"Mo Hi: Don't Look"

Writer Cynthia Yee shares another insightful and compelling reflection on Boston's Chinatown in the 1950s and 60s. In her latest piece, Yee gives us an inside look into displacement and Life in the Combat Zone, an area known for once having many adult movie theaters, strip clubs and prostitution, all situated alongside Chinatown, where hundreds of families lived and worked, and where their children played. It took years of hard work from Chinatown residents, activists and politicians to shut down most of the adult entertainment businesses, and make Chinatown a more safe and family-oriented neighborhood. Below is an excerpt. Please note that this work contains some adult themes.

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“ We moved to the Combat Zone, after the Boston Redevelopment Authorities had called my Taishanese America, “urban blight.” That had led to their next story, “urban renewal,” about rescuing us, though we didn’t need rescuing. ”

1974 zoning map of the Combat Zone, Boston Redevelopment Authority

…At thirteen, the City leveled down my quiet childhood home and transformed it into a high speed roadway. We’d moved to a place of neon lights and fast action. We moved to the Combat Zone, after the Boston Redevelopment Authorities had called my Taishanese America, “urban blight.” That had led to their next story, “urban renewal,” about rescuing us, though we didn’t need rescuing. 

When you let someone make up a false story about your life, you give them the power to destroy it. They razed Hudson Street and built a ramp for the Southeast Expressway. We, longtime Taishanese and Syrian immigrant families, scattered to live elsewhere. It was the end of childhood for me and my friends. A stroke of a pen and a swing of a wrecking ball and I’d grown up.

I lived in an alley never touched by sunshine. It stank of urine and decaying trash.  I listened to great bands, going strong, well past midnight. The beats of drums and guitars and the chatter of honky tonk strip joints drifted in the window and lulled me to sleep every night. Prostitutes, pimps, Johns, and cops strolled around my neighborhood.

“It was the end of childhood for me and my friends. A stroke of a pen and a swing of a wrecking ball and I’d grown up.”

Men’s table a birthday party with Cynthia’s uncles, dad, and paper brothers; courtesy of the author

My Dad, his brothers, cousins, friends, and my paper brothers had toiled on their days off from the restaurants, transforming a factory loft into a living space. MaMa stayed in Chinatown, living a full life, close to her Taishanese grocer at the See Sun Company, and her soul sisters, Aunty Cheong Sim, and MaMa’s best friend, Ah-Goo, Gock-Lim’s Ma. Cooking and chatting with friends, the main social activity for immigrant women, sustained them, and therefore, me. 

Women’s table in the kitchen with Cynthia’s paper sister in-law, Ah Goo, nephew, mom, niece and Aunty Cheong Sim; courtesy of the author

The Naked I by Peter Vanderwarker

…The swinging beat of Jerome’s Bar and the Naked I became my teen lullaby. On the front of the Naked I hung a blinking neon sign, two flashing, disembodied, lower legs crisscrossing again and again. Right smack in the middle, a naked eye, between the crossing legs, blinked blue, with long black lashes. The nun at school asked, “What is a pun?” I told her, on Friday nights, I walked past the Naked Eye on my way to the porno house [that showed Chinese films after the adult entertainment]. 

I saw things other girls didn’t.

My Dad called me every night from the restaurant and asked me about my day, what I had eaten for dinner, and if I’d finished my homework. On Saturday mornings, he cooked French toast for me. He talked and listened to me in English. My Dad loved me. I was his American born daughter, his youngest child, the only one of four daughters that he raised. So, why had he moved his beloved teen to a place of sin? “Your mother does not want to leave Chinatown,” he said…

The State Theater, 1967 by Nick DeWolf

…Friday evenings, with fathers toiling on in the restaurants, mothers shut down sewing machines, and stopped their work for the local garment factories; on lucky evenings, they took us to the Chinese movies at the State Theatre on Washington Street, in the center of the Red Light District, on the edge of Chinatown. My friends and I preferred modern romances and kung fu flicks with sticks and swords, and brave, agile heroes and heroines. Our mothers liked the costume dramas, Cantonese operas, with actors in heavy make up, elaborate costumes, and shrieking singing, that we children couldn’t understand. The glamorous people on screen spoke in something close to our country dialect. The musical tones and smooth sounds of Cantonese fed our hungry, immigrant souls, even my American-born one…

…My friends and I ran up and down the aisles of the theatre. Our mothers called us back to our seats, the nudist flicks still running. We sat down and covered our eyes with the Chinese movie program, moving the paper hei kiu [pictured below] up and down, playing peek-a-boo with the naked people. I wondered what those solitary white men, sitting in the dark, thought of MaMa, yelling across the theatre as if she were working in the rice paddies.

Movie scroll or “hei kiu” from Chinatown’s Trans-Lux theatre; courtesy of the author

The American Nudist Colony movie ended at 10:30 pm and just like that, the Chinese movie began. Chinese instruments, Chinese lyrics, Chinese actors and actresses with shiny black hair, dark eyes, flawless skin. Love and betrayal, lovers separated and reunited, courage and honor defended, revenged and redeemed, and always, justice prevailing. We held our breaths when the heroine believed lies, and sighed collectively, when kindness finally conquered evil. 

The Cantonese language of the movies seldom sounded like the Taishanese commands our rural mothers shouted at us, telling us to eat, sleep, behave, and do homework. No words of romantic ardor, no “Slay the enemies for revenge!” had ever flowed from MaMa’s’ mouth. The actresses looked nothing like our busy mothers, and the handsome actors, unlike my English-speaking Dad. Still, the distinctive world of Chinese movies enchanted us…

…Through the curtain, late at night, I heard MaMa telling my Dad, the entire movie plot. I dreamt about the story, and on Monday, it still ran through my mind during class.  Ah Goo had given MaMa a recording she made of a classic Chinese opera. On separate floors, they sang along with the music and sewed late into the night. Listening to MaMa sing and sew, I lay in my bed, gazing at the rectangle hole, framed with stained wood moldings, cut high in the wall, opening onto the kitchen where MaMa sewed. In the distance I also heard the loud music from the Naked I and Jerome's Bar. I slept.

MaMa and her friends called each other, “So and So’s Mother!” I never learned Ah Goo’s name, nor the other Aunties’ names, only that they were “So and So’s Mother.” I called them Elder Aunt, “Ah Moo” or Younger Aunt, “Ah Sim” or “My Father’s Sister, ”Ah Goo,” if their surname was like mine, Yee, though they were not my aunts nor my father’s sisters, in the English sense. This respectful formality created an easy intimacy, Chinatown a big family linked by aunties, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, and paper brothers.

Aside from the white people on film, I saw housewives on television with puffed hair and neatly pressed house dresses; teachers at the American school in orthopedic black high heel shoes; nuns in long black habits with black head veils, strings of beads with crosses around their necks, and ropes with three knots dangling from their waists; ladies in kitty cat smocks selling blueberry muffins at Jordan Marsh; streetwalkers in scanty tops; Johns in trench coats; pimps in cowboy hats, waving dazzling rings; Theatre District patrons in pressed suits and mink stoles. None of my Chinatown friends and neighbors dressed special, and nobody walked around nude! The parade of white folks’ styles along our neighborhood streets and the naked people on screens confirmed our separateness. And no Chinatown folks, young or old, worked in, or patronized the Combat Zone, though we lived right in it…

“And no Chinatown folks, young or old, worked in, or patronized the Combat Zone, though we lived right in it…”

…Chinatown changed, and so did we. Aunty Cheong Sim’s son became a physician and medical director of the first Asian American bilingual bicultural health center in Boston. Ah Goo’s son graduated from MIT and became a radiologist. The two young couples who lived above Aunty Cheong Sim opened popular Chinese bakeries and restaurants, and moved out to rich Chinese enclaves in the suburbs. I became a teacher, teacher trainer, and writer. I sent my family’s story to the governments of the Peoples Republic of China and America. I negotiated with them, with letters, translated in Chinese and English. China allowed my two sisters and their families to leave. America gave them permission to enter. My father sold over the house for $35,000. In 1980, the neighborhood was designated a United States Historic District and our homes were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, requiring special permission for further renovations. Today’s developers price my house at over $2 million, and rent it to young professionals. The police have swept the streets of prostitutes. Poor girls of all races, including girls from China, lured with false promises, are trafficked into massage parlors and suburban motel rooms instead. No loud music flows onto the streets to disturb the cafe and theatre crowd. The porno houses are replaced by high rise apartments…

Eldo Cake House today by Ling-Mei Wong; Courtesy of Sampan

…I walked to Eldo Cake House on Harrison Avenue, where Mr. Yee’s See Sun grocery once stood. The new owners sublet part of the cafe to an herbal store. High rents meant sharing commercial space. A new Boba tea chain has opened next door, with long lines out the door. 

Eldo has gone through two new ownerships, but the ladies at the counter stay the same. Immigrant newcomers, they speak three Chinese dialects and adequate English. Customers lined up, seven days a week, for traditional Hong Kong style milk tea, coffee, whipped cream, fruit filled sponge cakes, steamed and baked buns of all sorts, cake rolls, custard tarts. I walk up the three steps and enter the cafe…

…Min came by with her mop, and a paper. “What does this say, Missy? My eldest daughter gave it to me. She said, ’Look at this, MarMee!’ ‘What’s this?’ I said.”

I took the paper from her. “NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY,” it read. “It says your daughter is in the smartest group in America. This is wonderful!” Min, smiling, kept on mopping. “I don't mind their business. I don’t know English. I can’t help them with school. I feed them. I tell them: ‘if you’re lazy, you sleep in the street someday.’ My daughter is volunteering for a film festival by the Chinatown Gate today. She’s always running around. I don’t bother her.”

Beneath the bluster and damnation talk, love and pride, Chinatown style…

…Sitting at the table by the window, where Mr. Yee’s jars of salty plums and hawthorn fruit wafers once stood, I sipped the nai cha, slurped the last spoonful of ji ma wu, and ate the rest of the sweet purple yam, waiting for the zhoong and char siu bao, boiling and steaming downstairs.

Sun seen yit lat lat

Delicious.

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Cynthia Yee grew up in Boston’s Chinatown on Hudson Street before being displaced by the construction of the Central Artery in 1962. Cynthia Yee holds an M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from Boston University and a B.A. in Sociology from Emmanuel College. She taught in Boston’s Chinatown and in Brookline, MA. She was recently nominated for a "2019 Emerging Artist Award in Literature” by the Director of the largest writing conference in North America, “ The Muse and the Marketplace”.

Author’s note:

The State Theatre or the Trans Lux Theatre, at 617 Washington Street, on the site of the Park Theatre, a playhouse in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, became an adult house from 1960 on. Nudist colony footage formed the beginnings of the porno trade. Located in the Combat Zone on the corner of Washington and Boylston Street in the Chinatown/Theatre District, the building was demolished in 1990. The State Theatre, rented Friday and Monday nights by Chinatown merchants to show Chinese movies from Hong Kong, provided entertainment, at an affordable price for immigrant Chinese families, beginning in the 1950s. An upscale furniture store, Roche Bobois stands there now. 

The Beach-Knapp District encompasses a collection of six 19th century buildings in the Chinatown neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It includes two Greek Revival residential structures, 5 and 7 Knapp Street both built in the 1830s. The writer and her family lived at 5 and 7 Knapp Street during her teen years after the demolition of Hudson Street. She and her parents moved out in 1970. The district was designated a United States Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 9, 1980.

The See Sun Company, originally located at 36 Harrison Ave, now the site of Eldo Cake House, was a popular two generation, family owned Taishanese grocery store.

Hoi San dialect (Taishanese), a southern Chinese rural dialect, is similar to Cantonese, but with eleven tones, instead of the nine tones in Cantonese, or the four tones in Mandarin Chinese. Together with a strong singsong rhythm, Hoi San dialect also has unique sounds made by putting the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth and blowing, creating the “thloo” sound. It’s a sound not easily mastered by speakers of other Chinese dialects. One has to learn it by age 2 or 3 to get it right. It is an earthy, peasant dialect, often spoken loudly, laced with humor, and great emotional expression. It is Cynthia Yee’s first language and therefore, dear to her heart. 

Taishanese immigrant mothers, raising their American born children, in post Chinese Exclusion Act Boston, often used the filter of “separateness.” This idea was reinforced in many ways, and it helped them to live and thrive in an adverse environment. That said, insularity combined with patriarchy, also created, at times, an unhealthy environment for young girls, young boys, women, and men.

No Secret

Local writer Cynthia Yee shares with us a few excerpts from her new creative non-fiction piece, “No Secret”

116 Hudson Street in Boston’s Chinatown.

Image courtesy of Cynthia Yee

I grew up in a world of secrets and transgressions, surrounded by mystery, embraced by hope.  Breaking rules was not so bad if somebody loved you.

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MaMa was a baptized Catholic, but not for the reasons one might think.  She wanted to adopt a boy.  She learned that, in America, Catholic Charities gave out boys.  MaMa felt it was her duty to provide a son to pray to my Dad in the afterlife, and she had four daughters.                                 

Two nuns visited us and asked about the photos on the wall.  

The first nun pointed to the four photos of my real and fake Grandparents.  

“Who are they?”  “Do you pray to them?”  and then told us we must not do that.  

“They are asking who the photographs are, MaMa.”  “They want to know if you pray to them,” I said.  

MaMa smiled, as if the nuns just could never understand, not in a thousand years. 

The nun then pointed to the sewing machine. 

“Do you sew on that machine?” “Do you sew on Sundays?” and then told us we must not do that, too.

“They want to know if you sew on Sundays,” I said to MaMa.  

MaMa smiled her friendliest smile, the one reserved for Americans, and said, 

“Sis-See Dah ah, U li-kee Gar Fe?”  my MaMa’s version of “Sister, you like coffee?” and she offered them fresh cups of coffee with cream and sugar in our best cups and saucers.

After coffee, the nuns got up to leave.  They gave us a present, a framed painting of a pretty white woman with pink cheeks and long brown hair, wearing a veil and a flowing dress, floating above a bush, with a circle around her head, her hands clasped together.  They said, “This is Our Lady of Fatima.”  MaMa smiled, nodded, and took the framed picture from them. She hung it next to the black and white photos of my real and fake Grandparents.  I don’t think MaMa knew the right answers to the nuns’ questions, but whether Immigration or the nuns came to visit, we were now all set.  MaMa believed in the promises of America and in Heavens’ blessings, in equal measure.  

My Dad said, “We don’t need a boy.  We live in America now, and the King of England has a daughter and she is the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth.  Even the President of the United States has daughters.  My daughters are fine.  Cynthia is fine.”  MaMa smiled at me, and said, “That’s why you are a Little Girl Emperor, because your BaBa thinks like that.  Like an American.”

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Well, Sally was a sight that made you stop what you were doing, and take notice.  Everybody, up and down my street, had black hair.  Unless they were old.  Then they had gray hair, or no hair.  Sally, on the other hand, had red hair some days, pink hair other days, orange hair, when she felt like it, and on some days, if she got the formula mixed up, she had purple hair with pink highlights.  She wore a lightweight housedress with a collar, four buttons in a row that ran down the front, beginning at her chest and ending at her middle, and a flair skirt that swirled.  Her round breasts hung low, almost down to her waist, and she wore shoes with thick heels. She had the look of a disposable doll, frumpy and well filled out, a doll one would not miss much if it disappeared. On sunny days, she wore sunglasses with bold red frames.  Nylon stockings rolled up at her ankles and red rouge smeared on her cheeks, she looked a bit like the clown I saw at the circus the nuns took us to see, but she was not the smiling kind of clown.  Her face wore an unwavering seriousness, and her walk spoke a focused determination. All the women on my street sewed at home, but Sally did not sew, and she did not stay at home. She followed old men home.

I watched this happen over and over again.  The old man, signaling her, looked to his right, then to his left.  He caught her eye with his eye, a whisper, or a small wave of his hand.  Then he looked away.  He pretended not to know her.  She followed. I thought it a call and response game. The old man slithered off, hands in his pocket, glancing over his shoulder.  Sometimes I felt the signal coming before the man made it.  The old men tried not to look obvious.  That was the first sign.  Trying to look invisible.  I did not blink.  The men slinked away and Sally followed, muttering under her breath.  Never too close.  

Sally’s visits to old men in the attics and rooming houses of Chinatown, and following old men home, made me wonder what she did exactly.  She answered to “Rose” and sometimes to “Mary.”  I wondered if the nuns had named her Mary.  They gave that name a lot to Chinatown girls registering for the public school next to the convent.  Jesus’ MaMa’s name came up when we got toys at their Christmas party, and so did Mary Magdalene, a loose woman.  Children called her Sally.  “Here comes Sally in the Alley!  Three bucks a throw,” we chanted as she walked down the street on one of her missions. No matter that she did not live in an alley.  She lived in a red brick row house, like mine, next to the convent.  We didn’t know what a “throw” meant.  We liked rhyming.  A Lo-Fan, a barbarian, a white woman, a woman with neither husband nor children, living in Chinatown, alone.  Sally stood out.  

This is a work of creative non fiction.   

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration to the United States based on ethnicity.  It outlawed intermarriage and barred paths to citizenship.  The Chinese adaptation to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the creation of a system of paper sons, whereby young boys were claimed as legal sons by Chinese American fathers.  These young boys and young men came to work and sent home remittances to support their families and clans.  Though the Exclusion Act was eventually repealed in 1943, allowing 105 visas per year for the Chinese, the repercussions of this Exclusion Act continued for four generations.  The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 further exacerbated the fracturing of Chinese American families when diplomatic ties between the United States and the Peoples Republic of China were suspended.  The men who came to work became stranded and many lived in the attics and rooming houses of Boston’s Chinatown.

Cynthia Yee, who grew up in Boston Chinatown, honors these sojourner men, many of whom were her neighbors and relatives, and who lived and died alone.  She thanks Alysia Abbott, author of “Fairyland,” and in whose Memoir class, Cynthia originally sketched out the “Sally” story.  “Thank you, Alysia, for reminding me every time we met, how much you liked my Chinatown stories, even remembering my Sally story, long after the class had ended.”  Cynthia also thanks Professor of Narrative Journalism, Mark Kramer, for advising her, even though he said, “It feels l like I am feeding a baby bird who keeps turning its head.”  To him, Cynthia says, “I listened and collected every word from your mouth, like pearls. Thank you.”

Cynthia looks forward to sharing with us her next piece “Don’t Look” soon!

Sky

Cynthia Yee with her mother, May-Soon Gee Yee, 133 Hudson Street, 1950s. (photo courtesy of Cynthia Yee)

For Mother's Day, Cynthia dedicates this revised 2018 version of "Sky" to the Taishanese immigrant women stitchers, the Mothers of her Boston Chinatown childhood, and to the Left Behind Daughters, whose births provided the slots for paper sons to enter America during the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882-1943.  It was the first federal law implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States of America. It barred paths to citizenship and intermarriage.  The reverberations of that exclusionary law continued to affect and fracture Chinese American families for four generations.

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            RRRrrrr…rrrr…The humming came from the top of the summit, rrrrrrrRRrrrrrr….rrrrrrr...Rrrrrr…, the soundtrack of my seven years of life, MaMa's constant heartbeat, MaMa’s sweet lullaby, MaMa’s comfort signal, trailing down, calling me home.  I faced the steep mountains, its wide bannister worn shiny and smooth, so perfect for mounting and gliding down.  The gleaming waterfall cascaded down, ending in a large flat curl, a glistening pool, a splash, a forever and ever promise of an exhilarating, soft, and safe landing. .  I placed my foot onto the incline, skipped up two steps, and then two more, propelling myself up the long, steep incline faster and faster, two steps at a time.  I delighted in Speed, flying through hollow air, the freedom of a comet in Space. I passed the empty milk bottle goddesses  shimmering in the arched grotto carved into the wall.  I bowed a deep bow.  At the end of the passageway, I spied three oil canisters, soldiers standing guard, with oily rags draped around their necks and I saluted them.  I followed the call of the siren, the never ending…..rrrrrr. The magic door opened with a slight nudge and a kick.  I slid in onto the shiny maroon and gray paisley print swirls and I looked for MaMa. I found her, in intense concentration, sitting over her Singer sewing machine.  She did not turn around to greet me.  I looked at her curved back, the most familiar part of MaMa’s body. The Singer faced the window where she could see the dirty milk sky, if she looked up, but she seldom did.  I stared out the living room window next to her and watched the trucks and cars rumbling by on the Southeast Expressway.

            I told MaMa about my school day, how my second-grade teacher had brown spots on her arms, how she draped an animal around her shoulders, and how the animal had eyes that popped out of its head, staring at me.  I told her about how the teacher heated up thick, yellow soup from a can on the radiator, and how her upper arms jiggled when she washed her hands, and how she didn’t rinse her hands well, but just dried them with a paper towel.  Without looking up or interrupting a beat in her pedaling, MaMa said, “Lo-Fans are like that.  They eat canned food and they grow brown spots on their skin.  Not like us.  We eat fresh greens and fresh meat and we don’t get brown spots on our skin.  You must always rinse your hands off after soaping or the soap will pickle your skin.  Lo-Fans grow from a different variety of seed.  They are different from us.”  I said, “How is that true?  They see the same doctors as us, so they must have the same body.”  She said, “U ni ge llim how sang mo ge, dik a yeh ngin koh. Keck mm hoong jung.”  I tried hard to imagine Miss Murphy with hair growing out of her chest.  Like a wild woman.  I saw furry chested men in cartoons and the cavemen shows on television or the Lo-fan men at the nudist colony flicks at the Trans-Luxe Theatre before the Chinese opera on Friday nights, but never a furry chested woman.  The Lo-fans were all in black and white, so it was hard to imagine them as real. Maybe they do grow from a different variety of seed, a less advanced species, in her opinion, but I was not convinced.  I liked Miss Murphy.

            Sometimes, MaMa talked to me about her old life in China and about my two older sisters still there.  She talked while she hung the wash on the clothesline that stretched from our living room window out to the tree in the back lot.  The Tree of Heaven, it was called.  She bought me coloring books and taught me how to color: “Red goes well with Green, and Orange goes well with Blue,” my mother said. I arranged the crayons in my crayon box in that order, just so I would remember.  I obeyed my MaMa in most things.  I trusted her to know everything.

Cynthia with her MaMa, May Soon Yee, in their first American home at 133 Hudson Street, 1950s       (photo courtesy of Cynthia Yee)

            I helped my MaMa with her work.  I flipped collars and cuffs, folded the College Town shirts into a neat pile, and tied them together into bundles for Norman, the factory owner, to pick up.  This week’s shirts had ties so I used a sharpened chopstick to turn them inside out. “Make sure the corners are pointy sharp,” she said.  I poked the corners with the sharp end of the chopstick.  She stepped on the pedal of the machine and the cloth slithered forward in front of her.  She stopped and pedaled again.  I watched her.  Then I looked for some chocolate milk in the squat white refrigerator that sat behind her. It leaned against the adjoining wall in the living room.  Without skipping a beat in her sewing nor turning around, she said, “Mix half white milk and half chocolate milk.  Don’t drink just chocolate milk.”  She didn’t have many rules but I knew this was one of her firm rules.  So, I peered at the tall clear glass and I poured the chocolate milk to the level I judged to be the half way mark, more or less, and then poured in the white milk up to the top of the glass.  I stirred it.  Then I sat on the sofa chair behind her and sipped my half white, half chocolate milk while she sewed.

            For variety, sometimes, I cracked a raw egg into a tall clear glass, I whipped the egg yolk and egg white around the glass with a spoon. I stirred clockwise, then counter clockwise, to see if it made any difference.  I stirred in one, sometimes two, teaspoons of sugar and watched to see how long it took for sugar crystals to dissolve in whipped eggs.  Then I filled the glass up to the top with cold milk and stirred some more.  I looked at the globules of yellow yolk floating in the white milk.  Egg yolk and milk did not blend, no matter how much I stirred.  Without turning around nor stopping, my MaMa said, “It is good for you.”  I judged it for sweetness, then, I drank it, especially enjoying the crunch of the undissolved sugar crystals with the rich taste of raw egg yolk.  “Opera singers drank raw eggs,” she said, “It clarified their voices.”  I made it often, mainly, just to look at the globules of golden yolk swirl around in the white milk and I wondered why egg yolk and milk couldn’t blend, no matter what.  Sometimes, I yodeled around the living room and sang up and down the scale, afterwards, to see if my voice got any clearer.  I believed whatever MaMa said but I liked to test things out. Entertaining two realities at the same time became my modus operandi.  Testing them out was a part of it.  I knew MaMa was not exactly like the American mothers I saw on TV nor like my American teachers.  I had the beginning notion that MaMa was not exactly ‘“mainstream”.

            She sent me to the factory on Edinboro Street, across busy Kneeland Street, to pick up spools of thread.  I was then ten years old and not very tall so I stood on my toes to pull the coarse rope of the freight elevator.  I found Laila, the factory owner’s wife, sewing at her machine. Her dark eyes peered at me over her black framed glasses.  “Hi, honey, what do you need?  Thread? What is May Soon sewing now? Here, take these home.”  She handed me three spools of thread of various colors.  I brought them home and handed them to MaMa.  She saved the leftover spools in a large cardboard box and used the thread to sew our own clothes.

            MaMa sewed until well past midnight.  I heard the click as she turned off the machine, just a few minutes before my dad returned home from the Cathay House on Beach Street where he worked as a maitre di.  She timed it so my dad would not know how late she worked.  He did not like her to work late but she said she had to work extra hard because she was slow.  “Ngoi maun,” she often said.  MaMa believed in Humility and Extra Effort, as perfect wedded partners created by the Natural Order of the Universe.  She embroidered pillow cases, knitted sweaters, crocheted, and sewed dresses by hand, telling me which colors paired well but sewing on a machine was a different thing.  Sewing the same style shirt, all the same color, over and over again, was just different. She earned fifty cents a shirt and when she applied for Social Security, she announced, with great pride, “I made $10,000 in my lifetime.”  I knew this to be true.  Every day she sewed on her factory model machine.  I went to the sewing machine store to buy it with my parents.  You might say, it was a cooperative family venture. She earned $10,000, sewing shirts, facing that dirty milk sky and the Expressway.  The same Expressway would, one day, expand and grow, and overtake our home.

Cynthia with her MaMa, May Soon Yee, 133 Hudson Street, 1950s  (photo courtesy of Cynthia Yee)

            In the evenings, MaMa leaned out of the bedroom window facing Hudson Street, calling, “Ah-Hing, hek fan la!”  That is me, Hing.  I answered to “Cynthia" in one world and “Hing” in another world, part of my Life of Two Realities.  I rushed home, knowing that she cooked my favorite foods: steamed custard eggs with straw mushroom and oyster sauce drizzled on top, or beef and tomatoes with black bean and garlic sauce, or beef and bok choy with oyster sauce and a fried egg on top, the yolk oozing down into the rice and covering everything with its delicious, rich egg-ness.  I loved runny eggs.  She sat with me at the square red formica table my father had rescued from a restaurant renovation, and she ate with me and talked with me and gave me advice.

            She told me stories about “Aw Kee”, her home.  I kind of thought 116 Hudson Street was “Aw Kee” but I knew in My Life of Two Realities, she didn’t mean this Home when she said “Aw Kee”.  I didn’t contradict her most days.  Just occasionally. You might say, I picked my battles. MaMa told me about her mother and her father, how her father was a happy go lucky peddler with a feather in his hat and many friends, and how he refused to eat beef because the Ox plowed the earth for Mankind and how he refused to eat dog meat because dogs had sense, and was a loyal friend of Humanity, and how a lightning bolt struck him and killed him one day.  She told me about her mother who told the Matchmaker lady not to bother introducing any young men to her four daughters if the young men were from anywhere other than the Land of the Gold Mountain.  No young men from neighboring villages in China, nor Southeast Asia, nor South America, nor from Cuba, her mother said.  She did not want her daughters to be poor, like her, who had married a happy go lucky peddler of needles and thread and then died on her from a lightning bolt.  I looked at my MaMa and pictured my two Aunts and said, “Her daughters have dark skin and are not so beautiful, so how could she be so picky?”  If the Matchmaker tried to recommend a nice local boy, her mother said, “My daughters are too young to consider marriage.  Come back another day.”  If the Matchmaker asked about Daughter Number Three, her mother said, “She is not ready.  She is still young.  Her two older sisters are not married yet.”  So, MaMa, being Daughter Number Three, had to wait until the old age of eighteen to marry my father.  She told me how her second oldest sister came to check on her regularly, to make sure her new family of three teenage sisters-in-law and a bossy mother-in-law, rich with American money, did not pick on her poor little sister and how her second oldest sister said, “How dare they pick on my little sister when the groom is so unworthy of her, such an unrefined, clumsy boy?”

“Unrefined?”  “Clumsy” My father?  I adored my dad.

            However, there was one story MaMa never told me. It was about how my father traveled to Boston with his father and uncles as his uncle’s paper son to work and go to school when he was twelve years old.  About how he became a bugler in the Italian North End Boy Scouts, about how he ran through the streets of the neighborhood of Sicilian fishermen, and how much he loved American movie stars, American music, and American culture, even though they never bought him a bed to sleep in, because they were Not Going to Stay. Instead, he slept on the ironing table in the close quarters, and ironed with his own monogrammed brass blow sprayer, after school hours, until the age of eighteen, when his mother summoned him home to China.  He was becoming too western, too barbaric, his Taishanese showing an awkward American accent.  No, my mother did not tell me that story.  About how his mother’s solution to the problem of his growing barbaric Western ways was, “You are eighteen.  It is time for you to take a wife.  We need to find you a nice Chinese Village Girl to marry.”  How he said, “Alright, if you say so, but the girl must be tall and must be literate because I don’t like short girls, and she has to be able to read and write letters to America after I leave.”  She did not tell me how the Matchmaker lady arranged for him and his uncle to stand on a particular street corner to see a girl with long, thick braids walk by with her married second sister, how he and his uncle checked her out for a wife, how reluctant, but easy going, a son he was.  How his uncle said, to him, “With a beautiful braid like that, what more do you want?”  About how careful and vain she was about her beautiful, thick, black hair, and about the pride she took inher meticulous, colorful needlework, in her neat appearance, and about growing up in her family of four girls.  She did not tell me about that.  About how my dad said, “Yes, she is fine.” when his mother asked him what he thought of the girl, and how she said to him, “You like her? You know, she is a bit on the old side. She is eighteen years old and her skin is a bit dark.”  “No, she is fine, she is just fine,” he said.  About how they married at eighteen and how shy and scared she was with him on their first night, and how he left within a year because his papers were due, leaving her with child.  No, she never told me that story.  About how he returned six years later and they had a second girl and how his mother was not happy with her for having only girls.  And how the wife of his younger brother made fun of her and said, “Whoever heard of a woman, like you, only birthing girls, unable to bear sons?” And how he left her with child again, and how she had a third girl.  And how that third girl died of a high fever while he was away.  She never talked about that.  Not even to him.  Not to anyone.  

            About how she survived the Japanese bombing, and starvation by hiding in the village with her two daughters, digging for wild sweet potatoes and wild taro, and selling rice by walking all day with her twelve-year-old daughter from one village with rice to another without rice, about how she told her twelve year old daughter to walk slowly if the sack of rice felt too heavy on her young shoulders.  About how she recycled clothing by using the good parts of her dead sister-in-law’s dowry clothes, still in its hope chest, to redesign new clothing to sell at the vendor stalls.  About how she walked a full day to the seashore to buy the salted fish brine from the fishermen to flavor and add nutrition to their watery rice gruel because she only had pennies to spend, while my father was an American soldier in Germany and France, and his pay could not arrive.  And about how she did not see him again for fifteen years.  

All this, she never told me.  

Cynthia’s parents, May Soon Gee and Walter Yee, Guangzhou, China, c.1930. They snuck out in the city to take this photo without telling his mother. (photo courtesy of Cynthia Yee)

            MaMa told me how obedient my older sisters in China were, how helpful they were to their Aunts, and how my oldest sister woke up before dawn to water the vegetables.  I thought to myself, “I probably would not do that, even if I had vegetables to water here in snowy Boston.”  I didn’t mention this to her because I knew she would just say with a sigh, “Ahh…Yes, you are lazy, not like your oldest sister, who was loved by all the Aunties in China.”  Even though MaMa always smiled when she said this, I didn’t mention it.

            The phone rang and I picked it up.  I knew it was my dad calling me, like he did every evening from the Cathay House.  He was unusual, different from the other Chinatown dads, in that way, and in one other, even more important way, he always spoke fluent English to me.  It was a code I used that I knew MaMa didn’t understand.

How are you? “

“Fine.”

“Did you eat dinner?”

“Yes.”

“What did you eat?”

“I ate beef and tomatoes and steamed eggs.”

“What are you doing? “

“Watching T.V.”

“How was your day? “

“It was good.”

“How was school?”

“It was good.”

“Did you finish your homework?”

“Yes.  Your wife is annoying me.”

“Just ignore her. She’s your Mother.  She will always be your Mother.  When you are fifty, she will be ninety and she will still talk the same way to you.  Just don’t mind her.”

Sigh.  “Okay, Dad.”

“Goodnight, Cynthia, I love you.”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

“Sleep tight.  Sweet dreams.”

“Yes, Dad.  Goodnight, Dad.”

             I never doubted that my busy parents loved me with all their hearts and did the best they could to take care of their American child.

            Rrrrrrr…rrrrr..…Rrrrrrrrrr….rrrrrrr…rrrrrrrrrrrr……….I hung up the phone and looked out at the darkening sky and the sliver of moon, and I wondered if my two sisters in China were waking up, at that very moment, to water the vegetables.  My dad, my MaMa, my sisters and I were together and alone, all at the same time.  We were a family, each of us, breathing in and out, spinning in four different orbs of the Universe.

       Cynthia Yee, wearing her first store-bought dress, with her parents, May Soon Gee and Walter Yee, 116 Hudson Street, 1959.  (photo taken by Eddie Moon Fun Yee) 

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            The original version of “Sky” was published in the Asian American Resource Workshop Writers Group collection, “Asian Voices from BeanTown” in 2012.  Cynthia Yee was the original founder and facilitator of the AARW Writers Group. She did a reading of the original version at the Annual Banquet Meeting of the Chinese Historical Society of New England in 2016 and also at the 2016 Bodega Signs+Wonders Poetry Block Party, at the urging of Denise Delgado, her GrubStreet teacher and Lead Artist for Bodega Signs+Wonders, a public art/oral history project in Egleston Square. Cynthia is grateful to her ever dependable cheerleader, Denise Delgado, for giving her the opportunity to read her work,“Tien Yi” at the 2016 GrubStreet Open House as well.  Cynthia says, “Thank you, Denise, for the voice that always answers whenever I call out into the internet universe for literary advice. Thank you for friendship and all things.”

            Cynthia thanks her former GrubStreet teacher, and dear friend, Stacy Mattingly, for insisting on walking down Hudson Street with her on a rainy Sunday afternoon, asking her the locations of her former Chinatown home and neighborhood, for her courage in crossing borders of Time, Culture, and Place.  Stacy’s abiding sensitivity, and compassionate interest in the human predicament, all helped midwife the birth of Cynthia’s 2018 revisions into stories of greater depth.  Cynthia says, “Thank you, Stacy, for friendship, for kindness, for teaching me that Story is an Art.  Thank you for your support, reading pieces before publication, cheering me on, and sharing my work among your circles, with enthusiasm.”

            Cynthia Yee is an American born daughter of mud, silt, and water, a daughter of the Pearl River Delta and of Migration, and all that that implies.

BaBa

Village of Two Beauties, Dik Hoy, Taishan, Guangdong, China  (Photo taken by: Chao Bak Yee, )

            This companion piece to“Sky” is dedicated to the Left Behind Daughters, whose births provided the slots for paper sons to enter the U.S.A. during the Chinese Exclusion Act era of 1882-1943, and to the unsung heroes, the Chinese American veterans of WWII and their left behind wives.

            This is a work of creative nonfiction based on a composite of what Cynthia Yee’s two sisters, Yerk Lin and Li Sun Yee, told her of their experiences growing up as Left Behind daughters, surviving the Japanese invasion of China during WWII.  The real Kwan Hoong was Cynthia’s third sister who died in infancy, and is here reimagined as four to seven years old based on their stories. 

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            Kwan Hoong sprawled on the fraying bamboo mat.  She fingered the reeds unraveling from the weave and then the smooth cleanliness of the brownish red cloth binding that ran along the edge.  Rubbing the nubs, the pilling on the patched up silk comforter, calmed her.  She snuggled against her mother’s back.  It felt warm, and MaMa’s breathing rocked her into a drowsy dream.  She wanted to hug her mother, to hold her tight, but was afraid to, so she closed her eyes and pressed her small fists together.  MaMa shook, her body heaving up and down, and it awakened Kwan Hoong from the light sleep she had gotten used to having these days, a sleep that made her wonder whether something was really happening. MaMa turned and put her arms around her. Kwan Hoong rubbed her eyes, brushed her mother’s tears away, and buried her face close to her mother’s breast. She fell asleep again, lulled by MaMa’s even breathing and warm body, and the pat-pat-pat, pat-pat-pat, the steady rhythm of MaMa’s hand on her back, pat-pat-pat, the only sound in the dark silence.  Kwan Hoong tried to ignore the pain in her belly, but it was hard not to notice the insistent throbbing. Its agony for food.

            They used to live in the city of Guangzhou, in one of her Returned from the Gold Mountain Grandpa’s houses.  It was not Yeh-Yeh’s most palatial house, not his favorite brag about building, but it was comfortable.  Comfortable enough, good enough, for a family without sons, a family with three daughters and no father, a family of “Sit Bon Fo”, a family of “Losing Investments”. She missed the special corner she used to hide and play in and the yard with the peach tree.  Her Grandpa’s best house went to her Grandpa, her GrandMaMa, her Uncle, and her Aunty with the Many Sons.  Her Aunty had many things, like rice and meat every day, and the four sons had a father to talk to and protect them.  Not like her and her mother.  

            One day, Hoong’s mother asked her to deliver something her father had sent from the Gold Mountain, to offer as a gift to her Aunty with the Four Sons and her GrandMama, some dried figs from a place called Ga-zhou, a special treat.  Hoong put on her cleanest shirt, one that her eldest sister had just sewn for her from a leftover scrap of cloth, big enough only for a child’s shirt.  It only had two patches and her eldest sister, Lin, was such a good stitcher, she made the patches look like two pretty birds flying in the air.  Kwan Hoong arrived at the large, heavy door in time to see them seated at the round table.  She straightened her two thin braids which hung down to her waist and she smoothed her pink shirt.  Hoong gripped the cloth bundle holding the last of the dried figs.  Her Aunty greeted her with a smile, “Ah Hoong, Yip lai la.”  Hoong walked in.  She watched them put chunks of meat and salted fish on their rice.  She breathed in the fragrance of salted fish steamed with ginger and water chestnuts and chopped pork cake.  Hoong’s mouth watered, her saliva ran, and her stomach gurgled, but she just smiled, and handed over the dried figs and said, “This is for Ngin-Ngin.  MaMa thought she might enjoy something sweet.  It is soft, and easy to chew.  It is for her health”. She memorized what MaMa said.  She hoped they would invite her to sit down and join them for the meal but they did not.  “Ooo deah nek a Ma la!” said her Aunty with the Four Sons, and she yanked the figs right out of Kwan Hoong’s fingers.  Hoong thought that her Aunty didn’t act that grateful as she rushed Hoong out the door.

            MaMa often said that she did not like the country village life.  Hoong didn’t mind it.  She liked running up and down the hillsides and climbing trees so it was alright for her. When she tired, she laid on the grassy incline and stared at the big sky.  She loved breathing in the fresh, sweet smell of the mountain grasses.  She scanned the blue sky and wondered about the size of the world and what her BaBa was doing at that moment. Maybe, he was thinking about her and buying her a giant doll, a gift.  She got up from her daydreams and felt the wetness of the earth on the back of her shirt.  “MaMa will not like this,” she worried.  When she heard her eldest sister, Lin, calling for her in that impatient voice she used when she got sweaty busy, Kwan Hoong ran off to help her sister dig for wild roots but her hands hurt after a short while, and she had so many cuts and scratches MaMa wrapped her hands in cloth.  “Your Mui-Mui is not yet six years old.  Don’t ask her to dig anymore,” MaMa said to Lin.

            The warning alerted the city that the Japanese soldiers were coming.  The news traveled through the streets of Guangzhou and into the alleyways and homes.  “The fierce Japanese soldiers are mercenaries without hearts.  They slash and shoot people without hesitation.  They are arriving at any moment.  Blood is flowing down the streets.  Blood is spattered all over the school walls.  Soldiers are pushing their way into people’s homes, stealing food, forcing women to cook for them, and then grabbing the women and girls into the bedrooms.  They look for pretty girls, like you,” said her Aunty with the Many Sons.

            Kwan Hoong felt the terror that had invaded the city.  Schools were closed.  The market stalls were empty.  Fires burned all around her.  The sounds of screaming and people scurrying surrounded Hoong and MaMa when they walked onto the city streets.  Hoong stared at the babies and children left by the roadside, crying and screaming, “Ma Ma, Ma Ma!”  Her hands were numb from gripping her mother’s hands so hard so as not to lose her. Kwan Hoong tried to hold back the tears brimming from the edges of her beautiful, fish shaped eyes.  The tears collected on her long, thick, black lashes and she wiped them with her sleeves.  Even though she was only a girl, she wanted to be a brave girl, like in the stories of Fa Mu Lan that MaMa told her, not a cry baby.

            “My storefronts are up in flames.  I have lost everything, all the money I earned in the Gold Mountain laundry. Everything gone!  All my hard work gone!”  Grandpa cried, tears flowing down his ruddy cheeks.  “We must move back to the village. Yow fun hui Leng Mee Tuen la. The Village of Two Beauties is a few hours away.  It will be safer there, easier to hide,” he said.  “We must leave quickly.  Just take what you can carry.”  Her mother jumped up.  She always did when her Grandpa spoke.

            “Pack your clothes and what you need.  We will probably live in the countryside for one year so just take what you need for one year,” MaMa said.  So, her two older sisters packed their clothes in a straw suitcase.  “Just take one pot, only one pot is all we need for one year in the countryside,” MaMa said, “We will not stay there forever.” Wing Yuen sounded like a mysterious length of time, but one year seemed acceptable for a four-year-old.

            One year, then two, then three years passed in the little country village.  Kwan Hoong’s father did not return.  He was a Gold Mountain soldier.  He left for the Gold Mountain before Kwan Hoong was born.  Hoong tried to imagine his face at night, as she laid in bed, leaning close against MaMa.  She saw his face before falling asleep.  His face changed each time.  Sometimes he was tall, sometimes he was short, sometimes fat, and sometimes skinny. Always, her BaBa had a friendly smile and open arms.  He was smiling at her tonight in her dream.  Hoong faded into sleep with a smile on her face.

            Hoong told herself a bedtime story.  “In the hills of Taishan near the South China Sea lived a girl named Kwan Hoong, the prettiest girl in the Village of Two Beauties.  She was the youngest daughter in a family of three daughters.  Theirs was a disfavored family because in her village, sons were prized above all else.  She sat on top of a hilltop looking far, far away, as far as she could see. This little girl said to herself, “I wonder how big the world is.”  “I wonder how far away the Land of the Gold Mountain is.”  “I wonder how long it would take to sail there.”  “How long would it take for me to find BaBa?”  “How long would it take for my BaBa to find me?” “Maybe BaBa has forgotten about me.”. “He never saw me even when I first opened my eyes.”  “No, BaBa would never forget his Precious Daughter, his Bo Bui Hoong!”  MaMa always hugged and squeezed her and kissed her at the “Bo Bui” part.  Then they both laughed.  Hoong heard this story so many times she had memorized it.  She told it to herself whenever she wanted to feel happy, imitating the singsongy way MaMa told it.  She always hugged herself at the end, the “Precious Daughter Hoong”, the “Bo Bui Hoong” part, and giggled to herself.

            She had a new story now. “The Japanese soldiers are coming to kill me.  I must hide and smear soot on my face so they cannot see how I look.  With skin as pretty as a porcelain teacup, they will drink me up!”  She repeated this new story to herself before bed and it gave her nightmares.  “You have skin as pretty as a porcelain teacup,” her Aunty with the Four Sons had said, stroking Kwan Hoong’s cheeks, “the Japanese soldiers will eat you up.”  Her MaMa and her Aunty reminded her and her sisters every day to smear ashes on their faces.  “Pretty is not good,” her Aunty said.  MaMa said, “The Japanese soldiers are far away from home.  They are fierce and lonely and angry, so pretty or ugly, old or young, will not matter.”

            MaMa and Lin, sewed every night.  They took the fancy silk clothes her Third Auntie had given them from her dead Auntie’s wedding chest.  The first Third Auntie had died a while ago.  Most of the clothes were in good shape but parts were frayed so they cut the frayed parts off and used the good parts.  Kwan Hoong liked the soft shiny silk scraps and the colorful embroidery. She took a needle and thread and asked MaMa to show her how to thread a needle and she practiced sewing with the old pieces that MaMa and sister Lin cut out.  Kwan Hoong sat close to twelve-year-old Lin to watch.  In and out, in and out, she pulled the needle and thread.  Kwan Hoong copied Lin but poked herself with the second in and out.  Her finger bled and then stung but she didn’t cry.  She wiped it and didn’t tell MaMa.  She wanted to make clothes to sell too.  MaMa and GrandPa’s concubine called this, “Zhou Goo Yi”, and they returned from a day of Zhou Goo Yi, smiling and happy, with the coins they made selling their remade clothes.  

            One morning, MaMa and Lin came upon a village with rice.  They bought the rice with their coins and carried the rice to another village with no rice.  They set up a stall and sold the rice with Lin yelling, “Rice to sell!  Rice to sell! “U mai mai!””  Lin had a clear strong voice and was good at getting a high price.  They scooped out handfuls and sold the rice for more coins then they used to buy it. Lin carried the bag of rice on her back. MaMa said, “Walk slowly if it feels too heavy on your back.”  Lin slowed down her walk.  Carrying the bag of rice on her shoulders made her hump over as she walked so sometimes she stumbled.

            Kwan Hoong said, “MaMa, please let me carry a bag of rice too!”  “U mai mai!  U mai mai!” “Ho ga ten!”  “Rice to sell!  Rice to sell! Very good price!” she yelled in her strongest voice.  “See? I have a loud voice.  I can sell rice too!”  but when MaMa tied a small bag of rice on her shoulder, it kept sliding off and some of the rice spilled.  So, MaMa said, “No, Hoong Niu, you are too small still.”  Kwan Hoong wished she was seven years old already, not just five years old.  She wanted to grow up fast, to be taller, to be stronger.

             MaMa walked all day to the fish pier to buy the salty fish brine with the coins from selling the clothes they made.  MaMa said, “Hom ngui siu hek a ho lik.” and spooned the salty fish juice into the watery rice gruel they ate.  She always fed Kwan Hoong and her eight-year-old sister, San, first because she said they were still growing and needed it.  MaMa fed herself and Lin last and Kwan Hoong noticed they only ate a little bit.  Kwan Hoong spooned another bit of salted fish brine into her watery rice because she remembered that MaMa said that salted fish juice would make her strong.  She really wanted to grow big and strong enough to carry firewood so she could help her MaMa and Lin.

            Kwan Hoong turned seven years old.  MaMa saved her a small, wild, sweet potato she had saved for her special day.  The rice was all gone.  The cabbage was gone.  There were not many more wild sweet potatoes and taro to dig up.  The villagers were hungry and had dug up what little was left and eaten it.  Hoong watched two villagers fighting each other for a small wild taro.  Kwan Hoong felt a piercing ache in her swollen belly so she told herself her favorite story.  “In the hills of Taishan near the South China Sea lived a girl named Kwan Hoong, the prettiest girl in the Village of Two Beauties.  She was the youngest daughter in a family of three daughters.  Theirs was a disfavored family because...”.  Hoong could not finish.  She felt out of breath.  “No, BaBa would never forget his precious Daughter, his Bo Bui Hoong…”  Tonight, Hoong did not hug herself.  Her arms felt heavy and she could not lift them.  Her eyes felt heavy and she could not open them and she could not laugh, so she smiled.

            Tonight, she dreamed. She stood at the fish pier and she had enough coins to buy fresh fish, not just the salty brine.  She spied her BaBa, handsome and tall, stepping off a big ship, waving at her, calling,” Ah Hoong!  Ah Hoong!  My Precious Daughter, Ba Ba has returned!”  “Ba Ba fun li le!”  Her BaBa had returned from the Land of the Gold Mountain and come home from the War. She felt BaBa lift her and swing her up high and put her down on his knee, straighten her braids, and pat her head. He pulled candy from his pocket and she tasted the sweetness as he put it on her tongue.

            Kwan Hoong heard voices. Her GrandMaMa and her Aunty with the Many Sons were whispering.  She thought it strange because they never visited her house.  Kwan Hoong knew her GrandMaMa loved her grandsons best and did not like girls much.  She felt a rough hand on her forehead, not MaMa’s soft touch.  Kwan Hoong felt a bit chilly, a shivering and burning feeling, all at the same time.  She tried to turn around, to get up, to greet them properly, as she knew she should to show that she had manners, but her limbs did not move.  “Her fever has gone on for how long?  Five days?”  “Kiu mm duk-le.”  “Kiu mm duk-le” she heard her GrandMaMa say with a sigh. “Hopeless?”  “Who is hopeless?”  Kwan Hoong wondered.  Then Kwan Hoong smelled bamboo, clean fresh bamboo.  A clean smelling mat of soft bamboo wrapped around her, encircling her, hugging her, like her MaMa’s arms.  She heard her GrandMama and her Aunty say, “Let her go.”  “You must let her go.”  Kwan Hoong’s eyes felt heavy.  “Go where?”  “Who is going?” wondered Kwan Hoong.  She heard MaMa’s voice crying and cooing in her ears.  “My little Hoong, my Hoong-niu.”  She heard MaMa scream.  She felt herself floating up, floating, floating, floating, becoming lighter and lighter, twirling around and around, then coming down and landing.  Moisture, wetness seeped through the bamboo wrap and onto the shirt on her back.  She felt the cool earth.  She smelled the rain in the air and the sweet grasses of the mountainsides, the mountainsides she knew so well, the ones she loved to climb and run up and down every day. She knew.  She knew Baba would come back.  She knew he would come back and love her, like a father would surely love his little Precious Daughter.  

            “My Bo Bui daughter, my Precious Hoong-Niu, run as fast as you can.  Go to that place where you will have rice to eat, many bowls of soft white rice, all the rice and salted fish and meat you want.  May you eat until your belly is full.  Laugh and play and be happy.  MaMa is so sorry she could not feed you and keep you well.”  Kwan Hoong closed her heavy eyes with MaMa’s voice in her ears, and greeted her BaBa with a smile.  “BaBa, I knew you would come.  I just knew you would.”  Kwan Hoong drifted off.  Darkness and silence embraced her. 

Pat…

Pat…

Pat.

            In the hills of Taishan, near the South China Sea, lies a girl named Kwan Hoong, the prettiest girl in the Village of Two Beauties, a girl with skin as translucent as a porcelain tea cup.

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                Cynthia’s father, worked in America, then enlisted in the United States Army and became a teacher of English for Chinese American soldiers at Fort Jackson, the Orderly for the Commander of the 100th Infantry, and a Corporal in Germany and France during WWII.  He was separated from her mother for fifteen years and never met his third daughter, who was born during his absence.  Her two older sisters remained in China under Communist rule until 1979 when Cynthia disputed the paper sons practice.  She presented her case to Senator Edward M .Kennedy’s office and he expedited her petition.  Cynthia’s two sisters and their families entered the U.S.A.  under the category of Humanitarian Parole in the summer of 1979.  It took fifty-eight years for them to enter the U.S.A. after their father  entered the North End of Boston as a boy of twelve in 1921.  Her eldest sister, Yerk Lin Yee, passed the U.S. A. Citizenship exam and became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of 80.

            In 2012, under President Barack Obama’s leadership, the government of the United States of America issued a statement of regret for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882-1943.  The effects of this Exclusionary Act has had reverberations for four generations of Chinese American families.  The War Brides Act of 1945 allowed Chinese wives to join their husbands in America and the formation of Chinese American families began in earnest.

            The practice of wrapping ill daughters, daughters judged as unable to get well, in a bamboo mat and taking them out to the hillsides to die was a common Taishan village practice that was strictly enforced.  It may have served to limit contagion at a time of limited medical care and medicines and also to conserve limited food supplies.  In their patriarchal society it was believed that daughters must not be allowed to die in their homes of origin since they were looked upon as belonging to their future husband’s families.  Two of Cynthia’s girl cousins as well as her Third Sister, Kwan Hoong, were taken out of their homes to die in this way.  Even though the Grandmothers were powerful matriarchs in a village with few men, their cries and tears could not stop this practice.

            Cynthia Yee thanks her writing buddy, Yvonne Ng, her devoted and loyal First Reader.  “Thank you, Yvonne, for being such a fan of my work, your honest no nonsense straight talking critiques, great tips, and recommendations.  You are the kind of cheerleader a friend needs.”

            Cynthia also thanks her eldest sister, Yerk Lin Yee, a left behind daughter who shouldered an Eldest Chinese Daughter’s traditional adult responsibilities while still a child.  Cynthia says,“Thank you for telling me stories of your survival and stamina in helping our family withstand life in a patriarchal society in wartime China.  Your intelligence and hard work helped our mother to endure and be reunited with our father in the U.S.A. under the War Brides Act of 1945, and set the stage for me to be born in Boston and write this story.”

Life from the Viewpoint of a Chinatown Chicken

by Cynthia Yee; to celebrate the Lunar New Year

May Soon Yee (Cynthia’s mother) and Foong Ying Yee (her aunt) preparing dinner at 116 Hudson Street.

          I lay here, all fragrant and dressed in my finery, listening to the sound of joyful chatter and laughter all around me. My head and graceful neck rest neatly by my side; my legs tucked under me with care. Elegance is my middle name. I am the center of a festive occasion. The smell of burning incense swirl around me and a great fuss accompany the aromas. I have never felt this important in all my Chicken Life.

          I was once alive, albeit, some might say, “What kind of Life is that, squawking around, scratching the ground, and pecking at pieces of grain? It was a Life, nevertheless. I ate. I defecated. And I pecked at lesser ones in the yard.

          One day, all that suddenly changed. Packed into a crate with others of my kind and trucked to a place full of squawking birds held in cages, I felt befuddled. Ended were my days of freedom on the farm, walking about, head held high, strutting my stuff. We were crowded into cages of twelve or more. I pecked at the grain in the trough and, of course, at those lesser than me. It was, after all, my nature to do so. On a sunny, snowy, cold, and quite ordinary winter morning, a little girl with shiny, straight black hair came into the place where we stayed. “Six-pound pullet, please.” she said. A hand reached into my cage and grabbed my neck. Off to the inner chambers I went. They slit my throat and drained my blood and then de-feathered me of my beautiful, shiny frock. A powerful spray of water finished me off. I opened my eyes in the cozy darkness of a brown paper bag.

          As she walked, the little girl hugged me close to her chest. She snuggled me closer and tighter. To keep warm, I think. My body, you see, still contained the warmth of Life. I snuggled back. I have never been hugged before in my entire Chicken Life. I felt myself ascending, and then, entering a steamy apartment kitchen where two women greeted us. “Ai Ya! Mai-a-gai la!” they said, in excited voices as if their deep and heartfelt wishes had come true. Popped out of the bag, I looked up into their smiles which spread from ear-to-ear. “Ai wah! Ho leng! Jeck gai, ho leng,” they repeated over and over. They bathed and massaged me with a nice warm salt-water bath. I have never had one before, you see. A bath, that is. Or a massage, for that matter. I giggled to myself, as they rubbed me all over with aromatic bean sauces. Suddenly….Oooo! They tucked a piece of garlic, a scallion, and a piece of tangerine rind inside me. What a strange feeling. Into a wok and onto a rack I went. Hot steam enveloped me…a sauna. Ahhh…Time passed, and before I realized it, I was cooked!

          I rode in on a silver coach…a round, metal pan, and onto a table in front of a large window. Three porcelain bowls filled with rice wine, three pairs of ivory chopsticks, three porcelain spoons, six sticks of incense stuck into a can of sand, a plate of shiny oranges and tangerines, sweet and salty rice cakes, and a slab of roast pork encircled me. They poured the rice wine on the floor, whispering some words I could not quite understand, and made a few cuts, removing one of my wings and placing it with care along my side, keeping me complete. A man and a woman bowed three times in front of me, facing the window and the open sky. They say I am a Special Offering. Wow. The little girl asked, “Why are there three of everything?” “It is for Heaven, Earth, and Man, Tian, Di, Yun” he said, laughing, “It is the Chinese Trinity,” implying it was a silly question. The little girl fingered the porcelain bowls and looked around the table and came around to face me and the open window. “Bow three times. Bow to your Grandmother and Grandfather to bless you,” the woman said. The little girl looked at the sky and looked at me and she bowed three times, just as she was told to do.

          Me, lowly me, a lowly chicken from a dusty farm yard and a dirty cage. Who would ever have guessed such a special importance could be bestowed upon a lowly chicken? Incense perfumed the air as the woman and man chanted good wishes, praise to the gods and Ancestors, and made humble requests for a prosperous year, healthy lives, and obedient children.

          I rode on my silver coach back into the kitchen where the woman chopped me into bite-sized pieces. Put all back together again on a beautiful porcelain plate as good as new, she brought me to a table surrounded by eager and smiling faces. The little girl with the shiny black hair and a boy younger than her, fought over my heart but the girl won, by decision of the elders. “She is older than you by two years. She is your Didi. She should get the heart,“ they said. The little girl deserved respect and deference, they said. So, my heart became her. As a consolation, the boy received my crunchy gizzard and they happily shared my rich, tasty liver between them. With two sticks, they picked up my tail of glistening yellow fat and offered it to a gray-haired man bent over his rice bowl, the oldest person at the table. I thought it was a respectful gesture for their old age because my tail was nice and soft and tasty and easy to chew. My drumsticks and wings went to the children. “May you fly high and strong someday.” the man said. As a sign of courtesy, the men and women offered my dark back pieces to each other, each declining and offering it back, for that meat is considered the choicest. The women picked up the pieces of my sweet graceful neck, deferring the choicer parts to the men. One of the older men offered my white breast to the little girl and boy. He said, “Oh, they are American born children; jook sing children, so they will like the white meat.” and they all laughed, except for the little boy and girl. The children refused. They knew that it was considered tough and dry and therefore the least tasty. They knew only foolish people would choose that.

          Thus, I became part of the family and so energized their work and their studies and blessed their efforts. By so doing, I contributed to the World’s Progress and one family’s hopes and dreams for the future.

The Yee Family having a celebration dinner at their home on Hudson Street.

          The original version was published in the Asian American Resource Workshop Writers Group collection, “Asian Voices from Bean Town” in 2012. It was read at an Asian American Studies class at Suffolk University by invitation of Professor Da Zheng.

          Cynthia has many fond memories of sharing delicious home cooked meals with extended family. She shared meals rich with symbolism at holiday times, like Lunar New Year. Cynthia still tries her best to shop and cook with fresh produce from farmer’s markets and avoids cooking with processed and canned foods. She, however, makes an exception for Chinese wind dried meats, which she buys from traditional Taishan sausage makers in New York and San Francisco. She is always interested in food: its source, growing it, shopping for it, and preparing it from scratch.

          For a child with tropical blood flowing in her veins, the Chinatown chickens who shared their warmth on cold New England winter shopping treks, remain a sweet memory, like an old friend. To them, she says, “Ooo-Deh,” “Dor Jee, “Much thanks.”