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Tides from the West, a Chinese Autobiography, written by Chang-Mung Lin, read by Tang Da-min. Chapter 10 China in America Before the end of October of my first year in America, an important change had taken place in China. This was the death in rapid succession of the Emperor Guangxu and the Empress Dowager. There were two versions to the story. One was that she died first, whereupon he was murdered by her followers in the fear that he would come back into power. The other was that near death, she sent a eunuch to Yingtai, the island palace in the Imperial Zhonghai Park, where the strong-willed woman had kept her imperial consort imprisoned ever since the short-lived reforms of 1898, who informed the Emperor, always in poor health, that Her Majesty the illustrious Buddha, as she was called, wished him as a favor to take the medicine she sent. According to this version, the poor-imprisoned Emperor understood the message and obeyed, succumbing to the poison in a short time. The fact was made known to her before she died, and she ordered the issue of an imperial addict by which the death of the Emperor was announced, and his nephew, little Pu-Yi, made successor to the throne. Whatever the truth of it, the unanimous opinion of the Chinese students in Berkeley was that with the death of the old woman, as the Emperor's dowager was disrespectfully called, there would be plenty of trouble in China. It proved to be so. For with the baby emperor on the throne, and his inexperienced father Zai Feng as Prince Regent, the authority of the Qing Dynasty fell into meteoric decline until his last vestige was swept away three years later by the revolution of 1911. In 1909, I had joined as an editorial writer the Chinese Free Press, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary organ in San Francisco. One evening in the fall of that year with my co-editor Liu Chengyu, I called for the first time on Dr. Sun Yat-sen at a hotel on Stockton Street on the outskirts of Chinatown. My heart throbbed with excitement as we entered. Dr. Sun received us cordially in his room. It was a small room with a couch, several chairs, and a small desk. There was a wash basin by the window. The curtains were drawn. Mr. Liu introduced me to the esteemed leader of China's revolutionary movement. His magnetic personality was such as to win the confidence of any who had a chance to meet him. Dr. Sun's ample and majestic forehead and strong dark brows gave signs of a forceful intellect and indomitable will. His clear, inviting eyes revealed his candor of thought and warmth of heart, while his compressed lips and seth jaw made people readily understand that he was a man of courage and decision. His general build was muscular and sturdy, giving the impression of strong nerves and steady emotions. In conversation, his line of argument was clear and convincing, whether you agreed with him or not. Thus you wished to discontinue he would keep on untiringly expounding his theories to you. He spoke slowly but distinctly, and one felt behind his words a deep sincerity. He also listened easily, yet was not slow to catch essential points. Later I found him to be an ardent reader of a variety of books, both Chinese and English. He saved all the money he could to buy books. He was a slow reader but had an extraordinary retentive power. Dr. Sun's wide reading gave him a clear understanding of the development of both Chinese and Western civilizations. He enjoyed jokes, though he seldom jested, laughing heartily when a good one was recounted to him. He liked fish and vegetables for his meals, but seldom touched meat and preferred Chinese to Western cooking. Chinese food is the best in the world, he would say. Dr. Sun was a real Democrat. He lectured in the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco. With banners of the Nationalist Party streaming in the air, he would stand on the sidewalk and talk to the crowd gathering around him. He understood the psychology of the man in the street and could reduce his own language to the simplest terms. What is revolution, he would ask rhetorically. Down with the rule of the Qing Dynasty, the crowd understood and joined in in chorus. Then he would go on explaining in very simple language why the Qing Dynasty must be done away with and what he would do when a Republican form of government was established in China, how many benefits the people would reap from a new regime. He would often size up an audience to which he was about to speak, choose an appropriate subject and improvise a suitable discourse, expressing himself with great eloquence. He usually carried the audience with him to the very end. He was always ready to speak, for he possessed a remarkable ability to carry it with him. Dr. Sun's deep understanding of human nature, his intense love of his country and people, and his insight into what China needed in building up her new nationhood gave him unquestioned leadership in the development of young China. Between travels in the southern and eastern states and in Europe, he came back every so often to San Francisco, where Liu Chengyu and I had the pleasure of seeing him whenever he came. On October 8, 1911, at about 8 o'clock in the evening, Dr. Sun came into the editorial room of the Chinese Free Press wearing a dark overcoat and a derby hat. He appeared happy, though not in the least excited, as he said calmly that from news he had received through certain sources, things seemed to be turning out well. The group of people who had laid plans for revolution in Hanco and Wuchang were ready for action. Two days later, news reached San Francisco that revolution had broken out in Wuchang. This was the revolution of October 10, 1911, which eventually overthrew the Qing Dynasty. On that day, the Republic of China was born. Urgent cablegrams advised Dr. Sun to come back to lead the revolution. He left San Francisco and returned to China by way of Europe. On January 1, 1912, he was inaugurated at Nanjing as provisional president of the Republic, and China entered on a new life. Under Dr. Sun's guidance, for three consecutive years Liu Chengyu and I wrote editorials for the Chinese Free Press, each of us at first writing one every other day. We supplied these articles to the paper while studying at the university, often burning midnight oil to finish a piece for the next morning's issue. The university work was by no means light, and we felt, especially myself, the burden of this extra labor. After the successful revolution, Liu went back to China, and I had to bear the brunt of the daily editorial war. Though I felt deeply for the future of my country, the constant practice of writing against my will ultimately killed in me all interest in writing. In the unremitting pressure and rush under which I labored, the quality of production deteriorated, and I formed the habit of loose and hurried thinking and careless choice of words. Sometimes my thought flowed reluctantly as water threw a clogged pipe, but the words still rushed from my pen like a swarm of aimless wanderers. I was rather exasperated at these unwelcome guests. I would, however, let them go, since they filled up the columns. When I first took the job, I found a real pleasure in writing, fitting words to thoughts like coins into a slot machine. Only when I tried to jam all the coins into the slots at once, the machine got clogged and refused to take in the superfluous ones, which spilled all around the floor, so to speak. This is how meaningless words fill space when you are forced to write in a rush. After my graduation in 1912, I gave up the job and felt a great release. Thereafter, I feared writing as a schoolboy would latin composition. When labor is drudgery and done in a hurry as well, no good work will come of it. The bad habits thus formed were difficult to eradicate for years after. On the Pacific coast, during my college days, about 50,000 Chinese immigrants clustered around the centers in the various cities, Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, and others. With isolated small groups or individuals dotting the smaller towns and villages, these centers were called Chinatowns. Chinatown in San Francisco was the largest of all, with a Chinese population of more than 20,000. The main street was originally Dupont Street, but its name was afterward changed to Grand Avenue, for what reason I do not know. Grand Avenue was a very prosperous street, oriental bazaars, Chinese restaurants known as chop-sui houses, fortune-telling stands, gambling houses in the guise of social or literary clubs, and temples for worship of Chinese gods called joss houses attracted the attention of tourists, sight-seers, and pleasure-seekers. Once a pretty young American told me that she had seen a wonderful thing in an oriental bazaar, a Buddha sitting in an artichoke, and had eaten bird's nest soup, shark's fins, and chop-sui in a Chinese restaurant. She was much excited over it. Her younger sisters listened with wondering eyes and gaping mouths. I declare, said the grandmother, looking over her spectacles while her hands were busy with her knitting. How do you eat soup with chopsticks? A younger sister asked curiously. As you do with your soda straws, my young lady, said I. All joined in the laughter. In small towns, my countrymen kept laundry establishments. Day in and day out, they washed and washed from dawn till dusk and often late into the night. The reason many American families liked to send their laundry to the Chinese was because hand wash did not wear out the materials as easily as machines. These hard-working sons of the celestial empire saved every bit of their earnings by living a frugal life. They slung silver or gold pieces into the saving bags hidden under their beds and made liberal contributions to the cause of Dr. Sun's revolutionary movement, or sent money home to support their families and relatives in Guangzhou, thus helping to enrich the villages of their province. Guangdong was the richest province of China, not only because the people did prosperous business in Hong Kong and elsewhere, but because it was the reservoir into which gold trickled from all parts of the world where there were Chinese colonies, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippine Islands, North and South America, etc. It was from this province that most of the emigres from China originally came. The Chinese working and living in foreign lands, numbering in the millions, were not there to exploit. Rather, their labor has been exploited. They had no capital other than the flesh and blood they were given in their mother's homes. With hard work, frugality and endurance, they labored like bees carrying their tiny specks of sweetness from distant flowers to build up honeycombs in China. There was no political power to back them up, and they carried no guns. They helped to build railroads, open mines, raise rubber. In return for their labor, they received a few dollars or shillings or rupees or gouldens for a day's hard work. Some, to be sure, especially in Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, became rich and owned palatial mansions and villas living like maharajas. A number rose to the level of the middle class and owned property. But the rich and well-to-do were in the minority. The rank and file had to work hard, and only by hard work managed to make a living and put by some savings. Among the Chinese in America, there were neither very rich nor very poor. Most of them were honest, hard-working people. Almost all had some savings to contribute to that great reservoir, the province of Guangdong. Their mode of life was mainly Chinese. Taking a boat along the Sacramento River, one would see Chinese towns or villages perched on the banks with bowed Chinese signboards in front of the shops. One felt as if you were sailing on the Yangzi River or the Grand Canal in China. I landed once at one of the Sacramento River Chinatowns and stayed with the owner of an asparagus plantation, Ding Shan, a friend of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He treated me to tender asparagus, fat and juicy. Thereafter, whenever I had asparagus for dinner, I thought of him. He had a cannery for this delicious vegetable under American brand names. So I often think that some of the American canned asparagus may have been raised and canned by the Chinese. His way of making money was really good and ingenious. He kept places of amusement for his men, arguing that they must have some diversion after the day's work, and if he had not established these houses, they would go to other places run by his neighbors. He wanted the water to flow into his own gardens, so to speak, to feed his own plants. His plants, or rather, dollars, did indeed grow from the voluntary contributions of his men to these amusement places. The Chinese immigrants in America as well as elsewhere were truly loyal sons and daughters of that flowery kingdom. The men wore cues, and some of the women even practiced foot-binding. In the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco, one could find fortune-tellers. One such man who was telling a white man's fortune said to him, Good luck! Buy and buy! Plenty of money! A black man, standing by, wanted to have his fortune told, and was very much pleased to hear the same words repeated to him. Everything would have been all right if the prophet had stopped there, but, he went on to say, Buy and buy! No more black, like him, pointing with his index finger at the white man. The black man, instead of being pleased, got mad and kicked over the fortune-teller stand. This was a case where compliments, overdone, become insults. There were grocery stores selling salt fish, eels, edible snakes, bean sauce, shark's fins, burst nests, dried abalone, and other Cantonese stuff brought to America from Guangzhou or Hong Kong. Once I went to one of the groceries and tried to buy something. Failing to make the man understand my poor Cantonese dialect, I wrote on paper what I wanted. An old woman, standing by, saw my writing, and being ignorant of the fact that China has only one written language for the whole country, despite her many dialects, was surprised and asked, If this Chinese cannot speak Chinese, meaning Cantonese, how can you write it? A group of curious people gathered around me. One who could speak enough Mandarin to make me understand asked, Have you ever been in the provincial capital of Guangzhou? No, I replied. Then, where did you do your shopping? Shanghai, I laughed, and went away with a bottle of bean sauce and a package under my arm. Schools in Chinatown still stuck to the old curriculum. Schools were taught to read aloud the old books just as I had been taught in China. The American schools not far away had no influence on them. These were the times before the revolution. After that date, Chinatown began to change. For China herself was changing, changing rapidly. In the course of a few years, the fortune tellers disappeared. The number of queues fast decreased until they were gone. The young girls stopped their foot binding. The schools were reformed and adopted a modern curriculum. More children were sent to nearby American schools. Chinatown resisted the influence of its American neighbors, but followed in the footsteps of the mother country in reforms and mode of living. These loyal sons and daughters of China. What you just heard is Tides from the West, a Chinese autobiography. Written by Chiang Meng Lin, read by Tang Da Min, and published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Some names and terminologies in this book have been updated per contemporary usages.