On Gold Mountain Quotes

“You can’t learn about living unless you live. You can’t live unless you take a chance; and your living is limited by the chances you take.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“The fallen leaves return to the root.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“The Exclusion Act of 1882 was devastating. Under this law, Chinese laborers wouldn’t be allowed to enter the United States for ten years. The wives of current resident laborers were also barred from entry. All Chinese needed to be registered and carry their residency papers at all times. Finally, they were declared totally ineligible for citizenship. (This clause alone allowed the United States to join Nazi Germany and South Africa as the only nations ever to withhold naturalization on purely racial grounds.)”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

“When you do things in a soft way, you make the other people believe they’ve thought up something to do for you, when actually you’re directing them.” Later, Ruth”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Yes, she had held her family together, but at what cost to herself.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

“I remember a song we used to sing, "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean." But I thought it was, "Columbus, Jump in the Ocean.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

“During the years of 1950, 1951, and 1952, Mao himself guessed that over 800,000 “counterrevolutionaries” were killed. A broader estimate, which includes landlords beaten to death and other civilian executions between 1948 and 1955, puts the number at closer to four million. In 1957 an Anti-Rightist Campaign was targeted against another half-million Chinese; their deaths numbered in the tens of thousands. Then, in 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward. Designed to encourage China to catch up with the West, it resulted in the greatest famine known to mankind. It has been suggested that as many as thirty million people died between 1958 and 1961.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“In New York Chinatown—the largest Chinese enclave in the country, in which sixty-five percent of the inhabitants reportedly have limited or no English—the median income is nine thousand dollars a year. In San Francisco Chinatown, the country’s second largest Chinese community, annual earnings are slightly higher, at eleven thousand dollars a year. In addition to poor wages, these immigrants lack affordable health care and housing. Nationwide, one-fifth of all Chinese American housing is overcrowded. In San Francisco Chinatown, the population density is 228 per acre, the second highest in the nation after some parts of Manhattan. Over half of the housing is considered “old, deteriorated, and substandard.” Today, single men can still be found sharing eight-by-eight-foot rooms and sleeping in bunk beds stacked from floor to ceiling. Bathrooms and kitchens are shared by several families. Immigrants—children and adults—can expect to hear racial epithets, have food thrown at them, get beaten up, and be made fun of. And, just as in the old days, these immigrants are usually too afraid or too bewildered to complain.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“But these new immigrants (all immigrants, actually) aren’t welcome. In Sacramento alone, twenty-one anti-immigration bills—most of them unconstitutional if enacted—are currently under consideration. The purpose of these bills, like those of the nineteenth century, is to stigmatize immigrants as “detriments, parasites, even criminals.” And, just as in the old days, elections are won and lost on the issue of immigration. In 1994, California’s governor, Pete Wilson, campaigned on this platform. Through Proposition 187, illegal immigrants would be barred from receiving any state funds; this meant no education, no welfare, and no medical care, except in dire emergencies. Wilson and the proposition won by large margins. The day after the election, several groups went to federal court seeking to block the new law as being unconstitutional, while in Washington, D.C., Congressman Newt Gingrich suggested that Proposition 187 be adopted nationally. The early court challenges were successful; the cases are now proceeding through the courts of appeals.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“The Communists were evil, or at least that’s what most people were saying. But it was hard to tell. Many in Chinatown had forgotten what China was like: starvation, drought, pestilence, no opportunities. When Mao said, “Everybody works so everybody eats,” Fong See, who may have been considered a landlord but had grown up as a peasant, recognized the irrefutable logic to those words. When relatives wrote that daughters of not very well-to-do families were being recruited to become orthodontists, doctors, and engineers, it was another sign—a woman could be something more than just a servant. But no one wanted to say these things aloud.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“With the Korean War, Americans were also in the grip of anti-Chinese, anti-Communist propaganda. Chinese students and scholars from the People’s Republic of China attending schools in the United States were barred from returning home. With the detention of Japanese American citizens still fresh in everyone’s mind, there was widespread fear that now Chinese American citizens might face the same fate. (The passage of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which provided for the internment of Communists during a national emergency, certainly didn’t help to quell these anxieties.) All these factors combined to produce a decline in the remittances sent to relatives in China from $7 million in 1948 to just $600,000 a year later. Now, in 1950, very little “tea money” left the United States for China.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“As soon as the Japanese were vanquished, the Generalissimo and Mao went right back to their civil war. In 1949, using the same guerrilla tactics they had used against the Japanese, Mao’s troops drove Chiang Kai-shek off the mainland to the island of Taiwan. Soon after, the Communist high command claimed victory and rode into Peking to take up residence at the Forbidden Palace. In South China, lesser troops took over the Fatsan Grand Hotel to use as that city’s Communist Commission Office.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“all through Chinatown, people scrambled to send money back, hoping to get mothers and brothers and cousins and wives out before the Bamboo Curtain came down. When China first closed, families sent “tea money” back to relatives left behind in home villages. But now the risk was too great. In villages and cities across China, retributions were carried out against citizens reputed to have Imperialist relatives in the West. In American Chinatowns, since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the politically powerful Six Companies—the federation of benevolent societies representing districts and counties in China—had mounted virulent anti-Communist campaigns. Spies were allegedly everywhere, and willing to report citizens sympathetic to the Communist regime. In addition to the fear of retribution that Chinese Americans faced from within their own communities, there was the apprehension about Caucasians that had continued unabated since the days of the railroad.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Fong See was old, but he’d never lost his vision of life in America. He always thought ahead. He knew people wondered why he didn’t take this opportunity to leave Chinatown altogether, but when the new City Hall had been built, he had seen the future. That building was so tall and sound that he became convinced that Los Angeles would always be a place where Caucasians would come first. So he stayed in Chinatown.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“As Fong See lay in his hospital bed, he thought about his Number Three wife. He realized that he had come to care about her in his own way. It was not the western idea of love, by any means, because in truth Chinese women were nothing to care about. Throughout his entire lifetime, girl babies in China had been abandoned at birth, sold as servants, prostitutes, and concubines, or matched into marriage with men they had never seen before. Women—Chinese women—lived to care for their husbands and have sons. Ngon Hung had fulfilled both of these duties. She was passive, submissive, and obedient; she had given him four boys and three girls. He concluded she had been a good wife all these years.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Much of the change that was happening in Los Angeles, and indeed across the country, was the result of the sudden exposure of so many GIs to different countries, especially those in Asia, which until the war had remained relatively unknown. For every horror story told of long, treacherous days in the Pacific, there were countless other tales of the beauty of Hawaii, the simplicity of Japan, the richness of China. It all seemed to come together in California, where the influences of Chinese and Japanese immigrants had melded with the state’s climate and landscape. It should come as no surprise, then, that after the war, the so-called California style of living suddenly took hold, capturing the imagination of the entire country. Everyone desired a palm tree, sunshine, a barbecue. They wanted moon gates, upturned eaves, stonework. Ray”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“The boys, Richard included, were like so much hollow bamboo, Chinese on the outside, hollow on the inside. They didn’t fit into the world of their parents. They certainly didn’t fit into the world of their white peers. They didn’t even fit in with girls in Chinatown. The basic philosophies didn’t mesh. The American work ethic—success, occupational prestige, educational attainment, the expenditure of wealth to compete with the Joneses—just didn’t jibe with how these boys had been raised: to save for buying trips and banquets, to work for the family and not for yourself, to think of returning home to China, and not to disgrace yourself in front of Americans or bring harm to the family through your actions. Like their fathers and grandfathers before them who had suffered from having their culture belittled, so too did these young men. The larger world spoke loudly and clearly: You are different. What you feel has no value. You are bad. You are dirty. You are unpleasant to live near. Consciously and unconsciously, they had heard, felt, and seen these things since the day they were born. Be careful. Watch out what you say. Don’t make a mistake. Their bodies, which should have been filled with all the hopes and dreams and spunk of young men around the world, were filled instead with a withering combination of insecurity and a what’s-the-use attitude.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Like other American GIs, the Chinese veterans took advantage of new opportunities for education and housing. By the spring of 1949, 3,610 Chinese Americans across the country had enrolled in American colleges and universities, more than ever before. With these successes, education became recognized and accepted as a way out of Chinatown.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“During the war, Los Angeles had established itself as “the arsenal of democracy.” Its aircraft industry, the largest in the nation, was the city’s number-one moneymaker and employer. But the city also ranked first in other industries. Los Angeles produced more movies than any other city in the world. As Time magazine reported, Los Angeles “lands more fish than Boston or Gloucester, makes more furniture than Grand Rapids, assembles more automobiles than any other city but Detroit, makes more tires than any other city but Akron. It is a garment center (bathing suits, slacks, sports togs) second only to New York. It makes steel in its backyard. Its port handles more tonnage than San Francisco.” What most people didn’t know was that the county was still the richest and most profitable agricultural and dairy area in the nation.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“But today her heart was so broken that her mind wandered as if looking for that injured organ.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“The fact that the Exclusion Act remained on the books undermined the United States’ stance as the protector of democracy. It didn’t help that even though the Chinese population in the United States had sunk to between 75,000 and 78,000—of which men still outnumbered women three to one—nearly one-fourth of the men were engaged in the war effort at home and abroad. (It must be noted, however, that many Chinese armed-forces recruits were sent straight to cook school.) Many enlisted, not through any great sense of patriotism, but as a way of automatically gaining their citizenship, and thus opening the door ever so slightly to the possibility of going to China one day and bringing back a “wife of an American citizen.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“On March 18, Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority, to be headed by Milton Eisenhower, the brother of General Dwight Eisenhower. “I feel most deeply that when this war is over and we consider calmly this unprecedented migration of 100,000 people,” Eisenhower said, “we are as Americans going to regret the avoidable injustices that may have occurred.” A few weeks later the evacuation began. On that occasion, General DeWitt, who was in charge of the evacuation, stated, “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty.… It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese, and you can’t change him.” The 42,000 native-born Japanese in California also had families—many with American-born children. This meant that 94,000 Japanese from California—and another 24,000 Japanese from Washington and Oregon—were viewed as “potential enemies” and subsequently interned. Amazingly, despite their internment, 33,000 Nisei—American-born Japanese—served in the U.S. armed forces.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, 42,000 native-born Japanese lived in California, as did 97,000 Germans and 114,000 Italians. The three groups were classified as “enemy aliens,” and were forbidden to enter military installations or the Canal Zone—as if anyone were traveling down there. They weren’t allowed to fly in airplanes or change residences within their own cities. They could no longer purchase or possess firearms, cameras, short-wave radios, codes, or invisible ink. Soon all enemy alien funds were frozen, and banks owned by enemy aliens were locked up—regardless of who the depositors were. In addition to these governmental restrictions, the populace at large—petrified by the possibility of radio-directed air raids—began making life difficult for the most easily recognizable enemy, the Japanese. Landlords evicted Japanese families; wholesalers stopped supplying products to Japanese businesses. The Japanese couldn’t get driver’s licenses, credit from banks, or milk delivered. On February 2, 1942, federal troops sealed the drawbridge and commandeered the ferry between Terminal Island and Long Beach. Of the four thousand people who lived on Terminal Island, more than half were Japanese farmers. The heads of all Japanese families were put under presidential arrest. On that same day, Attorney General Earl Warren recommended and received approval for a plan to have all Japanese aliens moved two hundred miles inland for the duration of the war. On February 19, a little over two weeks later, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to establish military zones within the United States from which any person might be excluded, subject to military regulation.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Elsie Robinson’s “Listen World” column in the paper, marking sentences that seemed pertinent. “We can spend our days in the midst of excitement—have countless things happen to us and all around us—and yet remain as ignorant as turnips,” Elsie wrote. “Turnips also are born, live and die, yet remain total dumbbells; and many humans remain equally dumb, for the same reason as the turnip.… You can’t learn about living unless you live. You can’t live unless you take a chance; and your living is limited by the chances you take.” On another day, Elsie seemed to be writing directly to Stella: “Love is always worthwhile, no matter what it costs.… Hate is never worthwhile, no matter what it costs.…”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“I love art. Sometimes after class, when I’m walking back to Chinatown, I stop at the library. I look at the Japanese sumi-e painters. I learn if you put down just what’s necessary to make a point, you will have a great painting. If you can do a painting with five strokes instead of ten, you can make your painting sing. I look up the Chinese brush painters of the Sung Period. I learn that nature is always greater than man. It is the balance and harmony between man and nature that is important.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Eventually the initial burning of her heart cooled to a sorrowful aching that would never leave her. And still she had to persist, working harder than ever.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“In 1924, the United States government passed a new immigration law, colloquially called the “Second Exclusion Act.” Designed to prohibit the immigration of Japanese, the law also allowed the practically unlimited entry of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Poland, but only 105 annually from China. While the law encouraged European immigrant men to bring their wives, who had non-quota status, it completely barred the entry of women from Japan, China, Korea, and India. Even the wives of U.S. citizens were excluded. (In addition, any American who married a Chinese national lost his or her citizenship.) Over the next five years, virtually no women left China to come to California. As a result of the new law, the male-female ratio in Chinatowns across the country once again dropped. In Los Angeles the ratio hovered at ten men for every woman.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“During the 1920s, slightly more than 350 new immigrants—some longtime Americans, some fresh off the boat—would take up residence in the county each day. Intoxicated by their good fortune, they would help Los Angeles grow from a mere thirty-two square miles at the turn of the century to a languid sprawl of more than 390 square miles by 1925. This development would catapult Los Angeles from the tenth largest to the fifth largest city in population in the country, considerably irritating residents of San Francisco, who had long held that theirs was the most important city on the Pacific Coast. In this decade, average life expectancy in America would climb to fifty-five years. One out of every four American families would buy or sell an automobile, and the Ford Motor Company would go to market with a car that sold for as little as $290. Radio would become all the rage. Women would ponder the meaning of the first Miss America Pageant, and would take pride in the first woman senator, the first woman governor, Amelia Earhart’s adventures, and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“peripatetic”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey

“Travel in China was difficult at best. Officials and the common peasantry had long fought the introduction of railroads into the country. The opposition was the result of old customs and a well-founded distrust of foreigners. Poorly educated people—cart drivers, wheelbarrow pushers, and boatmen—believed that the railroads would irritate evil spirits who would then seek revenge upon the populace. (A railroad would also deprive these common workers of their livelihoods.) The educated class, on the other hand, had discovered that when a foreign entrepreneur—from England, Germany, France, Russia, or the United States—built a road, that road was then used by that particular nation’s government to extend its power in China, to gain some new piece of territory or trade advantage. Chinese officials realized that railroads—just like paved roads—would make travel easier for missionaries and other foreigners who wanted to exploit the country. The opposition had been so great that, back in 1875, the first railroad line from Shanghai to Wusung was bought by the Chinese authorities and destroyed. By 1919, however, there had been some progress, as fifty-four railroad lines tentatively webbed across China’s great expanse.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey