Auntie Kam

I have vague memories of my dad's aunt and cousins coming to visit my grandparents in San Francisco in the 1980's.  His cousins Pat and Liz were very nice. and his aunt, Auntie Kam, seemed very nice also but she did not speak English, so we really could not communicate very much.

I recently learned that Uncle Bill married Auntie Kam in China. then he brought his bride back to America. If someone had told me this six months ago, I would have thought this was an interesting situation and wondered why he didn't bring her back to the US and then get married.  I also learned that 'Kam' is not her real name.  It's just what the family called her.  It was short for Kum Mo which translate to 'Aunt" in Cantonese.  In China it was culturally acceptable to name a person by the place they held in the family, so you might have families whose children were named FIRST SON, SECOND SON, FIRST DAUGHTER, etc.  And people's names sometimes changed based on things that happen during their lifetime.

Again,  six months ago I might have found that to be very odd to not know the 'real' name of a family member.  But recently I have been reading and researching Chinese-American history in the hopes of learning and understanding more about my own family history. My sister recommended reading SHANGHAI GIRLS by Lisa See. This was the fictional story of two 'upper class' girls in Shanghai China and how their world came crashing down around them when they learned that their father (who had a gambling problem) had lost their family's fortune and at the same time Japan invaded Shanghai.  Hoping to save his own life, their father sold them as brides to a Chinese man from America for his sons.  Because of the Japanese invasion, many families were torn apart.  The mother took the daughters and started out on the journey that would bring them to America.  The book is the story of that journey as well as the lives of these two sisters once they made it to 'The Gold Mountain'.  It gave me a broader understanding of how life was in China before and after the Japanese invasion. And it gave me a better understanding of life for Chinese people in the United States in the 1930s - 1950's.

After reading this book I wanted to know more.  I decided to read GOLD MOUNTAIN MAN, also by Lisa See.  Turns out that this book is a family biography covering four generations of the author's family. Her great-great grandfather came to America just after the California Gold Rush.  He found work as an herbalist treating and caring for the many Chinese men that were helping to build the transcontinental railway.  A few years later the author's great-grandfather came to America. He found his father and began working with him. But soon he was ready to strike out on his own, and he opened a store selling ladies undergarments to 'working girls' in the Sacramento Area.  It was at this time that her great-grandmother emmigrated from Portland to Sacramento and somehow convinced the chinaman that he needed to hire her (a white woman) to work in his store.  They worked together and eventually fell in love.  But there were laws forbidding inter-racial marriages, so instead of a traditional marriage, they went to a lawyer and drew up a contract. This union produced four sons and a daughter who were all 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 white. (like me!).

Reading this story gave me a better grasp of the laws and discriminations that Chinese have faced in America since they began emmigrating here.  Thankfully, most (hopefully all, but I'm not sure) of these laws have been repealled. And America has become such a true melting pot that Chinese as well as other Asians and other minorities are more readily accepted into the mainstream of American culture.

I was shocked and saddened to learn that there were laws that prohibited Chinese from entering the United States.  If, somehow, you were lucky enough to 'get around' these laws, then you still  had to face laws that prohibited the Chinese from voting, owning property, marriage, attending schools, owning businesses, going to resturants and stores frequented by white people, living in towns and neighborhoods outside of Chinatown.  Many Chinese persons entered this country 'illegally' as paper sons and daughters. And because of this they were often afraid to provide personal information, if they were caught they would be deported and sent back to China in disgrace.

I know that my own grandfather was a 'paper' person.....but THAT is a different story for another day!