CHOW MING, the husband of Ah Sue was an Americanized Chinese, so when Christmas day came, he gave a big dinner, to which he invited both his American and Chinese friends, and also one friend who was both Chinese and American.
The large room in which he gave the dinner presented quite a striking appearance on the festive evening, being decorated with Chinese flags and banners, algebraic scrolls, incense burners and tropical plants; and the company sat down to a real feast. Chow Ming's cook had a reputation.
Ah Ming and Ah Oi, Chow Ming's little son and daughter, flitted around like young humming birds in their bright garments. Their arms and necks were hung with charms and amulets given to them by their father's friends and they kept up an incessant twittering between themselves. They were not allowed, however, to sit down with their elders and ate in an ante room of rice and broiled preserved chicken -- a sweet dish, the morsels of chicken being prepared so as to resemble raisins.
Chinese do not indulge in conversation during meal time; but when dinner was over and a couple of Chinese violinists had made their debut, the host brought forward several of his compatriots whom he introduced as men whose imaginations and experiences enabled them to relate the achievements of heroes, the despair of lovers, the blessings which fall to the lot of the filial and the terrible fate of the undutiful. Themes were varied; but those which were most appreciated were stories which treated of magic and enchantment.
"Come away," said Ah Sue to me. -- We two were the only women present. -- "I want to tell you a story, a real true love story -- Chinese."
"Really," I exclaimed delightedly.
"Really," echoed Ah Sue, "the love story of me."
When we were snugly ensconced in her own little room, Ah Sue began:
"My father," said she, "was a big rice farmer. He owned many, many rice fields, but he had no son -- just me."
"Chow Han worked for my father. The first time I saw Chow Han was at the Harvest Moon festival. I wore a veil of strings of pearls over my forehead. But his eyes saw beneath the pearls and I was very much ashamed."
"Why were you ashamed? You must have looked very charming."
Ah Sue smiled. She was a pretty little woman.
"I was not ashamed of my veil," said she, "I was ashamed because I perceived that Chow Han knew that I glanced his way.
"The next day I and my mother sat on the hill under big parasols and watched the men, sickle in hand, wading through the rice fields, cutting down the grain. It is a pretty sight, the reaping of the rice.
"Chow Han drove the laden buffaloes. He was bigger and stronger than any of the other lads. My mother did not stay by me all the time. There were the maid's tasks to be set. Chow Han drove past when my mother was not beside me and threw at my feet a pretty shell. 'A pearl for a pearl,' he cried, and laughed saucily. I did not look at him, but when he had passed out of sight I slipped the shell up my sleeve.
"It was a long time before I again saw the lad. My mother fell sick and I accompanied her to the City of Canton to see an American doctor in an American hospital. We remained in Canton, in the house of my brother-in-law for many months. I saw much that was new to my eyes and the sister of the American doctor taught me to speak English -- and some other things.
"By the spring of the year my mother was much improved in health, and we returned home to celebrate the Spring Festival. The Chinese people are very merry at the time of the springing of the rice. The fields are covered with green, and the rice flower peeps out at the side of the little green blade, so small, so white and so sweet. One afternoon I was following alone a stream in the woods behind my father's house, when I saw Chow Han coming toward me."
Ah Sue paused. For all her years in America she was a Chinese woman.
"And he welcomed you home," I suggested.
Ah Sue nodded her head.
"And like a Chinese girl you ran away from the wicked man."
Ah Sue's eyes glistened mischievously.
"You forget, Sui Sin Far," said she, "that I had been living in Canton and had much talk with an American woman. No, when Chow Han told me that he had much respectful love in his heart for me, I laughed a little laugh, I was so glad -- too glad for words. Had not his face been ever before me since the day he tossed me the shell?
"But my father was rich and Chow Han was poor.
"When the little white flowers had once more withdrawn into the green blades and were transforming themselves into little white grains of rice, there came to the rice country a cousin of Chow Han's who had been living for some years in America. He talked much with Chow Han, and one day Chow Han came to me and said:
"'I am bound for the land beyond the sea; but in a few years I will return with a fortune big enough to please your father. Wait for me!'
"I did not answer him; I could not.
"'Promise that you will ever remember me,' said Chow Han.
"'You need no primrose,' I returned. Chow Han set down the pot of fragrant leafed geranium which he had brought with him as a parting gift.
"'As for me,' said he, 'even if I should die, my spirit will fly to this plant and keep ever beside you.'
"So Chow Han went away to the land beyond the sea."
Ah Sue's eyes wandered to the distant water, which like a sheet of silver, reflected every light and color of the sky.
"Moons rose and waned. I know not how, but through some misfortune, my father lost his money and his rice farms passed into other hands. I loved my poor old father and would have done much to ease his mind; but there was one thing I would not do, and that was marry the man to whom he had betrothed me. Had not the American woman told me that even if one cannot marry the man one loves, it is happier to be true to him than to wed another, and had not the American woman, because she followed her conscience, eyes full of sunshine?
"My father died and my mother and I went to live with my brother-in-law in the city of Canton. Two days before we left our old home, we learned that Chow Han had passed away in a railway accident in the United States of America.
"My mother's sister and brother-in-law urged my mother to marry me to some good man, but believing that Chow Han's spirit was ever now beside me, I determined to remain single as the American woman. Was she not brighter and happier than many of my married relations?
"Meanwhile the geranium flower throve in loveliness and fragrance, and in my saddest moments I turned to it for peace and comfort.
"One evening, my poor old mother fell asleep and never woke again. I was so sad. My mother's sister did not love me, and my brother-in-law told me he could no longer support me and that I must marry. There were three good men to be had and I must make up my mind which it should be.
"What would I do? What should I do? I bent over my geranium flower and whispered: 'Tell me, O dear spirit, shall I seek the river?' And I seemed to hear this message: 'No, no, be brave as the American woman!'
"Ah, the American woman! She showed me a way to live. With her assistance I started a small florist shop. My mother had always loved flowers, and behind our house had kept a plot of ground, cram full of color, which I had tended for her ever since I was a child. So the care of flowers was no new task for me, and I made a good living, and if I were sad at times, yet, for the most part, my heart was serene.
"Many who came to me wished to buy the geranium plant, which was now very large and beautiful; but to none would I sell. What! barter the spirit of Chow Han!
"On New Year's day a stranger came into my shop. His hat partly concealed his face; but I could see that he was of our country, though he wore the dress of the foreigner and no queue.
"'What is the price of the large geranium at your door?' he enquired, and he told me that its fragrance had stolen to him as he passed by.
"'There is no price on that flower,' I replied, 'it is there to be seen, but not to be sold.'
"'Not to be sold! But if I give you a high price?'
"'Not for any price,' I answered.
"He sought to persuade me to tell him why, but all I would say was that he could not have the flower.
"At last he came close up to me and said:
"'There is another flower that I desire, and you will not say me nay when I put forth my hand to take it.'
"I started back in alarm.
"'You will not sell the geranium flower,' he told me, 'because you believe that the spirit of Chow Han resides within it. But 'tis not so. The spirit of Chow Han resides within Chow Han. Behold him!'
"He lifted his hat. It was Chow Han."
Ah Sue looked up as her husband entered the room bearing on his shoulder their little Han.
"And you named your boy after your old sweetheart," I observed.
"Yes," replied Ah Sue, "my old sweetheart. But know this, Sin Far, the Chinese men change their name on the day they marry, and the Chow Han, who gave me the scented leafed geranium, and after many moons, found me through its fragrance, is also my husband, Chow Ming."
Winnifred Eaton (Onoto Watanna) Stories
Winnifred Eaton was born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1875. However, she lived most of her life in New York, Hollywood, and Calgary. Winnifred's father, Edward Eaton, was a silk merchant who traveled around to major Asian trading towns, particularly Shanghai. There he met his wife, Grace "Lotus Blossom" Trefusis. She was a Chinese woman adopted and educated by English missionaries. Winnifred was the eighth of fourteen children. She became an author who published many novels, a Chinese-Japanese cookbook, short stories, newspaper articles and motion picture screenplays. At age fourteen she published her first story in a Montreal newspaper. At that young age she was already establishing a name for herself in the United States, with articles in American Youth, Ladies Home Journal, and Metropolitan Magazine.
At age seventeen, Winnifred left Montreal with ten dollars in her pocket to go to Jamaica because she had accepted a position as a stenographer for a Canadian newspaper there. A year later she moved to the United States where she settled in Chicago, working as a typist at the stockyards. There her short stories began being published in the Saturday Evening Post and other periodicals.
Eaton became one of the first known writers of Asian descent to be published in America. It was in Chicago that she published her first novel, Mrs. Nume of Japan (1899), which told the story of a romance involving two couples, one American and one Japanese, who switch partners during a series of romantic and tragic encounters. It was an immediate success. From then on she published almost a novel a year. Moving to New York she wrote her next novel, A Japanese Nightingale in 1901. It was translated into many languages and was even made into a Broadway play and film (1919). She lived in New York until 1917. During that time, she married and divorced Bertrand Babcock with whom she had four children. She had much financial and writing success. In 1910, she wrote the bestseller Tama. Her novels, written during her time in New York, were mainly set in Japan. Most of them featured romantic scenarios of a Japanese woman and American man. Her novel, Me, A Book of Remembrance, in which she created a story about a girl named Nora Ascouth, is a thinly disguised memoir. This book, through the story of Nora's life, shows Eaton's attempt at covering up her Chinese ancestry. The novel created a small scandal partly because it discussed her many romances and friendships with men and partly because everyone was trying to guess the identity of the author.
Her works were popular because they were romances, not only giving Americans a flavor of the Orient but also drawing upon the Orientalist clichés of her time. Eaton was able to explore diverse social issues and exploit Oriental fantasies. Eaton used a Japanese pen name when she wrote, even though she was of Chinese descent. She used the name Onoto Watanna because she wanted to create for herself a persona of a Japanese noblewoman. At that time in America, there was a more favorable perception of Japanese than Chinese. The name Watanna can be dissected into two parts- "wata[ru]," to cross and "na," which means, "name. " Winnifred put these two ideograms together for an intentional purpose. Her sister, the eldest girl in the family, was also a writer named Edith Maude Eaton. She wrote fiction and was a journalist. She too had a pen name which was "Sui Sin Far" or "Water Lily," which she said was a pseudonym of a prominent Americanized Chinese merchant from Los Angeles.
In 1917, Winnifred Eaton Babcock married Francis Fournier Reeve and moved to a ranch in Alberta, Canada. She wrote one more Japanese novel in addition to two novels set in Canada with no Japanese characters. In 1924, she moved back to New York and was hired to write and edit for Universal Studios. She also wrote stories and screenplays and screen adaptations for film companies like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Fox Films, and Universal Pictures. She was one of the writers of shows such as Showboat, Shanghai Lady, Mississippi, Gambler, and Phantom of the Opera. She also made money writing short stories and articles for magazines.
In 1932, she moved back to Calgary where she founded the Little Theatre movement and served as the president of the Calgary branch of the Canadian Authors Association. Eventually, her health restricted her writing and she was able to write only a few short stories. Eaton died on April 8th, 1954, while on her way back to Calgary from a vacation in the United States. Her work prompted a donation by the Francis R. Reeve Foundation and made it possible to construct the Reeve Theatre at the University of Calgary. Also, in the Glenbow Archives in Calgary, Alberta, manuscripts of her short stories, novels, articles, screenplays, publishes works, newspaper clippings of articles and reviews of novels and screenplays are housed.
Despite the fact that Eaton wrote the "first known novel by an Asian American author" (Eaton, Mrs. Nume of Japan, XI) her work has been largely ignored. Some people criticize Winnifred for denying her Chinese heritage and claiming a Japanese one. Most critics have trouble categorizing her because she was of Chinese Anglo descent and assumed a Japanese identity to write romance novels about Eurasian and Japanese women.
The Japanese Of New York
The Japanese of New York make a small but energetic and ambitious colony, approximating a thousand, of which only thirty are women.
There is not a great diversity in the employments they follow. Apart from the merchants and importers, men in the consular service, a few writers and three or four artists, the average Japanese in Manhattan is either a clerk or domestic servant. Of course there are also a number of students attending the colleges here, but even among these, one may find youths employed as above, using their meager earnings to defray their college expenses. Besides these, there are a number of men of leisure who have literally made New York their home. I believe there is only one lecturer in the colony, and it might also include a transient group of jugglers, who like most vaudeville players, make New York their headquarters.
I make no defense of the ambition that causes one to cross thousands and thousands of miles of land and water to come to a strange and alien country for the pitiful employment of domestic service in a foreigner's household. There are not many Americans who would do this. Still, there is something admirable in the spirit behind it, which, after all, is superior to the pride scorning such employment. Many of the Japanese who come to New York are bitterly poor. It is an old delusion that the average student here is sent by the generous Japanese government. On the contrary, most of the young Japanese men in New York have come on their own account to satisfy their native curiosity and thirst for more knowledge of the great and fascinating West. How many of these youths arrive utterly penniless and friendless! But having reached the land of desire, they must at once "study the country." For this, time and money are required: the former they have; the latter they must obtain at once in order to exist. And so they go to work -- the easiest work to obtain. They make excellent butlers, valets and cooks. They are both clean and dignified -- excellent traits in a servant.
It is told of the Marquis Ito that when a youth he wandered about the streets of London, penniless, ragged and hungry, a starving alien in a strange land. No employment was too lowly for that one whose eager and ambitious mind was in after years to point out to the civilized world a new sun of astonishing brightness arisen in the East.
That the Japanese merchants and men of means appreciate the real spirit which has brought their poorer countrymen to New York is shown by the really beautiful beneficence of these men. Many of them are private benefactors on a most unexpected scale, as is shown in the case of three tea merchants who have imported to this country a number of Japanese youths and are personally paying for their education and living. Besides this, the number of their proteges among the clerks and artisans is astonishing.
But it is not all striving, aspiring and working among the Japanese of New York. On the contrary they are quite a gay and happy little colony. They have their clubs, their societies, small social circles and gatherings. There is one small club whose members meet to practice their national jiujutsu, a scientific method of wrestling and boxing quite unsurpassed in the West. There is much mystery, too, about this jiujutsu, and the members are under a rigid oath to reveal none of the various secrets of this ancient cult.
The Hinode, or Rising Sun Club, is the foremost and most exclusive social organization in the city. It was founded in 1896. Its members are for the most part men of leisure, merchants, importers, students, writers and artists. The pleasures and sports enjoyed by this organization are strikingly American -- yachting, excursions, tennis, golf, bowling, billiards, and even card-playing. The Club prides itself upon its Americanism, though in reality beneath its western surface it is essentially Japanese. The influence of "Dai Nippon"1 is upon every individual member. This may account for the fact that not one of its members has become a naturalized citizen of this country. The heart and nature beneath the American clothes are still Japanese.
A number of the Japanese have married American women and the latter affiliate quite freely with the Japanese colony. There are very few half-castes in New York, and most of these are children. They are regarded here with far more toleration and even cordiality by the Japanese than they would be in Japan. This is doubtless because of the fact that after all a good many of the Japanese here are in favor of mixed marriages and cherish the desire to marry a western woman; so that their own offspring may be of that same mixture of blood formerly despised in far away Japan, that is, the Eurasian.
Lafcadio Hearn holds that the Japanese have the greatest patriotism. It is true, to the point of fanaticism. Right here in New York that almost religious love for the fatherland is constantly shown. Whenever any matter of national import to Japan is brought to a crisis, then the little band of Japanese in New York is simply aflutter with excitement. The colony is well informed concerning all the political movements of its distant home, and every bit of triumph, diplomatic or otherwise, attained by their country is exultantly celebrated by the exiles in Manhattan. When the several nations of the world were battering the walls of Peking, and little Japan plunged in bantam-like for her share of martial honor, few knew that the Japanese in New York celebrated the occasion by a banquet given at Sherry's. With tears in their eyes they hoarsely sang the national anthem and with equal fervor the Star-Spangled Banner.
The Japanese of New York are a somewhat serious and even solemn appearing little band. There is not a strong enough sense of humor among them to appreciate some of the very humorous experiences they meet in New York. Consequently, these very experiences often take on, to them, the aspect of tragedy.
For instance, there is a small but handsome Japanese gentleman in New York who is a sentimentalist by nature. As he is rich, cultured and very entertaining, he is a great favorite within a circle of Americans. He is always in love with some impossible woman and his amours are the joke of his countrymen and the despair of his own heart. Unfortunately, he has a wife and a number of babies at home in Japan. A New York lawyer has advised him that he cannot also legally marry an American woman. Nothing would induce him to divorce his Japanese wife, of whom he is very fond, but he simply cannot resist the charms of the women of this country. He is rich enough to retire to his Japan, but he lingers on here. Among his American acquaintances he is thought to be a bachelor.
The Japanese who have the oddest experiences in New York are those who endeavor to become very American, and consequently seek to make New York friends. Of a dignified, sensitive temperament, the Japanese is constantly having his amour propre pierced in consequence. Often, to his intense indignation, he finds himself, instead of the respected guest, the object of amusement and entertainment to his American hosts. This is often involuntary on the part of the latter, and in justice to them, there are only a few after all who invite Mr. Japan "because he is sure to amuse everybody else there." The absurd mistakes made by the hapless Japanese new to American ways are usually the cause of the latter's mirth. Take, for instance, the case of a young Japanese gentleman of high birth and very elegant manners. He was entertained by a charming New York woman who really was flattered and pleased to have him as her guest and had invited a number of distinguished friends to meet him. All went well until dinner time. Then the previously flattered Japanese suddenly found himself the object of the most unexpected mirth, stifled and suppressed when possible, but undeniably there. To laugh at a Japanese gentleman of dignity is a deadly affront and insult, and the paleness of the guest was not wholly due to the barbarous food he had swallowed. True to the tradition of his own race, this gentleman, out of compliment to his hostess, had eaten all placed before him. Food in America is not always served in the dainty small courses with which the Japanese are familiar, and so the action of this guest was quite heroic. He ate everything before him and everything handed to him, even to a full plate of hot and spicy chow-chow, from which he was only expected to help himself to a portion. Having swallowed this chow-chow and vainly endeavoring to stifle a choking cough, he declared to his hostess that that food was "most hot stuff," a remark which sent the table into convulsions.
New York has among its Japanese colony a fair number of clever artists, humorists and writers. The latter contribute to a little magazine published here called "Japan and America." It is published and written in the English language, but its editors and general staff and contributors are all Japanese.
The colony has, too, one poet -- one lone poet. His muse finds its inspiration in the English tongue -- and sometimes it distorts the language grotesquely. But the poet is a poet for a' that. He says he would rather be a poet by nature than write poetry. So he can humor his fancies to his heart's content. And his fancies are eccentric. When he likes a person he is apt to send him poems over the telegraph wires, and when he dislikes one he is sure to tell one so. He has big brown eyes, very sad and mysterious in expression. His hair is long and straight and silky, and he "looks the part."
Then there is a modern Japanese artist in the colony. By that I mean one who has deliberately abandoned all the ideals of his countrymen in regard to art. Then he studied art in America. He is one of those Japanese who are complimented if you take them by mistake for Frenchmen.
While picking out the various characters of distinction in the colony, I must not forget a Japanese-German. He is the son of a German nobleman by a Japanese wife. There is no question of his genius -- and indeed he is a genius in more ways than one, the very reason, perhaps, of his failure to win the highest laurels. He writes exquisitely, both in German and in English. His little stories are prose poems. No words could be more happily used than he uses them in his writing. He is also a clever artist, a book and art critic, and besides all this, a perfume entertainer. In short, he has invented a novel device of entertainment; one, however, which only the truly aesthetic could enjoy and appreciate. His invention is a device for diffusing perfumes of various sorts throughout a concert hall. He lectures on a trip to Japan. His audience is taken by him verbally to the various countries at which they wish to stop before reaching Japan. Starting from America with the hall all odorous of American beauties, he changes the perfume at each stopping place until Japan, with her trees of cherry, is reached and smelled. Sad to relate, the only occasion upon which this versatile man gave his lecture, a stupid manager arranged his "attraction" for a beer garden. It is needless to say that the noses of the placidly smoking and drinking patrons were not sufficiently aesthetic to smell the point of the lecture.
Every once in a while one drifts across some little waif of Japan in this city, who seems somehow cut off and separated, not only from the Americans, but his own people. I ran after a Japanese lad I saw turned away from an elevator in a building, bearing that edifying motto -- "No canvassers, dogs or beggars admitted." The boy had a basket of lily bulbs. He was thin and weary looking, his face white and pinched, and his hands were blue with cold. I was fabulously rich that day (having disposed of a story to a magazine), and I "went shares" with the lily boy.
In Coney Island, once I came across a real Jap-Yankee. He was crying his wares in a voice which drowned out a Hebrew rival's, and his hand swung back and forth a mechanical American balloon, blown into the form of a pig. Here was enterprise for you!
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