On Gold Mountain Read online

  Yet for all of his anxiety, Fong See could only offer his wife comforting words. He had to trust his father to save her from death. Ticie was vaguely aware of Fong Dun Shung as he hovered over her, murmuring soothing words in a language she didn’t understand. He fought for her life when she herself had ceased to care.

  She was riveted by the sensation of burning followed by numbness as Fong Dun Shung placed a cloth soaked in herbs across her chest and another across her face. She experienced a brief sensation of coolness as her skin met the open air, followed immediately by the crazy, incessant itching of the smallpox, followed by the taming poultice. Time and time again, she thought she would fly out of her skin even as he held on to her hands and spoke softly.

  Fong Dun Shung prepared different medicines for each stage of her illness: sheng ma geng tang to release the muscles during the fever stage; sheng ji da biao tang for the rash; xin xue zhu jiang tang, with its active ingredient of silkworms, for the suppurant stage; hui jiang tang for crust forming; and gu ben xioa du tang for crust loosening. He also brewed teas to restore her overall well-being, including xi jiao di huang tang with rhinoceros horn—which was known to clear heat, relieve fire toxins, cool the blood, nourish the yin, dispel blood stasis, and stop bleeding—and bao yuan tang, the oldest smallpox remedy, which strengthened the qi, her life energy.

  Ticie gradually recovered but remained shaky. Every day Fong Dun Shung and Shueying walked her to the outskirts of the village and back to build up her strength.

  “You are our true daughter-in-law,” Fong Dun Shung said in his halting English. Shueying rattled something in her cackling voice. Fong Dun Shung nodded, then translated, “She say you are Number One wife, not Number Two. She tell Number Four—only one wife, you. He listen. Do what mother say.”

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done.” They were such formal words for what she felt. Her in-laws had embraced her and the boys. They had harangued their son about this wife thing. They had given her back life itself.

  Her father-in-law smiled. “Be careful. Go slow. You still weak.”

  With Ticie well, Fong See—perhaps realizing how close he had come to losing her—insisted on having a formal photographic portrait taken of his family. Ticie thought she was strong enough to get herself and the children ready, but once she had them dressed in long gowns and embroidered caps and shoes, fatigue settled over her. She was too weak to put up her hair in her customary style, so Shueying pulled the auburn tresses back into a severe Chinese bun at the nape of her neck. Then her motherin-law helped Ticie into an embroidered skirt with thousands of miniature pleats, and fastened the frogs of the silk jacket.

  Fong See, attired in a mandarin robe, already posed regally in a carved chair before the photographer. Ticie sat nearby, her hand resting on a decorative table that stood between them. The photographer placed the children next to them. Ticie tried to focus on the table’s mother-of-pearl inlay and the incongruous objects that lay upon it—the covered teacup, the opium pipe with the tassel hanging from its stem, the stack of joss paper, the western-style clock—but the effort seemed too great for her. It seemed, in that captured moment, that she was hardly in her body at all.

  Fong Yun, Number Five, understood that he was fortunate. Fong See had been sending money home for years, always saying that he wanted Fong Yun to have a good education. “Every family should have a scholar,” his brother often wrote through the letter writer. “This will bring us honor.” No one ever spoke of Imperial examinations or the life of a true scholar. They just wanted Fong Yun to be able to read, write, and do sums.

  But even with education, what opportunity did he have? In 1895, when he was twenty, he married a no-name girl from Low Tin village. She assumed the name Leung-shee—simply meaning that she was a married woman from the Leung clan. The following year, Fong Yun went to Guilin to work for a cousin who owned a distillery. He did paperwork and managing. He met the mayor. He thought he was doing well. Then one day he was told to go to a certain mountain to pray to Buddha. People said, “That is a great place to go,” and so he went.

  As Yun traveled by sedan chair, he watched laborers gathering mountain grass to stoke the fire in the distillery. He traveled a long way, up and up, but no matter how far he went, people still cut the grass and carried their oversized loads back down the mountain. “This is a hard life,” Fong Yun said, his voice surprising him in the confines of the sedan chair. He stared at those people and felt pity for them. He said, “I cannot stay here any longer. I will go to the Gold Mountain.” But he was alone and no one heard him.

  When Number Four first returned to the village, Fong Yun said, “Take me with you to Lo Sang.”

  His brother shook his head. “The Gold Mountain is a very bad place. It has bad gambling. It has bad women. It is very wicked.”

  Fong Yun asked many times, but always his brother refused him. “I am worried that if I bring you to the Gold Mountain you will do all those bad things.”

  During the following weeks, Fong Yun watched as his brother met with families and walked away with his stomach full of teas and sweetmeats and his hands full of family heirlooms. Fong Yun wondered at the people who lived in the Gold Mountain. What could they want with these peasant goods—the ceramic pieces, the wooden carts, the musical instruments? Yun followed his brother to Fatsan and watched as he negotiated to export baskets, paper goods, fireworks, pottery, and furniture.

  Yun was young but not stupid. He realized that the way to go to the Gold Mountain was to make himself indispensable. He bought a manual for traders. He could not read the English words, but in one column the editors had placed Chinese characters that phonetically duplicated the English. He started at lesson one: An ox. My ox. Is it an ox? Is it? Is it an ox? No ox. Is so. Is it so? No. Fong Yun practiced phrases: He is a man of his word. That is just what I want. Cock-fighting is mean and cruel. Other things he couldn’t understand. Don’t swallow stones. What did this mean? Was it some foreign-devil habit? Was it a proverb? He couldn’t tell. He also pondered at great length the eighty-three entries under “female.” Adjutrix, administrix, adulteress, amazon, authoress, baroness, begum, belle, bridesmaid, canoness, chaste woman, concubine, countess, cully-lady, dame, damsel, daughter, dignified woman, dissolute woman, doctoress. The list made his head swim. Washerwoman, wench, whore.

  He mastered commercial words for annual income, assets, auction, treaties, tariffs. He learned the rules relating to passengers, luggage, and dutyfree goods. He scanned the duty lists for bamboo ware, tin bangles, baskets, clothing, and confectioneries. He memorized duties reported from the U.S. Custom House: chinaware, 55 percent; jewelry, 25 percent; silk, 25 percent. Each of these he reported to his brother. Together they worked out amounts on the abacus to see if these items could still be profitable after packing and shipping costs.

  Fong See said he admired Ming furniture. Yun accompanied his brother to furniture factories and antique shops. Yun watched as Fong See bargained for items for the store, as well as big rosewood armoires and a long, rectangular table in hung-mou wood—both in the Ming style—as belated wedding presents for Ticie.

  Eventually, Ticie joined them on these excursions. Fong Yun listened as Fong See and his wife learned about ceramics and porcelains. Together they looked at ceramic monochromes, ding yaos and powder-blues from the north. From the Ming Dynasty, they studied the brushstrokes of the blue-and-whites—the quality, the refinement, the depth of the cobalt blue in contrast to the white clay. In the south, they bought polychromes—the overglazed enamels of the Ch’ing period. From the T’ang Dynasty, they bought figurines of camels, horses, acrobats, female courtesans, and sages. (When the originals seemed too expensive, they bought reproductions, which Fong See said could be artificially aged without difficulty.) In time they learned to seek out grave robbers who could provide them with tomb figures, porcelains, and ritual bronzes.

  At every stop Ticie asked questions. “How do I know this bowl is good? What should I look for?” Bec
ause she was asking, a merchant would answer and they would all learn. “You look at the whiteness of the paste, the whiteness of the clay, the thickness of the sides of the bowl. The thinner the clay, the better the quality of the piece. We use the finest kaolin clay—pure white, with particles that are very fine. A piece made from clay of this quality will have much strength.” The merchant might escort them outside, then say, “Hold this bowl up to the light. See how it has a perfect silhouette? See how the light glows through the porcelain? These elements show you that the piece is good.”

  Ticie made inquiries even when they visited peasant factories. At each place she was respectful, and the men answered as though she were the Empress herself. “There is no tensile strength in these pieces,” a craftsman might venture. “They are of common clay.” Or, “Some people say our work is clumsy and thick. But this is an inspired piece. Yes, it is true this jar is only used for oil, but when the potter held his hands to the clay, it came up to greet him.”

  They learned how glazes were applied, how a craftsman achieved the finest results in his powder-blues from sprinkling a thin dusting of powder onto a clear glaze. They learned what to look for in sang de boeuf pieces, and about all the accidents that would happen when a large draft of air was forced into the kiln and the flares caused drips to oxidize in blazes of purple and blue. That happenstance, that intentional accident, was highly prized. It created art, made value.

  At the end of his year-long visit, Fong See told his younger brother, “I need a person who is educated to work for me. I will not depend on a stranger. You are family. If you are willing to be honest and loyal, I will bring you to Lo Sang.”

  “Of course, brother,” Fong Yun said.

  In September 1902, Fong See and his family left China on the SS Korea for the month-long voyage to San Francisco. Yun said good-bye to his wife, Leung-shee, and traveled to Hong Kong, where his father set him up in a temporary “branch” of Kwong Tsui Shang, Fong Dun Shung’s old business, selling ginseng and herbs. This, combined with a fictional interest in the F. Suie One Company dating from 1896, established Fong Yun’s merchant status.

  CHAPTER 5

  IMMIGRATION

  1902–13

  THE See family arrived in San Francisco in late 1902. Fong See stood out from the mass of Chinese immigrants; his wife was a white woman, and their children were American citizens. This, combined with the family’s obvious wealth, meant that their interrogations were perfunctory. Within hours the family was processed and on its way to Los Angeles. Once again they settled into the store on Main Street, where each day new merchandise arrived from the Far East. Fong See’s workers occupied themselves prying open crates and removing excelsior and rice-scrap wrappings to reveal new surprises. With so much stock on hand, Fong See began to think of ways to expand to meet the needs of an ever-changing and growing city.

  Downtown Los Angeles may have still been rough-and-tumble, but all around the outskirts, residents were beginning to bask in their wondrous luck. Contented farmers watched as heavy bunches of grapes strained at the vines. Row after row of lemon, lime, and the ubiquitous orange trees filled the air with their intoxicating scents, and served as the most eloquent advertisement for Southern California. The land was so rich, it was said, that farmers grew cabbages as large as toddlers and watermelons heavier than men.

  At the seashore, bathing beauties basked in long woolen costumes. To the east lay the dreamy town of Pasadena, where wealthy easterners came to winter. They loved to have fun. They formed their own riding club and rode to hounds. For New Year’s, they raided each other’s yards and thrashed through the Arroyo, where they swooped up armfuls of roses, geraniums, poinsettias, bougainvillaea, pampas grass plumes, and the feathery branches of the California pepper tree. They decorated every carriage, ranch wagon, buggy, and tallyho in garlands, wreaths, bunting and a profusion of flowers for the annual New Year’s Day parade.

  Fong See and Ticie saw Pasadena as the logical place for another branch of the F. Suie One Company. The town’s citizens had the three things that the Sees needed to be successful. They were rich. They were sophisticated. And, since most of them had come from the East, they weren’t leery of doing business with a Chinese.

  In December 1903, just two months after the birth of their third son, Bennie (Ming Loy), the Sees opened a store in Pasadena, on South Raymond Avenue across from the Green Hotel. At first, customers may have been set at ease by Ticie’s white, matronly presence. As time went on, they came back to see Fong See. To spend an afternoon with him was an adventure.

  With three children, two stores, and an active auction business on the side, Fong See required more help. On January 3, 1904, Fong Yun and his older brother Quong arrived in San Francisco Bay on the Coptic. Unlike Fong See and his family, the brothers were detained and treated as common immigrants—just two members of a nameless “horde” of Chinese that the United States was determined to keep out. The inspectors made thorough physical examinations of both men, matching Quong to his original exit file and noting that Fong Yun had a small mole on his forehead, small pockmarks on his neck, and a large amount of hair on his legs.

  Two days later, Yun’s interrogation began aboard ship. Yun, through an interpreter, described his education, how his father had bought stock for him in the F. Suie One Company when he was just a boy, and how he had worked in Hong Kong in a business, the Kwong Tsui Chang, that was “virtually” his. After just thirty-four questions, Inspector Ward Thompson wrote, “I have the honor to report that this applicant in no way controverts the statements set forth in his certificate and that his appearance and conduct are consistent with his claims.”

  Things didn’t go as smoothly for Fong Quong, who, like Fong See, arrived with the status of “returning merchant.” Over the next several weeks, immigration officials would use money, intimidation, and time to elicit the information they wanted. Quong’s first interview also took place aboard the Coptic before Inspector J. Lynch, interpreter H. Eca Da Silva, and a stenographer. Fong Quong was as much of a human being—with desires, dreams, and weaknesses—as the men who sat across from him, yet they toyed with his future as though they were gods on Mount Olympus.

  Inspector Lynch was suspicious from the start. He began with easy questions—What is your name? How old are you? Where were you born?—then quickly progressed to Quong’s alleged business interests in this country, querying him on his status at the Suie On firm in Sacramento.

  “In what Chinese year did you first become a member of that firm?”

  “I think it was my seventeenth year,” Quong answered nervously.

  “How much stock is carried in your Los Angeles store?”

  Fong Quong, who had never been to Los Angeles, answered, “About twelve thousand dollars.”

  “Did your firm manufacture anything at the Sacramento store before you went to China?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Do you know if they manufacture anything in Los Angeles?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t it a fact that your firm manufactured ladies’ underwear in your store in Sacramento?”

  “I misunderstood,” Quong said. “We employ people to do the work on the underwear. The partners do not take a hand in it.”

  Inspector Lynch was far from satisfied. He asked Quong to give the names of “white men” who could vouch for him. Quong—frightened and humiliated—dredged through his memory and came up with the names of Luce, Acock, and Davis. After giving this information, Quong was transferred to the dilapidated warehouse on the Pacific Mail steamship line’s wharf, which had been turned into a processing station after Exclusion. Every morning Fong Quong awoke to increasing feelings of fear, frustration, and uncertainty. But he could only wait.

  A week later, Mr. Lynch wrote to Charles Mehan, the Chinese Inspector in Charge, that he had traveled to Sacramento and personally examined the white witnesses, except for Mr. Luce, who had died some three years before. Mr. Lynch deemed these interviews “wor
thless.” Mr. Mehan, in turn, wrote Mr. Putnam, the Los Angeles Chinese Inspector in Charge, to “please cause an investigation to be made in the case.”

  On January 16, the very day that Yun arrived in Los Angeles, Fong See was sworn in to testify in the matter of Quong. Fong See described his own past—his birth, the housework and peddling he had done in Sacramento, the partners in his firm, the location of each of his stores. At this last bit, Inspector Putnam seemed to brighten.

  “Have you an interest in any other store?” he asked smoothly.

  “Yes, I got one at Pasadena just opened,” Fong See responded.

  “Didn’t you have a store last summer on Fourth Street in this city?”

  “Yes, I had one there where I auctioned goods every day.”

  “Didn’t you have a store in Long Beach last summer?”

  “Yes.”

  Finally, Mr. Putnam got to the crux of the matter. “What white men are there who know Fong Quong owned an interest in the firm of Suie On while at Sacramento?”

  “That is a long time ago. The old fellows nearly all died, and I don’t know,” Fong See shrugged.

  Putnam queried Fong See on the dry goods man, Mr. Davis, the tombstone man, Mr. Luce, and finally Mr. Acock. “What is his business?”

  Even Fong See was unnerved by this relentless questioning about people whom he hadn’t seen in six years. “I don’t know if he did any business at all,” Fong See answered, his English faltering. “Don’t know what he did, but sometimes real estate, and something else. I did not see enough; he old man.”