Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

A few days ago there was an article in the LA times about the city of Taishan, China. Taishan is the city of my ancestry. My great grandparents were all from there. It is the ancestry home of over half a million Chinese Americans. There are 1 million people in Taishan today but over 1.3 million people of Taishan ancestry all over the world. The story of this city and its people provides a lesson not only about immigration but also about prejudice (not just the racial kind) and about human nature in regard to work ethic.

Taishan was an extremely poor area even by Chinese standard in the early 20th century. Well before WWII the men from the area were leaving oversea to find work. The land was poor and there was no industry. Since it was close to South China Sea many people left for places like the Phillipines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The more ambitious ones went to Canada and the U.S. Of course most of them got in illegally. This means once they are in they can't leave easily because they may not be able to come back. So usually many years went by before the men could see their family again. My grandfather left for Canada, came back a dozen years later for about a year and then returned to Canada forever. My grandmother was pregnant with my father when my grandfather left the second time. It was over 30 years later that my father saw his father for the first time. My other grandfather never made it back home, having been stranded in SE Asia. Meanwhile back in Taishan the women were in charge. It became almost a matriarch society as most of the men were gone.

By the 1980's most of the people who had left Taishan had done well oversea. In the Americas they had gone from waiters and cooks to businessmen. Their children, if they were able to join them, had become professional people. In SE Asia they became even richer as many ran corporations or small businesses. While America is the land of opportunity for immigrants, in some ways it was easier to be successful in places where the natives were not as advanced as Americans. The drawback is that while the Chinese may face prejudice in America because of their skin color, they face even worse prejudice in other lands because they became richer than the natives. Many Chinese had to change their names to hide their ethnicity. When they became rich they had to hire armed guards. They were basically to SE Asians what the Jews were to the Europeans in the 40's.

As the Chinese did well overseas they sent large amount of money back home. Since Taishan had more people oversea than other Chinese cities, it benefited the most. Schools and hospitals were build with oversea money. The hillbillies of China had became the "Beverly Hills Hillbillies". But this would not last. As the overseas Taishanese became old and died, less and less money were coming back. The children and grandchildren of these "wah kius" had no connection with the old villages. The young people who benefitted from the new schools built by overseas money moved out to cities like Canton, Hong kong and Shanghai. This left the old and less educated in the old villages. Having dependent on overseas money all these years the people left behind are unable to lift themselves out of poverty. With the change to capitalist system throughout China there is no handouts from the government either.

What are some lessons I learned from this history of the Taishanese people? First of all, my view of illegal immigration. When you are desperate you will not hesitate to break immigration laws. If China was connected to the U.S. the most law abiding Chinese would have ran over here without regard to immigration laws. If the Chinese would risk their lives in the ocean to come here illegally, do you think that any fence would keep out the Mexicans? Where there is a demand there will be a supply.

Another lesson about prejudice. This is the prejudice of Chinese against Chinese. The Taishanese were considered inferior by other Chinese. They spoke a dialect that many Chinese considered to sound less intelligence than other dialects. This is similar to our belief that the southern accent sound less intelligence than those from other areas of the U.S. Due to their high poverty level, the Taishanese were also considered to be hillbillies of China. They were looked down upon because the men are gone from the villages. Just like the southerners here, the Taishanese were considered to be less intelligent. But look what happens when their children had the opportunity to have an education in America. So it is a matter of opportunity not genetics. So what we should do is make sure that all of our children have an opportunity to succeed.

As I mentioned before, Taishan was considered backward because most of the men had left. But the women were able to keep the society going without the men. They tended to the fields and animals while raising the children by themselves. So the theory of the weaker sex has to be thrown out the window.

Having the opportunity itself does not equal success. Some in Taishan took the advantage of the better school provided by the overseas money and left to bigger cities. But some just took the handouts. They spent their time playing mahjong and drinking. This is like the welfare system and the Indian reservations in this country. It just makes people lazier. Human nature is such that if there is a easy way out we would take it. Also if we are given handouts then pretty soon we would believe that we are always entitled to it. The Taishanese who left the country had no other choice, so they would do whatever it takes to survive and provide for their families. So to lift people out of poverty we cannot just throw money at them but we must think about ways to increase the opportunities. Then it is up to the individual to succeed on his own.