A hand-me-down collared shirt; a hand-made cloth shoe; a patriarch’s cloth shoe; a wooden bench; a rock. These are the current entries to our archive. Each entry has two stories: a personal or familial one passed from father to daughter and a historical one. Objects have a history, a haunting. Like Ba’s village on that moonless night, objects have a resonant quality to them. If we look closely enough, we just might learn something about the time that they came from.
This project started in bravery. A child of an immigrant asking an immigrant to uncover moments of trauma but also moments of joy. An immigrant laying his childhood bare in front of his child and unpacking the intergenerational trauma that now sits within the hollow of his child’s bones. We carry the story of our fathers, our mothers, and our grandparents, and I believe it is our task to uncover and tell them.
The phone calls with Ba weren’t always easy. Sometimes his voice would get quiet and terse and then I’d be left interviewing the low beeps of a dial tone. Sometimes I’d call him, and he’d send me straight to voicemail. Sometimes we’d have to take breaks that would span days or even weeks because some stories were simply too hard to tell. Most of the time, we’d both end up in tears and he’d tell some tangential story that I knew wouldn’t end up in this paper.
Talking to Ba is hard; it’s never been easy. But I’d like to think that through stories I think we finally saw each other. I spent so much of my adolescence running from my Chinese American identity and in screaming matches with Ba over participating in the Chinese American community. I never realized that there was a history beyond my story. In my anger, I shut Ba out. I forgot that Ba was a person before he was my 爸爸. I didn’t realize that Ba had thousands of memories that were from before me. I forgot to listen to his stories from a different world, from Village No. 8 in 太平乡.
And I’ve only told a portion of that story.
There are so many more artifacts than the ones I’ve presented. A Russian nesting doll of houses throughout the years; an old 1970s radio; a box television; a wooden board, $13 worth of cabbage or a week’s worth of groceries. All present their own stories and reveal something new about not just Chinese history, but also Chinese American history. Ba’s story tells the story of China, but it also tells the story of an immigrant who broke away from the village and discovered the world outside of it. His story is one rooted in bravery.
To tell this larger story will require a lot more work – a lot more interviews, research, and time. To tell the story of an immigrant requires bravery. I will tell that story eventually but I am not sure I am brave enough now. It is fitting that a project that started in bravery will eventually be completed in bravery.
Relevant Sources
DASS, Nirmal, and About the Author: ChinaConnectU. “Three Obediences and the Four Virtues (Sāncóng Sìdé 三从四德): Sāncóng Sìdé 三从四德 (Three Obediences and the Four Virtues).” ChinaConnectU, 16 Dec. 2014, https://chinaconnectu.com/2012/01/23/three-obediences-and-the-four-virtues-sancong-side-%E4%B8%89%E4%BB%8E%E5%9B%9B%E5%BE%B7sancong-side-%E4%B8%89%E4%BB%8E%E5%9B%9B%E5%BE%B7-three-obediences-and-the-four-virtues/.
Finnane, Antonia. Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, Modernity, Nation. Columbia University Press, 2008.
Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. “China Drafts Its First Domestic Violence Law, but Rights Advocates Say It Falls Short.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Nov. 2014, https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/china-drafts-its-first-domestic-violence-law-but-rights-advocates-say-it-falls-short/.
Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. “China’s Harsh Child Discipline, through the Lens of Domestic Violence.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Mar. 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/asia/china-corporal-punishment-education-discipline.html.
Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. “Year after Detentions, Chinese Feminists Mark Setbacks and Progress.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Mar. 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/world/asia/china-feminists-women-domestic-violence.html.
Tone, Sixth. “Why Divorcing an Abusive Spouse Remains an Uphill Struggle.” SixthTone, 15 Mar. 2021, https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006943/WhyDivorcinganAbusiveSpouseRemainsanUphillStruggle.
Tsui, Christine. China Fashion: Conversations with Designers. Berg Publishers, 2010.
Zhao, Yuhong. “Domestic Violence in China: In Search of Legal and Social Responses.” UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, 2000, https://doi.org/10.5070/p8182022139.
Thank you for reading the final part of the Family and Country’s History series by Amanda Chen! Stay tuned for more works by Amanda in the future and read more about her here. Click here to go back to the first part of the mini series.