Going to speak in Marysville at the new Chinese History Museum was a special event since this small town was so important in the early history of Chinese headed to seek their fortunes on Gold Mountain. The timing coincided with the 129th Bok Kai (Rain God) Festival, which has also become an occasion for the entire community which put on an old fashioned small town parade, complete with politicians, local officials, beauty queens, marching bands accompanied by lots of firecrackers and not one, but two dragons.
The history museum has a small but impressive collection of artifacts pertaining to the early Chinese, and Brian and Lawrence Tom spearhead the efforts in maintaining its operation and development. About a dozen scholars dealing with Chinese American history gave presentations over the 2 days and the collegiality was warm and supportive.
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I was at first puzzled that at many talks one or two non-Chinese would come up after my presentations to tell me not only that they enjoyed my talks but that they really "related' or identified with my experiences. It turned out that they were not identifying with ethnic Chinese issues, but to the experience of cultural isolation. For example, one African American woman clarified by noting that her family was the sole African American family in her small New England town. Other people found yet other topics that I raised that they felt a connection with. We all share many more concerns than race/ethnicity. It was not unexpected that my presentations might connect with many older Chinese Americans since they would have shared with me many similar experiences. In fact, I sometimes wondered why they were so interested in my talks inasmuch as most of what I was telling them, they already "knew." One day I suddenly realized what should have been obvious. Because few had written or publicly spoken about many of the experiences of the second generation children of Chinese immigrants, they felt 'validated' by my presentation of "our" experiences. In searching for information about early Chinese laundrymen, I discovered an archive of 'John Jung' letters from the 1920s at the University of North Dakota, which I was, of course, most curious to read. By a remarkable coincidence, the North Dakota John Jung had somewhat similar circumstances and experiences that I, the Georgia John Jung had in growing up when we were in the only Chinese family in our hometowns.
John Jung wrote many letters to one of his elementary school teachers and she saved all of them because she sensed they provided a perspective on his personality development. Of course, we have no copies of her letters sent to John. In contrast, I saved all of the letters sent to me after I left Georgia at age 15 from two white adult men who 'mentored' and befriended me when I was growing up. It was fascinating for me to write about the 'two sides of the coin' for the correspondence from North Dakota John Jung to his teacher and the letters from my mentors to me. Both attest to the powerful and positive influences that two Chinese boys, growing up in cultural isolation, received from supportive and nurturant non Chinese in their communities. |
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