Author: Xin (Page 1 of 2)

I visited the exhibit at MOCA, the Museum of Chinese in America. It was no surprise that the museum was located in Chinatown, but it was not as eye-catching as I expected. Inside, there were many documents of Chinese culture and the struggles that they faced in America.

When you entered the first room of the exhibit, you are greeted with three different components: crystal clear cylinder displays with hanging notes, a wall of significant people at that time with luminous backlit pop-outs, and a wall of different primary sources at the time explaining Chinese roles in American expansionism and the Gold Rush. I was attracted to the crystal-clear display of an opium ball that caused the opium war. This was a reproduction made by the artist, Arlan Huang, made in 2009. At first glance, it just looked like a ball that rolled in a pile of dried rose petals, but up close you can see the intricate details of the opium ball. Forty of these were packed and stored in wooden chests to be sent to the market. This seemingly insignificant object marked the start of the era of unequal treaties with China in which they were forced to concede many of its territorial and sovereignty rights.

In the second room, the relevant theme there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. On the wooden wall, words filled up the middle column, describing the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act. On both sides of the words were a bunch of art portraying the fear and struggles of that period. Beneath those images were drawers filled with writing and small paper-made objects, like the trade cards from the late 1800s. They had an image on one side and business information on the other. The images used frequently illustrated the anti-Chinese imagery in commercial culture. From this specific drawer, I could feel the racism towards the Chinese people. Five cards each one showing weeks one through five laid on the drawer, each one with a Chinese man holding plates. On the first week, he was not holding much and as the weeks progressed, the number of plates he had increased, and by week four, his hands and head were loaded with plates. By the fifth week, the Chinese man is buried under plates. This piece of display demonstrates the social status that Chinese people had and the hatred against them. Something else that I found intriguing in this section was the display of immigration documents. The rejected applications were printed out on red paper while the ones that passed were printed on green. There was more red paper than the green ones. Compared to the red ones, the green papers had examples of some well-written appeals in close-to-perfect English. 

Moving on, the next part of the exhibit walks through “The Eight-Pound Livelihood”, which is when Chinese people were excluded from entering skilled trades so they could only do “traditional women work” which is work in the service trades, especially in the hand laundries industry. On the wall were inscribed verses from “Chinaman, Laundryman” by songwriter Ruth Crawford Seeger in 1932 in both English and Chinese. The verses cry out the voices of Chinese people and how they were cleaning these clothes, but they live in an unclean world where there is hatred and exclusion. On the counter below the poem, there was an actual iron used during the time. When I tried to lift it, I felt how heavy the iron was, I could not imagine how tiring it would be for someone to be lifting this and using it all day long. 

In the last room of the exhibit, more recent events were shown, like the case study of the neighborhood of Sunset Park in Brooklyn. It described how Chinatown in Manhattan was over-packed with immigrants in the 1980s due to the Immigration Reform Act and the end of China’s isolation. A part of it was “Little Fuzhou” which was filled with people from the Fuzhou province. But soon, demand for affordable housing was increasing at a rapid pace, while supply was at its limit with the increasing amount of Fujianese immigrants. This is when they found another place with more spacious and affordable housing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It was also convenient because of the subway lines to Manhattan. I can personally relate to this because I am from Fuzhou and the neighborhood of Sunset Park is a big part of daily life. Even though it is a big Chinese community, we still experience a lot of anti-Chinese crimes, racism, and stereotypes.

In Lauren Yee’s Ching Chong Chinaman, she writes the play in a way that balances humor and the critiques of Chinese American stereotypes. In her play, she emphasizes the racist and offensive language that most Americans use when stereotyping Asians and Asian Americans.

One scene that touched me specifically was the part where the Wong family was trying to pronounce J’s name and instead of pronouncing it like “JIN-qiang”, the father pronounced it as “Ching Chong.” (Yee, 10) People usually view this as offensive language, one to mock Asians and Asian Americans and their accents and names. I especially resonated because of the dread that comes when people try to pronounce my name. My name is spelled uniquely so people often pronounce it incorrectly. In Chinese, it’s pronounced differently than how people pronounce it in America. The x sound is hard for people to pronounce so most people resort to pronouncing it as Jin, Shin, or Zin. To make it easier for people to pronounce, I usually just go with their pronunciation or correct it to Zin. However, whenever my friends hear other people try to pronounce my name and they hear Jin or Shin, they would make fun of it. I don’t think they realize how offensive it can be even though they are also of the same ethnicity. Reflecting back on my own experiences kind of answers the question of whether or not you can be racist to your own race. My answer would be that some people are racist towards their own race.

One example of this sort of racism is how the Wong family is ethnically Chinese but they are so Americanized that they cannot assimilate with their Chinese side. They couldn’t even pronounce J’s name or know what Chinese people eat and how they behave. They have lost all of their Chinese cultures and instead acts as if they are not themselves associated to be Asian. In the play, Desdemona says “We need return him to his natural environment. We don’t know anything about his diet, his lifestyle, his basic wants. We don’t even have the right sensitivity training to even begin to cater to his needs as a displaced person.” (Yee, 11) Her remarks on J and his situation can be interpreted as humorous yet offensive because it’s weird to say that they need to return J to his natural environment as if he were some animal that needs to be sent back to where he came from so that he can survive. It’s mocking J yet it’s also humorous in how unaware Desdemona and the rest of the family is of their own identity.

Another scene that I personally found humorous yet offensive was when Grace was struggling to ordering Chinese takeout on the phone. She ended the call by saying “doomo arigato…thank you.” (Yee, 15) She said thank you in Japanese and English but it was a Chinese restaurant that she was ordering from. Yee uses this scene to highlight how stereotypical people can be when they think of Asians, they usually refer to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean but Asia is such a big continent, with many different countries, each one different from the other.

Personally, this play highlighted a lot of the different stereotypes and offensive language that we encounter in our lives but Lauren Yee balances it out with humor to make it less serious. Her choice of language and characters really helped to highlight the problems of society.

I feel like we all recognize the word “immigrants” more than “refugees”. We are less familiar to the stories of refugees because not many, like Amin Nawabi, can open up and recall on their experiences. It is not something that most people can relate with or empathize with. We always read about or watch documentaries of history but never realizing how appalling it can actually be especially for the people at the time.

In Flee, Nawabi opens by lying comfortably down on a mat, closing his eyes, and taking himself with the viewers alongside back in his memories. It starts with young Nawabi running home with “Take on Me” by a-ha playing in his headphones. He says how he only remembers seeing his mother in grey hair, wishing to be able to see his mother when she was younger. He also remembers his siblings sitting in the yard telling stories of their father. When Ramussen asked about his father, it was too hard for Nawabi to continue as he says that he is not ready yet. Throughout this documentary, Ramussen makes it clear that Nawabi has trouble coming forward and sharing his story, even to his partner which has troubled him for a while, because he is afraid of his loved ones using his most vulnerable experiences to hurt him.

One scene that left me an impression was when Nawabi and his brother left their apartment in Russia and went outside. At the new Moscow McDonald’s opening event, the two brothers were caught by police and search for money to compensate for not having papers but since they just came out to see what was happening, they didn’t have any money on them only the watch that his father left behind, so they were taken into the police car. Inside, there was another refugee girl who was also caught and didn’t have any money so the police thought she would compensate a different way. But later, the two brothers were kicked off the car and the police entered the car assaulting the girl. Nawabi regrets for not standing up for the girl at the time, knowing how scared and helpless she would have been. This scene makes me wonder if I were in his place, what would I have done? Or maybe if I was the girl, how much despair would I be in that situation? It ultimately comes to do I save myself or others?

Touching up on Ramussen’s approach to telling Nawabi’s story, everything was put together in a way that is intriguing yet touching. I feel that he very attentive when it comes to details and is very patient with getting this out. He accurately portrays the blurriness of Nawabi’s memories but also finds real documentaries of the events at that time. He also switches between the scenes of Nawabi’s past and how its affect on his present life. He portrays the life that we don’t live and one we will probably never experience. The story of a refugee.

Photographs are ways of preservation of what is valuable to us. Photographs capture the moment and lock all the precious memories in place. We often refer back to photographs to help us recall past events and preserve interesting experiences. Although it might seem like a thin, mass-producible object when it’s in physical form or a file that takes up space digitally, photographs are flexible and valuable.

As Sontag states in On Photography, “To collect photographs is to collect the world” (Sontag, 1). It’s like we are treasure hunters, journeying around the world and collecting different puzzle pieces of this world and of ourselves. She mentions how we often write about the history of an event or a person but those are just “printed words” but photographs are what give us knowledge. She says that photographs provide “the look of the past and the reach of the present” (Sontag, 2). Words can be interpreted in many different ways but a photograph provides a guide that opens up more direct conversation.

Photography is the documentary of history. Although much of Earth’s history still remains undocumented, ever since the invention of cameras, most of it has been. It also provides evidence. It’s like when people say “I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes”. Most of us like it when we have solid evidence because it proves a point. Sontag mentions how photography is used in the same way in criminology that helps with police investigations (Sontag, 3). But also, photographs are proof of existence. Everyone dies in life, some earlier and some later in life but it’s all part of a person’s life. Photographs are proof that you exist and give people a chance to remember you. During funerals, they also leave a clear picture of the deceased, so that people can remember most of you before they continue on with their own lives.

Personally, I believe that there is a story behind every picture that the photograph doesn’t fully cover so most of the story is concealed. A photograph might show some of the simplest things like a blank white wall but still have meaning behind it. A photograph doesn’t have to be eye-catching or follow a certain set of guidelines, it’s flexible and open to every and any type of story. When I take photographs, my ultimate goal is to be able to capture the most memorable moment of my life, from my smile to my clothes, to my pose, or from the position of the object to the specific angle at which the sun shines on the object. All of them tell a story…my story.