A Story from the Chinese Diaspora: The Chung Family

In the 1860s, my paternal great, great, great-grandfather, Man Lung, left Kwangtung Province for the U.S. He worked as a laborer for the construction of the Sierra Nevada segment of the Transcontinental Railroad.

In the 1910s, my paternal great-grandfather, Lin, came to LA as a small boy. He worked for the family laundry located in Hollywood. (Courtesy of Michelle Chung)

Remembering the past gives power to the present. Memories do add up.
-Fay Myenne Ng, Bone

I am the product of a diasporic migration that originated in China more than one hundred years ago. My paternal great, great, great- grandfather Man Lung departed from the 19th century colonial port city of Hong Kong bound for America as a laborer for the construction of the Sierra Nevada segment of the Transcontinental Railroad. The few existing photographs of these early laborers were meant to reflect the historical record of events and circumstances depicting the conditions under which they build the railroad. These photographs, however, reveal little of the unofficial history that would more accurately be told by the laborers themselves.

Chinese American history texts and photograph collections offered me a limited understanding of what it must have been like to be transported thousands of miles from one's home, toiling sixteen hours from sunrise to sunset, and feeling the uncertainty of what lies in the following day's work (which often involved the many risks associated with this type of labor, including dismemberment of one's body due to the explosives used for cutting through the mountainous terrain and being buried alive by sudden snow drifts and avalanches). Man Lung's story is part of this collection that does not belong to the official historical record, but is no less important than what has been written as history.

It was the belief of my ancestors who came to America that one should always return to their homeland in old age. This thought was widely held by the majority of Chinese who had left for the U.S. As each generation grew older, their male children would join the fathers as a means of providing continuous support for their families back home. This meant that many of the men who came were either bachelors or husbands separated from wives. A common pattern that emerged for these sojourners was the marriage of these men prior to departure from China or their periodic return to the homeland to father children. This trend was no different from my ancestor's experience of sending for their sons to join them in the U.S. whom they had not seen for years on end. This also accounted for the reason behind the large number of years separating the children where it would be possible for the eldest to be the father of the younger ones based on age.

For generation after generation, then, what was initially conceived of as an opportune moment for an economic venture became a lifestyle for a time to come. When my paternal great-grandfather, Lin, came to the United States in the 1910s, many things had already changed from the time his grandfather first entered the U.S. At the time of Lin's arrival, the earlier vessels had been replaced by faster and safer steamships that accelerated the time for passage as a strategy for earning a larger profit. Additionally, the population of Chinese in America had been more spatially distributed than previous data indicated, thus demonstrating the geographic dislocation of Chinese Americans from the major urban centers to its peripheries. Lastly, but certainly of mention, were the immigration procedures intended to exclude them from participation in virtually all aspects of life -- social, political, economic, and cultural. These factors converge on a particular understanding of the Chinese American experience as defined by struggle and hardship in the face of immense adversity.

From 1882 until 1943, the United States government imposed exclusionary legislation against the Chinese. During this time, the Chinese American communities established in the mid-nineteenth century grew not because of migration, but rather natural increase accounted for the greater numbers of Chinese recorded on the official census records. Older Chinese Americans remained within the confines of the ethnic enclave more so than the younger generation who were shaped by American popular culture. Influenced by images and ideologies of the American Dream, many sought inclusion in the mainstream as a means of partaking in this collective dream. Immigrant parents desired for their second-generation children to access educational and career opportunities by adopting American ways, yet they also wanted their children to retain the Chinese cultural heritage and traditions.

The American Dream was what Lin and his brother Quong sought in America. Lin's father (name unknown) had settled in Los Angeles during the turn of the century. He then sent for his young sons who were expected to contribute to the earnings that were to be sent back to the homeland. Together, they had saved enough money to open a hand laundry in Hollywood. The City of Hollywood was a rather strange and unfamiliar place for Lin and Quong. To begin with, it lay outside of what was familiar geographically and culturally. Furthermore, to them, it represented a lack of moral restrain and integrity.

(L to R) Uncle Fan, Grandmother, Father, Great-grandmother, Uncle Wilson, and Aunt Helen lived in LA's Chinatown during the 60s and 70s. (Courtesy of Michelle Chung)

My brother, Aaron (2nd from L), and I(R) identify ourselves as both second and fifth generation Chinese Americans. (Courtesy of Michelle Chung)

Because of the struggles and determination of the generations coming to the U.S., my family in China was able to survive and flourish lavishly. Stories passed down claim that we were one of the wealthiest families in our region. In China, we ventured into various enterprises enabled by the remittances sent back from those who toiled in the U.S. for those in China to have a better life. The stories of bachelor societies in Gam Saam, or the Gold Mountain, were not an accurate reflection of our family's experiences as they were able to amass a significant amount of money to send back, indicating that the vices associated with images of Old Chinatown in America did not taint the persistence of my ancestors to bring wealth home.

The Communist Revolution in China during the 1950s dramatically altered the history of my family in ways spoken of softly. My father, Steven (at the age of three), and his paternal grandmother, Yung (Lin's wife), attempted to escape from China to Hong Kong to flee from Communist rule. Their attempt, however, was broken by the Chinese officials. They were imprisoned and subsequently returned to their village in Hoiping in Kwangtung Province. They made the attempt again a while later and successfully arrived in Hong Kong. Shortly after, my grandmother and my Uncle Wilson joined them. At the time, my grandfather, Kim Hing, was already in the U.S. Years later, my uncle, Fan, and aunt, Helen, were born in Hong Kong and lived there until they were able to join their father in the U.S.

The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act represented a major turning point in the history of the Chinese Americans, and had a particularly important impact on my existence. My parents came to the U.S. during this post-1965 period. My mother, Annie, came to America to pursue higher education at a college in close proximity to Chinatown. My father emigrated under a provision of the 1965 Act, which allowed for families separated to reunify. My grandfather, Kim Hing, came to the States under Lin's sponsorship and subsequently brought my grandmother and their children over. They resided in an apartment complex on Alpine Street in Los Angeles Chinatown. At the time, my father was in his early twenties. He worked and attended school when he first arrived and had to tend to the family. My grandfather, for the first time in his life, had to find work in the U.S., as he had not worked all his life. Flourishing from the wealth of those who had worked in America for a comfortable life in China, he finally began to understand the hardship that accompanied survival in the U.S. They lived in that apartment for several years until they had saved enough money to purchase a home in Highland Park, just a short distance from Chinatown. Their livelihood, however, still remained in the Chinese community. They worked, shopped, and socialized with those in Chinatown because it stood for what was familiar and comfortable to them -- a sense of home and homeland through community.

My father and mother met in the early 1970s through a mutual friend and married a while after courtship. While living in Chinatown for several years, they put away money that would allow them to buy a house in the suburbs. They settled in the community of Rowland Heights at the edge of the San Gabriel Valley in the mid-1970s through a government program enabling those who served in the armed forces to purchase homes at a lower interest rate. At the time, Rowland Heights was little more than a sleepy bedroom community that was predominately white and middle-class. The mass exodus of Chinese from Chinatown and from overseas to the San Gabriel Valley, however, did not take flight until the 1980s when businessmen began investing in the area and when shortages in housing caused by the large numbers of immigrants entering the U.S. had prompted the movement eastward.

Those of my generation, who are children of immigrant parents, struggle not only with understanding the multiplicity of languages and meanings of two vastly different worlds, we also see ourselves and our personal histories as apart from the oldtimers experiences of Chinese America. The longing for homeland and the desire to return home that my ancestors felt so strongly about is foreign to me in many ways. My identity as a Chinese American is complicated by the realization that my home is both in China and in America. Often times, I ponder what it would be like to return home -- to the birthplace of my ancestors -- yet home is also in America, the place of my birth. My identification as both fifth and second generation is, thus, a culmination of memory and experience -- of theirs and of mine. My existence is, in many ways, neither here nor there, yet both here and there.

The need to excavate history and memory plays a crucial role in Chinese American history and culture. Chinese, as an identity, is not singular in definition or significance. The hybridity of Chinese and American cultures and its amalgamation are constantly being negotiated and reconfigured. The Chinese diaspora, which began thousands of years ago, continues into the present with the perpetual movement of people across geographies and political boundaries. To articulate a past that is multiple in breadth and depth beckons for the telling of stories and the capturing of them for generations to come.

A doctoral student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, Michelle Chung is conducting research on the historical intersections of race, gender, and class in the myriad versions of The King and I and Anna and the King.