*****

This is a very readable story of Chinese immigrants, who came to the United States for a lot of different reasons and always for the same reason: opportunity. In this, the Chinese are no different from the millions of immigrants who have made America what it is today.

Ms Chang tells history anecdotally: as stories of individual successes and failures. She reviews many famous cases. Her stories are not filled with special pleading, or ranting condemnations. In her telling, the dignity and worth of Chinese people in America comes through almost of its own.

Ms Chang's accounting is of a profoundly apolitical people, interested primarily in their immediate families and survival in a hostile jungle. Only as a last resort, when pushed "against the wall," the Chinese seek legal and political redress of their grievances. As a people, they are extraordinarily silent in the face of bigotry, such as racism and sexism, and long-suffering when subjected to violence.

As a 2^nd generation Italian living on the margins of a large Taiwanese family, Ms Chang's telling rings true. No doubt about it: everyone is hard-working. Children must go to school, to Chinese school, pass tests and perform, perform, perform. The family is there to help, nay ENSURE that, every child become the maximum possible whatever. Among modern Chinese Americans, that's boys and girls. I was the first or second to go to college in my extended parental family, but my achievements are nothing compared to my totally professional, accomplished and rich Chinese relatives. So, I have succeeded in being the Black Sheep of 2 families.

By her method, Ms Chang is unable to close in on a few points people should know. There is a difference between the Taiwanese, the Chinese and the KMT-Chinese. The "aboriginal" natives of Taiwan, some 500 years ago, were related to the people we call Phillipinos. They were the majority population until the 18^th or 19^th century. During the last 500 years, Chinese people - mostly pirates and fleeing criminals - settled in Taiwan by sailing from the adjacent coast (the city of Fouzhou, Fujian province). Gradually, the Chinese took over Taiwan. While the Manchus asserted sovereignty over Taiwan, the Heavenly City always had a hard time subduing the crooks in Fujian and Taiwan. Taiwanese have a long history of being rambunctious and independent.

In the 1890s, Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese, who renamed it Formosa ("beautiful"). A lot of colonial Chinese managed to get Japanese and, even, Western education under Japanese rule. But, the Chinese culture persisted and even deepened, perhaps in resistance and resentment of the Japanese.

The "aboriginal" Taiwanese never reconciled themselves with the beauties of either Heavenly City, in Beijing or Edo (Tokyo). After World War II, they hoped for independence. (Are we allowed to say THAT word?)

When Chiang Kai-shek led the defeated Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan, he - not the previous residents - declared Taiwan part of China. That declaration was based on his claim that the KMT was the legitimate government of all China. Most unfortunately, driven by Cold War necessity, the United States recognized all of Chiang's claims without thought. Thus, our modern problem. And, as Ms Chang so well describes, the ambivalence and craziness of Taiwan-Chinese families about their status in America.

Despite their accomplishments, their wealth and their skills, the Chinese are sometimes incredibly naive about or, perhaps, ignorant of, their national milieu. This may result from the Chinese walls families build around themselves. It is simply assumed the outside world is barbaric and hostile. Given the long history of war, murder, rape, robbery, slavery, serfdom, dispossession and even genocide to which the Chinese have been subjected, theirs is not an unrealistic assumption.

However, in America, this inner-directedness builds suspicion and hostility, as the Chinese have not integrated very much. In the presence of Chinese, a reasonably perceptive White Man will discern his status as Barbarian. On the other hand, Ms Chang documents the long history of American racism and persecution of the Chinese, which didn't encourage integration. In fact, American hostility to the Chinese started shortly after the first ones came to America. In the light of that history, and their family preferences, it is amazing that today's Chinese people are inter-marrying with many other races in large numbers. In the end, the hostilities are resolved by Chinese-Americans preferring to be just Americans.

I note that the Chinese in China are working on their own space shuttle, their own space station, their own man on the moon, and their own man on Mars. They have the courage, the intelligence, and, above all, the will to do it all. Unless Americans get off their butts right now, the Chinese will probably get to all those places first and last.

It is worth remembering that Latin Americans are mostly Hispanics because Christophe Colombus, an Italian working for the Castilian Queen Isabella, got there first.

The story Ms Chang tells of the American Chinese is convincing, and demonstrates that they and their mainland relatives are capable of great things. Especially for the non-Chinese, this book is worth buying and reading carefully. Uncivilized Barbarians might learn a thing or two, and come to respect their fellow Americans a little more. They might even save their own skins.

June 17, 2004

Last update: 11/02/2007

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