Dream Variations: A Journey Across Two Continents
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The photographs included here are selected mainly from family albums and Chinese Benevolent Association’s scrapbooks. With a few exceptions, all photographs are snapshots, thus making it very difficult to reproduce quality prints. Nevertheless, the immediacy, the candor, and the history these images have captured speak for themselves.
These are your next door neighbors.
A family of musicians: my friends Lizhou, Yvonne, their
daughter Olivia, and son Beiwen (2004)
(June 2004)
Homebound
I have lived in the U.S. for the past eighteen years and counting. True, I became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2002; but China, my birth country, is never far from my heart and mind. The past three years found me eagerly making the annual 24,000-mile round trip from Savannah to China.
Fishing Duo (Suzhou, 2005)
During these brief visits, my camera became my best friend: it enabled me to capture the spectacular, the mundane, the strangers, and the loved ones. Everywhere I went, I saw firsthand the quantum leap China had made since opening her door to the world in the 1970s; I walked the land that nourished me, met people that inspired me, and spent time with those that sustained me; I felt China up close and personal. My life’s journey, which started in China half a century ago, has taken me across two continents from China to the U.S
Reflections (Wuxi, 2005)
Now let the journey home begin.
Breaktime (Guangzhou, 2006)
I invite you to journey with me to China and wander in this land of hope and harmony, history and heritage, vigor and vitality. On the streets of Guangzhou, a.k.a. Canton, you meet people whose ancestors helped build railroads in the U.S., my adopted country. In the park of Shenzhen, you unwind with ordinary Chinese folks. While in Wuxi, you simply let the Teapot King quench your thirst. Lingering in the earthly paradise of Hangzhou and Suzhou, you yearn for longevity. Finally, in my hometown Changchun, you join me to celebrate my father’s 85th birthday.
“Welcome home, my sojourner daughter.”
Celebrating Father’s 85th birthday (2005)
(October 2007)
Chinese Worked on a Railroad of Dreams
(a book review)
The Chinese in America: A Narrative History by Iris Chang, author of the much-acclaimed The Rape of Nanking, is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the history and experience of Chinese immigrants in the United States of America.
Chang opens her book with a metaphor: “The story of the Chinese in America is the story of a journey, from one of the world’s oldest civilizations to one of its newest.” It is a befitting metaphor because today, more than 150 years after the first wave of Chinese immigrants came ashore in the 1849-era California Gold Rush, this journey is still going on strong. In her 496-page book, Chang, citing personal interviews, media accounts, scholarly studies, court proceedings, legal documents, government publications and much more, details the history and experience of generations of Chinese immigrants in America.
Chang’s book essentially tells two stories. The first explains why at certain times in China’s history certain Chinese made the very hard and frightening decision to leave the country of their ancestors and the company of their own people to make a new life for themselves in the United States. The second examines what happened to these Chinese émigrés once they got here. In general, Chinese came to the United States for the same reasons that many other ethnic groups chose to come: a better life and future; social and political stability; freedom to expand and grow. But what happened to the Chinese émigrés was quite a different story and Chang’s unique perspective as a Chinese American sets her apart from other scholars.
Though it is not widely taught at schools or readily acknowledged in our history books, it is a historic fact that the first ever discriminatory law that the United States of America passed against any single group involved ethnic Chinese: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This law barred Chinese from entering the country with the exception of Chinese merchants, teachers, and students. Later, ethnic Chinese were denied the right to become naturalized citizens. Chang sums up pointedly in her book that “the great irony of the Chinese American experience has been that success can be as dangerous as failure: whenever the ethnic Chinese visibly excelled—whether as menial laborers, scholars, or businessmen—efforts arose simultaneously to depict their contributions not as a boon to white America but as a threat. The mass media have projected contradictory images that either dehumanize or demonize the Chinese, with the implicit message that the Chinese represent either a servile class to be exploited, or an enemy force to be destroyed.”
Just as they have built the transcontinental railroad with their sweat and blood, talent and wisdom, so have the ethnic Chinese built a home for themselves with endurance and sacrifice, intelligence and perseverance. But has their journey been a success? Chang seems to be uncertain at the book’s end: “Only time can tell if their journey will have been successful. This will depend entirely on whether America can continue to evolve toward the basic egalitarian concept upon which it was founded—‘that all men are created equal.’ For it was the haunting, elusive dream that such a place really existed that first drew many of the Chinese to American shores.”
(June 2003; included here as a dedication to the memories of Iris Chang, March 28, 1968—November 9, 2004)
We Are Railroad Builders
A frog in a well sees the sky above its head and assumes it is all there is. It thinks it owns the sky and holds the key to unlocking the entire world. Talk about limited visions!
My biggest discovery on my continued journey from China to the U.S. is to find out that my forefathers were railroad builders. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Truth be told, there had been no travelers in my direct family line that had come to the States during the Gold Rush era, the western expansion of the frontier, or the wave of new immigrations after the 1965 Immigration Act. Being the first person in my family that had stepped her feet on U.S. soil, in 1989—a very late arrival by any stretch of imagination—I nonetheless developed a strong affinity for my forefathers, my cultural ancestors: the railroad builders.
It was by rather a chance encounter that I discovered my forefathers. In 1997, I proposed and taught a course “History of American Culture for International Students” at the Savannah College of Art and Design, playing on the strengths of my academic background. Trained as a humanities scholar, I like to explore how culture, history, and socioeconomic factors impacted people in any given historic period. For the textbook of the course, I chose American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context (1991) by Barbara Rico and Sandra Mano. It was there that I learned of the first discriminatory law in U.S. history—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict the immigration of a specific group solely based on nationality.
Qiwei showing off his cabinet (2009)
I was particularly inspired by the tremendous contributions the early Chinese immigrants had made to the development of America, especially their immense achievements in the building of the country’s first railroads, which opened up the western frontiers and enabled growth on many fronts. In building the very first railroads of the country, these Chinese immigrants had also built the bridges that linked the future generations of Chinese immigrants to the country’s infinite possibilities, allowing them to build a future for themselves and their children. My own success is only made possible by those trailblazing, hard-working, and law-abiding early Chinese immigrants.
“Two Scholars” (Qiwei 2005)
My husband Qiwei Sun has been quite a builder in his own right. No, he did not build any railroads. Yes, he has built many neat things. He has tried his hand at making Chinese furniture. He has also constructed a traditional Chinese courtyard, bringing China into our life to soften our homesickness living in a foreign land—yes, still foreign to us—although we have been naturalized U.S. citizens since 2002. Together, we have built a loving nest for our daughter Fe
ifei. In time, she will build one of her own.
Traditional Chinese Courtyard (Qiwei 2007)
Joining in with all Chinese Americans and people of Chinese descent in this country and elsewhere in the world, and with those advocates and friends who have worked resolutely to right the wrong the U.S. government had inflicted on Chinese Americans, I applaud the United States Congress for the formal apology, albeit 130 years later, it issued to Chinese American communities on June 19, 2012. We are Americans. We are railroad builders.
My 52nd birthday (in front of Qiwei’s painting, 2009)
(May 2012)
Reading Amy Tan
The book that has influenced me the most is The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan and published in 1989. Perhaps it is because the book is about mother-daughter relationships, about which I myself have a lot to say; or perhaps it is due to the time period in my life. I happened to discover it when I just came to the U.S. in 1989, leaving my own daughter—who was not quite three at the time—in China under the care of my husband and my mother. Little did I know that this separation would turn out to be the longest one for each one of us involved.
Through one of her characters, Amy Tan sums it up aptly, “your mother is in your bones.” I can vouch for that. My mother’s influence on me is bone-deep. No matter how hard I have tried, at different stages of my life, to have just inherited her strengths, not her weaknesses, I know I failed miserably each time. Tan also claims that there is a generational connection among the women in a family: “All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” Each generation of women has left her marks on the next, and the next. I can see this manifested in the complex yet close relationships between my mother and me, and between me and my daughter Feifei.
But what I love the best about Tan’s book is that all four mother-daughter pairs have worked tirelessly on making their relationships work: not better or worse, but working. All relationships require give and take. Mother-daughter relationships are no exception. I can’t go back to fix any problems I had had with my mother, but I will try my hardest to be a supportive, understanding, loving mother and best friend for Feifei.
(June 2012)
My mother and me (1958)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Weihua Zhang, an English Professor and African American literary scholar, a published writer and photographer, lives in Savannah, Georgia. In Dream Variations, Zhang takes us along her journey from China to the United States of America. Whether recalling her early years in a tumultuous China or sharing her bittersweet days in America, Dream Variations presents a candid account of one Chinese American woman’s journey across two continents.
Self-portrait (2006)