by Jimmy Lam

Jimmy's father, Lin Lam, as a teenager

“Jimmy, you think I’m like an American?  Do you think I went out every day to waste away my life fooling around?  I told you, my life was simple.  If someone asked me to explain my life, I could explain it in one sentence: I worked.  There is nothing more to my life. When I was your age, I did nothing but work, work, and more work.”

Introducing Myself
My concave navel and my chunky earlobes indicate that I am guaranteed prosperity in life.   Also, if my ears ever turn red it means that someone is gossiping about me.   One time I almost had my ears chopped off by spirits because I pointed at the moon.  This is what I was told as a child growing up in a Chinese family.  Chinese people dwell upon superstitions and like to ramble on about them.  When I was younger, I passively agreed to everything my parents had to say.  Their superstitions altered my perception of fallacy and reality and I soon became a skeptic of any story they ever mentioned.  In particular, I ignored my parent’s recollection of family history. Now that I am away from them, for months at a time, I only wish they would retell their stories to me in every minute detail.

And so I began my journey, questioning my family about our history.  My ability to speak and understand Chinese has waned over the years from lack of practice, so many of my translations here are the closest to my family’s words that I can offer.

Memories of a Visit
Over five years ago, on June 7th, 2003, I visited Fuzhou, China for the first time.  My family from my mother’s side traveled along with me. Complaining was my primary language at the age of 13.  My child-like perceptions were focused on the horrid weather, while my family focused on their memories of growing up in Fuzhou.  I complained about how the air was so stale, musty, and humid that my XL white T-shirt latched onto my body, drenched in sweat.   I dreaded the tours around the city in the blazing sun where my cheap Styrofoam-like sandals fused with the scorching asphalt with each step I took.   I whined about my vision being obscured by the stinging sweat seeping into my eyes from the corners of my slanted lids.  On the other hand, my family reflected on the struggles they had faced in Fuzhou and the tensions they had felt journeying to the United States.

Fuzhou is the provincial capital of the Fujian Province, located on the Southeast coastline of China.  The temperatures fluctuate above 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer seasons (mid May through October), and the humidity insulates the body even more. Torrential rains frequently inundate the area, giving rise to much agricultural labor, and mountains spread like pimples in Fuzhou.  If you Googled “Fuzhou”, pictures of swanky urban areas and modern architectural technology will come up on your screen.  Images of mystical oriental gardens will swarm over the page.  The true image of Fuzhou is not shown. Instead, you see one fabricated by tempting brochures created to lure tourists.

On my way to the house where my mother lived three decades ago, I witnessed street after street lined with families living in huts, many of them raised chickens for profit. Before long, starving families will eat these chickens when profits does not meet their needs.  An overall lack of commodities elucidated the reality of their poverty.  Diapers, for example, were mostly unheard of.  Without diapers or sewage systems in the suburban areas, the warm air created perfect breeding grounds for cockroaches and other insects.  I remember many occasions when my family and I passed through alleys that were crawling with one-inch-long cockroaches inconspicuous under the low wattage of flickering amber street lights.  As soon as my family and I stepped within close proximity, all of them scurried beneath the piles of trash bags. Another flicker of light and these menacing creatures would reappear. According to my mother, the economic conditions had improved greatly since she emigrated to the U.S., but Fuzhou still seemed to lack the opportunities that U.S. offered.

I do admit that as a kid I frequently felt as if my parents were trying to hide something. I believed that they were bitter, and unconsciously jealous of American society and how spoiled it was.  They used “hard work” to elude being identified as Americans.  Up until I was about 12 years old, I do not recall seeing my parents except on the weekends.  I now see their “hard work” as a way for them to evade memories of the past.  Even during the weekends, their worries took priority over the acknowledgment of my existence.  Their eyes focused mainly on the unopened letters sitting on the kitchen table.  Trepidation at the negative digits that might appear within was apparent in my father’s pale expression, and his frustration at not being able to read English was apparent in his frown.  My father would make a silent sigh before opening the envelopes with his thrifty knife.  The satisfaction my parents long sought in the U.S. was elusive.  Nonetheless, they prospered and persisted, thinking that wealth and gaining possessions would make their transition to life in the U.S. worthwhile.

The city of Lianjiang, which lies northeast of Fuzhou, is the city where my mother grew up.  The unscathed archaic house that mother lived in is still there today.  I remember walking into the house lit only by the filtered light emanating from the 1 x 2 foot windows.  Before entering, the weakly hinged Japanese Shoji doors were kept closed by a simple lock.  When unlocked, both doors simply gave up and fanned the ground.  As we entered, the wooden floors no longer creaked with spirit as they did years before.  Instead, softened from years of humidity, with each step taken, a slight imprint of the foot was molded.  The house lacked furniture.  It had never had any.  Something about the right section of the house lured my parents to it.  My mother told me later that the bathroom-sized cubicle used to be their kitchen.  It was the place where the family would gather to warm up by the crackling leaves during winter.  I remember looking at mother, but making no eye contact with her for her long hair covered her profile.  As she reminisced about the old days, she looked down at the burnt ceramic pot placed on the floor in the center of the room and fell silent.  Mother softly spoke, “You know, this is where my three siblings and I sat most of the time, just as quiet as we are right now.  No one ever spoke, but we all knew we were thinking about the same thing: The United States.”

Left to right: Hiu Lam (my mother), Xian Lam (my uncle), Wong Lam (my aunt), Sai Lam (my uncle), Chai Lam (my grandmother), and Ling Lam (my uncle). The picture in the background is of my great-grandmother.

It was a childhood fantasy to get out of the hopeless pit of Fuzhou. The idea was that you either work hard or go to school.  But no one could afford school.  Life was therefore defined by work, especially for women.

In order to sustain the oversized family consisting of four siblings, in addition to her own parents, my grandmother walked at least eleven miles daily just to fish for oysters and clams to sooth the cries of her malnourished children.  Quite often disease and poverty overwhelmed my grandmother, forcing my mother and her siblings, who were barely teens, to fend for themselves.  Each of the four children would gather and cook congee (porridge) after digging for sweet potatoes.  In the mid-1900s, only the wealthy could afford white rice.  The only way mother and her siblings obtained rice was by standing outside the rice parlor and picking up each grain of rice that had fallen out of perforated rice bags.  My mother and her siblings were frequently beaten by the owners of the store, but were quick to return to grab the last scraps of fallen rice and sometimes the owner just looked upon them aloofly.  Mother and her siblings often found other ways to find rice.  As my mother recalls:

The feces of horse often contain undigested grains of rice, so the four of us would rummage through horse feces to get foul pieces of rice.  I remember following behind horses, waiting for the horse to defecate.  A days worth of scouring for rice would get us about a child’s handful.  The handful of rice and half of a sweet potato would serve the entire family for the day.  [With an uneasy laugh] These were the lucky days.  When my family ran out of food and starvation was too overwhelming, we resorted to feasting on tree barks of willow trees.  Really, there were so many people who fed themselves tree barks of willow trees.

As much as my family wanted to earn income in Fuzhou, work was rarely available.  A primary reason why my family strove to emigrate to the U.S. was to avoid destitution and to find prosperity.  My parents had heard about the great opportunities in the United States to find jobs.  Nevertheless, jobs and affluence did not give the “push” my family needed to emigrate away from their sense community.  Instead, it took the Sino-Japanese War for my family to realize that emigration was crucial to surviving.

Japan’s search for open markets and other resources exploded into open warfare with China from July 7, 1937 to September 9, 1945.  While it is the intention of every economy to expand its horizons, Japan failed to consider the necessity of keeping long-term relations with China.  Ultimately, Japan’s invasions and casual bombing around China, including the Fujian Province, boiled into a long-term resentment against Japan that exists to this day.

In October 1938, goods that had previously been exported to Japan were banned from being shipped to avoid assisting Japan’s attacks.  Since agricultural job opportunities were being restricted by the government, the citizens competed for the already limited jobs that were available. By the time World War Two had started, my grandmother was still working, but found it increasingly difficult to market her oysters.   Everyone was selling, but no one was buying.  Supply simply overwhelmed demand.  My grandmother felt helpless and trapped by the economic conditions.  My aunt Hiu Yok Lam recalls:

It was so strange seeing her like this.  She didn’t talk to us very often.  I would often ask her questions but the questions didn’t reach her.  She over-thought things.  She seemed brainless and spineless at times.  She was weak and tired from all the grief.  The only way I can describe her is by comparing her to a mouse trapped by its tail.  No matter how hard you try to pull yourself out of that trap, the results will be the same—you’re stuck.  She was stuck.  As a result, we were stuck.  The longer the mouse lies trapped, the more he gives up trying to struggle his way out.  Day by day, she became unmotivated.  There was no drive to do anything.

My grandmother (Chai Lam) and my grandfather (Fing Lam) on my mother's side.

Stoicism would not free my family from their misery, but the war certainly did.  May 5th 1940—The Sino-Japanese War rained terror.  Dozens of bombs were dropped in Lianjian, the city mother lived in.  My grandmother was outside that day sweeping the stone pavements with a cheap broomstick.  An airplane flew by in the red-orange mist of a typical warm morning.  From a distance, it seemed like two ant-like pellets were dropped from the plane.  Before my grandmother could fathom the circumstances, she dropped her broom and leapt into the house.  My grandmother grabbed her children, slipped under her mattress, reached above to pull down her quilted blanket, and covered her entire body, while clutching onto her four children.  Her graying eyes peaked through a tiny puncture hole in the quilt.  She stared hard, not allowing the burning sensation in her dry eyes to force her to miss even a moment.

Not a blink went by before everything went up in flames.  My grandmother was buried under several layers of flimsy debris.  She would have gotten out easily had not a bronze silicon wood screw pierced her left leg.  Her yelps for help were to no avail.  Everyone was too concerned with grasping onto the last seconds of their own lives.  People walked around aimlessly with flesh hanging off their bodies.  These images of citizens walking around with their flesh burned and melting, just as an ice-cream melts from overexposure to the sun’s rays, scarred my grandmother’s  memories.  In the midst of the conflagration, mother recalls grandma tearfully promising to find freedom in the Americas as she huddled over my mother and her three siblings.  Panic assisted grandmother in pulling herself out from the debris along with her children.  Her tears of agony would be the last in that city, for my grandma escaped with my mother and aunt to Hong Kong on August 15, 1954.  They lived there for several years before immigrating to the U.S.  My two uncles were smuggled into the U.S. by the notorious “snakeheads” (gang members who smuggle immigrants into the U.S. for large sums of money).  Upon arrival, each of my uncles had to pay around $20,000.

Their move to the U.S. would change their lives.  Their material desires would be met.  However, connections with Chinese tradition would prove difficult.  The term melting pot was a nonexistent ideology, and mother could not rely on it to transition into the U.S.

Unlike many other immigrants before her, my mother emigrated to the U.S. with relative ease.  A payment of $5,000 to the Travel Agency of Hong Kong helped her obtain both her visa and her ticket to the U.S.  She remembers the plane taking two days to go directly from Hong Kong to Korea.  From Korea, the plane made a stop in California, another popular destination for Chinese immigrants.  Finally, mother arrived in New York on June 8, 1979; she had been traveling for a total of seven days.  As soon as she got to New York, mother headed for Chinatown to reconnect with fellow Fujian citizens.  For the next eight years mother worked in Chinatown.

Work was plentiful, unlike in China, but my mother found no satisfaction in the U.S.  She was used to the harbors of Fujian, the farms in the country, and the Chinese traditions.  But Chinatown was a safe haven for my mother.  Chinatown not only allowed mother to escape from the hatred against the Chinese community, but it also allowed her to find a sense of community.

Mother 2008
Recently, on a typically gloomy New York City day, my mother arrived from Virginia (where she currently works) and headed for Chinatown to revisit familiar places.  The two of us sat in my father’s car, my mother in the front passenger’s seat; I sat directly behind her.  Her head was placed slightly to the left of the head-rest.  Her hair is the definition of straight with a natural waxy shine and a few subtle brick red colored highlights.

I asked my mom to take me where she first lived when she came to the U.S. for an NYU writing assignment.  My dad insisted that I take some random picture and pass it off as the place where my mother had lived.  His frustration indicated that he did not want my mother to remember the days when she first arrived in New York.  With my apt ability to argue back, I got my way.  Mother flinched unconsciously each time she gave directions to my dad.  She only flinches in anger or when strong emotions run through her.  Father purposely made two wrong turns to evade the destination.  Finally, my dad saw there was no point in trying to further evade the neighborhood.

Between Rivington Street and Bowery is where my mother first lived. The little red apartment is at the center of Rivington, and it has about sixteen windows facing the street.  Around it are ill-maintained apartments with graffiti tainting the otherwise insipid street.  There are mostly building material equipment stores on the block.  Mother recalls:

When I first came to the U.S., I shared that apartment with a friend of mine.  Actually, it was not really an apartment; we only had one room that was able to fit one bunk bed and a two-feet wide space to walk to our beds.  The rent was cheap, around $100 or $105 dollars a month.  It was well worth it, but no one wanted to live there at the time, except for Chinese immigrants. I remember walking—running—back from work each night in the lonely streets of New York in the 1980s.  At that time, it was really scary you know?  There were a lot of hopeless people, and many nights they would line Delancey Street, crazy and drunk.  If I didn’t run home, they would always ask for money.

It is no coincidence that mother lived a reclusive lifestyle.  The little apartment resembled the small personality that mother held away from society.  Despite finding plenty of jobs in the U.S. and a slight sense of community, culture shock enforced mother’s closeted lifestyle.  I struggled to pry into her life.  I had a challenging time asking the right questions with my poor understanding of the Fuzhounese language.  Secondly my self-made language, consisting of gesticulations, half English, and half Fuzhounese, further confused my mother.  I gave up asking specific questions.  Instead, I asked mother to recall specific moments that were especially interesting.  She denied having any.  I kept asking her; I knew there was more.  But she insisted her life was simple and nothing was worthy of taking note.  My temper boiled and the irksome language barrier overwhelmed us.  The only thing my mother told me was:

Jimmy, you think I’m like an American?  Do you think I went out every day to waste away my life fooling around?  I told you, my life was simple.  If someone asked me to explain my life, I could explain it in one sentence: I worked.  There is nothing more to my life.  When I was your age, I did nothing but work, work, and more work.

Silence fell between us as I strolled along Mott Street with my mother.  I was irritated at not being able to get anything accomplished.  While walking towards father’s double-parked car, I passed by two historic statues in Chatham Square, located on Mott and Bowery.  One statue is of Confucius and the other is of Lin Ze Xu. The Confucius statue was built in 1984 by Chinese immigrants.  Lin Ze Xu was a Fujian patriot who led a resistance against British imports of Opium.  I remember as a kid that I would frequently pass by these two statues with my mother.  Each time we did, my mother mentioned the history of the statues as if she had never told it before.

During my family research, I finally realized why my mother habitually repeated the history of the statues—she longed for traditional Chinese culture.  She greatly wished to return to Fuzhou, but admired the U.S. for the chance to live the “American Dream.”  My mother was sober-minded and goal-oriented, but she failed to assess her reasons for coming to the U.S.  She was here to find happiness and a different lifestyle.  Yet, her dreams were only partially fulfilled.  She found a different lifestyle, but happiness was far from attainable; to this day she works overtime and rarely finds the time to enjoy the greater things in life.

A Final Word
The American dream for immigrants is about prosperity and happiness, a dream that is only partly accomplished.  While prosperity is generally not an issue for immigrants, the overindulgence in the time and labor invested in their occupations results in a hollow life.  Furthermore, a dream is not as promising if the dreamer is ostracized by the community.  Immigrants like my mother often find themselves longing to return to their home countries, yet their decisions to remove themselves from their countries for an unattainable dream places them at a loss—a loss in transition.

Jimmy Lam was born in 1989 at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.  He graduated at the top 5% of his high school and has a strong interest in Chemistry.  This past summer he spent time in Peru working with the medically-deprived indigenous Andean community of Peru.  He speaks Spanish and Chinese and hopes to continue to improve his ability in both languages. His hobbies include pet keeping, learning strange words, exploring nature, and playing tennis.  During his free time…well, he is currently taking a 19 credit course load which includes Organic Chemistry and Physics, and that does not grant free time!  Jimmy’s parents, born in China, were both forced to drop out of school due to China’s financial crisis. When Mr. Sai On Lam and Mrs. Hiu Tan Lam came to the U.S., they entered the only job market catering to Chinese immigrants at the time—the restaurant industry, and remain working in that industry to this day.  Jimmy’s parents met by arranged marriage. They have two children. Jimmy’s sister Stella is 21 years old, and has recently received three interviews to medical school.  Jimmy wrote this essay at NYU and is now a student at Cornell University. He intends to pursue a career in medicine.