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By Lena Li
In this episode, our host Lena Li, a new-generation Chinese immigrant, sits down with William Gee Wong, a California-born journalist and author of Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America. Together, they discuss Wong’s father’s immigrant journey during the Chinese Exclusion Act era and explore how Chinatown’s legacy continues to shape Chinese American history and the future of the community.
- Host: Lena Li
- Translation: Lena Li
- Wong’s Chinese voice: Eric Qiu
- Chinese Immigrant Stories is a Mandarin-language podcast produced by AsAmNews designed to serve members of the limited-English speaking Chinese community. You can subscribe to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube Podcasts where you can view it with English subtitles.
Introduction: The Sons of Chinatown and William Gee Wong
Lena:
As a new immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for less than ten years, I have a feeling of both familiarity and unfamiliarity with Chinatown. Many early Chinese immigrants live here, most of whom still speak Cantonese or Taisen-wa.
Walking down the streets of Chinatown, I smell the familiar scent of Chinese herbs mixed with the odors of fish, meat, and vegetables from the market. I see the passing faces with their distinct Eastern features, and the Chinese clothing, household goods, and kitchenware displayed in the shops.
It feels as though I am immersed in a nostalgic film slideshow.
No matter where in the world one goes, the settlement of Chinese immigrants is always accompanied by a strong cultural imprint. Standing amidst the bustling streets of Chinatown, I know that I am surrounded by my fellows, but how much do I truly know about them?
What are the stories of immigration that have been locked away in history books and the distant memories of the older generations? How did these journeys begin? Why did they come to this unfamiliar land? How did they cross vast oceans, traveling thousands of miles in search of survival? How did they start new lives here? And how did they manage to root in a new country, passing their legacy on from generation to generation?
As one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States, the number of Chinese immigrants reached a peak of nearly 2.5 million in 2019. Despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump administration during the pandemic, which tightened visa policies for international students and foreign workers, this did not affect the high proportion of Chinese immigrants in the overall U.S. population or the continued growth trend.
However, few new immigrants are aware that historically, the U.S. government’s attitude and policies toward Chinese immigrants have gone through different phases. For instance, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the result of anti-Chinese sentiment and labor union lobbying. It wasn’t until 1965, when the U.S. lifted restrictions on non-European immigrants, that Chinese immigration began to rise again.
According to the latest data, approximately half of Chinese immigrants currently reside in California (32%) or New York (19%). Among them, Santa Clara County in California is one of the counties with the highest concentration of Chinese immigrants.
Over the course of history, Chinatown has no longer served as the primary settlement area for new Chinese immigrants; instead, it seems to have gradually transformed into a microcosm of history, showcasing the changes of an era and the evolution of historical narratives to the world.
Today, as a representative of new immigrants, I had the honor of engaging in a conversation with William Gee Wong, a descendant of early Chinese immigrants, renowned writer, and journalist. We discussed his memoir, Sons of Chinatown, as well as the immigration stories of his father and family during the early 20th century.
This year, 82-year-old Wong, whose full Chinese name is Zhu Hua Qiang (朱华强), was born in Oakland’s Chinatown, California. He is a native Californian journalist, writer, and amateur historian. He is also one of the few columnists writing about Chinese American identity and Asian American issues for mainstream newspapers in the United States. Mr. Wong earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has worked for the Wall Street Journal and the Oakland Tribune. Additionally, he has contributed to well-known publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco News Call Bulletin, the San Francisco Observer, and Asia Week. In 2022, the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists awarded Mr. Wong the Career Achievement Award.
Critics have commented on Mr. Wong’s new book, Son of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America, describing it as “a master class on twentieth-century social and political dynamics that engulfed historic Chinatowns, journalism, and American society.”
This book tells the story of Mr. Wong’s family history, including his father’s immigration experiences during the Chinese Exclusion Act, as well as his childhood stories in Oakland’s Chinatown and his career as a journalist. It includes many of his reflections on the significance of place, identity, and culture.
Mr. Wong’s father immigrated to California from Taishan in southern China during his youth. His immigration story bears a unique historical mark: after the 1906 earthquake and fire, all birth certificates and records at San Francisco City Hall were destroyed.
As a result, many boys and male immigrants from China took advantage of this by posing as the sons of U.S.-born men, a common immigration method at the time known as “paper sons.” Mr. Wong’s English surname is Wong, but his real surname is Zhu (Gee), which is his biological father’s surname.
Due to his parents’ complex immigration process, his mother immigrated to the U.S. as his father’s legal “sister.” Therefore, the children born in the U.S. had to take the surname Wong, becoming his “children on paper.” This dilemma was common in Chinatown at that time.
Wong explained in a media interview that the title of his book, Son of Chinatown, refers to both himself and his father. In a metaphorical sense, they are both “sons of Chinatown.” The Chinatown community profoundly influenced Wong’s childhood, and in his memories, Chinatown represents his little universe.
The Asian American movement of the late 1960s was also a significant turning point in history, with the establishment of Asian American studies programs at both San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Influenced by this wave of activism, Mr. Wong began to focus on and write about the stories and issues faced by Asian American minority groups. He estimates that he published six to eight major feature stories on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, including coverage of the civil rights organization “Chinese for Affirmative Action,” which was formed by the first wave of Chinese Americans after World War II. Mr. Wong has stated that reporting on issues related to the Asian American community is one of his proudest moments in journalism.
Today, I had the honor of speaking with Mr. Wong about his father’s immigration story and his perspectives on the new generation of Chinese immigrants.
The conversation with Mr. Wong
Lena:
Hi, Mr. Wong. Thank you for joining me today. As a reader of Sons of Chinatown and a new immigrant myself, I found the book incredibly fascinating, as it offers a unique window into the lives of earlier generations of Chinese immigrants in the Bay Area. For those in our audience who may not be familiar with your work, could you start by giving us a brief introduction to Sons of Chinatown and sharing a bit about your father’s immigrant story?
William:
Yes, thank you very much, Lena, for having me on your podcast. And I’ll be happy to share my story with you and your audience. Sons of Chinatown is really a story about my father’s journey from China to America and his growing his family both in China and here. And when I came along as his seventh child, my journey into the American mainstream, which is mostly a White-dominated mainstream, after I had grown up in Oakland, California’s Chinatown.
So the story, very briefly, about my father, he came to America in 1912 when he was a teenager. He came from Taishan, or Hoisan in my dialect area, not very far from Macau and Hong Kong. And he came to make some money because his parents knew that America, which they called Gimsan, or Gumsan, or Gold Mountain, was a place to be able to make some money to help a poor rural family in that part of China.
So he came in 1912 during the Chinese Exclusion Act. And for those who don’t know what that is, it was the official policy of the United States from 1882 to 1943 to keep as many Chinese people out of America as they could. But there were some legal categories that Chinese people could maybe be eligible for legal entry. And one of them was a son of a native.
So my father and other people used that paper son, paper daughter scheme to get into America to qualify to be eligible for entry. Most Chinese were not eligible, but those who could say, for example, for my father’s son who is a native, he was able to get in. So I tell that story of him qualifying as the son of a native, settling in Oakland, California, because he already had a cousin or somebody who owned a store in Oakland Chinatown, which was then very small. So, he worked there. He lived there.
He went to an American school to learn English. And then he went back to China three or four times over the next 10 or 12 years to get married, I mean, to father three daughters, and brought his wife, my future mother, and three of his China-born daughters.
And then in Oakland, he had three more daughters before he had me. So I’m his seventh child and only son. So then I grew up in Chinatown, first spoke Hoisanwa, which is the dialect from the place where my father and mother lived and were born, went to Lincoln School, which is the public school, learned English, loved the English language. And therefore, I began losing some of my Chinese, and then became very interested in writing and sports, and eventually became a journalist in American newspapers and had a career as a journalist. So that is basically the story of Sons of Chinatown.
But it also shows to me that immigrants from China during that time when they were not welcome in America were able to somehow survive and grow several generations, including myself, my children, and grandchildren, who are now Americans of Chinese descent.
Lena:
Yes, absolutely. I’d love to dive deeper into that a bit later, but before we do, I want to touch on something that struck me while I was reading the book. You mentioned that you went back to the village your father came from and had a very emotional experience while being there. Could you share a bit about what that moment was like for you?
William:
Well, some members of my family and I, in 1994, and this was 33 years after my father died. He died in 1961. He was in his mid-60s. So 33 years later, members of my family and I went looking for his village in Taishan, Hoisan. And two people in my family, my sisters, had been born in the village. One was born in 1926. The other was born in 1931.
So they were having sort of a homecoming. So my feeling at the time, I remember, was I was interested in how my older sisters who were born there, how they felt. And I didn’t have, at that point, a lot of emotional ties to my father’s village.
Even though my sisters and I, over many years, had wondered about my father and mother’s upbringing in China, especially the people who were like me, were born in Oakland. Since we only heard stories, not from my parents, but mostly from my older sisters who were there.
So when I went there first, I was just kind of interested in their stories. But once I found myself inside my father’s house, and we found his house, by that time, it was not, it was dilapidated. It was really in bad shape. But we found our way inside, and I decided to just give some of my thoughts about being there.
And being a journalist, I’m pretty good about describing a scene, and being able to think through what I was seeing. I suddenly got very emotional. And I did, as I describe in my book, I did break down. I did cry because I suddenly felt an emotional connection to my father’s house. And that was part of what I call my identity search.
Because my Chinatown experience taught me that I was ethnic Chinese, but I lived all my life in America. And America has a very small Chinese population. Very small in the days of my father, a little bigger when I was growing up, versus today where it’s even bigger, but we’re still fairly small.
But we are, national identity is American, but our ethnic and racial identity is Chinese. So gradually those feelings came together in me, and I just broke down. And that got me thinking even more about who I was and who my father was.
Lena:
Yeah, When I read that part of the book, I found myself also getting very emotional, especially in the way you described the inside of the house your father lived in. because growing up in China in my generation, I had never seen a living environment like that in my entire life. That moment transported me to a completely unfamiliar place, and I started imagining what your father’s daily life might have been like.
Another question I’d love to ask is about the vivid picture you painted of Oakland’s Chinatown during your childhood. I know it plays a critical role in helping your family establish roots in the U.S. In your opinion, how do you see the role of Chinatown for Chinese immigrants today compared to when you were growing up?
William:
I still visit Chinatown because I live now about two or three miles from Chinatown, the Chinatown I grew up in. And I do see a number of elders who could have been like my father and mother speaking both Cantonese and Hoisanwa, the dialect from the area where my father and mother grew up. So I do know that Chinatown still remains a place for older immigrants who don’t speak English at all or well, but who are much more comfortable in their native dialect, whether it’s Cantonese or Hoisanwa.
The big difference is that when my parents came and my older sisters came, and even when I was growing up, Oakland Chinatown was segregated. That’s where Chinese people live in Oakland, basically not able to move outside of Chinatown into White neighborhoods or mixed neighborhoods.
The difference today is that Chinese people are able to move anywhere in Oakland and anywhere in America. That’s the big difference because at the time when my parents were here, the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in place. Remember what I said, in 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, basically expired. From that point on, we were able to gradually move into other places in Oakland and other cities throughout America. We were able to find work and live and be with people of many different races and cultures.
So that’s the big difference, but Chinatown still exists as a place where people from China or other places who are of Chinese descent, who don’t speak English well, feel more comfortable with just Chinese people. So it’s still a neighborhood that is thriving, has a lot of businesses and people, but many people of Chinese descent today live all over the cities of America and are able to find work anywhere.
Lena:
What do you think are some core values or traditions that older Chinese immigrants have tried to perceive in the U.S.? And do you think these values resonate with the newer generation?
William:
That’s an interesting question. I think that Chinese, whether in a Chinatown environment, immigrant or American born or whatever, still feel a closeness to family. When I was growing up, I got the message from my parents that they wanted me and my sisters to honor our family, to be respectful to elders.
Maybe it goes back to some Confucian influences in Chinese culture when my parents were children in the late 1800s or the early 1900s before China itself changed its form of governance from the emperors to a more Republican form, and then finally the governance of the Chinese Communist Party.
Not an expert in any of that, but I do know that for us in Chinatown, my parents instilled in us a value of being respectful to elders and honoring family. I do see that that is still a value that is important to even newer immigrants from China or Chinese from other countries.
But what’s different and or what’s also valuable to many people who come to America is the sense of individual freedom. It’s not something that is well regarded in my amateur observation that people who grow up in China have, and maybe there’s a wish to be freer.
But when you come to America, you learn that individual rights and freedom are highly valued. As you move into the American mainstream, whether you’re an adult from, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, or not, you adapt to that because that’s the way one survives in America. You learn the values that are highly important to Americans in general, but you also may try to keep some of the traditional values. So it kind of causes some of us to figure out who we are.
But to me, you know, I’m now in my 80s and I still value family. I have two sisters who are surviving with me and we get together frequently. We talk about how we are interested in family and want to be close to family. And we try to instill that in our children and grandchildren.
Lena:
Yeah, I totally agree. Although I have had my own family and children nowadays, I still feel very connected to my parents, even when we were not in the same country, because family is such an important value to me. I also see this core value in many younger Chinese immigrants today.
In your experience while writing the book, have you encountered younger Chinese immigrants who are eager to learn about the stories of the older generation? Or do you sense a cultural gap or generational disconnect between older and younger Chinese immigrants?
William:
That’s a very complicated situation. I have found that once my book has been published and it’s been out for about four or five months now, I have met a number of younger Chinese Americans, mostly Chinese Americans, but also some younger ethnic Chinese who may have grown up perhaps in another part of America rather than California which is where I am.
And they’re very interested in the story because there is something about my story and about my family’s story in growing up in Oakland and California in America, a generation or two older than them that resonates with them that really touches their own story. So there’s something about the Chinese immigrant experience, whether of my generation or two generations younger, that we can share.
So I find that now there are also Chinese immigrants of a newer generation, perhaps of your cohort who came either fairly recently or within the last 30 or 40 years who have come from different parts of China, not the area from where my parents came and who came here better educated or seeking a higher education in the United States, chose to stay here for job opportunities or to start a family here.
I’m not sure how many of this newer group, which is much larger than when my parents came, are either interested or knowledgeable about the Chinatown Chinese who came here during the Chinese exclusion era.
I do find it interesting that you have a podcast that presumably wants to explore, and you are doing it with me, different generations of Chinese people who are either newer immigrants to America or those of us who have been here for at least one, two, or three generations or even older.
So that’s why it’s a complicated question. But I find that the people who have contacted me, who I have met at book events of mine, who have found my story online, their questions to me, tell me and their desire to tell me their stories, tell me that the story I tell in Sons of Chinatown really impacted them and inspired them to think about their own growing up and their own integration and or their own identity issues.
Lena:
Yeah, when I first moved here, I met so many new Chinese immigrants who came to the US for work, marriage, or other reasons. I never really thought about spending time learning about the older generations who arrived much earlier, or the Chinese community in Chinatown.
I had visited Chinatown in San Francisco, but it still felt very unfamiliar to me—until I found your book. It made me think, “Wow, it’s so interesting why those early Chinese immigrants left their home country and how they made it here.”
I’m curious, what do you hope the younger generation of Chinese immigrants will take away from your book?
William:
Well, one thing I do want to put on the record, which is what my book is, the history and the experiences of a Chinese family that had moved to America more than a hundred years ago, which is what my father did. And to just talk about and explain as best I can the very difficult challenges that one Chinese man and his young family faced in America, because I think it is something to know about one community’s history and to learn about what happened many, many, I mean, in this case, many decades ago, because when you come here, you know, you have to adjust to life.
You don’t think about that kind of history because you’re involved in just trying to survive yourself. But you then may run into a situation where people may look at you a little differently. Maybe they’ll say some not so nice things to you. They may treat you badly, or more neutrally, they may simply say, kind of, who are you? And where are you from? And do you speak English or whatever? Or do you eat food that is so strange?
You know, it could be just an innocent interaction, or it could be a negative interaction. What my book does, along with many other books that have been written by Chinese Americans and Asian Americans, to give a history of the treatment of people who are like you and me in terms of how we look and our race and ethnic backgrounds, not to say we should be mean to people, but to just explain how the difficulties in some cases of the older generations have faced and be alert to that, but also be adaptive.
And one of the words that I like to use about the Chinese community, not unique to us, but it is the case with many immigrants from many different countries, resilience. You have to be able to take some negative interactions, somehow navigate your way and be able to survive a situation without getting into a lot of trouble. And I know what human nature is. Sometimes we disagree. We may say some not nice things about people. But I hope each of us takes some time to at least give ourselves a chance to get to know one another.
Every day we meet people and or even within our own families, we may have disagreements, but at least it will be on the basis of getting to know you as opposed to just looking at you because of the idea of a stereotype, and I think we are familiar with that term. You know, if we look at a Chinese person and say, oh, that person is such and such, they’re good at math, not very good at interacting and being a good human being or whatever. So, those are the kinds of things that I would like younger immigrants, especially from either China or who are of Chinese descent, to learn from my book and to reflect on their own experiences so that they can have a better life here and a healthier mental and physical life.
Lena:
I totally agree. As someone who has witnessed the evolution of the Chinese immigrant experience over the decades, what advice would you give to new immigrants who are navigating their identities in today’s America?
William:
Well, I will reiterate a bit of what I just said, that when you find yourself in a new environment, there are so many other things that you need to do first. You need to get used to where you are, try to find friends or at least people who are in your similar situation, or others who can teach you how to more easily adjust to your new environment.
If you go to a Chinatown and just stay there because that’s how you feel safe, that is already a good thing, but America is a very big, complicated country, not as big as China is, as we know, but if you’re in a situation where you are a racial minority, your English may not be super sharp or you may speak with an accent, there may be a time when people will look at you a little funny and maybe even treat you a little badly.
That’s when you have to learn to look inside yourself and say, well, what do I do? Should I stay away and just be with my own kind? That is fine, but it also limits your opportunities, I think, in America, there has to be a time when you need to both be prideful of who you are, stay with your friends and families who are from your same similar background, that’s fine, but at some point in your life, if you work in an environment where you are one of only a few, or if you want to travel and learn about this big, wonderful, diverse country, then you need to adapt.
And I think Chinese people, again, my amateur analysis is that we are able to be all over the world, be able to both be a community and to be ourselves in a Chinatown, because I’ve been to many foreign countries where there are Chinatowns, or Chinese restaurants at least. If you really want to take advantage of your life in general, you need to learn, adapt, and I like to think about having positive relations with people from other backgrounds.
Lena:
That makes sense. So how do you envision the future of Chinese immigrant communities in the US, and what role do you think both older and newer generations will play in shaping that future?
William:
Again, that is a very interesting question, because I go back to when my father and mother first came, and then when I was young, it was less complicated. Before World War II, people of Asian descent in America were largely from about three or four different root countries,
China and Chinese, Japan and Japanese, Filipinos in the Philippines, Korea. I don’t know whether Korea was then split, but Koreans. There were some Indians, South Asians, and a few from other groups. So there were mainly four or five Asian ethnic groups, much smaller in number, as I said.
Today, there are Asians from so many more different countries starting in the late 1960s when American immigration laws changed, allowing more Asians to come into this country. So, the idea that we can maintain our own communities is to me much more nuanced and difficult. Now, there are many more Chinese from different places in China than those of my parents’ generation. There’s people from Hong Kong who grew up or lived most of their lives in Hong Kong. There are people from Taiwan who either grew up in Taiwan or who were children of Chinese who left the mainland in 1949 or even before that from the Civil War.
They have a bit of the Taiwanese experience which had Japanese influence. Then they come to America, so that’s another cohort. There are also Chinese from Latin America, not maybe a lot in America. There are some Chinese who came through Canada who have that experience, a whole different Chinese experience in America. And many, perhaps even like you, have worked in American companies, high-tech maybe, or some of the professions, academia, which were not available at all to the Chinatown Chinese of my parents’ generation.
So there are so many more opportunities in America. And whether or not we relate to one another, I would hope that we would all be able to, at least at a superficial level, get along with people from all different backgrounds.
Again, back to my parents, they were not able to do that because even though they had a restaurant in Oakland Chinatown and the customers were primarily Chinatown people, but also White people and Black people who had worked near Chinatown and came to Chinatown for a good meal. And these people were mainly people who worked in military bases during World War II because Oakland happened to be near some military bases and White people and Black people from all over America came to Oakland and the Bay Area to get military jobs.
But even after that, Chinatown restaurants in Oakland and all over the world get people who are not of Chinese descent to eat there. So today, Chinese cuisine of many different regions is very popular, whereas in my parents’ day, it was Cantonese or some version of Cantonese. As I write in my book, and maybe my parents wouldn’t like me to say this, but our Cantonese food wasn’t terribly good compared to what we see now of the tremendous different versions of Hong Kong cuisine, which are, thank goodness, some of them are in Oakland and San Francisco and all over the country.
So the idea of community today versus yesterday, I think there’s still room for us to be together if we want because we feel more comfortable with people from our own background, but I think there are so many more opportunities for all of us to be with people from all different backgrounds. It’s really up to each of us to do that in our own personal lives, whatever we feel comfortable with. And one of the beauties of America, I think, is that I go back to the concept of freedom.
We do have a larger degree of individual freedom to be with people who are not like us and to be friends, at least, or friendly with people who are outside. And we hope that those who are not friendly, you simply avoid them, stay away from them.
Lena:
So last question, I just think it’s a fun question. I would like to use this question to wrap up this interview. So if you could bring one aspect of your life from the Chinatown of your childhood into the present day, what would it be?
William:
It goes back to the value of family, honoring a family. And what I did really learn from my father, and there’s a chapter in my book I call Chinese Lessons, where in my Chinatown experience, I went to Lincoln School, which is the American school, where I learned English.
A lot of Chinese kids, immigrant kids are going there, learning English. And we had some non-Chinese kids there too. But my parents sent me and my sisters and other Chinatown parents sent their children to Chinese school. So at the same time, we went to an American public school from the morning until mid-afternoon.
And then what we would go, me and my sisters, we would go to the restaurant, get a snack. And an hour later at about four o’clock, we would go to Chinese school for two hours, learn Cantonese.
I forget what the lessons were, to be honest with you. And then even on Saturday, we would go to Chinese school to learn Mandarin. And I don’t know any Mandarin, but my Cantonese is not good. And my Hoisan was no longer good. All of which I describe in Sons of Chinatown. So I go back to where my father also on his own started reciting what I believe were Confucian precepts, four or five word rhyming phrases in Cantonese.
And as you know, in my background, you will see a calligraphy that some Chinese man sent to me, but my father had six panels in our family home. I didn’t care about anything, I couldn’t read, I didn’t know what they were, but I later learned that they were the writings of Zhu Xi. Oh, I should mention that my father’s surname is in my dialect, Ji or Zhu, Z-H-U is spelled in the Mandarin transliteration.
Now these panels were up there and I never learned what they were, but I learned by thinking about it and talking to my sisters and she was very proud to put those up because Zhu Ji is part of my Ji family genealogy. I have the genealogy book, his name is in there.
So I then went either online or learned and I don’t know much about it. But I find out as you just indicated he was a famous philosopher, educator, scholar. Yes. So it was through that learning and I had the panels translated and what comes across is what I call a moral code of living family is central.
So I still think that even though I didn’t listen to my father when he was alive, I didn’t know what these panels said when he was alive. He tried to teach me but my self-interest at the time I was growing up was becoming an American kid. Now I really do go into that in my book if you notice it’s one of those interesting personal journeys that I believe that Chinese Americans of my generation and maybe even younger ones find themselves going through because we do not live in China.
We don’t know China other than as a concept. Yeah, just an icon on the world map. I happen to have visited China twice, 1994 as I indicated earlier and then 2014 when I purposely went back to the village to do more research about my father. I’ve been to Hong Kong three or four times when it wasn’t yet back to China. It was still a British colony. I’ve been to other parts of Asia. I lived in the Philippines for three years as a Peace Corps volunteer.
So it isn’t as though I don’t somewhat know the places where either my father came from or my root country, but I think that I come down to this value of family respect for elders, but more broadly respect for people as a whole and to be treated with dignity. That’s what I would like for all of us. I’m not trying to, you know, be too goody-goody two-shoes here, but I wish most of us would treat one another better and at least listen to people learn their stories.
This takes a lot of time. It’s not easy in our internet age and where there are so many different influences from technology that takes our time rather than to have a face-to-face conversation the way we’re having and to be generous with one another and treat one another better. That’s my long-winded answer to your question.
Lena:
On a sunny afternoon after the interview, Wong and I met in San Mateo, in the Bay Area. I took him to a local Chinese restaurant, where he tried a dish called “Ma La Tang (Spicy Hotpot)” for the first time in his life. Holding a silver bowl, he curiously stood before a display of ingredients, carefully selecting his choices and happily savoring this new culinary experience, much like a child discovering a new dish.
During the meal, he asked about my immigration journey and life story. We were like two newly acquainted friends — though we share the same heritage, we’ve had completely different life paths and are separated by half a century in age. That afternoon, through our face-to-face conversation, we came to understand more about each other and the stories of different times.
As Wong said, perhaps what this era needs most is dialogue and exchange that bridge age and cultural divides. No matter where you come from, and regardless of whether we share the same roots, as long as we share this planet, we are all part of the human family. You might find that, despite the apparent differences between people, we actually have more in common than we realize.
I hope that both new and older generations of Chinese immigrants will have more opportunities to start such dialogues. Cross-generational and cross-cultural exchanges not only deepen our mutual understanding but also empower us to face the challenges of the future together.
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