Golden Lotus

Immigration Debates and its role in family dynamic

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006703.html

Koren Men Mail-order Wives

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Korean-men-mail-order-wives-20024.html

My Visit to Chinatown.

Le Sigh

"You find you need China"

Tapping into your communication systems...

...OF laundry lines and resturant chains.

A giant snake rattles above

...Spewing black clouds into your kitchen"

Shes talking about railway cars and trams.

A little history on railways in Chinatown
The Central Pacific Railroad Company was established, and construction of the route East from Sacramento began in 1863. Although the beginning of the effort took place on relatively flat land, labor and financial problems were persistent, resulting in only 50 miles of track being laid in the first two years. Although the company needed over 5,000 workers, it only had 600 on the payroll by 1864.

Chinese labor was suggested, as they had already helped build the California Central Railroad, the railroad from Sacramento to Marysville and the San Jose Railway. Originally thought to be too small to complete such a momentous task, Charles Crocker of Central Pacific pointed out, "the Chinese made the Great Wall, didn't they?"

The first Chinese were hired in 1865 [sic] at approximately $28 per month to do the very dangerous work of blasting and laying ties over the treacherous terrain of the high Sierras. They lived in simply dwellings and cooked their own meals, often consisting of fish, dried oysters and fruit, mushrooms and seaweed.

The meager provisions and sentiments of once belong -

"...Fermented roots, Mah-Jong Tiles and firecrackers..."

In order to speak on the displacement that the Chinese immigrants must have felt in an isolated and ordained living area, instead of exploring the language and transportation barriers, I find displacement in the commercialization of the culture.'

Here is an official quote from "sanfranciscochinatown.com" the hub of all things Chinese in terms of culture and history.

"Ross Alley is the oldest alley in San Francisco. It was known for brothels and gambling. Today, it is home to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory and murals depicting the everyday life of the Chinese American community"

This is what it has become. Fortune cookies and brothels. I sure, Ross Alley being the oldest alley and San Francisco, that there should be some history of settlement, laying tracks, displacement during camps. Instead, San Francisco chooses to comodify a culture.

Mah Jong:
Mahjong (Chinese: 麻將; pinyin: má jiàng) is a game that originated in China, commonly played by four players (with some three-player variations found in Korea and Japan). Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy and calculation and involves a certain degree of chance
One of the myths of the origin of mahjong suggests that Confucius,[1] the Chinese philosopher, developed the game in about 500 BC. This assertion is likely to be apocryphal. According to this myth, the appearance of the game in the various Chinese states coincided with Confucius' travels at the time he was teaching his new doctrines. The three dragon (cardinal) tiles also agree with the three cardinal virtues bequeathed by Confucius. Hóng Zhōng (紅中 , red middle), Fā Cái (發財 , prosperity), and Bái Ban (白板 , white board) represent benevolence, sincerity, and filial piety, respectively.

Fireworks: Bamboo stems filled with gunpowder that were burnt to create small explosions were once used in ancient China to drive away evil spirits. In modern times, this method has eventually evolved into the use of firecrackers during the festive season. Firecrackers are usually strung on a long fused string so it can be hung down. Each firecracker is rolled up in red papers, as red is auspicious, with gunpowder in its core. Once ignited, the firecracker lets out a loud popping noise and, as they are usually strung together by the hundreds, the firecrackers are known for their deafening explosions that are thought to scare away evil spirits. The burning of firecrackers also signifies a joyful time of year and has become an integral aspect of Chinese New Year celebrations.

...Swarmed with others to inundate the shore.

From the "Alta California" (San Francisco Newspaper in the 1850s)
"Rising with a tide of locusts,
She swarmed with others
to inundate another shore.
In America..."

The California Gold Rush began in January 1848 when carpenter James Marshall discovered gold at John Sutter’s lumber mill on the American River at Coloma. As news spread of the discovery, the ensuing gold rush led to an influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from every corner of the world.

The Naturalization Act of 1870 restricted all immigration into the U.S. to only "white persons and persons of African descent," meaning that all Chinese were placed in a different category, a category that placed them as ineligible for citizenship from that time till 1943. Also, this law was the first significant bar on free immigration in American history, making the Chinese the only culture to be prohibited to freely migrate to the United States for a time. Even before the act of 1870, Congress had passed a law forbidding American vessels to transport Chinese immigrants to the U.S. The reason behind the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was to prevent an excess of cheap labor.

Foot Binding: The Arc Of their Movements as Dormant as a willow

"....they Gathered Patience;
learning to walk in shoes
the size of teacups,
without breaking..."

Millions of Chinese women before 1912 (and privately after the banning) found suffering the path towards beauty in feet-binding practices. Binding their feet to turn them into prized "Three-inch golden Lotuses"

Bound fee was a status symbol, and the only way for women to marry into money. But this process is not as beautiful as tradition may suggest.

Foot binding woman, Zhou Guizhen (86 yo) says "I regret binding my feet. I can't dance. I cant move properly. I regret it a lot."

So exactly what is foot binding? In a nutshell it was an attempt to stop the growth of the feet. It usually began somewhere between the ages of four and seven.

A bandage, ten feet long and two inches wide was wrapped tightly around thc foot, forcing the four small toes under the sole of the foot. This made the feet narrower but at the same time it made the feet shorter because it also forced the big toe and the heel closer together by bowing the arch of the foot. The bandage was tightened each day and the girl was put into progressively smaller and smaller sized shoes. The entire process usually took about two years at the end of which the feet were essentially dead, useless.

The feet had to be washed and manicured on a daily basis. If they weren't manicured properly the toe nails could cut into the instep and infection could set in. If the bindings were too tight they could cut off circulation which could lead to gangrene and blood poisoning. The feet had to be massaged and given hot and cold compresses to help relieve the pain and help improve circulation. corns would develop on the toes that were bent under and would have to be cut off with a knife.

With the lack of circulation flesh would rot and fall off and sometimes the toes would ooze pus. The pain was said to have been excruciating especially if this process was begun at a later age. The ideal foot would fit into a shoe only three to four inches long. A Chinese saying says, "Every pair of small feet costs a bath (kang) of tears". It is difficult to imagine the suffering that these women had to endure.

And still today Foot binding, though taboo, is a part of fashion, and subsequently still an emblem of art and Beauty. In London Fashion Week Aminaka Witmore designs foot-binding reminiscent designs.

Jade, a Symbolic Link Between Man and the Spiritual World

Jade―
the stone that in the far fields
could moisten the dry season,
could make men move mountains
for the healing green of the inner hills
glistening like slices of winter melon.
From "Lost Sister"

"stone of Heaven" is a term used by the Chinese to describe what they view as the most precious of gems -Jade.

The use of carved jade has been a part of Chnese society for more than 6000 years.

To the ancient Chinese, Jade embodies qualities of nobility, perfection, constancy and immortality.

Jade in China is seen as containing properties that promote good health, good luck and protection.

Produced through the natural forces of mountains and riverbeds.

Eternal symbol of ancient civilization and divinity.

Poem Imagery Series

As I am reading "Lost Sister" I realize that I recognize all the words. I read the poem through and found superficial meaning: distance, displacement, nostalgia, comparision, a search for middle ground. But the true feeling of disconnection comes from my exploration of her verbal imagery in the poem.

The next series of blogs will explore further the imagery of Traditional Chinese pastoral and objects discussed as well as San Francisco "China Town Life"

Imagery

Definition of Imagery Poems

Imagery Poems draw the reader into poetic experiences by touching on the images and
senses which the reader already knows. The use of images in this type of poetry serves to intensify the impact of the work.

O'Keeffe's Painting that Inspired Chapter Divisions

"The Black Iris" 1926
"Sunflowers"
"Orchids" 1923
"Red Poppy"
"White Trumpet Flower" (1932)
O'Keeffe's Flower Paintings suggest the kind of synthesis underlying Songs response to the painter's work as a whole and operating in her poetry as a whole. O'Keeffe's oversize, large canvas flowers contradict ideas of delicacy, tenderness, modesty, shyness, etc, associated with flowers. The flowers are also with brilliant tints and finely nuanced tones, often soft or velvety textures and colors which are consistent with "woman as flower" image. The flowers are "radically conservative, a balance [that is] fundamental to the painter's creativity and personal vision" says Song.

Inteverview: By Gale K. Fujita-Sato '"Third World" as Place and Paradign in Cathy Song's Picture Bride"

Picture bride furnishes a rich text for the study of relationships among ethnicity, culture and writing. Picture Bride can be read as a Personal history and a paradigm for analysing multicultural writing.

Insights from this interview between Song and Fujita-Sato:
"["Picture bride"] concern[s] marriage, motherhood, traditional women's roles in both Asian and American society...images of women in art and the nature of artistic creation."

"Picture Bride recreates as plenitude for the reader's consumption; it is a feast of pit cures colored by the particularities of [my] experience"

"PB is less about arranged marriage per se than a meditation on how to acquire knowledge of the past."

"poems [should] trace an event or idea back to a point of origin"

Fujita notices the the anthology refers explicits to a socio-historical phenomenon buy says more about interpretation and imagination of events.The section titles , borrowed from paintings, suggest an emphasis on creation and expressive forms, but in some sections te poems grouped under these titles emphasize socio-histirical concretes.

Cathy feels "The organization of the book...presents a structure of crossing categories or a structure of pluralism and synthesis."

"Blue and White Lines" is about the limits defining a speaker. (on why it is spoken in voice of G. O'Keeffe)

In literature, especially in "lines" she finds writing as "a perceptive, sensitive and serious rendition of the visitors point of view"

"[balance is] fundamental to the painter's creativity and personal vision"

On her inspiration writing the anthology, she speaks of the impact of the book "Georgia O'Keeffe" appearing soon after she transferred to Wesley "All the O'Keeffe poems in Picture Bride sprang from this encounter."

Her work and writing is about discovery, and the "pluralistic underpinnings of societies shaped by different cultures and ethnicies"a survey of her personal stories and the retelling of images and ideas through words. To acquire knowledge of the past and retell it.

In a shorter interview she says it is "very important" that she continues to write, for her 'children" ... "especially for [my] daugther." Writing uncovers, reminds, and remembers the vital points of our past and explores through response and analysis, how it shapes us.

Picture Bride

How do you leave all that shelters and all that guides for the unknown? When a universe of people and objects are necessary for survival, what come along on the journey. Does a picture say 1,000 words, or still does the distance make lovers strange? Cathy Song writes "Picture Bride" And explores this journey through the eyes of her 23-year old grandmother, a Korean Mail order Bride.

Picture Bride

She was a year younger
than I,
twenty-three when she left Korea.
Did she simply close
the door of her father's house
and walk away. And
was it a long way
through the tailor shops of Pusan
to the wharf where the boat
waited to take her to an island
whose name she had
only recently learned,
on whose shore
a man waited,
turning her photograph
to the light when the lanterns
in the camp outside
Waialua Sugar Mill were lit
and the inside of his room
grew luminous
from the wings of moths
migrating out of the cane stalks?
What things did my grandmother
take with her? and when
she arrived to look
into the face of the stranger
who was her husband,
thirteen years older than she,
did she politely untie
the silk bow of her jacket,
her tent-shaped dress
filling with the dry wind
that blew from the surrounding fields
where the men were burning the cane?

Cathy Song, Biographical Information

Song graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in 1977 and from Boston University in 1981 with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. She currently resides in Kahala, Hawaii.

Cathy-Lynn Song was the middle of three children of Andrew and Ella Song, born in 1955. Andrew Song was a second-generation Korean American whose father had come to Hawaii with the first wave of Korean laborers. His wife came later as a "picture bride," a bride whose marriage was arranged through the exchange of photographs.

Song traveled from Hawaii to Boston to attend Wellesley College, where she earned her bachelor's degree in English literature in 1977. She went on to earn a master's in creative writing at Boston University in 1981. It was while in Boston that Song was influenced by her second strong mentor, Kathleen Spivack.

Cathy has 3 children : 2 sons and a daughter. Her father was a pilot, allowing Song and her family to travel often.

Song's Works:
Picture Bride (1982)
Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988)
School Figures (1991)
The Land of Bliss (2001)
Cloud Moving Hands (2007)

Searching for Being and Belonging

Cathy Song is my choice Poet for the quarter because she is a woman who, at once, shares a since of longing -for history, for truths, and a woman who want to follow the journey for ancestors and relatives past to define her place and her direction, that I posses.Yet we are so different.

Cathy Song and I do not share similar ethnicity or upbringing. I am a 20 year old girl of mixed heritage, with a large family. Cathy is Hawaiian, but of Chinese and Korean ancestory, from a small family. Her father was a pilot, mine a track coach. Her husband, a doctor. I do not have a husband. She drives a Volvo, and I am on a poetic and literal journey to get my licence. However, Cathy, like myself, finds truth in stories told around a dinner table, in a Pall-Mall-Red-smoke-filled den, or in pictures, silent but pulsing with stories and insights waiting to be excavated.

I will focus on "Lost Sister" from her collection of Poetry entitled "Picture Bride" (1982)
1
In China,
even the peasants
named their first daughters
Jade―
the stone that in the far fields
could moisten the dry season,
could make men move mountains
for the healing green of the inner hills
glistening like slices of winter melon.
And the daughters were grateful:
They never left home.
To move freely was a luxury
stolen from them at birth.
Instead, they gathered patience;
learning to walk in shoes
the size of teacups,
without breaking―
the arc of their movements
as dormant as the rooted willow,
as redundant as the farmyard hens.
But they traveled far
in surviving,
learning to stretch the family rice,
to quiet the demons,
the noisy stomachs.

2
There is a sister
across the ocean,
who relinquished her name,
diluting jade green
with the blue of the Pacific.
Rising with a tide of locusts,
she swarmed with others
to inundate another shore.
In America,
there are many roads
and women can stride along with men.
But in another wilderness,
the possibilities,
the loneliness,
can strangulate like jungle vines.
The meager provisions and sentiments
of once belonging―
fermented roots, Mah-Jong tiles and firecrackers―set but
a flimsy household
in a forest of nightless cities.
A giant snake rattles above,
spewing black clouds into your kitchen.
Dough-faced landlords
slip in and out of your keyholes,
making claims you don't understand,
tapping into your communication systems
of laundry lines and restaurant chains.
You find you need China:
your one fragile identification,
a jade link
handcuffed to your wrist.
You remember your mother
who walked for centuries,
footless―
and like her,
you have left no footprints,
but only because
there is an ocean in between,
the unremitting space of your rebellion.


Lost sister stood out to me because of it's title. I have a lost sister. I lost her in 2001. Her life was interesting. She graduated from HS at 16, attended UCLA. On the surface she lived a normal life. But her soul was experimental and adventurous. She broke the rules of our raising, and set out her own trail. Traveled by herself, married a very much older man. Was the first sister to leave the nest and chose her path rather than following what our parents prescribed as appropriate and acceptable. She journied fast, and left us with photos, letters and questions of who she was when she was blazing the trail that led her away from tradition and acceptable eldest daughter ideals of marriage, education and occupation. I am sure, Like in "Lost Sister" in her sheltered raising she sought freedom and exploration and in her liberation she clung to fragments of a familial rock, static-laden phone calls and sleepless nights -up staring at pictures of a family she barely knew. In her liberation she sought a middle ground.