![]() ![]() Once back at the store, I’d go upstairs to the workroom, with its huge machinery and its pinups of sedate Chinese maidens, where my grandfather and great-uncle Bennie would be engulfed by dense clouds of sawdust and the din of saws. At the restaurant, we’d go back to the kitchen to chat with the cook and watch as he packed up our order into cartons. We’d stop in at Margaret’s International Grocery and browse through the aisles with their salted plums, dried squid, and fermented tofu. Suie One Company, a gigantic mercantile museum that contained, among other things, porcelains taken from the royal kiln and floated downriver on sampans altars pillaged from provincial temples and huge architectural carvings shipped in sections to be reconstructed by Fong See’s sons in one of his many warehouses.Īt lunchtime, Grandma Stella and I would walk up the street to a restaurant that must have had a real name but that we just called “the little place.” Along the way we’d stop to chat with Blackie at the Sam Sing Butcher Shop, with its gold-leafed roast pig in the window. ![]() ![]() We would pass through a moon gate guarded by two huge stone lions and enter the dark, cool recesses of our family’s Chinese antique store, the F. This is the story of the Sees and the Fongs and how they assimilated into America.Īs a girl, I spent frequent weekends and most of my summer vacations with my paternal grandparents in Chinatown. Altogether, Fong See sired twelve children–five Eurasian, seven Chinese–the last born when he was in his late eighties. This family always lived under the name of Fong. The second wife, a Chinese waif who had supported herself making firecrackers, was only sixteen when she married my great-grandfather, who was sixty-four at the time. The marriage between Fong See and Letticie Pruett–my white great-grandmother–would go on to establish the See name. My family always “knew” that Fong See had two wives. He loved money, and had a childlike enthusiasm for fancy cars. He lured customers into his Asian art store by selling tickets to see a stuffed mermaid. Rising out of a mass of nameless Asian immigrants, he became one of the richest and most prominent Chinese in the country. Belle Yang – THE LOST WORLD OF BABAįong See, my great-grandfather, left China in 1871 as a youngster, found prosperity on the Gold Mountain (the Chinese name for the United States), and lived to reach his hundredth birthday. “Extraordinary! Every sentence pulsates with humor, muscle, meaning, and cool snappy music…Wonderful. “Both serious social history and one family’s version of realizing the California dream…Fascinating.” - Seattle Times “A copiously researched history and a page-turning read.” - Kirkus Reviews Immediate and gripping.” - Publishers Weekly, S tarred Review The ambitions, fears, loves, and sorrows of See’s huge cast are set forth with the storytelling skills of a novelist. “A matchless portrait not only of a remarkable family but of a century’s changing attitudes…. “Lovingly rendered…See paints a vivid tableau of a family and an era.” - People ![]() “Astonishing…as engagingly readable as any novel…comprehensive and exhaustively researched.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review Lisa See looks at what’s in her bones and re-creates an enviably entertaining family history.” -Amy Tan - THE JOY LUCK CLUB and THE KITCHEN GOD’S WIFE “ON GOLD MOUNTAIN weaves together fascinating family anecdotes, imaginative storytelling, and historical details of immigrant life over the last one-hundred years. Terrific stuff… The See family’s adventures would be incredible if ON GOLD MOUNTAIN were fiction.” - New York Times Book Review “ proves to be a clever, conscientious, fair-minded biographer… has done a gallant job of fashioning anecdote, fable and fact into an engaging read. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |