1968- Eye Hotel

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  A revolutionary

  Federal Building

  January 29, 1971

  Around noontime on April 9 . . .

  I saw Ike and Tina Turner the other night at the Fillmore. Tina worked the mike, you know what I mean? She worked it, like it was her object. She tongued the machine. I was there, right there in the front watching her try to wrap her body around and get into that thing. Right, disgusting. By now you’d think it would be a cliché, the mike thing, but it’s the music that gets into your system. So we’re gonna pump those speakers into the floor. Take your shoes off. Now feel that. Oye Como Va. The floorboards are vibrating like they got a pulse.

  Old Chinese guy below is probably deaf, don’t you know. But he’s not there anyway. He got his old Chinese brothers together to march around Portsmouth Square with Edmund and the others. Want to imagine it on KPFA? Come on. Stretch yourself out, and feel it happening like we’re there. Let’s do some island lovin’. Oh, we’re in luck. It’s Arthur Ma reporting. Listen. They’re singing the Tiao Yu Tai song in Portsmouth Square.

  Arthur Ma: About fifty demonstrators, mostly students from China going to school here, are gathered today in Portsmouth Square in Chinatown to protest the U.S. and Japanese takeover of the Tiao Yu Tai islands. They have been making their speeches in Cantonese, and the student organizers of the rally urge their supporters to keep up the pressure against the oil grab of these islands. The students are showing their support by putting up their fists in power signs.

  Down with Japanese militarism!

  Down with U.S. imperialism!

  Down with the KMT sellouts!

  Ma continues: Now you notice in the park, there are the usual Chinese elderly folk sitting around playing checkers, reading the paper, and sunning themselves, but with these excellent speeches, some of them have begun to perk up and take notice. You can see their shy smiles and quiet claps of appreciation and approval. The speaker is saying: “Chinese must have pride and not allow foreign governments to step all over us and then allow the Chiang Kai-shek government to do nothing! It’s because of this that our Chinese people have had to leave China.” Now they are standing up and clapping. What the—? Who are these guys?

  Who are these guys? The Wah Ching of course, hired by the KMT sellouts come to beat up the Communists. What did that ruffian yell? Death to the Communist traitors! Oh, it’s kung fu time. Oh baby, come get me like a Water Margin outlaw. Just rough me up a bit. Oh yes.

  Ma: Eight guys dressed up in black have just rushed onto the stage! They’re attacking the speakers and throwing around the sound equipment!

  Oh, the commotion! But check this out honey, the Chinese elders from the park are rushing to the stage! Oh, that’s gotta be my old man downstairs. Spinning around with kung fu kicks and punches! Truth is, only real men with experience can fight like this. It’s like a kung fu motion picture! Baby KMT gangsters are just no match. They’re scattering like black mice. There now. There’s our interlude. The rally can go on. Oh, but can you hear it now? Oh baby, it’s the Tiao Yu Tai song! Nothing moves me like island patriotism.

  Student speaker: We will march as planned! We will not be intimidated! Follow the monitors in black armbands. First we will march to the KMT Chinese Consulate. Then to the Japanese Consulate. And then we will march to the Federal Building! Follow us!

  Hey hey hey!

  U.S.A.!

  Stay away!

  From Tiao Yu Tai!

  Ma: This is Arthur Ma for KPFA signing off at one thirty p. m. from Portsmouth Square in Chinatown on April 9, 1971.

  The Ping Heard Round the World

  On April 10, nine ping-pong players, four officials, and two spouses stepped across a bridge from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland, ushering in an era of “Ping-Pong diplomacy.” They were the first group of Americans allowed into China since the Communist takeover in 1949.

  On the Anniversary of the May 4 Chinese Student Movement . . .

  I’m just like that little Mowgli feral child in the Jungle Book. Can you believe I cried when I saw that cartoon? That was me: a little Asian girl raised among drag queens. Now, they’ve dropped me off in the forbidden city to hide my sorry ass. But who in Chinatown isn’t facing the same circumstances? Look at you. We were all left here in the tribal village to fend for ourselves. Honey, pass me that pipe. I’ve got some forgetting to do.

  Edmund’s going to have to make some choices. Five hundred academic sinologists can sign off on a letter, tell Taiwan what for and so on about how to run its business, but in the end, what does it mean? You can’t stir up a pot with five hundred sinologists. Honey, you need five million sinologists.

  My old man downstairs explained it all to me. He was right there on the very day at the birth of the revolution. He told me that he arose a new man on that day. But I’m confused. May 4 is the birth of the revolution, but which revolution? The one for Sun Yat-sen, for Chiang Kai-shek, or for Mao Tse-tung?

  The land of China can be conquered but not ceded; the people of China can be slaughtered but not bent. The nation is falling! Fellow men, rise!

  Luo Jialun

  Tiananmen Square, May 4, 1919

  Overseas Chinese will never forget the motherland!

  Well, you should know more than I. Your dear professor friend is always advising Edmund, isn’t he? He’s the one who suggested tying the island protest to the May 4 Chinese student movement. I’m with RG, Mr. Red Guard himself, who said who gives a shit what happened in China over fifty years ago, but obviously Professor Chen knows how history works on people’s psyches. If people see history repeating itself, they get all nostalgic and riled up. I know. I was there, sitting next to Edmund in that same movie.

  You know those movies. They’re showing them every weekend downstairs at the Asian Community Center, like entertainment for the old folks, to give them a peek of the homeland. You see maybe millions of Chinese in black-and-white, standing room only, in that square in Peking that looks likes it’s a mile wide, red flags flapping around everywhere. They’re going crazy. Now that’s a rally! What’s a mere one-fifty at Portsmouth Square, or even five hundred at Saint Mary’s? All right, I agree. Each of those five hundred represents five hundred more. At least Chinese know how to count.

  Edmund’s over at Portsmouth Square again, rallying the folks. They’re all making speeches in Chinese about the anniversary of the May 4 student movement. But notice that the Red Guard is doing security backstage with their Mao caps and shades, packing loaded revolvers behind their flack jackets. No one’s taking any chances this time. No eight KMT gangsters dressed in black are going to disrupt this session. They’ve got Red Guards posted on the roofs above the square with loaded rifles. Wah Ching could only arrive to a bloody surprise. The Tiao Yu Tai college types are making their speeches in Cantonese, with translations in English for the ABC. Please be patient, darling.

  ABC:

  American-Born Chinese

  MIT:

  Made in Taiwan

  HIP:

  Hong Kong Instant Product

  FOB:

  Fresh Off the Boat

  KMT:

  Kuomingtang

  ROC:

  Republic of China (Taiwan)

  PRC:

  People’s Republic of China (mainland China)

  MTTT:

  Mao Tse-tung Thought

  O.K., now they’re finished with their history lesson.

  Here comes the ABC Red Guard with their flamboyant red flags, blasting “East is Red.” RG struts his thing to the podium and makes his speech: We of the Red Guard salute you in the Year of the People Off the Pig!

  (chanting) People Off the Pig! People Off the Pig!

  Let it be known today, May 4 in the Year of the People Off the Pig, that we, the Red Guard, claim the territory of Portsmouth Square in the name of The People and henceforth rename it Tiao Yu Tai Park!

  China in the News in 1971

  July 15

  After Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
’s secret mission to Peking, President Nixon announces he will visit China.

  September

  Lin Piao, understood to have been Mao Tse-tung’s successor, is killed in an airplane crash in Mongolia. The official explanation is that he had been involved in a failed plot to kill Mao and was killed fleeing to the Soviet Union.

  October 25

  Resolution 2758 is passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, withdrawing recognition of the ROC as the legitimate government of China, and recognizing the PRC as the sole legitimate government of China.

  But, darling, as I was saying about the movies: I’m sitting next to Edmund in the dark with those millions of black-and-white Chinese flickering off our faces, and they say: THE CHINESE PEOPLE HAVE STOOD UP! And Edmund, he’s wiping his tears away. O.K., I admit it: I cried too. I cried, and I’m not really Chinese. When it comes to solidarity, I’m solidarity all the way.

  So right now, Edmund and his comrades are marching over to the Taiwan—or was it the Formosa?—Consulate to deliver their manifesto. Oh excuse me. The Republic of China Consulate. Listen, if you ask Edmund, he’ll tell you that this is not an issue of supporting one government or another. It’s not about long live Chiang or Mao. This is about the sovereignty of the Chinese people, period. You and I could be there now with the masses, yelling. The Chinese people have stood up! The Chinese people have stood up! Oh, rub me there, baby. Right there. It’s time now, baby. Oh yes. The Chinese people have stood up! The Chinese people have stood up! THE CHINESE PEOPLE HAVE STOOD UP!

  5: We

  When we arrived, there was no Golden Gate, no Statue of Liberty. Even so, some shouted: America! America! And we floated into the bay like the fog at twilight. If we got here earlier than the great earthquake and fire, our first impressions of our golden city were on the Barbary Coast—loose men and women of the vintage Gay Nineties carousing in dance halls and bars, around and about in horse-drawn buggies, speculating on a future and fortunes made from California gold. If we arrived after the fires, some of us might have noticed the island of Alcatraz but were forced to dock at another prison island, the one called Angel.

  In those early years, the bay’s geography was traversed by ferries, fanning out from the city’s great transportation hub: the Ferry Building. We ourselves fanned out across the peninsulas, congregating in cities segregated by covenants, in farmlands confined by land laws and leasing contracts, on coastal waters in small fishing boats. We worked as houseboys, cooks, pickers and stoop labor, gardeners, fishermen, and canners. We opened shops: groceries, dry goods, tailoring, restaurants, flower shops, drug stores with soda fountains. We ran boarding houses and hotels, churches, temples, newspapers, health clinics, language schools, YMCAs and YWCAs, and kenjinkais. We gave our adopted towns names like Li’l Yokohama and Nihonmachi.

  By the third decade of the century, our children witnessed the great engineering feats and the openings of the stately Golden Gate and Bay bridges. Cable cars and automobiles replaced horses and ferryboats. We sent our children to school and college, only to see them return home jobless. Those were the days when you’d meet a fella with an engineering degree selling fruit on the corner. Everything changed with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We were forced to leave our li’l towns and farming and fishing communities and were herded en mass to desert camps surrounded by barbed wire and gun towers. We looked like the enemy, but that’s not the same as being the enemy.

  At war’s end, those of us who survived came back to our golden city and our little towns, took up our old jobs or started new ones. We rebuilt our old communities and started new families. Our youngsters turned into the third generation, what we call the sansei, and that’s about the time when this story begins.

  Who’s to say what love is or how it starts inside each person? Who’s to say what triggers the feeling, the knowing that passes from one to the other? We saw the young man walk through the tattered remains of the old ferry building. Maybe it was the old building with its ghost lovers, we can’t say. We could see his footfalls avoid the scraps of trash ground into grimy crevices. Maybe it was the decay of an old place. He was wearing gold alligator cowboy boots. We could see them shuffling out from his ragged bells, scuffed and shredding at the toe. We could tell that those boots were his favorite, snug in the right places, his walk confident.

  He walked out into the warm-swept sunlight, the sort of day we rarely know in our foggy city. When such a day arrives, it’s like a sweet summer gift, and we know that we truly live in the most beautiful city in the world. From the hills we can see the glorious expanse of the azure bay and its bridges reaching into the picturesque vistas. All the pastel Victorians winding up and down over the hills in rows, like glittering ladies with gloved hands pressed one to the other.

  We saw him remove his jeans jacket and toss it jauntily over his shoulder. Beneath the jacket he was wearing a thin shirt, so thin it was threadbare. It was sepia in tone, and perhaps it was silk or some sort of nylon imitation. We could see it flutter at the sleeves but press with the wind about his body, exposing the curve along his spine and the rise in his chest above his ribcage. The sepia of the shirt reflected off his felt fedora of the same faded sepia, which he adjusted to account for the sun.

  He presented his ticket and walked the gangway into the ferry. He chose a place along the starboard railing, looking out across the bay in search of his destination. His soft features shimmered off the glinting ocean.

  We weren’t tourists. We lived here, but taking the ferry in those days had become unusual, like the weather on this particular day. A few of us worked on the other side, and the ferry was still the most direct way to some points. But that day, we wanted to revisit old haunts that held our memories. We’d step onto Angel Island and remember our lives as we began our American journey with detention and interrogation.

  Chen was already on the ferry, seated on the top deck in his usual spot, reading a book. We knew him to be a regular on this ferry when the weather was good. Maybe our commotion bothered his reading, but when he looked up he watched the young man in his gold boots saunter across the ferry. We smiled at the man’s show of casual independence, and so did Chen. The felt fedora shaded his face with a slight attitude of mystery. In that moment we sensed a longing pass from the young man, flittering like the gulls along the ferry’s wake. We knew that the young man knew he was being watched by the older man. He felt that watching. Craved it. Please see me, his longing seemed to speak.

  Chen stood and walked to the railing. He held his book before him. The young man saw the book in his hands before he saw Chen, but he knew it was he. Their shoulders touched. The threadbare shirt grazed the short-sleeved cotton bound to Chen’s muscular biceps. “For your birthday,” Chen said, proffering the book to the sea. “It’s today, isn’t it?”

  “How did you remember? I’m twenty-one.”

  “We’ll celebrate.”

  Every culture has its day of passage. We’d adopted this one because we believed in the law. We of all people knew the promise of law could be broken, but we doggedly struggled behind that faith.

  The young man took the book from Chen and turned from the sea. He leaned his back into the railing with the open book. The pages flapped up in a salty gust as the ferry left the dock. We looked up into the sky with Chen as the ferry’s horn announced its departure. But the young man was troubled with the wild pages of his new book.

  “You’ve written another book.”

  “I translated the calligraphy and wrote the historic text. It’s the work of an artist I’ve long admired. He died a few years ago in his nineties.”

  “When did you do this?”

  “This year.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “So have you.”

  “I moved into the I-Hotel.”

  “Edmund told me.”

  “It’s over. She left for Cuba.”

  Chen nodded. “Venceremos?”

  “She was stripping to save the money.
”

  “Viva Che.”

  The young man smiled. “The things we do for the revolution.”

  “And you? Why didn’t you go too?”

  “I guess I couldn’t strip for the revolution.”

  “Ah, no?”

  “I have bourgeois tendencies.”

  “Stripping is not?”

  “The experiment failed.”

  We understood Chen’s quizzical look, but he remained silent.

  “I was the experiment, I think. She gave up. No, she got tired. I got tired.”

  Chen said nothing.

  “It was all about pretending. I couldn’t pretend all the time.”

  “Drugs help.”

  The young man turned to Chen with some astonishment, then embarrassment. He turned to the sea and felt his tears well uncontrollably.

  Neither spoke for a long time. We felt the ferry press across the bay, chased by gulls.

  Chen spoke first. He changed the direction of the conversation. “The work of the revolution is a life devoted to the people, that is to say, the public. It’s a public life. A man’s private life, one’s deep interior, must at times be forgotten or sacrificed.”

  The young man shifted. We shifted too, wanting to avoid the weight of these words.

  “Here.” Chen retrieved the book offered as a gift, searched the pages. “This is one of my favorite paintings. Twin peaches in a small basket. Peaches represent long life, but as you know they are delicate, bruise easily. If the tree lives long, the fruit is ephemeral. Picked ripe from a tree, there is nothing sweeter or more succulent. Here twin peaches sit together, sweetly and exaggeratedly red in color for a lifetime.” Chen reached up to touch the soft fuzz of the young man’s felt fedora and tugged it down in jest.