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Rosa's Reviews > How Much of These Hills Is Gold
How Much of These Hills Is Gold
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I was pretty excited to read How Much Gold Is in These Hills, the story of Chinese Americans during the Gold Rush as written by an emerging Chinese American author - Our Story Our Voices, let the revolution continue! Unfortunately, the novel tries to plant a foot in too many doorways, using language that persistently attempts poetry but often comes across as heavy-handed and verging on emotionally manipulative... the sum of these flaws is that numerous themes are rendered ambiguous and incoherent.
Much of the book's language strives for a dreamy, fable-esque, "everywhere and nowhere" tone, with vague names for places (the mom never actually says she's from China - she's just from the "land over the sea"), whispered names for what the characters would call themselves in their parents' language (literally not printed on the page, so readers aren't privy), some magical realism with tiger imagery and animal bones... yet, we're also meant to view the characters through the particular burdens and injustices Chinese Americans endured throughout that era. Specific events in Chinese American history are referenced throughout the narrative, such as how the 12,000 Chinese laborers who built the western side of the first transcontinental railroad were completely left out of the official photograph commemorating the railroad's completion. The dad's jobs, from prospector to miner, also reflect the types of labor newly arrived Chinese immigrants scrambled to find in those harsh times.
I'm just not sure you can effectively achieve both aims together, the dreamy fable thing + the rooted-in-actual events version of historical storytelling... perhaps you can, but this book isn't a great example of successful execution. Zhang's recurring use of Mandarin provides a key example of these missteps - in order to fully convey the main characters' innate separation from everyone else around them, the characters' dialogue is interspersed with Mandarin throughout the novel, untranslated words whose meaning readers must infer via context. This device turns the tables on the probably-not-Mandarin-fluent reader (you feel immediate identification with the newly-arrived Chinese immigrants, because this is how constantly working through the English language must feel to them); in addition, the Mandarin words and phrases highlight the characters' profound "separate-ness," as well as their familial insularity, and a strength of identity that counterbalances the unending grimness of the protags' relative powerlessness, as the only Chinese immigrants in a land where desperate, morally weak white people run everything. For the family at the center of this story, Mandarin is one of the few things that's truly theirs, and serves as a kind of... identity magic, for lack of a better term - identity magic for all the Chinese Americans who were/are continually sidelined.
Which makes it all the more galling that very few of the men who were left out of the Central Pacific photograph, or miners who had their findings stolen/denied in the early days of the Gold Rush - nearly none of these men would have spoken or even understood Mandarin, since almost all early Chinese immigrants to the United States (and Canada) came from southern China, around Canton/Guangzhou. It's ludicrous to build the characters' core identity around Chinese language to the extent that this story tries to, then proceed to use a historically inaccurate one. Is replacing Cantonese for Mandarin really such a big deal? #1, they're as different from each other as Italian and Spanish; #2, try telling a Cantonese speaker it doesn't matter.
Cantonese people don't even call themselves Chinese - we call ourselves "Tang people," because the Tang Dynasty is when the area that's now southern China joined the rest of China; when the dad whispers the name that their people call themselves to the protagonist, but the actual word is left off-page, it's supposed to be a powerful moment, one in which the protagonist is given a vital piece of herself... but for me, the omission of the actual word (alongside the Mandarin-for-Cantonese switch) reinforced an overall blurring of the people who were actually here (of which I'm a descendant, but that was probably obvious a few paragraphs back), in the name of artistic license.
The very title of this book evokes the *Cantonese* name for this country, since the early Chinese immigrants called America "Gold Mountain." Google the name for "Gold Mountain" in Cantonese, "Gum San" - almost 100% of the results reference early Chinese American/Canadian history. Search the same two words in Mandarin, "Jin Shan" - most of the results are for a buffet in Lawrence, Kansas (3.8 stars). Readers who don't know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese, or who aren't familiar with early Chinese American history, wouldn't have caught that switcheroo, and could have enjoyed the bilingual music of the narrative unimpeded... but what does that mean about this book, beholden to the experience of the first Cantonese-speaking Americans as it is - who is this book is for?
Which leads to the essence of where this novel falls short - it's being touted as a sort of re-interpretation of the traditional American Old West narrative, which has always been problematic with its cis hetero white male heroes aided by/set against 2D, not-white sidekicks/villains; in all those stories, the hero is a free agent, his own man, because unlike everyone else around him, he's not weighed down by historical baggage, has no one to answer to (certainly not the people who have already lived on this land for centuries before he ever set foot there). This novel, supposedly something brand new and For Us, repeats the old problematic structure more often than it rejects it. Flattening the unique characteristics of the people who were actually here and the identities they carried with them, cherry picking aspects of history to lend gravitas while glossing over others, under the banner of "poetic fable" - we've already read this story, A Lot. Wes Anderson sometimes makes them into movies.
The novel's depiction of not-Chinese POC continues the dead old white guy tropes. All the Native American and mestizo people in the story essentially serve as barometers for how "down for the cause" the main character they happen to share the scene with is - we know this character is messed up because they rebuff all the non-white people, and we know this character is Together because they pick up tricks/wisdom on how to stay alive in the desert from the unnamed not-white people. Only one POC character even gets a name. White villains receive considerably more word space + names and actual dialogue. For the brief scenes when they appear, the non-Chinese POC are uniformly noble and goodhearted, and just want to help (sometimes they have great insight on how to be respectful of the land). How exactly is any of this a re-imagining? And while there hasn't been much scholarship on dynamics between Native Americans and early Chinese immigrants, what little there is shows it definitely was not All Love (various newspapers around that time show Chinese Americans calling Native Americans "savages," and Native Americans thinking of the Chinese immigrants as weak because they did "women's work" [laundry].) It would have been much more interesting and humanizing to explore these complicated dynamics - judging by the Afterword, the author is clearly a fan of Beloved, so it's somewhat surprising that Zhang wouldn't have drawn from Morrison's vision of a deep and textured community (where every character, even minor ones, has nuance via baggage and flaws, and where people display a vast range of human resentments and judgmental opinions, right alongside empathy and solidarity) as a source of inspiration.
Finally, something about the portrayal of the dad felt "off." The mom and dad are together for about ten(?) years and she never realizes that (view spoiler) Yup. I've spoken Cantonese (poorly) to my parents most of my life, yet I can't go into an Asian grocery store to ask for one thing before the employee takes pity on me and switches to English, mid-sentence… this novel is interested in exploring how one might look one way on the outside, but not actually match that outward identity on the inside, a quintessential Chinese American condition. But this aspect of the dad's story almost prizes plot contrivance at the expense of emotional weight and accuracy. Because it's not just in the way Chinese Americans (view spoiler) speak that makes us clearly not-Chinese; we don't move the same, and we don't look at the world the same way, which comes through in how we carry ourselves. Even if we *wanted* to "pass," we can't. The Chinese mom is supposed to be pretty sharp - it's preposterous that she wouldn't have sized up the situation sometime during the first few days, much less over the course of 10 years of sharing a family life together. Exploring the contrast between the four family members' self-perceptions as different iterations of Chinese American identity would have made for an infinitely richer story. There's not one homogenous Chinese American identity (we come in different flavors), but this novel fails to convey any of this.
If I sound too harsh, it's just that I was genuinely excited by the ambition of this novel's premise. And there were some strong parts - the complicated dynamic between the sisters was often affecting, and Zhang conveys the feeling of being who we are under the white gaze (across different permutations of that gaze, across different white characters) with great intelligence, sensitivity, and complexity. The story really comes alive when the central characters interact with the white characters, which is both an asset (in how well Zhang is able to write those scenes) and a flaw, because how do we shrug off the great white gaze for good when that's where we are most defined? Everything Toni Morrison ever wrote taught us this.
Toni Morrison's Beloved, Beyoncé's 2018 Coachella performance, Issa Rae's Insecure- these very different art forms are linked by how they're brimming with cultural references that I often miss and have to look up later, not being of the culture. One of my favorite parts in looking up, say, "swag surf," is witnessing the vast swell of pride across social media when African Americans see their own culture reflected back to them on such a grand platform, with such artistry and love.... This novel fails to weave any kind of sustained "I see you!" web like that; the cultural references feel largely worked in to buttress the author's insular, amorphous, one-size-fits-all Chinese American fantasy, one which doesn't bridge back out to our actual history, or to affirm Chinese American identity in a way I found particularly meaningful. However, though the book wasn't for me, I can say it's not "forgettable" - I spent lots of time working these ideas out, ideas very close to what I prize most about the goals of reading and writing - I'm thankful to the author for that journey, which gave me temporary-but-precious escape from our current grim reality + my by-this-point-verging-on-feral quarantined brood.
Much of the book's language strives for a dreamy, fable-esque, "everywhere and nowhere" tone, with vague names for places (the mom never actually says she's from China - she's just from the "land over the sea"), whispered names for what the characters would call themselves in their parents' language (literally not printed on the page, so readers aren't privy), some magical realism with tiger imagery and animal bones... yet, we're also meant to view the characters through the particular burdens and injustices Chinese Americans endured throughout that era. Specific events in Chinese American history are referenced throughout the narrative, such as how the 12,000 Chinese laborers who built the western side of the first transcontinental railroad were completely left out of the official photograph commemorating the railroad's completion. The dad's jobs, from prospector to miner, also reflect the types of labor newly arrived Chinese immigrants scrambled to find in those harsh times.
I'm just not sure you can effectively achieve both aims together, the dreamy fable thing + the rooted-in-actual events version of historical storytelling... perhaps you can, but this book isn't a great example of successful execution. Zhang's recurring use of Mandarin provides a key example of these missteps - in order to fully convey the main characters' innate separation from everyone else around them, the characters' dialogue is interspersed with Mandarin throughout the novel, untranslated words whose meaning readers must infer via context. This device turns the tables on the probably-not-Mandarin-fluent reader (you feel immediate identification with the newly-arrived Chinese immigrants, because this is how constantly working through the English language must feel to them); in addition, the Mandarin words and phrases highlight the characters' profound "separate-ness," as well as their familial insularity, and a strength of identity that counterbalances the unending grimness of the protags' relative powerlessness, as the only Chinese immigrants in a land where desperate, morally weak white people run everything. For the family at the center of this story, Mandarin is one of the few things that's truly theirs, and serves as a kind of... identity magic, for lack of a better term - identity magic for all the Chinese Americans who were/are continually sidelined.
Which makes it all the more galling that very few of the men who were left out of the Central Pacific photograph, or miners who had their findings stolen/denied in the early days of the Gold Rush - nearly none of these men would have spoken or even understood Mandarin, since almost all early Chinese immigrants to the United States (and Canada) came from southern China, around Canton/Guangzhou. It's ludicrous to build the characters' core identity around Chinese language to the extent that this story tries to, then proceed to use a historically inaccurate one. Is replacing Cantonese for Mandarin really such a big deal? #1, they're as different from each other as Italian and Spanish; #2, try telling a Cantonese speaker it doesn't matter.
Cantonese people don't even call themselves Chinese - we call ourselves "Tang people," because the Tang Dynasty is when the area that's now southern China joined the rest of China; when the dad whispers the name that their people call themselves to the protagonist, but the actual word is left off-page, it's supposed to be a powerful moment, one in which the protagonist is given a vital piece of herself... but for me, the omission of the actual word (alongside the Mandarin-for-Cantonese switch) reinforced an overall blurring of the people who were actually here (of which I'm a descendant, but that was probably obvious a few paragraphs back), in the name of artistic license.
The very title of this book evokes the *Cantonese* name for this country, since the early Chinese immigrants called America "Gold Mountain." Google the name for "Gold Mountain" in Cantonese, "Gum San" - almost 100% of the results reference early Chinese American/Canadian history. Search the same two words in Mandarin, "Jin Shan" - most of the results are for a buffet in Lawrence, Kansas (3.8 stars). Readers who don't know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese, or who aren't familiar with early Chinese American history, wouldn't have caught that switcheroo, and could have enjoyed the bilingual music of the narrative unimpeded... but what does that mean about this book, beholden to the experience of the first Cantonese-speaking Americans as it is - who is this book is for?
Which leads to the essence of where this novel falls short - it's being touted as a sort of re-interpretation of the traditional American Old West narrative, which has always been problematic with its cis hetero white male heroes aided by/set against 2D, not-white sidekicks/villains; in all those stories, the hero is a free agent, his own man, because unlike everyone else around him, he's not weighed down by historical baggage, has no one to answer to (certainly not the people who have already lived on this land for centuries before he ever set foot there). This novel, supposedly something brand new and For Us, repeats the old problematic structure more often than it rejects it. Flattening the unique characteristics of the people who were actually here and the identities they carried with them, cherry picking aspects of history to lend gravitas while glossing over others, under the banner of "poetic fable" - we've already read this story, A Lot. Wes Anderson sometimes makes them into movies.
The novel's depiction of not-Chinese POC continues the dead old white guy tropes. All the Native American and mestizo people in the story essentially serve as barometers for how "down for the cause" the main character they happen to share the scene with is - we know this character is messed up because they rebuff all the non-white people, and we know this character is Together because they pick up tricks/wisdom on how to stay alive in the desert from the unnamed not-white people. Only one POC character even gets a name. White villains receive considerably more word space + names and actual dialogue. For the brief scenes when they appear, the non-Chinese POC are uniformly noble and goodhearted, and just want to help (sometimes they have great insight on how to be respectful of the land). How exactly is any of this a re-imagining? And while there hasn't been much scholarship on dynamics between Native Americans and early Chinese immigrants, what little there is shows it definitely was not All Love (various newspapers around that time show Chinese Americans calling Native Americans "savages," and Native Americans thinking of the Chinese immigrants as weak because they did "women's work" [laundry].) It would have been much more interesting and humanizing to explore these complicated dynamics - judging by the Afterword, the author is clearly a fan of Beloved, so it's somewhat surprising that Zhang wouldn't have drawn from Morrison's vision of a deep and textured community (where every character, even minor ones, has nuance via baggage and flaws, and where people display a vast range of human resentments and judgmental opinions, right alongside empathy and solidarity) as a source of inspiration.
Finally, something about the portrayal of the dad felt "off." The mom and dad are together for about ten(?) years and she never realizes that (view spoiler) Yup. I've spoken Cantonese (poorly) to my parents most of my life, yet I can't go into an Asian grocery store to ask for one thing before the employee takes pity on me and switches to English, mid-sentence… this novel is interested in exploring how one might look one way on the outside, but not actually match that outward identity on the inside, a quintessential Chinese American condition. But this aspect of the dad's story almost prizes plot contrivance at the expense of emotional weight and accuracy. Because it's not just in the way Chinese Americans (view spoiler) speak that makes us clearly not-Chinese; we don't move the same, and we don't look at the world the same way, which comes through in how we carry ourselves. Even if we *wanted* to "pass," we can't. The Chinese mom is supposed to be pretty sharp - it's preposterous that she wouldn't have sized up the situation sometime during the first few days, much less over the course of 10 years of sharing a family life together. Exploring the contrast between the four family members' self-perceptions as different iterations of Chinese American identity would have made for an infinitely richer story. There's not one homogenous Chinese American identity (we come in different flavors), but this novel fails to convey any of this.
If I sound too harsh, it's just that I was genuinely excited by the ambition of this novel's premise. And there were some strong parts - the complicated dynamic between the sisters was often affecting, and Zhang conveys the feeling of being who we are under the white gaze (across different permutations of that gaze, across different white characters) with great intelligence, sensitivity, and complexity. The story really comes alive when the central characters interact with the white characters, which is both an asset (in how well Zhang is able to write those scenes) and a flaw, because how do we shrug off the great white gaze for good when that's where we are most defined? Everything Toni Morrison ever wrote taught us this.
Toni Morrison's Beloved, Beyoncé's 2018 Coachella performance, Issa Rae's Insecure- these very different art forms are linked by how they're brimming with cultural references that I often miss and have to look up later, not being of the culture. One of my favorite parts in looking up, say, "swag surf," is witnessing the vast swell of pride across social media when African Americans see their own culture reflected back to them on such a grand platform, with such artistry and love.... This novel fails to weave any kind of sustained "I see you!" web like that; the cultural references feel largely worked in to buttress the author's insular, amorphous, one-size-fits-all Chinese American fantasy, one which doesn't bridge back out to our actual history, or to affirm Chinese American identity in a way I found particularly meaningful. However, though the book wasn't for me, I can say it's not "forgettable" - I spent lots of time working these ideas out, ideas very close to what I prize most about the goals of reading and writing - I'm thankful to the author for that journey, which gave me temporary-but-precious escape from our current grim reality + my by-this-point-verging-on-feral quarantined brood.
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Reading Progress
May 10, 2020
–
Started Reading
May 10, 2020
– Shelved
May 17, 2020
– Shelved as:
asian-america
May 19, 2020
–
Finished Reading
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Thank you for that Asian Review of Books link - I've never gone to that site before, but their review of HMOTHAG actually linked to a different book (Gordon Chang's Ghosts of Gold Mountain) that I abandoned a few pages in, partially because he also did the Mandarin instead of Cantonese thing (which AROB also noted), but mostly because it's reeeally long and dry & my attention span is Not in fighting shape right now... anyway, the AROB review makes it seem like I'm fine abandoning - anytime my intellectual laziness can be justified, it's a win-win :) Thank you!!!
I just linked to your review in the Newest Literary Fiction group read of this novel. Thanks for writing it, Rosa.
That’s so kind of you! I sometimes spend a long time on reviews no one ever reads, so appreciate any bump, haha. I’m loving your comments in the discussion and sorry I didn’t know about it sooner! At this point I can’t recall the book well enough to contribute meaningfully, sigh. Please give a holler on your next discussion bc I really enjoy how you approach reading/discussion (for example, I too am fascinated by the question of how much license a writer gets to re-interpret history, and how close the author’s background must be to the culture they’re portraying to make reinterpretation okay/not okay).
I hope you dive in to a discussion soon, anywhere you like, Rosa. I learn so much from the people in that group. For a head start, in July 1 we're starting a discussion of Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn, and July 7 we'll be starting a discussion of If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha.
both of those are on my To Read list - thank you!
This is an incredible review, which I was alerted to in a thread on this book in the Newest Literary Fiction group. You touched on many of the questions I had about this ambitious novel, and I appreciate your insights. Thank you!
You are too kind! And have the best profile pic - I made all my kids come to the laptop to look :)
Hey there! I'd just wanted to say that I learnt a lot from your review, so thank you for writing it. I'm a born-and-bred Southeast Asian myself, but I didn't actually think about the dynamics of Mandarin being used in the novel! And this is coming from someone who understands Mandarin and had to learn it in school. I enjoyed the book for its lyricism and point-of-view, but your review really makes me think deeper - something that is always welcome. Thank you for that!
Thank *you* for the kind comments :) I wasn’t very taken with the novel’s language - it felt too forced to me. But many readers loved it, and to be fair, I was probably never going to be neutral about it from the first sight of pinyin, haha.May I ask, are there parts of Malaysia where Mandarin is more common, and other parts where other Chinese dialects are? Or does it have more to do with different waves of Chinese immigration (as opposed to geography)? I am always curious about overseas Chinese communities, but am mostly familiar only with the U.S.
I can actually give you a perspective on Mandarin from both Malaysia and the neighbouring Singapore (where I actually went to school - so, not being Chinese myself, most of my exposure to Chinese history, etc. comes from Singapore - long story!) Most Chinese in both countries in their twenties (like me - not the Chinese part, just the in-twenties part) and below would have received some measure of Mandarin instruction in school, although Malaysians' grasp of the language - based on schooling - would be better, in general, than Singapore.
Malaysian youths who went to Chinese medium schools would be able to speak in Mandarin and dialect, which they'd pick up from their parents/ grandparents, community, etc. The most common dialects would be those from Southern China (Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew - these three would be the "main" dialect groups both in Singapore and Malaysia, given the proximity of the regions they originate from compared to Northern China). So, basically, most every Chinese would be able to speak Mandarin, and perhaps their dialect. Certain pockets of Malaysia are heavier in certain dialect groups than others - I'm not sure why, but some areas might be more Hokkien, others more Cantonese, etc. - but that's the gist of it, generally.
In Singapore, most people my age and younger would no longer be able to speak dialect, because the government had this series of programmes in the later 20th century which focused on Mandarin to the detriment of dialects. So whether you were Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka etc., your "second language" in school could only have been (simplified) Mandarin - which I think, was part of why I had such a blind-spot re Mandarin in the book, it was what I was used to! Advertisements/ media in dialect groups were also banned by the govt. during this time (if I remember right), who were big on the unifying factor of Mandarin, so a lot of the dialect languages have, well, been phased out among younger generations, and Singapore is mostly too small for there to be any significant geographical variance - though I do know of at least one neighbourhood that has been a "Teochew stronghold" since the 1960s.
Hope this helps!
That was really helpful - thank you! I've read a bit about the history of overseas Chinese communities around the world - I think the people who set out initially, no matter where they ended up, were all mostly from southern China, the same groups you listed - Cantonese, Hokkien, and Teochew. In addition to what you noted about proximity to Malaysia and Singapore (plus other parts of Southeast Asia with sizable Chinese populations, such as Vietnam, Philippines, and as far as Hawaii), 2 other reasons for most early Chinese immigrants hailing from southern China are that both Opium Wars occurred in that area, so the region was pretty devastated by famine and destruction for a long time. The other reason that most of the earliest Chinese immigrants all around the world hail from southern China (here and there I'll read about Shanghai, but that's as north as we ever get) is that though the government in Beijing officially forbid all Chinese citizens from leaving the country at the time, Canton/Guangdong was geographically relatively far away from the capital's reach, so the southern Chinese hoping to escape their war-torn land for better opportunities easily jumped on the ever-present multitude of international ships docked around Canton's ports.So my assumption when I read about a long-standing Chinese community outside of China is always that they spoke/speak at least one of the 3 southern dialects you listed. I was so confused to see Mandarin alongside the Cantonese and Malay in Crazy Rich Asians [confession - I didn't read it - I find the book unreadable, after having tried twice.] Thank you for finally clearing up this question for me!
One more: is the Malaysian (and Singaporean) government so pro-Mandarin due to wanting citizens to be able to fully participate in the global economy with PRC/Taiwan, or are there more political/cultural reasons beyond that?
Oh, your first paragraph is really interesting! Definitely will be delving more into those histories and their wider implications, thank you for telling me about them! But yes, I think I always do hear about a huge Cantonese (especially) presence in the Chinese diaspora, even as far away as the West. Also yeah, re Crazy Rich Asians... it's definitely not representative of Singapore by any metric, though its probably quite accurate about the 1%, I don't know. But if I'm correct, the demographic illustrated in CRA would be what is known here as the extremely "anglicised" bunch, whose grasp of the Chinese language (and heritage) wouldn't be very strong also.
As for your last question - I'm afraid I may have given you the wrong impression that Malaysia's government is pro-Mandarin. The Chinese are a minority in Malaysia too and the Chinese-medium schools I mentioned are not really overseen by the government; there is some level of insularity there, the govt. doesn't really have much to do with the issue of how/ why Mandarin is taught (the Malaysian government is also not pro-Chinese (in terms of racial dynamics)... that's another, separate issue, though). So I can't speak to the exact specifics of why Mandarin is prioritised in a Malaysian-Chinese context, unfortunately.
As for Singapore, though, yes the economy definitely has to do with that. I'm afraid I wasn't someone who was good with lessons and so I cannot remember much about them, but I have heard friends mention - after we graduated - that the way that Mandarin was taught was very business-centric, with regards to phrases, terms, etc - although I can't give any examples, not having been good at it myself. Singapore is also the opposite of Malaysia in that it has a Chinese majority - but they are surrounded by Malay and Muslim (not all Malays are Muslim, but they tend to be viewed as synonymous) countries (Indonesia and Malaysia). In the 60s, when they just gained independence, this was a political issue, because the government was afraid that the native Singaporean-Malay population would "betray" them for their "Malay brothers" to the North and South. The historical relationship in SEA between the Malays and the Chinese was - and to some extent still can be - fraught, so I expect that having more unifying factors among the Singaporean-Chinese population was seen as useful by the government, who was and still is, mostly Chinese.
Bobbinus wrote: "Oh, your first paragraph is really interesting! Definitely will be delving more into those histories and their wider implications, thank you for telling me about them! But yes, I think I always do ..."Bobbinus,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge - I've learned so much more about Singapore, Malaysia, and the people who live there just from your three paragraphs! You were also extra diplomatic :) While I am very far from being able to call myself knowledgeable about overseas Chinese communities around the world, I know enough to understand that it is not, um, all love.
Viet Thanh Nguyen summed it up plainly in his recent review of Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods for the New York Times - in highlighting the inaccuracy of a scene in which the U.S. veterans return to Vietnam years later and encounter hostile Vietnamese locals, Nguyen writes:
"Many American visitors to Vietnam remark in amazement that the Vietnamese have seemed to let the past go. This is true. We have no time to hate Americans because we hate each other more, given that our war was actually a civil war (plus, the Vietnamese really hate the Chinese the most). "
Haha + ouch. Maybe he's just talking about the PRC, but based on things I've heard and read about overseas Chinese communities across SEA (as well as China's history with Vietnam, but that's a whole other topic), I'm guessing not.
Anyhow, are there English language books about Malaysia that you enjoy/appreciate, that are not about the 1% and not from an ethnic Chinese POV?
Finally, I'm belatedly realizing/remembering the reason Mandarin is probably prioritized, even without a "business" focus, is because it's the "scholarly" language. Not sure how far it goes back (probably since the beginning of imperial scholars at court, which has always been North), but even while my mom was growing up in British-run Hong Kong and most everything that surrounded them was in Cantonese, my grandmother always told her and her siblings that if they really wanted to be refined and cultivated, they should take Mandarin lessons. She was the only one out of 6 that listened, but it ended up being a pretty sweet deal for her, because it's enabled her to watch all Chinese soaps (be they from Taiwan, China, or HK) without turning on the subtitles.
Just want to say I'm enjoying following your discussion here!
No worries, I've learnt a lot from you too - thank you! And yes, it's probably best to be diplomatic online lol. Also that's cool about your mum, sounds super convenient for her (as far as TV goes, anyway)! I didn't know that Mandarin was a scholarly language actually - or, to be fair to my teachers, I probably just forgot - I should learn more about the language on its own terms, outside of the lens that I have as a Southeast Asian. And yeah, Viet Thanh Ngyuen's sentiments (in the v interesting review, thanks!) sound about right - though from my knowledge, when the term "Chinese" is used in such a context even in Singapore (by the local Chinese here, no less) and Malaysia, it definitely refers to the PRC... by which I also mean that a Vietnamese would probably regard a Singaporean- or American-Chinese visitor better than they would a visitor from China. Though Vietnam would have more issues with the conceptual nation of China even before the existence of the PRC I suppose.
Anyway, for books!
- I'd recommend Preeta Samarasan's "Evening is the Whole Day": the main family is well-off, but not astoundingly rich, and the novel interrogates the class dynamics of the local Tamil population.
- Also the works of the late K S Maniam are much lauded here (I've only ever read his short story collection "Haunting the Tiger", but would have loved to read more, unfortunately his work is difficult to find).
- M Shanmughalingam's short story collection "Marriage and Mutton Curry" is a light-hearted introduction to the Sri-Lankan Tamil diaspora in Malaysia, and the writing has a sort of mid-century Commonwealth flavour to it. And, lastly -
- I've heard good things about Rani Manicka's "The Rice Mother" too, though I haven't been able to get my hands on it.
You'll notice that all these are Indian writers - I'm not able to give any recommendations from Malay and indigenous (Orang Asli from the Peninsula, and the many native peoples of East Malaysia) writers as there isn't as much work from them unfortunately for a variety of reasons (particularly indigenous ones), or (in the case of the Malays) a lot of it remains untranslated. There is Hanna Alkaf's (Malay writer) "The Weight of Our Sky", which deals with the Chinese - Malay relationship and a critical period in Malaysia's history, and is a pretty good read for a YA audience, though.
Oh, if you're interested in hearing the views of Singaporeans who were less than pleased with the CRA movie's representation of their country, this podcast episode is quite illuminating, and gets into the nuances of Singapore's history, the use of Chinese languages + accents in the film, and political/ racial dynamics: https://newnaratif.com/podcast/politi...
I’m really excited to delve into your list of reading recs - thank you so much!And you’re a psychic - your summary of the podcast sounds like *exactly* what I wanted to know about the whole CRA phenomenon as it was received overseas, particularly in Singapore and Malaysia. There were grumbles here in the U.S. as well, about how the story was not-relatable most Asian American lives; however, the complaints were kept to a comparatively low murmur, in case Hollywood never lets us be in front of the camera again in a sizable group (where martial arts and/or human trafficking is not involved.)
I think the idea of Mandarin being more “scholarly” is more from my grandmother's time, and more specific to her particular cultural background - as a native Cantonese speaker born and raised in British Hong Kong, who immigrated to the U.S. before Hong Kong went back to PRC, she had no direct experience of the PRC. However, since China's capitals have always been in the northern part of China, where Mandarin is the native dialect, all the imperial exams/universities/culture would have reflected this image of Mandarin as being the more "official," "cultivated" mode of communication, something like what RP is for Brits in the UK. You mentioned that you didn't question the Mandarin in this book because it's what you know - our conversation here has made me realize, I don't question Cantonese because it's what I know! Now that I think about it, why would you start a Chinese school, then proceed to teach Cantonese - it would be like starting an English school, then teaching everyone to speak like Ozzy Osbourne instead of Dame Maggie Smith :) (Obviously I'd go with Ozzy - his English has all the color.)
However, post-dynastic rule and especially since the PRC, prioritizing Mandarin became part of a focused agenda, both for utilitarian purposes (since many Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible) + similar to what you mentioned re: the Malaysian government's efforts to encourage a sense of national identity/solidarity via promoting Mandarin as the "common language." So, being proficient in Mandarin transitioned from being a sign of refinement and learning in my grandmother's time, to being what it is today, an essential requirement of a Chinese citizen if they expect to get anything done at all.
My general impression is that resentment of overseas Chinese predates PRC where there are sizable communities that predate the PRC, especially around SEA. I could see how resentment started as one type (pre-PRC resentment, aka phase 1) and morphed into the current form you spoke of (phase 2, which incorporates reactions to PRC's global presence, with overseas Chinese people joining in the resenting for this round.) Here in the U.S., I've noticed that there's actually a divergence of attitudes re: PRC among American Born Chinese (ABCs) depending on which wave of immigration our parents came here with.
Thank you again for all the great recs :) I just checked and The Weight of Our Sky looks very easy to find, yay! I'm particularly thrilled to read that novel because it promises to help illuminate exactly what I was trying and floundering to articulate in the paragraph above, haha....
Ah!! Glad to have referred it then - hope you enjoy! (And yes, people were less tempered in their reactions to CRA here, if they had bones with the film's representation of "Asian-ess") Also, on the topic of recs, I hope you enjoy Alkaf's novel as well. As mentioned, it's YA, but it's a decent enough jumping-board to leap off into, particularly, "13th May 1969", a rather definitive date for Malaysian racial dynamics where the Chinese population, especially, is concerned. And I don't think your description of the anti-Chinese sentiments in SEA were floundering; they were quite acute! I was speaking, in my earlier comments yes, to the present-day evolution of such sentiments, coloured by the PRC and people's perception of the PRC. But, as you said, the history of anti-Chinese sentiment does goes back far longer. (As an aside, you can look into the term "pendatang". It means "visitor" in Malay [it's quite illustrative of the sentiments behind Phase 1], which seems rather innocuous, but it is used in Malaysia [Indonesia has something similar if I'm not wrong] sometimes to refer to the local Chinese - and for M'sia, Indians too - population, whether they've just recently come or have been here for generations. It's not exactly a slur but it's not friendly, either. That alone should be enough to tell you how some people feel regarding the issue... sigh...)
Anyhow, thanks for telling me your stories and thoughts regarding Cantonese - its history, your personal history, its usage - it has been super interesting and I am glad to have had this conversation with you :) It has encouraged me to learn more about the histories of the various Chinese languages - starting with Mandarin and its implications for Southern China, and the diaspora, of which you've taught me plenty! I like the Smith vs Osbourne analogy!
*Also, just to clarify - it's Singaporean govt. in your third para instead of Malaysian! Probably just a mistake but I really don't wish to misrepresent these countries here (I feel like this is an annoying aside haha, I'm sorry!).
Your correction was very important, not “annoying” in the least. I actually meant to say "Malaysia," but now realize I was presuming in doing so; because you mentioned the Malaysian gov being anti-Chinese/PRC, I automatically assumed there had been a push to unify a national identity through one central language that doesn’t necessarily reflect the heritage of everyone in the country (just like Mandarin in PRC) - which is not actually anything you said. So, I definitely jumped to a conclusion - apologies! Also, I thought I’d read somewhere that Singapore is unique in supporting a plurality of national languages, which makes me not equate it with PRC - however, I welcome correction (which would not at all be annoying) if this is also inaccurate on my part :)As for phase 1 of anti-Chinese feeling across SEA, I understand that the intolerance of overseas Chinese communities was not necessary in a single direction, that there were limits to how, um, open-minded some Chinese communities were of their surrounding environment, sigh. I'm sure Viet Thanh Nguyen can tell us more about that :)
Sort of adjacent to what we've discussed, I once read a collection of essays by different overseas Chinese all around the world that I remember really enjoying at the time, though the details are hazy now. I don’t recall it being necessarily educational in terms of anthropological/sociological/historical info - it was more like personal essays, providing thoughtful POV on the Chinese diaspora. Each essay focuses on the author's experience of setting foot in China for the first time after having grown up far away:
Cultural Curiosity: Thirteen Stories about the Search for Chinese Roots
I’ve enjoyed our exchanges so much, and learned *immeasurably* from them - thank you! So very glad to have connected here :)
Just want to say I'm enjoying following your discussion here!"Awesome :)
Oh, I see! Yeah, I can see how you might have come to that conclusion. Either way, just to clarify, the Malaysian government is not really interested in pushing for the use of Mandarin or Chinese solidarity, and Chinese-medium schools in Malaysia mostly operate on their own accord. Although most Malaysians would also be able to speak at least three languages: Malay (the official language), English and their own mother tongue, if they aren't Malay.As for Singapore, yes, they do tout multilingualism (along with multiculturalism) as one of their strong points. To some degree this is true, students are to take a mandatory mother tongue class throughout Primary and Secondary school, and this is mostly divided by race. *Malays would take Malay, Chinese would take Mandarin (despite it not being most - if any? - of these Chinese students actual Mother Tongue) and Indians, Tamil (Tamils being the majority among the local Indian population). At the same time there is a sort of unspoken understanding that out of all these mother tongues - Chinese is *the* one. It's common to see job ads here asking for "Chinese speakers only" (despite the job not being, for example, actually Chinese-specific; loosely, it's also understood that it actually means: "Chinese only"), etc. Add to that also, as the generations pass, Mother Tongue proficiency, for some reason - throughout all these languages - is falling. I am actually not quite sure why that is. Globalisation? It wouldn't be fair for me to say that the syllabus isn't good, as I myself wasn't a very good student, but it could also be possible...? I think it funnels down to usage, really. It was quite popular when I was younger for many students to be "bad" at their Mother Tongue and to pretend that they were worse than they were (I have no such excuse; I was just... bad lol). Global English hegemony, I suppose. The podcast ep also has a short rant about Singaporeans and mother tongue proficiency vs how that proficiency is globally perceived. So it's not so much as you being inaccurate, as that being the idea of Singapore that is pushed by Singapore!
But yes, Singapore is definitely far more supportive of multilingualism than countries such as the US or Australia, even if on a superficial level: the providing of street-signs or public announcements in all four languages, etc. So I mean, to quite a bit, they do try.
And yes, I suppose you are right re the insularity of certain parts of Chinese communities. In some instances I suppose it's rather a chicken-and-egg situation. One would hope that one day we can all move past it!
Also, thank you for the recommendation! Personal essays are my favourite type. I am sure I shall enjoy it if I can find it.
*Although you do have quite a few Malay or Indian, or other minority-race/ mixed students whose parents have deemed it more prudent for them to take Mandarin, given the rise of China.
And BookMonkey: <3
I’m learning SO much from these exchanges - THANK you.I did understand after your first response that we were not talking about "enforced" Mandarin in Malaysia; I was actually equating the PRC's efforts with Mandarin to the Malaysian government's push of Malay as the official language... but as I said earlier, that was an erroneous comparison for me to make, since I don't know if the two efforts are comparable in execution/nature.
And I should have mentioned, I had a friend years ago in college who was an ethic Chinese born and raised in Vietnam, who gave me an (admittedly small) understanding of how Chinese schools work in other countries (as well as, ahem, certain attitudes of overseas Chinese regarding the surrounding community - sigh... as you said, here's to moving forward!) I understood from your first response that it wasn't the Malaysian government calling for Mandarin to be taught in those Chinese schools, but since I knew that most overseas Chinese who immigrated before the 1990s are most likely from the southern parts of China, I was confused why it's Mandarin being taught in the schools. Our discussion made me realize/remember, #1, they're already speaking the Mother Tongue at home, why would they also learn it at school?; #2, [what I mentioned earlier, remembering my grandmother's beliefs] Mandarin = higher learning.
Back to the PRC, I don’t even mean to sound necessarily critical of having a common language - it seems essential to have One language for operational purposes? But so many countries have designated Official languages that only reflect where the capital of the nation happens to reside. I had wondered how Singapore made the multilingualism work - thank you for painting such a vivid picture. Though kind of depressing. It sounds like either way (One Language vs. Multilingualism) is not ideal.
Re: the PRC’s efforts to solidify Mandarin as the common tongue, here's an article from last year about how things are going in Hong Kong:
Hong Kong Identity and the Rise of Mandarin
Reading the above article, chatting with you, and listening to the podcast (I'm about halfway through and couldn't be more delighted by how snarky they are - I live for the snark!), I'm realizing an essential component is suddenly re-envisioning Cantonese as "threatened," or at the very least, something that needs to be defended, which would have seemed preposterous not that long ago. There are *many* other parts of China where the native dialect is not mutually intelligible from Mandarin (Shanghai, Fujian, the list goes on and on) - I think those dialects have fared okay despite the PRC's reinforcement of Mandarin - but all the worlds and layers contained within the Hong Kong situation is making the Cantonese debate extra charged. [Btw I have been conflating Hong Kongers with the early southern Chinese immigrants, which is not necessarily entirely accurate - but both groups speak some form of Cantonese, or Cantonese-adjacent dialect.]
All of which brings me back to this book. It says on the author's bio that she's originally from Beijing, so I'm guessing she just wanted to write in the dialect she knows, to have the most control over her language and vision. Terrible timing, though - and her saying "this isn't historical fiction" doesn't work for me. Her bio also says she lives in San Francisco - if you were to ask, "Which city in the United States are you most likely to turn around and bump into a Cantonese speaker?" guess what
Oh, it was I who misunderstood then, regarding the whole Malaysian-Malay/Mandarin language thing, apologies! Yes, in that respect, Malay is *the* binding language here, from instructive levels in schools, to being the lingua franca, etc. I have read your linked article and there are a few similarities to how the PRC is enforcing Mandarin, with regards at least to it being the language of schools and government, spoken (in varying levels of fluency) by most of the population. But as to how deep the similarities go, however, I am not that sure also, to be quite honest; I would probably have to do more research on China's side. Of course there are some differences in intent, as Mandarin would be "usurping" Cantonese, while in Malaysia, the Malay language is native (not to excuse various other issues that might crop up around this, however; especially when the indigenous languages of Borneo Malaysia are not given the same weight). I do hope that HK will be able to retain Cantonese, though. And regarding your friend's insight plus your own statements about Mandarin being the Scholarly Language - certainly Chinese political, geographical and linguistic histories are very complex, but in that last aspect, at least, have been funnelled now for the sake of convenience (not that, as you say, having a central, unifying language is wrong - it is necessary, but one does wonder if there might be better ways to "cement" that language without having that come at the expense of other languages which have just as much cultural and historical weight, a la Singapore. It is depressing! Multilingualism is a boon for all sorts of reasons).
Regarding Cantonese, specifically, both of us are coming from a very Southern Chinese perspective; to us it does make sense that these dialects are threatened in favour of Mandarin. It is what we see, and have seen, and it is a political and historical reality also. Of course, as you say, in Northern China the reality would be somewhat different.
But given the context in which Zhang's novel has been published, it IS galling that the same nuances that we have raked over in our conversation are not discussed. It is really bad-timing with what the PRC is doing to Hong Kong (ironic, given that this book has been called timely, which in a way it also is, for being published amidst growing anti-Chinese sentiment). And yes calling it not historical fiction doesn't really work, because, (a) by definition it is historical fiction and (b) I do think we do owe something to the past, it is not a fictional world a la Tolkien: these are real things.
On that note, and going back to what you more lucidly outlined in your review, I read many years ago in the interview of a historical fiction writer (I cannot remember who it was, though Tan Twan Eng's face is swimming in my memory, lol) who described his approach to the fictional elements of historical fiction as this: he (definitely it was a man, I remember) was fine with *adding* fictional events to the narrative (as long as he had the caveat in the postscript that these were fictional events) but he would not subtract real events. I think it is a good approach as it allows the writer some wiggle room for creativity, but it does not come at the expense of erasing real experiences.
Unfortunately, with Zhang, it does seem that her book leans more on the side of erasure. She could have, if she was keen on paying homage to her upbringing have Mandarin be the story's family's "home language", as long as it was explained that they were outliers in that regard. But portraying Mandarin as the de-facto language of the Chinese immigrants of that particular period + context does erase the historical complexity of the era, and the work, so to speak, of those immigrants. This is what I find troubling, too, as these immigrants were already written out of the narrative by the first wave of history; now to have that done double-fold, by one who claimed to have wanted to do otherwise, no less - that is the sad thing. Which is why I am glad to have read your review; it would not have occurred to me, not really knowing this American history, otherwise. So thank you too, for being the first one to teach me so much regarding this!
*On that note, perhaps I could ask for recommendations also? If you have any for historical fiction from the 19th and 20th centuries with Chinese perspectives in America, or at a push, Canada. I understand that they are probably rare, which adds to the disappointment with Zhang's book.
I've been attempting a response, which inevitably devolves into a bloated opus, hence the long delay :) This exchange of ours has actually enabled me to put something of a shape to large chunks of Chinese American history floating loose in my head since forever - once I try to touch on one thing, it leads to another, then another, and suddenly I'm writing the Chinese American My Struggle: Book 1, hahaAttempting to hit just major bullet points, Chinese immigrants came to this country in different waves - each wave comprised Chinese people from different parts of China, who spoke different dialects and who had differing degrees of educational attainment. My parents' wave (and even they are fairly different from each other, since my dad was born and raised in China, whereas my mom was born and raised in British Hong Kong) has little to do with the more recent waves. This novel set me off because it didn't show much understanding of/desire to understand the previous waves.
Though I actually think Zhang wasn't trying to write a historical fiction - this story aspires to be a western, but struggles to meet this challenge because it can't seem to escape its depiction of the main characters as perpetual victims at every turn - to me, that's not really what a western strives to do.
And I do wonder how much publishers/marketing have to do with the book's being generally regarded as historical fiction, to where Zhang seems to be declaring at the outset of numerous interviews that this is Not historical fiction... if Not writing a historical fiction was her aim, it really would have helped her own cause to have strayed more from historical events! As it stands, she invoked enough actual Chinese American history to convolute her own professed goals. It's interesting to think about what it means to declare that one is not depicting history - does that simply mean, This isn't exactly what happened? Or does it mean, I absolve myself of the burden of that representation?
And I'm a terrible person to recommend historical fiction, because I'm annoyingly picky, particularly when I know some of the history at the outset (case in point-this book); I either get really bored ("I know all this!" as my 7-year-old likes to whine whenever he's getting schooled), or I become irate all out of proportion over choices made by the author.
All that having been said, I do know of (but have never read) one Chinese American author who writes a lot of YA rooted in the Gold Rush/railroad period, Laurence Yep. He has a whole series focusing on different aspects of Chinese American history during that time, the Golden Mountain Chronicles.
My other rec is possibly controversial, Maxine Hong Kingston. She wrote two books that touch on Chinese American history from that time period (but which span across others), first about women (The Woman Warrior), then about men (China Men), that meld memoir/ history/folklore/magical realism. Some other Chinese American authors have accused her of tokenizing Chinese American culture for mainstream acceptance. I just read a great essay that manages to evenhandedly sum up the case against her, but which also celebrates what makes her important to Asian American literature.
https://electricliterature.com/the-la...
I tend to be in the camp that is more For her... however, since reading Zhang's book, I've attempted MHK's China Men, because I wanted to contrast New Wave Chinese American writing (Zhang) with Old Wave (MHK); every time I pick up China Men (which I read years ago), I've not been able to make it past the 2nd page. Her authorial voice is so LISTEN TO ME, FOLLOW ME - I don't have the best attention span for that vibe right now.
However, she's a Chinese American from my dad's generation, probably from a nearby village (judging by surname), so I'll stand by that rec.
I'll close by rather hypocritically asking one question you're never supposed to ask an Asian American - how is your English so good? :) We've talked about Tamil, Malay languages, Chinese dialects, everything but the language we are blatantly communicating in, haha. Is English still the mode of teaching in both Singapore and Malaysia, and is that a holdover from being a former British colony?
Ah, no worries - that would be an interesting piece anyway, if you ever write it! But yes, I do see what you mean, regarding issues having to do with intent and marketing. I wasn't aware of the delineation between historical fiction and the "Western" genre actually, that's super interesting, I will look more into it. But I suppose that does clarify Zhang's intent and somewhat explains it - if she was deliberately trying to craft something mythical and thus vague (in terms of time periods, characteristics, etc.) instead of relying on the specificity that comes with the territory of historical fiction. But given what you said about what characterises a Western (that sense of the "heroic"? the self-idolisation, -mythicisation? - if I got what you meant right?) then yeah, the book sort of slips into a nether territory.
But I do also think that perhaps the marketing of the book may have muddied the waters a little. It is a little in vogue to market work done by non-Western/ White artists as "representative" of their respective cultures, so I imagine that the marketing team would be eager to push this particular tangent, much as CRA was probably intended by Kwan to be just about that particular class of Singaporean Chinese, but the movie went with being the Definitive "Asian" Cinematic Event of the Decade.
Regardless, I do think that while liberties can be taken with art, there should be some sort of... nod (for a lack of a better word) to whatever is specific to the setting. So yeah, the parameters of Zhang's work (or lack of) seem to give her an "easy way out", so to speak... totally get what you mean about feeling that she didn't acknowledge the complexity of Chinese immigration during that period. (Long way of saying that I really appreciated your review and agree with it lol)
Thank you for the recommendations! I've actually heard of Maxine Kingston Hong and Frank Chin's feud, but I should probably read both their work as well. We also have that argument - in Asia itself - about what constitutes self-exoticisation, etc., so I find it interesting.
And as for your last question, I've been thinking about it and apologies because the answer is probably longer than you bargained for!
In Malaysia the mode of instruction in school is in Malay, and Singapore's is in English. (So you get a little smug ribbing from Singaporeans at their English ability compared to Malaysians'.) The switch to Malay from English as an instructive language (school-wise) in Malaysia was fairly recent though, I think it was done sometime in 2000ish? And I think before that it was switched from Malay to English. My father, for example, was English-educated, which was the norm for his generation at government schools. But my mother, quite a few years younger, was educated in Malay.
But I do think it's too easy to boil one's English ability (in Singapore specifically, but also Malaysia) here down to schooling, as one can enter the same system and come away with vastly different results, although everyone in Singapore (and Malaysia, if they were born around 1970 and later - for both countries) can speak and write in English to various degrees of grammar accuracy and with differing strengths of vocabulary (the extent is the thing; everyone can converse/ write in English if they are born after a certain period - though in Malaysia this does depend on how rural the area is). It's probably more accurate to say that your background outside of school influences the precise strength of this ability.
For me, my first language is actually English, which is not that common for my background (born before 2000 + neither parents having had English as their own first language + not being particularly well-off - though my father taught English at certain points, which also helped); when one thinks of someone who was "raised in English" they would think normally of a family like in CRA, or at least upper-middle class, anglicised. I am from a mixed-race (but fully Asian, so it's not due to having a Western parent; Eurasians are expected to be good at English here for no other reason than that...) background, so it made sense for my parents to use a common language for us at home, and they chose English instead of Malay, even though my mother is stronger in the latter - they thought it would be more beneficial for us.
But I think for me what really helped was that I loved to read and most of my *books were from the UK (or to a lesser degree, US), as a child/ younger teenager, common for that period, so I don't think a kid could grow up anticipating and loving each newly released Harry Potter book for example without it having an effect on language ability! So really my default setting is English (which has come at the expense of other languages, which is something I am trying to rectify). Even at work, or school, we all spoke to each in English outside of class as my friend groups were always mixed, race-wise. The same for strangers, etc. (in Singapore; in Malaysia I use Malay for stuff like asking strangers for directions, ordering food, etc.) Although for sure there is an amount of colonial hangover; English has "power", it can bring you further, make people perceive you differently - though that would be probably something truer for older generations, and not really mine, where everyone can already speak it. At least to some degree.
*For some people from postcolonial countries, the effect of this is heavy - for myself, having a childhood reading list that was mostly from the UK (specifically mostly English) never really affected my sense of "Asian" identity, really - to me it didn't really matter as a child, though I do keep a more diverse reading list now because, well... it's more interesting! Though I do still love the books from my childhood. But Jamaica Kincaid's essay reflects the experience of someone from a postcolonial (specifically: Commonwealth) nation whose relationship with England or the idea of England (via secondhand interactions as a child) left her more scarred.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/84c9...
**Late edit!
a) It's a bit glib to round down Kincaid's perspective to being just a product of interaction with English books as a child, but that too is a product of postcolonialism (as Preeta Samarasan details in this more light-hearted essay: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2011/...)
b) The Singapore education system's approach to literature (thus English) is also class-based. In the typical school I went to, children might or might not have the chance to take literature as an elective subject, or the books that they deal with might be viewed as less complex. In more "elite" schools they tend to have a far more "classical" approach to literature (for reference, in my school we did a local text and one from another postcolonial country, but these elite schools would probably not go "below" what are considered as The English Canon, if that makes sense. But then again that was about 10 years ago). They might even mine teachers from the West. I was personally very happy with the education I received as it did not "deify" the West to that extent.
Rosa, thank you so much for this review and its insights. I learned so much from it. The whole question of "what language are they speaking?" niggled at me while I was reading but I needed you to put the pieces together for me. Thanks!
I felt very similarly -- I was initially blown away by the ambition and voice, but ultimately the details felt off, especially Ba. I don't know if I read this correctly, but I was under the impression that Ba isn't Chinese, but looks Asian -- I was thinking he might be indigenous? The accuracy of the mandarin aside, I found it weird that Ba was speaking so much mandarin when it's not a language he grew up with or a culture he has any apparent connection to outside of his relationship with Ma. I am 100% with you on feeling like African-American literature seems to navigate place and identity with an intrinsic confidence that this book's exploration of the Chinese-American experience lacks.
Appreciate your thoughtful comments. - I think Ba is definitely Chinese in terms of his actual DNA - it's been a while since I read the book, but I recall a scene in Ba's section where Billy(?) tells Ba that he[Billy] first found Ba onshore alongside other dead Chinese immigrants (implying there was shipwreck and young Ba was the sole survivor). Billy makes slant eyes at Ba to highlight that #1, the other people on the ship looked like Ba, so Ba ostensibly came over with them, and #2, it connotes to us that Ba doesn't look like anyone else around (neither white nor Indigenous). [And yes, I thought it was a little weird that a Native person would zoom in on eyes as a prime physical distinction, given that epicanthic eye folds are also common among indigenous people, but it was a small matter compared to the more glaring inconsistencies, like the Mandarin.]
I do think the initial intent was to illustrate different incarnations (for lack of a better term) of Chinese American identity on American land through the 4 members of the family. But the story loses grasp of that thread pretty early on.
I am late to the party but just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this incredible review. I couldn't finish this one (will probably give it a go again at some point) but you expressed everything I felt and then more. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!
What a kind comment - thank you :)And because you did not ask (ha), two books that were also published this year that I thought engaged with Chinese American identity in new and interesting ways: Interior Chinatown and Days of Distraction
Rosa wrote: "What a kind comment - thank you :)And because you did not ask (ha), two books that were also published this year that I thought engaged with Chinese American identity in new and interesting ways:..."
I actually loved your review so much I went to your profile and checked and added interior chinatown to my list because of your review haha! Will add days of distraction now as well :)
Jesus, this review is almost as long as the book.
I just couldn’t get beyond the maggots.
I’m glad to find someone sharing similar feelings regarding (1) the misuse of languages [i got extremely angry and unsettled by Zhang’s decision to replace Toisanese and Cantonese with Mandarin pin yin, just bc maybe her own background 🤷🏻♀️ ] and (2) the erasure of Native Americans through the sinicization of Indigenous people on this land. Zhang’s genre revision is basically a sino-centric reimagination of the gold rush that really is proposing how the European settler colonialism shall be revised into a “better” Chinese settler colonialism. There’s not much a grappling of the intricacies of many POC as both victims and beneficiaries of settler colonialism. And i cant help but question why Zhang, an elite ivy league one point five generation mandarin-speaking Chinese American, is trying to tell this story of gold rush. It’s neither a sincere family story nor a historical fiction that respect the experiences of early chinese diaspora and their descendants. Thought i would mention that this one academic book (Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railway) might be of interest.
ZL wrote: "I’m glad to find someone sharing similar feelings regarding (1) the misuse of languages [i got extremely angry and unsettled by Zhang’s decision to replace Toisanese and Cantonese with Mandarin pin..."Sorry I missed your comment from so long ago - glad to hear someone else had so many of the same reactions to this! And thank you for the book rec - it looks utterly fascinating (must have been near-impossible to research, given the relative lack of source material - really impressed with the author's persistence) - adding to my To Read list, though my attention span is not at its greatest currently :)
I just wanted to say thank you for the excellent review - especially because I wasn't until I actually read your thoughts was I able to finally realize why the use of Mandarin throughout the book was grating me.
Great review, Rosa! I just finished reading this and while I enjoyed it a lot more than you did, I appreciate the way you pointed out the inaccuracies, especially with the Mandarin vs Cantonese switch. Being from Hong Kong myself, and having grown up speaking Cantonese and English interchangeably in our household, I’m actually not surprised that Mandarin would be used, since that’s the more universally favored “written” Chinese language. Cantonese is more spoken than it is written (even in HK, the more formal publications are mostly written in Mandarin Chinese — the ones written in Cantonese are considered “local slang”). I guess you can say that I’m so used to not seeing Cantonese being used that it doesn’t bother me anymore, as I’m not expecting to see it in mainstream written publications anyway. With that said, for this particular novel, I don’t know what the intention was in using Mandarin if Cantonese was more historically accurate, though I’m curious now to do more research to see if the author addressed this at some point…😀
Thank you so much for this review! It's so important for Mandarin-speaking Chinese people not to center ourselves when it's ahistorical to do so, and I am side-eying this book/author quite hard now.
Bkwmlee wrote: "Great review, Rosa! I just finished reading this and while I enjoyed it a lot more than you did, I appreciate the way you pointed out the inaccuracies, especially with the Mandarin vs Cantonese swi..."Very much appreciate the kind words, and the food for thought!
I read this as a specifically Chinese American novel, with English as the central mode of conveyance, and the limited Chinese words functioning to highlight the novel's awareness of “othered" identity within outer English-speaking society - as such, the choice of dialect is fundamental to establishing character interiority.
Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, and Lawrence Yep, all noted Chinese American authors who wrote about this time period, invariably used Cantonese and sometimes Toisanese (which would actually be most historically accurate of all) to highlight what it meant to be Chinese American during the Gold Rush in the U.S. Not coincidentally, all were already here pre-1965 (when the last of the exclusion laws for Asians were finally eradicated), so are in a way the most direct descendants of those early Chinese immigrants.
I assume Zhang chose Mandarin because she favors a very lyricism-heavy style for the narrative, and based on her bio (originally from Beijing), Mandarin is the Chinese she's most comfortable with/has most the facility to shape. In the few interviews I've read (or seen - she was actually featured on Seth Meyers's show, via Zoom), Zhang continually calls this a "fantasy," and insists it not be read as history.
While it's true that this book didn't work for me, over a year and a half later, I'm still thinking about it, because it continually raises the question for me of what an artist's debt is to both lived history, and to the legacy of the artists who came before, who also tried to honor this memory with their storytelling. I really don't think it's interesting or worthwhile to keep telling the same stories in the exactly the same ways, but changing things in a manner that actually obscures an already-marginalized history - I just couldn't find a worthwhile rationale within this novel. Aside from the dialect issue, I was equally troubled (but didn’t want my review to be even longer, ha) by the fact that women apparently labor alongside the men in this Fantasy, so we skip over the Page Act (barring Chinese women from entry) and all that particular history carries about this country's use of laws to brand all Chinese women immigrants as potential prostitutes + ensuring Chinese people don't start families and make a life on American soil… for me, not one historical "swerve" resulted in any insight richer or more profound than the realities lived by the people who serve as inspiration for this a-historical novel. But I’m repeating myself.
My mom's side is from Hong Kong, going back at least 2 generations; my grandmother made a point of reading a newspaper every day to “keep her mind sharp,” haha - it must have been printed in colloquial speech? She never learned one word of Mandarin. In fact, of my mom's entire immediate family of eight, only my mom knows Mandarin with fluency, and that's only because she paid to take a class in her young adulthood. However, she only ever lived under British rule (and comes from a very working class background, which I imagine plays a factor). I just read a study on Hong Kong Cantonese which postulated that the British colonial government allowed/somewhat enabled Canto-intense cultural development, figuring it would inhibit the Hong Kongers from identifying too strongly with the mainland. Very on-brand if so.
On the subject of all things Hong Kong, thank you so much for turning me onto Eileen Chang! I *loved* the Love in a Fallen City collection, though it really put me through the emotional wringer because of how crushingly devastating her writing is... what a brave, fascinating mind she had. Is there an English language memoir or biography for her that you enjoyed?
Alice wrote: "Thank you so much for this review! It's so important for Mandarin-speaking Chinese people not to center ourselves when it's ahistorical to do so, and I am side-eying this book/author quite hard now."Thank you! For me, the main issue is that the book uses so much of the actual history, but edits out/changes aspects which are integral to the "trueness" how those lives were lived... I think it would have been less egregious if she'd changed things up more, so that it's Overtly fantasy. Maybe set that whole western in space, haha...
Just finished this book and saw your review. I had to log in simply to say thank you so much for this review and expressing so many of my own sentiments! I was also puzzled that the characters were speaking Mandarin. I didn't know much about the role the Chinese played during this time in American history, but I'm Chinese-Filipino and always knew that most Chinese immigrants to the Philippines came from Fujian province and spoke Hokkien/Amoy, not Mandarin. I suspected that the Chinese immigrants to the west coast in the 1800s wouldn't have come all the way from Beijing. Google confirmed that they most likely would've spoken Cantonese and this new piece of knowledge pretty much ruined the reading experience for me.
On top of that, it was just one horrific turn after another, so at some point I just skimmed through pages and pages describing the new misfortune to befall the characters, to get to the end.
I was very much looking forward to reading it based on so many glowing reviews, but in the end I felt quite strongly (in a negative way) about this book. Strongly enough that I debated leaving a review on Goodreads, but when I saw yours, I saw that someone had said it all, and more. Thanks for saving me the time! :-)
*Edited to add that the Philippines now has an influx of new expats from China who are here mainly as online gaming employees serving the Chinese market (this is to bypass Chinese laws preventing them from operating in their own country). They all speak Mandarin and that's how we distinguish between the Chinese Filipinos who have been here for generations and are more Filipino than Chinese, and those we call "mainlanders." So I agree, the Chinese aren't a homogenous demographic with one basic culture and language, and it's a disservice to depict them as such.
Therese wrote: "Just finished this book and saw your review. I had to log in simply to say thank you so much for this review and expressing so many of my own sentiments!Really appreciate your generous feedback, as well as your fascinating insights. Reading this book was actually hugely instructive for me, because it made me realize how relatively little we across the Chinese diaspora know of each other's histories, even when localized to the same destination country (how each wave of immigrants knows less and less about the waves that preceded them). It's actually started a mini-obsession with me on learning about all the places the southern Chinese struck out for during and after the Opium Wars, and eventually called home (for example, I did know about the Fukienese settling in the Philippines and other countries across Southeast Asia, but only recently, due to this new interest of mine :) ) Are there any English language books about the Chinese Filipino experience that you would recommend?
As for the "one horrific turn after another," I'm not a squeamish reader , but I do expect justification for pervasive depictions of trauma, which this work failed to deliver as a whole... the fact that the actual history behind these depictions only link to the author in the broadest sense (i.e., Han DNA) definitely didn't help things go down any better.
If you're at all interested, I just read a pretty good collection of short stories by a Chinese Malaysian author who currently lives in Singapore - all the stories explore Chinese Malaysian or Chinese Singaporean identity across different points in time (WWII, late 1800s, present time). You will find some Hokkien peppering the dialogue (I think? I am only sure on the Cantonese :) But yes, there's a whole array of dialects/languages because it's Singapore and Malaysia)
The Heartsick Diaspora and other stories
Thank you again for your kind words!
I loved your review, Rosa, and learned a lot from it.I'm Argentine and of course missed the Cantonese/Mandarin issue, but I agree on the other novel's flaws. Thank you so much for a careful, detailed and insightful review. I also gave the book two stars.
Delia Rubens wrote: "I loved your review, Rosa, and learned a lot from it.I'm Argentine and of course missed the Cantonese/Mandarin issue, but I agree on the other novel's flaws. Thank you so much for a careful, detai..."
Thank you for such kind feedback :)
Thanks for the points raised, I think I was so excited to see a different side to the typical wild west narrative that I didn't pick up on some of the things you've touched one.Were you also annoyed by the fact the mum supposedly was able to just get up and leave immediately after her son's still birth, and the fact their mining town was in turmoil after the storm?! Like how far could she have gotten without a horse, gold or provisions without bleeding out, plus if they were the only Chinese in the region, she would've been really easy to track because she would've stood out.
Lastly, I don't think the mother thought the dad was from China all the years they were together, just in the very beginning when they met, when she mistook him for a big shot. It's also highly possible that she did because the world back then wasn't as internationally mobile, it would be fairly unthinkable to a poor labourer that an ethnically Chinese person could have been born and raised overseas. And if he had a weird accent or language she might have just thought it was a regional dialect or something?
Great review! The use of Mandarin instead of Cantonese was grating on my nerves, especially anachronistic phrases like “親愛的”, which is something only certain modern Chinese would use, as it’s a direct translation of the English term “my dear”. No Chinese husband in the gold rush era would address his wife like that. Same thing with him calling Lucy “亂七八糟” to mean she’s “messy”, because in Mandarin that’s only used to describe the state of things, not people, even though in English the adjective can be used for both. This was clearly written by someone who didn’t know better and just used Google Translate to plug in whatever English terms to get the corresponding Mandarin words without doing any research, which reminded me of what Jeffrey Deaver did with Stone Monkey, although he was probably using a dictionary, and the results were ridiculously laughable and completely ruined the reading experience for someone who knows the Chinese language. But that was a pulp crime novel by a white man published in 2002. I expect better from an Asian American literary writer in 2020.
This also reminds me of Under a Painted Sky, another deeply unpleasant reading experience as the YA gold rush novel featured a Chinese American teenage girl who taught violin lessons (to whom? I wondered. To White kids? Laughable. To other Chinese kids? Also laughable. They were few and far between and could doubtfully afford such a luxury.) and used Chinese Zodiacs to judge everyone she first met (racist self-stereotyping) but mixed up the meaning associated with the signs because the author obviously did not know that deeming someone born in The Year of the Rabbit promiscuous because of the common phrase “breeding like rabbits” was wildly inappropriate, as that’s an English notion, and no Chinese people would never think of rabbits as rabid, oversexed animals. I was deeply offended.
I had such high hopes for this book. Sadly, as with the above mentioned title, this will be a DNF.
“A buffet in Lawrence, Kansas” I’m DYING
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