katia Bachko, Lisa Weir, Alexandra Goncalves-Pena, Jason Ng, Alexa Olesen, Jen Salen, Ran Wei, Nathan Thornburgh, Adam Higginbothom, Samir Patel, Chris Cox, Sophie Xiong, Yan Cong, Michael Chu, and Meredith Jacks.

  Rebecca Whitehurst, for making that first trip to Beijing with me. Christopher Colvin and Behice Kutay, who encouraged me to write and let me look after their eight cats. Gary Hendrickson, who gave seventeen-year-old me more confidence than I probably deserved.

  Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, who first sent me on my way to Wukan and whose insight and counsel over the years have made me an immeasurably better writer and person.

  Lynn Lee, James Leong, and Zhu Rikun, for their company in Wukan. Gideon Lewis-Kraus, for his extreme generosity and encouragement. Jennifer Jones, for her diligent and thoughtful reading. The MacDowell Colony, for a blissful few weeks in the woods.

  My agent, Elyse Cheney, who pushed me to make this book a reality and who unexpectedly talked me through hours of contractions on the day my daughter was born. Rachel Klayman and Meghan Houser at Crown Publishing, who have been watching over the project ever since.

  My parents, Joan and David Hilgers, to whom I owe nearly everything. All of the women in Austin who took my ambition seriously even when it was not yet fully formed, particularly Dinah Chenven, Frances Schenkkan, and Cynthia Levinson.

  Diao Lumin, whose calm, practical shepherding of my daughter has made it possible for me to live a double life and write this book.

  Kelly Winship, my phenomenal sister, who has been providing helpful editorial suggestions since birth.

  Taylor Price, for his lack of pretension, his deadpan jokes, and his talent for making all newcomers feel welcome.

  NOTES

  Chapter 2: A Fisherman’s Son

  on the edge of Hong Kong: Xiangming Chen and Tomas de’ Medici, “The ‘Instant City’ Coming of Age: China’s Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in Thirty Years,” Urban Geography 31, no. 8 (2010): 1141–47.

  the freedom to move: Mary Ann O’Donnell, Winnie Wong, and Jonathan Bach, Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 25–27.

  “the floating population”: Ibid., 5–6.

  better healthcare, and higher incomes: John Knight and Lina Song, The Rural-Urban Divide: Economic Disparities and Interactions in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chaps. 4–6.

  booming real-estate sector: George Lin and Samuel P. S. Ho, “
The State, Land System, and Land Development Processes in Contemporary China,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (2005): 411–36.

  earlier than his urban counterpart: Yuhui Li and Linda Dorsten, “Regional and Urban: Rural Differences of Public Health in China,” Global Journal of Health Sciences 2, no. 1 (April 2010): 20–30.

  by the time he was sixteen: O’Donnell, Wong, and Bach, Learning from Shenzhen, 5–6.

  Chapter 3: Wukan! Wukan! Revolution

  left up to interpretation: Vince Wong, “Land Policy Reform in China: Dealing with Forced Expropriation and the Dual Land Tenure System,” Centre for Comparative and Public Law Occasional Paper no. 25 (Hong Kong: Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, 2014).

  three tons of methamphetamines: Dan Levin, “Synthetic Drug Manufacturing Is an Open Secret in China,” New York Times, June 23, 2013.

  20 to 25 different government departments: Yang Zhong, “Dissecting Chinese County Governmental Authorities,” China Policy Institute Discussion Paper no. 11 (Nottingham, U.K.: University of Nottingham, September 2006).

  gap has to be made up somehow: Donald C. Clarke, “The Law of China’s Local Government Debt Crisis: Local Government Financing Vehicles and Their Bonds,” George Washington University Law School Public Law Research Paper no. 2016–31 (Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, June 2016).

  illegal taxes on villages and towns: T. P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lu, “Taxation Without Representation: Peasants, the Central and the Local States in Reform China,” China Quarterly 163 (2000): 742–63.

  Wukan Port Industrial Development Company: Yanbing Zhang and Zhimin Zheng, “The End of Government-Business Relations, Solidification and Collapse: Local Government Autonomy and Social Power in Wukan,” School of Public Policy and Management Working Paper no. 2015-001 (Beijing: Tsinghua University, January 2015) (Chinese); Tianyu Peng, “The Revelations of the Wukan Incident,” in Grassroots Democracy in China—2012 (Beijing: World and China Institute, 2012): 300–10 (Chinese).

  sold to developers: “Summary of 2011 17-Province Survey’s Findings: Insecure Land Rights, The Single Greatest Challenge Facing China’s Sustainable Development and Continued Stability,” Landesa Rural Development Institute, 2012, https://www.landesa.org/​china-survey-6/.

  Chapter 4: In Queens

  West Egg to New York City: Jason D. Antos, Then and Now: Flushing (Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia, 2010), 75.

  “man’s achievement”: Lawrence R. Samuel, The End of the Innocence: The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 18; Bruce W. Dearstyne, The Spirit of New York: Defining Moments in the Empire State’s History (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015), 259.

  Quakers circled back: Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 30–31.

  “Jews, Turks and Egyptians”: Giles Henry Mandeville, Flushing, Past and Present (Flushing: Home Lecture Committee of 1857–58, 1860), https://archive.org/​details/​flushingpastpres00mand.

  ash heap on the edge: James Driscoll, Flushing: 1880–1935 (Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia, 2005), 17.

  invested in real estate and opened restaurants: Weishan Huang, “Immigration and Gentrification: A Case Study of Cultural Restructuring in Flushing, Queens,” Diversities 12, no. 1 (2010): 56–69, www.unesco.org/​shs/​diversities/​vol12/​issue1/​art4.

  more than two hundred thousand Chinese: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (2015), https://factfinder.census.gov/​faces/​tableservices/​jsf/​pages/​productview.xhtml?src=bkmk.

  largest Chinese population of any city: Kate Hooper and Jeanne Batalova, “Chinese Immigrants in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute, January 28, 2015, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/​article/​chinese-immigrants-united-states.

  fastest-growing immigrant group: The Newest New Yorkers: Characteristics of the City’s Foreign-born Population (New York: Department of City Planning and Office of Immigrant Affairs, December 2013), https://www1.nyc.gov/​assets/​planning/​download/​pdf/​data-maps/​nyc-population/​nny2013/​nny_2013.pdf.

  immigrants from southern China: Kenneth J. Guest, “From Mott Street to East Broadway: Fuzhounese Immigrants and the Revitalization of New York’s Chinatown,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 7 (2011): 24–44, esp. 40.

  people from Fujian: Ko-Lin Chin, Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 49–93.

  dollar vans and easy train access: Guest, “Mott Street to East Broadway,” 52.

  Flushing is no Chinatown at all: Wei Li, Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 173–74.

  eating at Chinese-run restaurants: “Chop Suey Resorts,” New York Times, November 15, 1903.

  “There were many signs”: Yang Fan, “Chinese Protest Leader Seeks Asylum in US After Arrests,” trans. Luisetta Mudie, Radio Free Asia, March 24, 2014, http://www.rfa.org/​english/​news/​china/​asylum-03242014165014.html.

  “The biggest fortune in life”: Echo Hui, “Chinese Authorities Just Won’t Give Up, Says Wukan Protest Leader Who Fled to US,” South China Morning Post, March 26, 2014.

  Chapter 5: Work

  In 1890, Chinese men: Peter Kwong, The New Chinatown (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987), 14.

  Their limited family lives: Peter Kwong and Dušanka Mišcevic, Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community (New York: New Press, 2005), 135–52.

  wealthy Chinese investors: Kwong, New Chinatown, 29–32.

  A statewide investigation: Kim Barker and Russ Buettner, “Nail Salon Sweeps in New York Reveal Abuses and Regulatory Challenges,” New York Times, February 29, 2016.

  multiple police raids: Phillip Martin, “Human Trafficking: The Route Through Queens,” WGBH News, January 10, 2013; Liz Robbins, “In a Queens Court, Women in Prostitution Cases Are Seen as Victims,” New York Times, November 21, 2014.

  Some establishments served: Chin, Smuggled Chinese.

  exposé on the working conditions: Sarah Maslin Nir, “The Price of Nice Nails,” New York Times, May 7, 2015.

  Chapter 6: The Chairman

  warlords who ruled much: Kwong and Mišcevic, Chinese America, 2–38.

  found their way to Cuba: Evelyn Hu-Dehart, “Latin America in Asian-Pacific Perspective,” Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, ed. Rhacel S. Parreñas and Lok C. D. Siu (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007).

  Drawn to San Francisco: Kwong and Mišcevic, Chinese America, 43–56.

  Deals were made: Ibid., 75–89.

  “is a better addition”: Ibid., 49.

  built their own social support: Ibid., 144–46.

  Chinese fishermen supplied: Ibid., 10–17, 79–80.

  Chinatowns were, from the start: Him Mark Lai, Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2004), 42.

  “pickaxe brigade”: Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 113–15.

  In 1888 another measure: Kwong, Chinese America, 106–18.

  They grilled new arrivals: Ibid., 135–44.

  “gained the sky but lost”: Rowena Xiaoqing He, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 15–36.

  Others moved to South Korea: Jie Chen, “The Chinese Political Dissidents in Exile: Struggle for a Sustainable and Relevant Movement,” Open Journal of Political Science 6, no. 1 (2016): 53–66.

  Chapter 7: Sanctuary

  Chen had grown so famous: Steven Jiang, “Batman Star Christian Bale Punched, Stopped from Visiting Blind Ch
inese Activist,” CNN, December 16, 2011.

  New York City is estimated: Pew Research Center Estimates based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s augmented 2014 American Community Survey.

  “defensive” and “affirmative” asylees: Nadwa Mossaad, “Refugees and Asylees: 2015,” “Annual Flow Report,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, November 2016.

  Nationwide, more Chinese people apply: Ibid.

  The persecution must have been: Sec. 208 (13), U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act.

  an FBI raid on lawyers: Kirk Semple, Joseph Goldstein, and Jeffrey E. Singer, “Asylum Fraud in Chinatown: An Industry of Lies,” New York Times, February 22, 2014.

  Chapter 8: Wukan! Wukan! A Death

  In a village just hours away: Sui-Lee Wee, “Violent Protest Against Power Plant in Another South China Town,” Reuters, December 21, 2011.

  “If you trust foreign media”: David Bandurski, “Guangdong Extends a Firm Hand to Wukan Villagers,” China Media Project, December 21, 2011, http://cmp.hku.hk/​2011/​12/​21/​guangdong-leaders-move-to-end-wukan-incident/.

  “extreme actions” would be forgiven: Ibid.

  Chapter 9: Little Yan

  A vocational school graduate: Yu Hong, Labor, Class Formation, and China’s Informationized Policy of Economic Development (New York: Lexington Books, 2011), 143–45.

  Chapter 11: Fortress Besieged

 

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