On Gold Mountain Read online

  When it was just Anna May and the boys, they’d play poker, drink, and tell dumb stories. Sometime during the evening, Anna May—dressed in black slacks and black sweater, her bangs just as black as when she’d danced as the slave girl in The Thief of Bagdad—would look over and mutter, “You know, fifty million Chinamen can’t be Wong,” and they’d all laugh as though it were the funniest joke on earth.

  In the summer, the boys ventured even farther afield—camping in Yosemite, Mammoth, and Yellowstone parks. Sometimes they went to San Diego to hunt and fish. Over time, Richard understood how unusual he was, compared to others. Sure, Chong and Gai, Uncle’s sons, were on the tennis team. Sure, Chuen had been in the service and Yun, Chuen’s younger brother, was doing auto shop. These were things Richard could relate to. But in other ways they’d been raised very differently. Uncle had never allowed his sons to join the Boy Scouts, because he didn’t trust uniforms. He hadn’t let them try out for team sports, because he’d grown up with rickshaw races and thought running was low-class. But the biggest discrepancy was that Chuen and Yun had to work, because they were being prepared to take over their father’s business. Uncle’s sons had to work, because they wanted to open their own shop in New Chinatown. Albert Wong worked hardest of all, delivering, bookkeeping, managing property, cutting meat, and shining shoes at the City Market on Saturdays and Sundays. No one really expected Richard to work. He was the family scholar; his parents simply wanted him to go to school, get good grades, putter around the store, and help Benji during the summers.

  During their sojourns, the boys drove all night, all day, never thinking about discrimination or racism, knowing how easy it was to avoid if they chose not to notice it. They encountered trouble only a few times. Upon arriving at the Canadian border, they weren’t allowed to cross, because they had “too much junk in the car.” Driving from Los Angeles to New York City to visit Jong Oy, who’d run off with her military man, they couldn’t get a room because of “who we were.” When they stopped at a public swimming pool to go swimming, they were stumped by a sign that said WHITES ONLY. Unsure about what they counted as, they just left.

  When they weren’t on the road, they hung out, usually in an area next to Uncle’s store in China City, where the boys built model airplanes, amateur radios, and electric gadgets, and repaired furniture. They tinkered with cars in the alley. They’d put away a few beers or maybe some wine—Richard more than the others—and talk. Just as Fong See had reinvented himself over and over again, they too reinvented his story—elaborating, changing, guessing, simply making it up.

  “How do you think my father met your grandmother?” Chuen might ask Richard.

  “He had that underwear factory …”

  “Do you really think that’s how it happened?”

  “You mean that she just walked in and he gave her the job?” Richard asked.

  The guys looked at each other, considering.

  “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “Maybe he met her when he was out selling door-to-door,” Richard suggested. “Maybe she was a customer. You know what I mean? Maybe he was getting a little on the side.”

  “Knowing my dad, I wouldn’t doubt it,” Chuen said.

  “What about your mom?” Richard asked. “Did he really buy her?”

  “I think my father needed a new wife because he wanted more children,” Chuen speculated. “My mother was scared, but he was kind and gentle. When she was five years old, my mother was on her own. She had to scavenge in the garbage for food, because people wouldn’t feed her.”

  “Our mother always wanted to learn how to speak and write English,” Yun might add. “She wanted a teacher to come in, but my father chased him off.”

  The boys thought they were hot stuff with their hair slicked back and their leather jackets, but they never went out with girls. Not ever. In earlier days, Fong See would have found brides for his sons, but now he was too old. Ngon Hung could have met with other mothers to make a match, but she was too loving of her sons to notice that they needed anyone besides her. The boys were so well cared for that they didn’t have a deep desire to look elsewhere. They would have liked to go on dates, but none of them thought they knew how.

  Their sisters and girl cousins seemed to adapt more easily. While the boys roamed the streets, the girls gathered together, climbed up on a bed, and perused magazines for the latest fashions and hair styles. They permed their hair or curled it into flips. They gave each other American names: Jong Oy became Joan. Sumoy wanted to be called Carol, “without an E.”

  The girls seemed better equipped to handle the conflicts between the imperatives of the American world and the strong traditional styles of their home lives, where it was taboo to show any part of their bodies, have ambition, aspire to more than embroidery and motherhood, or show any disrespect for male family members. Perhaps the American school system exposed them to more opportunities than it did their brothers, who were expected to work in the family business after school. Perhaps, because the girls weren’t “working,” they could do their homework. (A father would have scoffed at a son doing homework: “This is just a devious means of wasting time!”) Perhaps, because the girls weren’t uncrating goods in the back alley, they had more exposure to the western customers who came through the store. Choey Lau found a kai ma, or fairy godmother, in a white customer who took her to the opera, the ballet, and the philharmonic. In turn, Leong-shee scolded her daughter, “You should never have been Chinese.” Choey Lau listened to this with equanimity, and later was to claim, “Because of Mrs. Morrison, I got westernized.”

  Her younger sister, Choey Lon, veered away from traditional Anglo cultural manifestations, preferring to sit at her window and listen to the mariachi music that wafted up from nearby bars. When she went shopping, her older sister might select a sedate pink dress. But Choey Lon would opt for, say, white with red stripes; what she really wanted was the one with the glitter and sequins and ruffles like what she saw the Mexican girls wearing on Olvera Street. She also liked to dance. When her family said, “Gee, Lonny, you’ve got rhythm,” she would answer, “Yes, I do, and I’m not afraid to show it.” She experimented with different kinds of food, begging her mother to make tacos and her father to eat them. To all this, Leong-shee just shook her head and said, “I can’t believe you’re from my stomach.”

  For young men, finding a suitable Chinese girl to marry was still difficult. Mothers who had been sold in villages told their sons, “High cheekbones are unlucky.” Fathers, who still longed to return home, spoke frankly to their sons: “Small ears mean a lack of blessing.” Even the old bachelors that every family had around their table, come dinnertime, were requested to advise lovestruck young men: “The world knows that a short underlip means a short life.”

  Interracial relationships were problematic at best. In his book on Los Angeles Chinatown, author Garding Lui tried to explain the perils from the Chinese point of view: “Colored” women were okay, because they were good workers; Mexican girls were bad, because they would bring their families and require too many bedrooms; Japanese girls believed themselves superior. Lui then described an affair between a Chinese man and a white woman. The couple was driving to a picnic in the country, making “dove-eyes” at one another, when a white man stepped up to the car and accused the Chinese man of being a white slaver. The woman interjected, “I have divorced three untrue husbands; I’ve had enough of such guys as you, and now I have a Chinese husband who is kind, and good, and true.” To this, Lui noted, “If that woman had three, or possibly five, husbands who were absolutely worthless and unfaithful ‘guys,’ and then finally met a golden yellow husband who was everything that could be desired; then, boys, give the Chinaman a big hand and don’t be jealous in the matter.”

  This story aside, dating a white girl seemed ludicrous. The younger generation of Chinese men couldn’t muster the unbridled nerve of someone like Fong See. Paradoxically, Chinese girls didn’t seem afraid to date white bo
ys, as long as they could keep the news a secret from their conservative elders. Perhaps this was because Chinese girls were in the enviable (at that time) position of being treated like “China dolls.” White men wanted to go out with Chinese girls; white girls wouldn’t give Chinese men the time of day.

  In this atmosphere of all the things that could be wrong or unlucky, Richard developed a crush on someone who would have been taboo for him in any culture—his half-aunt Sumoy.

  Much of the change that was happening in Los Angeles, and indeed across the country, was the result of the sudden exposure of so many GIs to different countries, especially those in Asia, which until the war had remained relatively unknown. For every horror story told of long, treacherous days in the Pacific, there were countless other tales of the beauty of Hawaii, the simplicity of Japan, the richness of China. It all seemed to come together in California, where the influences of Chinese and Japanese immigrants had melded with the state’s climate and landscape. It should come as no surprise, then, that after the war, the so-called California style of living suddenly took hold, capturing the imagination of the entire country. Everyone desired a palm tree, sunshine, a barbecue. They wanted moon gates, upturned eaves, stonework. Ray See saw these trends and recognized that his time had come.

  He had been griping for years about putting his earnings into the family pot. The way Ray saw it, he alone—with a little help from Bennie—had built the See Manufacturing Company. (Ray totally dismissed Eddy’s participation, because his brother had quit so early into the enterprise.) Ray had started in a little hole-in-the-wall down on Ceres Street where he’d done custom work for Hollywood celebrities and socially prominent families in the west. Later he’d done Monterrey-and Mission-style furniture—heavy stuff with thick arms and simple lines, but easy to sell in Los Angeles. Then he’d expanded again, doing lamp groups and Chinese-modern furniture for Stickley and Prevue right through the war. By that time the factory had moved to Eighteenth Street south of downtown, and covered an entire city block.

  With the combined success of the furniture lines and the war contracts, Ray knew he was at a key juncture in his life. He could step forward and reap the rewards due him, or hold back and stay with the See family. When Morris Markoff, the president of the West Coast Lamp and Shade Manufacturers’ Association and owner of the Marbro Lamp Company, approached Ray with the offer of a partnership, a large capital investment, marketing expertise, and national expansion, Ray made his move. If he broke up the family partnership, then he and Bennie would be free to make their own fortunes. With Ticie gone, Ray felt he could do this with a clear conscience.

  Over several weeks in early 1946, the See siblings met on the mezzanine of the store on Los Angeles Street. The various life choices each of them had made seemed obvious. Ray had decided to live in the white world, where he’d pursued the life of a playboy, with his affairs and high living. He was solidly built, and his face had the fleshy quality of someone accustomed to the good life. His height, at just over six feet, helped to create a presence that the other brothers couldn’t muster. Ironically, of all the sons, Ray was the most faithful to his father’s vision of life in America. He was an entrepreneur through and through.

  Ray’s partner and sidekick, Bennie, was a family man. He dressed simply, in baggy clothes more appropriate for the mess of the factory than for a businessman’s lunch. He didn’t put on airs. Although he had affiliated with Ray, the two families rarely got together. Ming had remained the essence of the eldest Chinese son. He kept one foot firmly planted in the family business, not for any love of Chinese art, but because it was his role. All of his friends were Americans. Eddy’s life, on the other hand, was anchored in Chinatown. Everything about him seemed Chinese, except his wife and son. And Sissee, by marrying Gilbert, had made the most complete decision to live as a Chinese.

  At stake were two businesses: the F. Suie One Company and See Manufacturing. Ming ran the store, but it had been in Sissee’s name since the family had bailed out of the lease on the Wilshire store during the Depression. Eddy, Ray, and Bennie had started the factory, but Eddy hadn’t liked the work. He’d opened Dragon’s Den, but it was closed now, leaving him in the position of being the only one in the family who didn’t have clear ownership of a business. Unfortunately, Eddy didn’t have anything to bargain with.

  Sides were drawn and redrawn. Affiliations were tested; some held, others collapsed. During the loud arguing—which Ray’s daughter, Pollyanne, and Eddy’s son, Richard, remember not for its content but for its vituperativeness—years of angst, resentments, and petty peeves poured out. Old rivalries showed themselves. Instead of bickering over who had the fastest car, the most expensive car, the biggest car, they argued over whether or not the family partnership should be dissolved, and, if so, who should get which business.

  Ray was a formidable force. Eddy, Ray claimed, no longer pulled his weight.

  “But I supported the family through the Depression,” Eddy retorted. “I carried you and your families for five or six years.”

  “That was the Depression,” Ray said. “Those days are gone and we owe you nothing. Bennie and I have an opportunity now, and what happened in the past doesn’t matter.” He sat perched on a stool, one hand tucked into a trouser pocket, a silk handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket of his well-tailored herringbone jacket.

  “I helped start the factory,” Eddy said. “Doesn’t anyone remember that?”

  “Bennie and I are the ones who worked it, who built it up,” Ray said. He took a drag on his cigarette, then continued, “It’s always been ours.”

  “But I had ulcers. I had to take it easy for a while! Now, as soon as I’m sick and not productive, you drop me?”

  “I’m not dropping you. You’re the one who closed Dragon’s Den,” Ray reminded him. “And remember, there’s the store. Why can’t you be partners with Ming?”

  Ming, who had remained silent through most of the discussion, turned to Ray. “Well, I’ve been doing the work in the store for years, while Eddy was showing off with the restaurant. After Dragon’s Den closed, he went back to the factory.”

  “But as an employee!” Eddy snapped. “Why should I have been an employee?”

  But Ming went on, “And Eddy quit. So then he came to work at the store, doing jewelry.” Addressing Eddy directly, Ming said, “I have to say that I don’t see why you think you have the expertise to run the store. You haven’t gone on any buying trips. You haven’t worked with the decorators. You’ve never spent much time with the Hollywood people except to give them dinner. I don’t see why you should be my partner.”

  “You know I could do those things as well as you,” Eddy said, but Ming only shrugged. The store was his by virtue of the fact that he was the eldest son.

  But this exchange gave Eddy something to work with. He did feel that he knew enough to run the store, and in fact he had often chafed at Ming’s arrogance. As the meetings wore on, Eddy went to his sister and said, “I’m the one who should have the store. Ming thinks he’s the big boss, but I could run it better.” When Sissee didn’t respond, he tried a different approach: “I could do what Ray’s doing. I can design. I can get contracts.” She listened to these entreaties, but revealed nothing of her thoughts.

  In another meeting, Eddy, desperately trying to keep his dignity and not get cheated by his brothers, attempted the one argument that he thought they would listen to: “Ma never would have wanted you all to do this. She wanted us to have the family pot so that we would stick together.”

  “Ma’s gone,” Ray said. “And I don’t see any reason why I should be supporting your family.”

  “And I’m asking you again, is this what Ma would have wanted? She always said family’s family and that we had to stay together.”

  Soon after this, Eddy was admitted to the hospital with a severe flare-up of his ulcers. With Eddy out of the way, his siblings decided to make their decision. They gathered once again on the mezzanine of the store.
The brothers and Sissee agreed that if Eddy were there, he would choose to keep the family together. Bennie and Ray agreed to separate. Ming, having listened to Eddy’s argument about what their mother would have wanted, voted to keep the partnership together. That made the vote two for breaking up the partnership against two for staying together. Suddenly the pressure was on Sissee. Here was the surprise that none of them expected. Although Eddy was her favorite brother, Sissee sided with Ray and Bennie. Her vote was less for breaking up the partnership than against what Eddy had told her in their private conversation. In asking for her support in trying to take the store away from Ming, Eddy had alienated Sissee.

  While Eddy recovered in the hospital, the partnership was officially dissolved. Ray and Bennie got the factory; Ming and Sissee kept the store. Eddy got nothing, except a promise that he would always have a place working in the F. Suie One Company. He could keep his table at the front of the store, make jewelry, and repair lamps.

  If it comes as a surprise that Sissee voted against Eddy, what is really astounding is that none of this was ever spoken about. The children only heard rumors, for none of their parents wanted to fully explain their individual roles in the breakup. Nevertheless, Eddy and Stella made certain assumptions. It was obvious that Ray and Bennie were together. Eddy never truly forgave them, but the truth was that he didn’t have to see them every day. It never even crossed Eddy’s and Stella’s minds that Sissee had voted to separate.

  So it was that Ming received the most blame. What possessed Ming to accept it? Affection for Eddy? Love for Sissee? Respect for the relationship between Eddy and Sissee, which, except for this one disagreement, remained extraordinarily close throughout their lives? Or was it the sense that, as the eldest brother, Ming had to try to maintain some semblance of family harmony? For the next fifteen years Ming and Eddy would work side by side. Eddy harbored his resentment and Ming took it, while Sissee continued in her role as the cherished younger sister.