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

by Lisa See

  Fong Yun, “Uncle,” was, like Fong See, born poor. But unlike his older brother, he was destined to die poor. Between 1904 and 1918, Uncle, a kind, warm-hearted man, worked as a virtual slave for his illiterate but wealthy brother. Earning a paltry fifty dollars a month, Fong Yun wrote letters in Chinese, read documents, perused packing slips, kept the Chinese books, researched the antiques his brother brought over, and went to China himself every couple of years to buy merchandise for the store.

  Fong Yun was a family man in his heart, but it was hard for him to be a family man when his wife and children were thousands of miles away. So he always saved his money, scrimping until he had enough to go home to see his growing family. In the last nine years he had made four trips to China—in 1909,1913,1915, and 1917—each of them lasting more than a year. Uncle would rather see his money disappear in time spent with his wife and sons than buy another carving or altar table.

  Uncle was the first person in the family to stay on Angel Island. Returning in 1910 from a buying trip to China, Fong Yun had been detained at Angel Island for a week with hookworm. He would always remember the wave of panic he felt before the board of special inquiry upon hearing their final pronouncement: “Inasmuch as the medical examiner of aliens at this port has certified that this alien is afflicted with uncinariasis, a dangerous contagious disease, it is the unanimous opinion of the board that he be excluded and ordered deported. From this decision there is no appeal, and he is so informed, and he is further notified that if deported his return trip shall be at the expense of the steamship company that brought him here. However, if hospital treatment is applied and granted in this case, and a cure effected, he will be admissible under the immigration law. Whom do you wish to notify?”

  “My brother,” Fong Yun had answered, and within two weeks—with his brother footing the medical bill of seven dollars and fifty cents—Uncle was on his way south to Los Angeles. But he would never forget the fear of that day, or the fact that he owed yet another debt of obligation to his brother.

  While Fong Yun stayed loyal to his family in China, his time spent with them only elicited excess household worry. Uncle’s wife, Leung-shee, from Low Tin village, was a foot-bound woman, high class, but very weak from a coughing disease no one could cure. When she deteriorated, Fong Yun found a no-name girl of the Leong clan from the neighboring village of Shuck Kew Tow to help out. Hired as a servant, the Leong girl understood that she would also be a concubine, for although Uncle was a poor man in Los Angeles, he was a prosperous man in Dimtao.

  Was it his fault that when he went back to Dimtao in 1913 and found Leung-shee too weak to perform her wifely duties, he turned to the servant girl with the wide feet of a peasant? Was it his fault that the servant girl gave him a son first? Was it his fault that Leung-shee only accepted him after the servant girl was pregnant, so that the child who should have been the first son turned out to be the second son? No matter. Leung-shee died and the servant girl became the Number One wife, acquired the proper married name of Leong-shee, hired a wet nurse to care for her stepson, Ming Ho, and bought a new no-name girl from a poor family to take over the chores. Relieved of her workload, the new Leong-shee devoted herself to her son, Ming Kuen.

  On Thanksgiving Day in 1918, Ticie busied herself in the kitchen. She had shooed out Dai-Dai, the fake Fong Lai, who ordinarily served as family cook. Her husband and children were two floors down in the basement warehouse “staying out of Ma’s way” as she prepared the meal. Enjoying the quiet and solitude, Ticie peeled sweet potatoes, scraping away the rust-colored skin to reveal the bright orange flesh. As she worked, she ran down a mental list of what still needed to be done. The turkey was stuffed and roasting in the oven. The cranberry sauce was cooling on top of the stove. She still had to make soda biscuits, mashed potatoes, and gravy—all last-minute tasks. She wanted the meal and the day to be as traditional as possible.

  Ticie understood that the more her Chinese neighbors knew about Thanksgiving, the more they thought all this work for one meal was unnecessary. No Chinese liked turkey; to them it was almost indigestible. Despite this, local missionaries pressed would-be converts into celebrating Thanksgiving—as well as Christmas and Easter. These were American holidays. If the Chinese were going to accept God and Jesus into their lives, they should also try to become American—in their dress, eating habits, and holiday traditions.

  Ticie considered this kind of thinking ridiculous. If you were Chinese, you should be able to meld Chinese and American traditions in whatever form you wanted. As an American who lived in Chinatown, she would celebrate this day with her family in her own way. In a nod to her Chinese husband and his workers, she added special ingredients—water chestnuts to the stuffing and fresh ginger to the pumpkin pies—to make the food slightly more familiar. She had chosen these sweet potatoes, though they were thoroughly American, because they were a common food in the Chinese countryside.

  During American holidays, Ticie often yearned for the company of other Caucasian women. Even though her family had disowned her—perhaps because they had disowned her—she often thought back on the holiday traditions her family had observed on the farm. In her memory, Christmas was a time filled with the scent of baking gingerbread. She remembered her brothers coming in with a fresh-cut tree, and her sisters-in-law putting aside their petty quarrels to work companionably in the kitchen, making dinner and wrapping modest gifts. On Easter morning they had all met at church and, in the late afternoon, sat down together for baked ham. She recalled the chill in the air on Thanksgiving Day, the promise of snow to come, and, again, the gathering of the family.

  In twenty-one years of marriage, Ticie had tried to make all holidays—both American and Chinese—joyous. When Chinese New Year approached, Ticie made sure that the children sent the kitchen god to heaven in a burst of firecrackers. Suie pasted up door gods outside the apartment and the various stores to keep evil spirits from entering during the festivities. Uncle, the only one among them who could read Chinese, decorated the walls with red paper scrolls filled with good thoughts: “May everything be according to your wishes.” “Wealth, high rank, and good salary.” “May we receive the hundred blessings of Heaven.”

  Suie took charge of planting narcissus bulbs in low-sided celadon dishes, knowing that if they bloomed in time for New Year’s the family would be rich in the coming year. He adorned the family altar with oranges to bring future wealth and good luck, tangerines to symbolize good fortune, and apples for peace. During Chinese New Year, Ticie stepped aside and let Dai-Dai take full charge in the kitchen. He cooked dishes that would bring the family good luck, paying special attention to good-luck-word foods. San choy, lettuce, sounded like the Chinese word for prosperity; ho yau, oyster sauce, sounded like “good moments.” The words for sticky rice cakes mimed the tones for “getting higher.” The bachelors who came by to pay their respects sampled Ticie’s rice cakes with gusto, for they implied possible promotion. They nibbled at her tray of togethernèss, each octagonal dish filled with a different treat: candy, so that everyone might say good words, candied lotus seed to have sons, candied melon for growth and good health, coconut for companionship, and watermelon seeds to “have plenty,” a salute to male sexual prowess.

  As a family, the Sees participated in the ritual events of the neighborhood. At night the younger children—Bennie, Eddy, and Sissee—helped their father hide money inside cabbage and lettuce. The next day, lion dancers pranced and writhed down the street from storefront to storefront, snapping at the lettuce that hung before each business, The dancers knew ahead of time that the lettuce in front of the F. Suie One Company would be generous. Another year’s good fortune assured, both for the See enterprises and for the charitable organizations of Chinatown.

  This year, as the heat of September and October finally ebbed and the younger children began coming home with construction-paper pumpkins, drawings of cornucopias, and stories of the Thanksgiving fathers, Ticie knew that she and her family had a lot
to be thankful for. They’d made fifty thousand dollars in sales last year, and would top that this year. The stock was holding steady—$15,000 in Chinatown, $25,000 in Pasadena, and $15,000 at a new store on Ninth Street. It was a measure of her husband’s trust in his one real partner, Wing Ho, that he didn’t worry about the Long Beach store.

  In fact, Suie had been away for most of the year and had left her in charge of both the business and the family. He’d been traveling around the country, exhibiting and selling goods, then coming home for a few days or weeks, then going back out on the road again. When the influenza epidemic broke out, Suie was home just long enough to hire Mary Louie, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a produce man. She’d just started college when the epidemic started. When the school closed—as did all the schools in the city—she needed a job.

  Alone except for the workers—the old “partners” and Mary—Ticie confronted her fears and appeared brave before the children during the epidemic. It seemed she didn’t know a family that hadn’t lost a son or daughter to the illness that swept through the community. Her daughter’s friend Jennie had almost died. At night, Ticie had stayed awake listening to the ambulances as they screamed through Chinatown, taking the dead and sick to the hospital.

  Ticie turned to her neighbors to ask what she could do to protect her children. “Western medicine won’t help the fever,” a neighbor woman told her. “Chinese won’t get better if they take it. You should try herbs.” Remembering how she’d been healed of her smallpox by her father-in-law, she took the children to an herbalist. During the rest of the epidemic, they’d all worn bags of herbs around their necks. Fortunately, none of them had gotten sick. And finally, Suie had come home.

  As Ticie began slicing the sweet potatoes into wedges, she reflected that her children were doing well considering that their place in Los Angeles society was awkward. Last year, in 1917, Ming and Ray had graduated from Lincoln High School as the only Chinese in the class. Ming and Ray were handsome young men. Both were quiet, cautious, and sometimes unsure of their places. Like their younger siblings, they’d often been excluded. How many parties had Ray and Milton missed? How many dances? How many girls had said no, they couldn’t possibly go out with them? Ming and Ray each had their own cars, the best money could buy, but only each other to drive with. Ticie worried about her elder sons’ isolation, but she knew there was nothing she could do about it.

  Workers on the railroad. (Asian American Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley)

  Work on the railroad continued, even in snow drifts. (Asian American Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley)

  Chinese laborer in a garment factory. (Asian American Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley)

  Anti-Chinese cartoons such as this one were prevalent during the years leading up to the Exclusion Act of 1882. (Asian American Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley)

  Marchessault Street in Los Angeles, 1896. (Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History)

  Fong See as a young man, c. 1880s.

  Ming, Fong See, Ray, Ticie, in China, 1901.

  Immigration photo of Fong Yun, 1903. (National Archives, Pacific Sierra Region)

  This 1908 immigration photo of Fong Yun shows how much he changed in five years. (National Archives, Pacific Sierra Region)

  Merchandise set up for an auction, sometime between 1910 and 1915.

  Ming and Ray in the F. Suie One Company, c. 1904.

  Early photo of an F. Suie One Company location, possibly Long Beach.

  Fong See outside the longtime location of the F. Suie One Company at 510 Los Angeles Street, c. 1906.

  Fong See decorates a car show, date unknown.

  Ray and Ming pose with the daughter of a customer outside the store, c. 1905.

  Family portrait, 1914. Top row: Ray and Ming. Bottom row: Eddy, Fong See, Sissee, Ticie, and Bennie.

  Sissee, 1914.

  Stella Copeland, as a “city girl,” 1912.

  Stella and her mother, Jessie, by a cook wagon, c. 1913.

  Photo of four generations, 1905: Stella Copeland as a baby, with her mother, Jessie Huggins Copeland; her grandmother Flora Elizabeth Lewis Huggins; and her great-grandfather Chauncy August Lewis.

  Mrs. Leong’s Chinese language class at the Methodist Mission in Los Angeles. Jennie Chan (Sissee’s friend) is the girl standing just to Mrs. Leong’s left. June 1919. (El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument)

  The Leong family in China, 1919. Middle row: Mrs. Leong, her sister, her father, her mother, and Leong Jeung. Front row: Elmer, Gilbert, and Margie. Ed Leong is on the left in the back row.

  Eddy, 1919. (National Archives, Pacific Sierra Region)

  Bennie, 1919. (National Archives, Pacific Sierra Region)

  Fong See, 1919. (National Archives, Sierra Region)

  The Sees certainly had the money to send Ming and Ray to college, but none of them had considered this option. Ticie had finished high school. Her husband hadn’t even gone to school. But they had found success as businesspeople. In turn, they expected Ming and Ray—and the younger children when their time came—to work in the store. In addition, few Chinese sons attended colleges or universities. Those that did usually came from China as already accomplished students, or from American Chinese families where the rarefied tradition of Chinese scholarship was valued.

  As Ticie finished putting the sweet potatoes in a baking dish and topping them with maple syrup and dollops of butter, Sissee come into the kitchen. “Ma, Ma, come quick. Pa’s about to open the surprise.”

  “Okay,” Ticie said. “Let me do a couple of things and I’ll come down with you.”

  Ticie basted the turkey, checked its temperature, and edged the pan over to make room for the sweet potatoes. She washed her hands and wiped them on her apron.

  “Pa made us unpack everything else first,” Sissee said as she pulled her mother toward the back stairs. “Eddy and I have been pounding the nails to make them straight. What do you think is in the crate, Ma? What?”

  As Ticie walked down the stairs to street level, where the store was, and down another flight to the basement, she thought about how her husband liked to pick up odds and ends wherever he traveled. What better place to pick up these oddities than at exhibitions, shows, and world’s fairs? “It’s your love of curiosities,” she said once after he brought home a mermaid—some sort of petrified fish—from one of the side-shows at a fair he’d been to. The owner couldn’t give it away, but Suie had said, “I’ll take it.” Ticie thought it was the ugliest thing she’d ever seen, but it might be a draw if they ever opened a branch of the F. Suie One Company on the Boardwalk in Ocean Park.

  Down in the basement, Sissee pulled her mother through the narrow aisles to where the boys rested, balancing on top of several unopened crates. Rice straw and excelsior lay about in fluffy piles. The wooden slates of the other packing crates had already been stacked in the corner. As Sissee had mentioned, the nails had been removed. Both wood and nails would be kept for some future use.

  “Pa, we’re here,” Sissee said. “Can we see it now?”

  Suie nodded at the two older boys, who pried open the remaining boxes. The excelsior fell away to reveal several bronze objects.

  “But what is it?” Ticie asked.

  “You’ll see,” Suie said. Bennie stepped forward, and with Eddy’s help they put the object together, stacking tier upon tier to a height of six feet. Once it was assembled, they saw a hu, a ritualistic vase, used to decorate the entrance to a temple. On its surface was a dragon rendered in bronze, with brass alloy highlighting the scales. The rest was a mishmash of Chinese and Japanese motifs. The waves drew directly from the Japanese, while the clouds and the dragon’s feet were obviously Chinese. There wasn’t a person on earth besides Suie who would have brought the vase home. To Ticie’s eyes, the hu was not a “pure” piece of art. It was just another curiosity.

  “I was next to a booth where they had things f
rom Japan,” Suie said. “From the first day I see this bronze, I say to myself, ‘I want it.’”

  “Who do you think is going to buy it?” Ticie asked slowly.

  “I don’t care about that!” he responded. “We keep it. No one else has anything like this.”

  “Oh, Ma,” Ray groaned. Immediately recognizing his tone, Ticie braced herself for the complaint. “I don’t understand how Pa can spend money on this kind of extravagance, then make the rest of us pound nails. Why, Ma?”

  “You be quiet!” Suie snapped. “You straighten nails or no dinner for you.”

  “Come on,” Ticie said placatingly. “Let’s not quarrel. Today’s Thanksgiving.”

  Ray glared at his father, then picked up the nail straightener and got to work. Why did Ray have to act this way, Ticie wondered. They gave him everything he could possibly want, and he still wasn’t satisfied. Ticie glanced at her husband and said, “I like the piece, Suie, and I’m sure we’ll be able to use it for something. Now, why don’t we go back upstairs and leave the children to finish up.”