Bone by Fae Myenne Ng: Death of the American Dream in San Francisco's Chinatown

    San Francisco’s Chinatown has been known for its bustling environment, multiple tourist spots, and large Chinese population. But what is beneath the surface of red lanterns and cobblestone streets? There is a long history of injustice and suffering by the group who immigrated to the United States in hopes of a better future for themselves and their families. Most were met with demeaning labels, discriminatory immigration laws, laborious work, and life and relationships full of toil, as described in Fae Myenne Ng’s novel, Bone. There were countless occasions of being used by the government and various privileged groups in America for personal gain at the expense of the Chinese, who offered their labor and their resolve to work hard for a better life that they were determined to have and provide for their children. Furthermore, after climbing up the ladder of social-economic status in the late 20th century amongst lessening immigration policies and an influx of educated Asian immigrants, more labels of being the “model minority” and false accounts of their experiences were used to further cloud the reputation and view of Chinese and other Asian groups in America. Many of these stereotypes and instances of racism still affect Asian Americans, with hate crimes and hatred alive even today. All these occurrences created lives full of disappointment, paranoia, and fear which permeate the history of Chinese Americans as a result. An Asian American enclave can be found in Chinatown, deep-rooted in such encounters and trauma. Ng’s Bone illustrates the multiple socio-economic challenges that Chinese Americans faced through Leila’s perspective in the heart of Chinatown. She describes her parents’ generation’s encounters in America in the mid 20th century, and finally, how they have affect her second-generation, contemporary Asian American reality. A few of the socio-economic factors that have bled into the lives of Chinese Americans in Chinatown were the struggles that came with being restricted to the location, challenges faced by paper sons, and the consequent trauma and detriment to health that altered the experience of Asian American communities of the early to mid 20th century.

    Adversity faced by Chinese immigrants in the late 20th century was being confined to the location they started in, San Francisco Chinatown, and the challenges it created in regards to the nature of their employment and work. They banded together in the haven of Chinatown, not only to escape the inhospitable white society but out of necessity; Immigrants did not have a means of leaving and felt that they needed to stick together in their community of comfortingly similar people in a strange and unfamiliar world with different customs and words. To illustrate, “[Chinatown] was only a short distance from the wharf where they had landed. Furthermore, since most Chinese could not afford horses, buggies, or wagons, they could not easily travel to other parts of the city. As most did not speak English or know the laws, they felt the need to stay together, particularly as white hostility began mounting,” as described in Connie Young Yu’s article, “A History of San Francisco Chinatown Housing.” Therefore, Chinatown was extremely valuable as a safe enclave where Chinese immigrants could peacefully exist amongst themselves, but it presented challenges such as being forced into a narrow job market for its inhabitants. Most of the businesses in hiring or being started were laundry and restaurants, where the competitive nature of the market caused job insecurity as shops constantly opened and closed. In his article, “The Chinatown Sweatshops: Oppression And An Alternative,” Dean Lan elaborates on the lack of choice in the matter, “Willing to work for whatever wages they can get rather than no wages at all, they are limited to the community with little chance of escape, and so they dare not complain.” A notable market was the garment industry, where hundreds of seamstresses, or more accurately, sweatshop workers, worked long laborious hours that bled into their family life and personal health. For example, in Bone, Leila’s mom, Dulcie Fu, works as a sweatshop worker, then opened up a small business selling baby clothes, while her stepfather, Leon Leong works as a seaman or picked up odd jobs washing dishes, running a grocery store, or even being a welder at some point, constantly working to provide for his family. Immigrant parents were unable to connect with their children due to the long hours and stressful lifestyle, and the outcome was that their children lacked a stable and consistent source of attention from their parents. Leila sees this first hand at her job where she talks to young student’s parents reading their teachers' concerns about tutoring or disciplinary issues; She observes how the long hours and cultural differences affect the family structure, and how the parents’ have difficulty comprehending their role as a parent in American society. Families grew apart, with the second generation frequently ending up resenting or looking down on their parents, which is not uncommon in current times; Many descendants of immigrants much like Nina in Bone, continue to disregard their parents as old-fashioned or conservative, causing rifts in families even today.

    Another socio-economic obstacle Chinese immigrants, and more specifically, paper sons, faced throughout the early to mid 20th century faced in America was the difficulty assimilating into American society. Once they arrived, one of the significant challenges immigrants faced was the inability to speak English, and consequently, being unable to communicate with anyone outside of the Chinese circle. This caused multiple issues because “without the acquisition of English-language skills, workers have few opportunities in the other sectors of the economy,” as mentioned in Paul Ong’s article, “Chinatown Unemployment and the Ethnic Labor Market.” This plight was not by choice, Chinese immigrants lacked the time and resources to learn English. Being looked down on by the obstinate and unwelcoming American society, and labeled as uneducated or unintelligent as a result of their “broken English” ensued. Leila mentions the way Leon Leong gets frustrated when attempting to speak English to the social security office interviewer, saying “I never talk English good” and getting scolded by her as a result. The shame from his lack of English skills affects his self-esteem, inferred by his silence after the whole ordeal passes; This was a shared feeling and experience for most first-generation immigrants. In addition, paper sons did not have the luxury of spending time learning English or exploring their options in America, they were preoccupied with finding work promptly; They needed to pay their paper fathers back for the documents that claimed they were legal citizens of the United States, as well for the fares for coming to America. Hence being stuck in the cycle of being obliged into accepting laborious and low-paying jobs, but being unable to leave them due to lack of education, and needing it because they lived paycheck to paycheck and had debts to pay. They often lived their lives in single resident occupancy housing, which can be described by Connie Young Yu, “Many of these places are not hotels, not rooming houses, and not apartments in the accepted sense, but were in many cases built as barracks for the single Chinese men in the coolie labor force brought here decades ago”, and spent most of their free time in Portsmouth Square with their companions, with no family or spouses to go home to. There were countless lonely days of being alone in the United States, with only disillusionment and being surrounded by a society that has labeled them as dirty bachelors, or “Chinamen”, forgotten and snubbed by the very groups who benefited from their work.

    An aspect of the struggles that came with being a disadvantaged Chinese immigrant in San Francisco Chinatown was the mental and physical toll it had on workers. Generational trauma caused by the constant rejection by American society and government, broken families, and years of toil to name a few, carried on through the first generation and onto the next. The overall mood of the drudgery of everyday life carried into the atmosphere of Chinatown, tinging it with an air of desperation. In his article, “The Chinatown Sweatshops: Oppression And An Alternative,” Dean Lan discusses this further, “The August 14, 1969 issue of the Examiner described Chinatown as a serfdom for immigrants with suspicion, fear, and hostility-a place where men, women, and children work for pittances and live in the deepest deprivation.” One group deeply affected by the cycle of exploitation so rampant in early Asian American circles was Chinese women. Chinese businessmen who ran garment sweatshops in the mid-1900s Chinatown scene took advantage of their immobility and lack of English speaking and general skills. They employed hundreds of seamstresses, knowing that they were unable to fight for reasonable wages or workers’ rights. Lan illustrates their working conditions as “poorly lit, badly-ventilated firetraps [where they worked] for as little as 64 cents an hour.” In addition to the physical conditions, this system was also unsympathetic for their mental well-being as evident in the lack of distinction between working hours and personal time, “Another 48 per cent said they also took garments home to work on them. 18 per cent said they worked 9AM to 10AM with lunch and dinner breaks.” This can be observed in Bone: Leila as a child would often witness nights when Dulcie Fu would “[sit] down at her Singer with the dinner rice still in her mouth” and realizes how her back is physically affected by the years of leaning over the sewing machine. When it came to the mental price immigrants paid, Leon Leong also has his fair share of anguish caused by immigrating to the United States as a paper son: guilt, shame, paranoia, and pain. The paranoia stemmed from the fear of being caught as an illegitimate citizen when the Chinese Confessions Program was occurring to “catch” paper sons during the Cold War era. His shame came from being constantly rejected by jobs, housing, the United States Army, and more American institutions, all of which affected his marriage, familial relationships, self-esteem, and self-esteem. All of these instances and subsequent trauma did not just apply to Leon Leong but were universal and applicable to most paper sons and immigrants at the time. Overall, the life of immigrants in Chinatown was not just hard, but many died without feeling that their American dreams ever gained fruition, besides the hope that their children would have better lives than them. 

    In conclusion, living in Chinatown in the mid to late 1900s had its positives and negatives. It is debatable whether the positives outweigh the negatives, but it is important to consider both when studying and considering the history of Asian American immigrants. Some of the challenges Chinese immigrants faced were being confined to Chinatown and the ramifications of doing so, paper son’s obstacles when assimilating, and the physical and mental struggles that came with life in Chinatown. It is important to understand the past view of Chinese immigrants and their experiences because it carries into society’s view of Chinese Americans, often marring their reputation even today. Unfortunately, many do not question stereotypes of the “dirty bachelor society” when studying the history of Chinatown. Most don't even look beyond the exploitative labels such as docile or obedient, that Asians have been typecast with when their painful history goes so much deeper. The fight for a more clear and truthful discussion about Asian American history is still going on today, these efforts hopefully bringing peace to the past generations who toiled for us, their future generations, and more to come. 

Works Cited

Lan, Dean. “The Chinatown Sweatshops: Oppression and an Alternative.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, 1971, pp. 40–57., https://doi.org/10.17953/amer.1.3.q0526r54t1n2q675. 

Ng, Fae Myenne. Bone, Hyperion, New York, 1994, pp. 32, 53. 

Ong, Paul M. “Chinatown Unemployment and the Ethnic Labor Market.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, 1984, pp. 35–54., https://doi.org/10.17953/amer.11.1.025430w450287253. 

Yu, Connie Young. “A History of San Francisco Chinatown Housing.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 1981, pp. 93–110., https://doi.org/10.17953/amer.8.1.xw713g02t2802540.