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

  In winter, Fong Dun Shung prepared tonics to stave off chills, fever, phlegm, coughs, nausea—symptoms that plagued his countrymen in these snowy mountains. In summer he mixed potions to cool a man’s body when he had suffered heatstroke, or to soothe insect bites or sunburn. All year round he had on hand poultices for cuts, scrapes, abrasions, sprains, broken bones—all those things that endangered the men as they hammered and chiseled and dynamited their way sometimes around the mountains and sometimes straight through them. Creating these mixtures was time-consuming and required his total attention as he selected and ground ingredients, boiled them until they had reduced by half or more, then sealed them in earthenware jars.

  When a man traveled to the Second City of Sacramento or to the Big City of San Francisco, or when a man left this land of hardship forever to return to his home village, he would come to Fong Dun Shung for a dose of spring tonic, for every man wished to be virile when he visited a prostitute or was reunited with his wife. If Fong had been a scholar herbalist instead of a peasant herbalist, he would have given those items that were most linked to male potency—the dried genitalia of male sea lions and seals, dried human placenta, the tail of the red spotted monkey, gum of tortoiseshell, and wild donkey hide. But simple herbs—ginseng, wolfberry, and horny goat weed—were more readily available to him and safer and gentler in action.

  As he ground the ingredients for his spring tonic, he didn’t think about his fate. He did not dwell on his hardships. He did not feel these things or any other emotions. He was an herbalist, trained to observe the world outside himself, and so he did.

  The Chinese in his camp worked twenty-six days out of an American month, from before dawn to dusk. For this they earned twenty-eight or thirty American dollars a month; in their villages they might have earned the equivalent of three to five dollars a month. His countrymen would not eat the food provided by the fan gway, or “white ghosts,” so they bought their own cooking utensils and food. Gang leaders made up orders for shipments from home, and eventually supplies of rice, sweet potatoes, noodles, dried fish and oysters, bamboo shoots, seaweed, salted cabbage, dried mushrooms, peanut oil, and dried fruit would reach them. Throughout the warmer months, traveling Chinese merchants passed through camp, and a man might treat himself to a luxury—a pipe and tobacco, a rice bowl and chopsticks, a toothbrush, an oil lamp.

  He had heard his countrymen commended for their cleanliness and work habits, for the esteem in which they held their families and ancestors, and for their quiet and sedate pastimes. These things were all true. He had seen them with his own eyes. Tang Men were different from the white ghosts who ordered them around. Every day his countrymen took sponge baths. As long as he had been in this camp, Fong had not seen a white ghost take a bath; they smelled rank and putrid from their sweat and the cow meat they ate. Many of the white men indeed became ghosts when their souls left their bodies during the frequent fights they got into at night. Fong had only heard of one Tang Man who had died in a brawl. White men drank a lot and passed out in their own vomit. His countrymen did not drink at all—at least not the fiery liquid that turned the fan gway into fools.

  His countrymen drank tea, boiling the water from mountain streams just as they had boiled the water from cisterns and wells in China for thousands of years. The white man drank straight from those same streams, and Fong often spent days scornfully watching the white doctor as he tried without success to provide relief to a man bent double with stomach cramps, weakening from malaria, or the qi seeping out of him as he died from cholera.

  After Fong’s story, his sons and the other laborers retired to their tents for the night, their bones weary from eating so much bitterness during the day, and with dawn only a few hours away. Fong lingered by the embers and allowed his mind to drift to his home, so far away. He knew that other men liked to talk about their villages—how theirs was the most beautiful or fruitful in the province, how a Sze Yup man was better than a Sam Yup man, how their plentiful sons would look after them when they became esteemed old men. Fong Dun Shung never participated in this banter. Instead he looked up at the stars, which seemed as close as an arm’s reach this high in the mountains, and let his mind travel from light to light across the universe, until he was over his home village of Dimtao and in his old life as a traveling herbalist.

  He dreamed of men who were matter-of-fact about sexual matters. There was no need for embarrassment, for often in these villages the peasants knew how strong a man was, and how happy his wife was, by the number of sons they produced. Those men who had no sons were often pushed forward by their friends. “I need something to make my penis as strong as that of an ox,” a man might request. “My wife longs for the seed to make many healthy sons.” Good-natured joking and teasing accompanied these times as Fong Dun Shung would pretend to ponder the dilemma, scrounging through his vials, jars, and cloth packets with much concerned determination, until he presented with a great flourish the ingredients that, brewed as a tonic, would make his customer’s wife’s visit to the temple at the next New Year’s Festival joyous indeed.

  He dreamed of poor grandmothers, toothless and wizened, who asked for something to cool them. “Cold foods—fruit, vegetables, sliced pork, crab, and fish—will reduce your body heat,” he suggested to those who complained of too much sweat and parched mouths. Then he sold them cooling herbs—gardenia and white peony—to help purge their inner fire, which he knew had not come—as it often did in young men—from an overindulgence in sex, drink, and food. In winter, when the old women had too much interior cold and shivered from fever, headache, vomiting, and body pains, he would say, “Take hot foods—fried, spicy, or those soaked in wine—to heat up and invigorate your body.” For their excessive belching, he gave them cloves.

  Other grandmothers and wives, with bound feet, sent out servant girls or forlorn daughters-in-law to ask for help for their nervous disorders. These were “wood emotions” and would be cured by treating the liver. He ground together the root of Chinese licorice, the fruit of the jujube, and common wheat kernels. “Boil these with water until reduced by one-third. Take one dose, sipping gradually,” he would recommend. He recognized that those red-faced wives who laughed too much and too shrilly had too much fire and their hearts needed to be cooled. These women and their children reminded him of how much he missed his own wife and children; they reminded him of traditions so earthly simple that even naming children was as easy as One, Two, Three.

  He dreamed that he walked back to Dimtao, where the alleys were just wide enough for a wheelbarrow to pass through. He searched among the one-room huts that made up Dimtao for his wife and children. Was his wife well? Was Number One keeping the ancestors’ graves cleaned and performing his other filial duties? And what of Number Four, Fong See?

  In his mind’s eye, Fong Dun Shung passed by older houses with bell-shaped roofs. He remembered telling his sons when they were young that these houses had roofs like a dragon’s back so that when it rained the water would run off quickly, and when it was hot the warmest air would rise up into the roofpeak and keep inhabitants cool. He stepped into his house, which had no windows and no real door. The entrance had swinging bamboo doors—like those of saloons in the white devils’ towns. In his dreams the bamboo was pushed aside, and only the large wooden dowels that slid from one doorjamb to the other, like crosswise jail bars, provided any protection. Fong knew that bad people would be kept out and that the good people of his family would be safe and cool inside. He relished the feel of the hard-packed dirt under the soles of his feet. Inside, the cool brick and high tiled roofs offered a respite from the stultifying heat and humidity.

  On these dreamy nights in the Sierra, he thought of the rain that beat down on his roof on summer days. He could see his youngest son—in his mind still wearing the split pants of a toddler—perched on the high stone threshold of the front door as the rain came down. Each house had a high threshold to show the neighbors that a family was of high standing, and to protec
t the house from the muddy water that swirled over the riverbanks during the annual floods. But it didn’t matter, because—and here Fong smiled to himself—the whole roof leaked and the threshold was the only place to stay dry during even the lightest rain.

  Fong Dun Shung continued his dream walk outside the village to the ricefields—watery pools during planting season, a dull blanket of amber by harvest. Even in his dreaming, he was careful. The raised dirt paths that separated the paddies and the small roadways that led away from Dimtao were purposefully miserable and crooked—sometimes leading nowhere—so that evil spirits wandering the countryside would get lost and not find their wicked way to the village. Sometimes he saw a relative, and would nod his head in greeting. The very name of his village, Dimtao, meant to nod one’s head in greeting. The peasants from his village, all of them Fongs, were good people.

  But what a terrible man he was! Every night his reverie was cut short by this thought, because it was a truth as unchanging as the stars above his head. Each month, the boss doled out Fong’s twenty-eight dollars—the same amount that his second and third sons earned for their back-breaking efforts. The other men in camp set aside a certain amount for gambling, then sent the rest by wire to their wives and families in their home villages. A lucky few gambled and won. Fong Dun Shung always felt sure that he would be one of them, but after each payday he discovered once again that he was not. So when the professional letter writers came through camp, Fong Dun Shung took that opportunity to stroll out to the far end of the line. When his friends gave their dollars to the bank men for an overseas wire, Fong retired to his herbs, saying that his spring tonic required his attention.

  One year slipped into another. Shue-ying, Fong Dun Shung’s wife, sometimes thought that the only way to tell the passing of time was when the monks in the temple to the north banged upon their huge bronze bell in the morning and their deep sounding drum at night to call people to prayer. Days passed, then weeks, months, and years. She thought back to days long gone when acrobatic troupes, magicians, or poets who stopped by the village would often recite a poem: “If you have a daughter, marry her quickly to a traveler to Gold Mountain, for when he gets off the boat, he will bring hundreds of pieces of silver.” But time had drifted away and now that poem changed: “If you have a daughter, do not marry her to a traveler to Gold Mountain, for he will leave her and forget her.” Surely this had happened to Shue-ying, because since her husband and two sons had left, she had heard nothing from them. She did not know whether they were dead or alive; all she knew was that life had been difficult before they had gone to seek their fortunes and now it was even worse.

  She married off her daughter, Lin, to Jun Quak, a man from another village, and would probably never see her again. Her eldest son was wasting away in an old mud house down one of the alleys in the village. He had given his life to the opium pipe, and his duties—caring for the graves of their ancestors, going to the temple, performing the proper rituals of New Year’s—had all been spirited away in the drug’s smoke. He had also stopped selling herbs, and their pitiable income had dwindled to almost nothing.

  Shue-ying. Her name meant “heroine of the snow,” but she had never felt much like a heroine. Her family had been poor, and she had been sold as a small girl. The world knew that her life was not to be one of oiled hair, lovely embroideries and silks, and delicacies laid out for each meal. She had no mother to wrap her feet into “golden lilies.” Instead, Shue-ying had the big-boned feet of a peasant. She was small but strong.

  Strong enough to carry people on her back from village to village. Aiya, these people cackled at her to hurry, to stop bouncing, to walk smoothly over the hard, rich earth as they traveled to make their New Year’s calls, or to attend a funeral or wedding. Sometimes they would rap their knuckles on her shoulder to hurry her along. She would burn with anger and embarrassment. They were peasants, just like she was! But no one would walk if they could ride. For the people of Dimtao she was a cheaper method of transportation than hiring a rickshaw or a sedan chair. For her humiliation and hard work, she would earn a few pieces of cash, enough money for a sack of rice.

  This work—demeaning as it was—meant not only survival for herself, but survival for Fong See, her Number Four son. He’d been nine years old when his father and brothers left for Gam Saan. Shue-ying often wondered what would become of the two of them. She was already married, so no decent man would help her. She was too used-up to become a prostitute in Fatsan or Canton. She hoped that the gods would let her and Fong See slip by unnoticed. Any more bad fortune and they would have to live on the street, living off the generosity of others, passing from house to house with beggars’ bowls in hand.

  By 1870 the transcontinental railroad had been completed, and Fong Dun Shung had opened an herbal emporium, Kwong Tsui Chang, in Sacramento. On the wall of his shop, Fong Dun Shung posted a yellowing newspaper photograph of the golden spike being driven to symbolize the completion of the railroad. He remembered when the bosses had come around, pushing his countrymen aside so that the photograph could be taken. The Men of Tang were not to be in the picture, nor were they to be praised by most of the dignitaries who took the podium that day. Only Crocker acknowledged them: “I wish to call to your minds that the early completion of this railroad we have built has been in large measure due to that poor, despised class of laborers called the Chinese, to the fidelity and industry they have shown.” Fong now knew he should have paid more attention to those words and the lack of them from others that day.

  Fong Dun Shung often thought of those last few days on the railroad—how the men had been filled with excitement as they rushed to be the first team to finish, how once it was over no one knew quite what to do. Some men went home, traveling back along the tracks they had laid. They took with them little more than what they had come with—their Gold Mountain baskets packed with padded jackets, a change of clothes, leather boots. They had money, but many lost it gambling on their ships—their years of toil lost when the button count didn’t come out in their favor too many times in a row.

  Others from his camp went in the opposite direction—east. No one really knew what was there, but, again, they had money in their pockets. Perhaps they might start a laundry or find work on a farm. Still others, hearing about rail projects in Washington and Oregon, went north. But most, like himself, traveled back over the mountains to Sacramento, where a huge land reclamation project offered jobs to men who would work hard for little money.

  There had been no rejoicing, no firecrackers to send these men whom he had cared for over the years on happy, safe, prosperous journeys. Most he never saw again. Some—so he had heard from those who gossiped when they came into his shop on I Street—were truly never heard from again. Some gangs had been taken up box canyons and shot, or left to freeze or to wander until they weakened and were eaten by wild animals. Fong Dun Shung didn’t know that these stories were true, but he didn’t know that they were lies either. He had lived among these white men long enough to know the depth of their hatred.

  After the railroad was completed, he took the little money he had saved and came to Sacramento, where he opened the Kwong Tsui Chang, which meant roughly “Success Peacefully,” down by the railway depot and wharf. Here he was able to continue his occupation as he had since his own father had died. For the first time in Fong Dun Shung’s life, he was earning a good income. Still, he didn’t send money home to Shue-ying and his two sons.

  He used many excuses to explain his behavior to himself: Perhaps they had died. Perhaps they had forgotten him. Perhaps it was best that he spend his money on the sons who were on the Gold Mountain with him. These sons, Fong Lai and Fong Quong, had taken day-labor jobs and earned barely enough to feed, clothe, and house themselves. Fong Dun Shung regretted his lack of respect for his wife. He regretted even more that he had not properly taught his second and third sons the centuries-old art of Chinese medicine. If only he had taught them, he reasoned, they would be able to take fu
ll responsibility for themselves.

  Just as he had during his years on the railroad, Fong Dun Shung tried not to think of these things, but focused instead on the practice of medicine. He still helped men who complained of too much cold or heat, too much dampness or dryness. The only difference between what he had done during the past few years and what he did now was that once again he administered to Chinese women—nearly all of them prostitutes.

  As early as 1854, the Honorable Hy Ye Tung Company had shipped to San Francisco six hundred girls to work as prostitutes. In those early days, peasants worn down by famine, drought, and warfare could sell their daughters in Canton for as little as the equivalent of five U.S. dollars. By 1868 the newspapers referred to this practice as the “importation of females in bulk.” Just as the coolie laborers had signed their lives over to men of little honor for passage to the Gold Mountain, many of these girls—aged twelve to sixteen years—did the same, pressing their thumbprints into contracts they could not read. Although the purchase of any human being had been declared illegal in the United States, this trade flourished virtually unchecked. By the time the railroad was completed, fair-faced girls of quality, bought in Canton for fifty dollars, could bring in as much as one thousand dollars in California; younger girls, or girls already diseased or unattractive, might still be bought for a few dollars and turn a profit of two hundred to eight hundred dollars each.