How my family and I are preserving a slice of Chinese-American history
- I have been collecting my father’s memories, one recording at a time, for two years
- If the Chinese-American community is to make a lasting mark on US history, greater efforts must be made to collect individual immigrant stories
Mondays are history evenings for my father and me. Since 2021, my father and I have had a standing phone call where I ask him a question related to a milestone in his life, or some aspect of how he feels about life, love and other broader topics. I tape the call and save the recording. A couple of years on, there are well over 100 recordings.
In the beginning, my father, who has spent much of his life and career as a professor, questioned the notion that his story would merit the time. “There are so many Chinese professors in the US and many of them are similar,” he said matter-of-factly. “Who else would be interested?”
Who would want to hear his life story that started in Shanghai and shifted to Hong Kong in his youth, before he became the first in his family (out of six brothers and sisters) to attend university overseas (McGill University) and began his journey to a tenured professorship? The immigrant story holds common themes, so would his be any different?
After I argued that preserving family roots was important to my sister and me, he decided to give the project a go.
My father was born in Shanghai on August 1, 1947, and first went to Hong Kong as a boy. To make ends meet in his university years, he cooked at Expo 67, the world’s fair, in Montreal in 1967, and moved timber at a lumberyard in Blind River, Canada.
After earning his PhD from Florida State University, he eventually found his way to the suburbs of New York City where he taught medical school students at New York Medical College. He sponsored his siblings to immigrate to the US, and helped them start new lives. In 2022, he retired after 45 years of service.
The recordings, each lasting no more than 10 minutes, are detailed. In some recordings, he tells of how he befriended a group of overseas students in postgraduate school (there were not many Chinese students in Florida back in the early 1970s) and of how he met my mother. In more intimate recordings, he focuses on the challenges of marriage, finding a mission in life, the role of spirituality in life and his views on money and the purpose it serves.
Significantly, the backdrop to my father’s life story is the intertwined history of the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. He recalls taking a train from Shanghai to Hong Kong as a boy to briefly live with his grandparents for economic reasons. Four years later, in 1958, he returned by train to Hong Kong due to political and economic changes on the mainland.
The highlights of his childhood include flying kites with his siblings in Victoria Park and playing ping pong.
This “Wu History Project” of ours has become a fixture, with my father asking, if not at times reminding me about our phone call. During the course of the project, I have also obtained photographs from family members. A favourite is one of my father, with his siblings and parents, at Victoria Park on a lovely autumn day.
Asian-Americans are still waiting for their US Supreme Court voice
The question lingers: what will I do with all the recordings and what is the purpose of it all? In the US, broadly speaking, there is a lack of preservation of Chinese-American history, especially the individual stories and experiences of those still with us.
Arguably, the preservation efforts have been greater for other ethnic and racial groups and even within segments of US society such as war veterans – which is all good, yet Chinese-Americans deserve a greater place in American history due to our past and present contributions.
The rewards of oral history are great: future generations will benefit from the knowledge shared on culture and language, with the bonus of the perspective that comes with age.
In major US cities, there are museums and societies devoted to Chinese-American history. Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington are home to Chinese-American Museums. Chinese-American oral history projects have sprung up at universities including University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University.
But the good work is not nearly enough. The collection of Chinese-American stories and experiences is something that Chinese-Americans need to push for if we are to make a lasting and sustainable mark on American history.
My hope is that, someday, the recordings will end up in an archive at a university with a reputable Asian-American programme such as Columbia University or University of California, Berkeley.
More recently, I connected with the Museum of Chinese in America in New York and inquired whether they would consider my oral history project for their archives. The wonderful news is that they will. In the meantime, the recordings await transcribing and indexing.
I recently asked my father if he misses Hong Kong. Yes he does, he said, and he holds fond memories of celebrating Lunar New Year (his favourite holiday) and eating his favourite food (braised pork and stir-fried giant prawns marinated in ketchup and soy sauce). While it is bittersweet knowing his story won’t end with him back in his homeland, I find peace in the knowledge that this will someday be history.
Amy Wu is a Chinese-American journalist based in New York and California. A native New Yorker, she writes about cross-cultural issues and topics related to women’s issues, including health and policy
