A book, and a historical trace from it

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2009/6/28

A book, and a historical trace from it

Book Recommendation: 'The Chinese in America: A Narrative History' by the late historian and writer, Iris Chang.

IT is the real history of Chinese immigrants of several generations in the United States, with all the almost second-to-none endavour of survival. Being a second-generation Chinese American, the auther even let express some confusion in her writing--some mixture of both approval and dissapproval to the American values and mainstream (namely white) society, some bewilderment that is clearly out of a deep-felt pain of being denied and accepted in different senses at the same time.

Accidentally, I found something interesting from this book. Guess many of us have seen the american movie 'the big fish', in which there's a Chinese drama actress--or two--twin sisters who share one trunk who became a celebrity after getting popular with their performance. This character might seem odd to Chinese audience--at least to me, for I even took it as another instance of demonization of Chinese people that has been quite common in American pop culture all the time till today. interestingly after reading the first half of the book(I'm still reading it), I found the possible trace: it might be a combination of the two--in fact three--persons: the twin brothers Chang and Eng Bunker who chared a trunk, and the first American Chinese actress Anna May Wong, rather than a totally made-up figure. See pictures--found some clue?

* all pictures above are photographed from the book

It is worth noting that Anna May Wong had never been granted any 'good' or even normal movie characters all her life. All she got were evil or seductive ones that took on the 'Oriental' characteristics deeply rooted in mainstream American mindset. In the movie 'The Good Earth' of Pearl S. Buck's novel of the same name, she was denied to star as the Chinese heroin, O Lan--who was eventually performed by an Caucasian actress Luise Rainer, and won Rainer the Oscar prize of the year 1937.

Luise Rainer: Does she look like a Chinese somehow? the bitter look--kind of obedience that characteriezed Chinese women?