by Weihua Zhang
“It means to lose one’s virginity,” as Peter’s fair complexion turned to crimson.
“Oh.” I could feel the heat on my face as if I were on stage, with all the spotlights on me. To say I was embarrassed was an understatement, but honestly I had never run into that word in my decade-long study of English back in China. The Chinese saying “never too humble to ask” was the driving force behind my question. In another session, we read Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and talked about their relationship (the first time I heard the word lesbians). One classmate also mentioned James Baldwin and how his book, Giovanni’s Room, depicted a white American expatriate’s struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality (another new word). This was all foreign (no pun intended) to me, this discussion of homosexuality, gays and lesbians. We did not have homosexuals in China. Or so I thought.
“So what do homosexuals do to one another?” I again raised my innocent question with Peter.
Looking back, many of my questions in those early days in the U.S. must have been downright rude or even offensive to some Americans. These questions exposed my ignorance and my lack of understanding of the western world, which was compounded by China’s isolation from the western world. When the new China—the People’s Republic of China—was founded on October 1, 1949, the western world viewed it as the Communist takeover and severed all ties to China. Between the isolation policy from the West and the self-imposed sanction from within, China folded inward. The door did not crack open, however slightly, until the historic visit by the U.S. President Richard Nixon on February 21, 1972. So for a stretch of twenty-three years, China and the western world operated on two entirely different tracks. There was little understanding between the two sides. Propaganda and misinformation jammed the airwaves across a vast geographical and ideological divide.
Yet it gives me hope to think that ignorance can work both ways, and a mutual understanding can be bridged between China and the western world. In my case, ignorance proved to be a blessing in disguise. After those initial cultural shocks I encountered at Swarthmore, I became a sponge, absorbing as much as I could. Thereafter, when someone in class mentioned Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the book, attempting to figure out for myself why the house on 124 Bluestone Road was haunted (I would come to wonder later why I bought a house in 1998 that also had 124 as its street number). My experience in that Honors English Seminar led me back to Toni Morrison five years later. In 1994, while a doctoral student at SUNY-Albany, I focused my dissertation on contemporary African American female novelists, examining the works of Morrison, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor. As a woman, I felt inevitably drawn to the powerful yet intricate works of these women writers. For the first time in my life, I faced the world as an unapologetic, unabashed woman. This—coming from someone who wrote a research paper on John Steinbeck in college, who devoted her Masters thesis to Ernest Hemingway’s tragic heroes in graduate school, who was unfamiliar with the feminist movement and unexposed to works of African American female (and male) writers before coming to the U.S.—was a big deal.
The cultural shocks I encountered in America have forced me to reexamine my own beliefs and purpose in life. No one can change history, nor can I change my past life or China’s yesterday. I can, however, utilize the knowledge and perspectives gained in the U.S. to better understand the social issues and human matters that affect my country, my family, and my own life. A case in point was Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique. My mind was blown away when I first read it in 1990. I could never have imagined that in the Paradise-on-Earth that was the U.S.A., across her affluent suburbs, there lived thousands of women whose very identity/existence hinged on the happiness/wellbeing of their husbands and children. I realize now what an oversimplification my reading had been; I was not in a position to fully understand her book at the time.
As a woman, daughter, wife, and mother, I found Friedan’s book provocative, which led me to reexamine women’s place in China. True, the modern Chinese society advocates for gender equality. Symbolically and significantly, China’s Marriage Law (1950) was the first law the young country passed after her founding in 1949. The law gives women an equal right to inherit properties, bans arranged marriages, and prohibits human trafficking of women and children. Women in China have enjoyed the voting right with their male counterparts from day one. On paper, at least, Chinese women get equal pay protection. However, I also became keenly aware of the fact that I had been a victim of gender discrimination (another new concept). In 1984, upon graduation from the English department of Nankai University, I was assigned to teach at the Department of Tourism (less prestigious—teaching English to future tour guides and mid-level hotel management), not retained by the English department (more prestigious—teaching literature to English majors). The reason? I was a woman. In spite of my superior academic performance, the English department selected my two male classmates over me. At least the department Chair was frank: “You are a woman; you will get married and have a child soon (due to China's one-child policy); you will miss work when your child is sick; we need male teachers in this department.” How ironic: the department Chair was also a woman!
My scheduled six-month stay in the U.S. quickly turned into one extension after another, coupled with my status change: I started graduate study at SUNY-Albany in September 1990; I became a green card holder in 1995; I began teaching full-time at the Savannah College of Art and Design in fall 1996. All along, though, I clung to my Chinese citizenship and agonized over my next move. Finally, I did choose to become a naturalized citizen and took the oath on January 2, 2002. When faced with the most difficult decision in my life, I simply resorted to one consideration that had been behind the decisions of millions of immigrants before me: my daughter’s future. Feifei was a 10th grader at the time and would soon be applying for colleges and scholarships. As a naturalized citizen, she would be eligible for all scholarship opportunities, including those available only to American citizens. Didn’t all immigrants come to this country—the beacon of hope—in search for a better life for their families?
In the post-Swarthmore years, I trudged along the journey to the West, to the discovery of a Self I did not know, to the identity of a Chinese American that is a fusion of two divergent cultures, and to the glowing artist/teacher who is committed to bridge a mutual understanding among her two peoples. Now as a Chinese American, I am no longer a transient, but a contributing member of this great country. In the summer of 2003, I put together a photography exhibition “Take Root and Blossom: Chinese Immigrants in Savannah (1880s-1990s)—a Photographic Journey,” the first of its kind in Savannah, GA, my hometown since 1996, to draw attention to the contributions of early Chinese immigrants in the region. It marked the first conscious act on my part: that I am a Chinese immigrant and these are my “ancestors”; that I can “take root and blossom” in this land of opportunity by standing tall on the shoulders of all Chinese immigrants before me.
The public’s reaction to the exhibition was overwhelming. During a two-hour opening reception, close to three hundred people came, with a sizable number of viewers descendants of the early Chinese immigrants. Our local newspaper, The Savannah Morning News, ran two articles in its June 23, 2003 issue, covering the exhibition: “Remembering immigrant stories” and “Savannah has small Chinese community with huge impact."
Teapot King (2005)
With the great success of this exhibition, I found my niche. “Homebound,” a solo exhibition in 2007, featured twenty-four black and white photographs selected from my trips to China in 2005 and 2006. Taken in several cities across China, these candid images provided American viewers an intimate and unvarnished look at today’s China: from playful children on their way to schools to energetic elders exercising in the parks; from the hustle and bustle of a farmers market to a happy family gathering on an 85-year-old man’s birthday (my father); from a snow-covered corn-stack in the Northeast to a giant teapo
t in the South. This was a vibrant and multi-faceted China the western media either failed to capture or neglected to cover. Could it be that they, too, were looking at China with a “colored lens” on?
As a college professor, I see my classroom as a unique opportunity to bridge a better understanding between my two peoples. My own cross-cultural perspective is certainly a big help. I am often compelled to share with my students the cultural shocks I experienced early on to emphasize the importance of mutual understanding between China and the U.S., between East and West. Recognizing the need for a diverse voice in American literature course offerings in my college, in 2006, I proposed and started teaching “Asian American Literature.” This divergent yet remarkable body of literature has challenged my students to dig deeper into who we are as a country and as a people. It is gratifying to see what my students have taken away from the course: that we are a nation of immigrants, that people of Asian descent are an integral part of America, that literature opens our hearts and minds. Together, my students and I rebuilt the Transcontinental Railroad alongside the Chinese laborers; reclaimed our picture bride foremothers from Japan; reacquainted ourselves with the Japanese Americans in the internment camps; relived the horrors of the Second World War, Korean War, and Vietnam War; and reaffirmed our admiration for all the immigrants, from Asia and elsewhere, who have enriched our lives as well as their own.
Poker Face (2006)
Twenty-one years is just a tiny step in the long journey of the human race, the evolution of the earth. But twenty-one years has added enough wrinkles to my face and gray strands to my hair so that I can claim I am now an older and wiser woman. I am glad that my very first air travel twenty-one years ago had taken me to the United States of America. After the initial cultural shock, the learning began and has never stopped.
At Savannah’s Annual Asian Festival (2010)
(Completed in May 2007; expanded in July 2010; published in the anthology Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizenship and Cultural Attachment, June 2011, Wishing Up Press, 223-29; minor revisions, May 2012)
Re-Education In America
(A group of five poems)
Lesson One: Save and Save Often
Early morning. January 31, 1989. Beijing Airport, China.
3 a.m., February 1, 1989. Swarthmore College, USA.
What a difference a day makes!
Like Sun Wokung, the Monkey King,
I somersaulted from Beijing to San Francisco to New York to Philly and collapsed onto my bed at Swarthmore.
I woke up to a persistent knock at the door.
Who could that be? I glanced at my watch:
It was only 8 a.m. and still February 1.
I struggled to find my footing.
Jet lag.
What followed was a blur:
I was led to Breakfast, Registrar’s Office, Bookstore,
Professor Morgan’s “Folklore and Folklife” class.
“Your first paper is due next Tuesday, typed, double-spaced.”
What? I stared at the professor, You gotta be kidding!
I had never touched a computer back in China.
Barbara, a Hong Kong student, came to my rescue.
She patiently explained to me the basics in her broken Mandarin:
Shift key, file name, open, close, save, print.
Thud, thud, thud.
The throbbing pain in my temples
merged with the sound of the keyboard.
Barbara soon left to work at the library,
while I ploughed along at a snail’s pace.
After a quick dinner break, I sat down in front of the same
computer and reopened my file.
Alas, what was a full page neatly typed up before dinner
shrank to one paragraph! [sigh]
An Expensive Chair
Ni Hao! Lisa greeted me when we first met.
She had studied in China the year prior.
That familiar expression sealed the deal:
She became my guide to everything American.
One day I read an article in the school newspaper,
something about the Endowed Chair of Economics.
The dollar figure was astronomical to me.
“Hey, Lisa, what kind of chair is that? How come it is so expensive?”
She glanced at the headline and bent double with laughter.
I gained a new meaning of the word chair.
The Politics of Disapproval
September 1990. SUNY Albany.
Welcome party for the new Chinese TAs.
“What are you going to study?” the chair of East Asian Studies asked me.
“African American literature.”
“Oh, that’s interesting.”
He questioned me no further.
I quickly learned the true meaning of interesting in this context.
He was right.
Spring 1993. SUNY Albany.
Time to form my dissertation committee.
I struggled to convince three to serve
out of an English Department of fifty-plus professors.
“I love all literatures,” one assured me.
Great. He was on!
Perhaps the two A’s I got in his classes have convinced him.
October 1993. Qualifying exams time.
“I can’t examine you based on your reading list.
I am not familiar with these African American literary work,”
he informed me with a straight face.
Just say you are not interested, I screamed in my heart.
I Quit!
My first non-teaching job in America
was to flip burgers at a Burger King.
Pretty soon, my boss figured it all out:
He would only give me the late-to-close shift
so I could drop off my co-workers.
You see, after we closed in the wee hours,
The city buses had long stopped running.
Now he had a guaranteed work force at my expense.
One busy evening, I quit on the spot.
“Don’t you have to give two-weeks’ notice where you came from?”
“You know what? I have a permanent job in China.”
Never Pay Nobody Rent
His name is Nick, our landlord in Albany, New York.
“I like your people. You always pay rent on time.”
Nick is from Greece.
He came to this country without papers.
In fact, it took him three tries to get here.
Forty years ago, he worked on a ship.
When the ship entered U. S. waters,
Nick jumped and swam to the shore.
He was caught and deported.
Fared no better his second try.
Only succeeded the third time when he volunteered to join the U.S. army.
Lucky Nick.
He saw no action in the Korean Peninsula:
The war ended before he was shipped out.
Green card in hand and money from the G. I. Bill,
Nick bought a duplex and leased one unit out.
Hard work paid off.
Soon Nick’s duplex morphed into three dozen.
“Why don’t you buy this property?”
Nick prodded us each month when he made his round collecting rent.
“Better put money in your own pocket. Never pay nobody rent.”
That was 17 years ago.
Nick, where are you now?
Your former tenants are proud homeowners.
It sure is good to never pay nobody rent.
Our First House (2012)
(April 2010)
Who Should Teach African American Literature?
To the Editor:
Nellie Y. McKay’s “Naming the Problem That Led to the Question ‘Who Should Teach African American Literature?’ or, Are We Ready to Disband the Wheatley Court?” (113 [1998]: 359-69) struck a dissonant chord in me. Believing that there is ye
t “a place to begin another conversation” (366; italics mine), I hope that an account of my personal dilemma will add a different dimension to McKay’s argument.
For me, there has never been a moment of doubt that African American literature “is one of the world’s preeminent literatures,” as McKay challenges us to acknowledge (364). When I started my doctoral work at the State University of New York, Albany, in 1990, I knew that I would focus on African American literature, because I was fascinated and inspired by it. In my enthusiasm, I gave no thought to the fact that as a Chinese woman I would have everything against me when the time came to find a teaching job in the field.
It would be a gross understatement to say that the road to my degree was bumpy. Fulfilling the required course credits was a hurdle since barely two courses in African American literature were offered in the English department, which had more than fifty faculty members—only one of whom was African American (she has remained my mentor to this day). As a result, I had to beg faculty members to supervise my independent studies. When it was time to form my advisory panel, my next hurdle was to get faculty members to serve on it. “I am not familiar with African American literature,” they told me. In fact, I had to replace a member of my panel, who, though he agreed to be a reader when I approached him, later told me that for unspecified reasons he did not feel that he could make up the qualifying examination questions from my reading list—a list that contained both literary work by African American writers and theoretical writings on literature in general and on African American literature in particular. There were more hurdles to jump in the form of three panel changes in less than a year. With each replacement, I had to beg and plead again for someone to serve as a panel chair and for the support and commitment of the panel members.