Rediscovering China

Family Ties: Participants in the annual “In Search of Roots” program spend two weeks traveling in the Guangdong Province. Above, the 1993 group visits the Ancestral Temple in Foshand. Photo courtesy of the Chinese Culture Foundation of san francisco

By Alethea Yip

When the first Chinese sojourners came to the United States to mine Gold Mountain, they clung to their culture for comfort in the foreign land. But with each new generation of Chinese Americans, the old ways and history have slowly slipped away.

But for the last five years, a unique partnership of American historical and cultural associations has helped to close the generational distance for many Chinese Americans through a program called “In Search of Roots.”

The program has two parts: researching participants’ Chinese American roots and then exploring their roots in China. Program coordinators conduct seminars on Chinese American history, the historical development of China, and the Guangdong Province and show interns how to sift through national archives. The pinnacle of the year-long internship is a two-week journey to participants’ villages from where their ancestors emigrated.

Douglas Young, who went through the program in 1993, grew up in Marin County, an affluent bedroom community north of San Francisco, where he felt somewhat excluded from the largely white community and from an education system that taught courses from a male, Eurocentric perspective.

“There weren’t a lot of either Chinese Americans or Asian Americans around,” recalled the 28-year-old independent producer. “I grew up feeling like I was different.

“Also growing up, I was never taught about my community, not even about the railroads,” Young said. “‘Roots’ helped me find my identity by giving me the opportunity to see where my community began. Growing up in Marin, I never sort of had an identity in terms of understanding my family and where I was from.”

Young was so inspired by the program that he directed a 30-minute documentary profiling three participants of the program.

Currently, “In Search of Roots” is intended for Chinese Americans who are 16 to 25 years old, and whose families are from the Pearl Delta Region of Guangdong province in Southern China. Since participants must also be able to attend classes and seminars in San Francisco twice every month, most of the interns live in the Bay Area.

Albert Cheng, president of the Chinese Culture Foundation and one of the coordinators of “Roots,” said the program was born after positive response to a symposium on family history and genealogy he and Chinese American historian Him Mark Lai gave in 1989.

With backing from the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, the Chinese Historical Society of America, and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office in Guangdong Province of the People’s Republic of China, Cheng and Lai decided to start the program that is specifically designed for young Chinese Americans to learn about their history.

“We are looking to build the next generation of community leaders,” Cheng said. “To do that, young people need to know where they came from. The theme of the ‘Roots’ program is the old Chinese proverb, ‘When drinking water, remember the source.’

“A lot of the interns were suburban kids,” Cheng added. “They grew up in environments that were mainly influenced by European Americans. There was hardly, if any, Chinese American history taught to them.”

Cheng, an educator with the San Francisco Unified School District, said that “In Search of Roots” is the only one of its kind. He added that there are a number of language and culture programs, but not a year-long process dealing with family history. The tuition for “Roots” is $450 and the transportation cost to China is about $1,000.

Lai, who teaches “Roots” seminars on Chinese American history, said the thirst for cultural understanding and history among Chinese Americans is fairly recent.

“I think that the civil rights movement and that Asian American studies played a big role in heightening ethnic awareness, including among Chinese Americans,” Lai said. “That kind of thinking is much more prevalent than it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

“Interns know that Chinese Americans are different from Chinese in China, but they realize after the program that there are ties that still exist,” Lai said. “The only thing that separates Chinese Americans from any other group is history. Without our history, how are we different from anybody else?”

For some, the discovery of the past is as much a painful and emotional process as it is enlightening and educational.

Vonnie Wong signed up for the “Roots” program last year because she was interested in the genealogical research aspect. She got more than she bargained for.

Her dig through archives and visit to China revealed that most of her mother’s relatives were either killed, died of starvation, or still missing as a result of the Sino-Japanese war. Her mother’s village, Boa ‘On, which is near Hong Kong, was one of the areas that was hardest hit by the Japanese invasion.

“It wasn’t anything I asked my mother or anybody about,” said the 26-year-old administrator of a nonprofit arts organization. “It never really came up.”

The closest Wong came to finding a relative on her mother’s side was very distant cousins. The near extinction of her mother’s family left her confused and saddened.

“I was one of the only people who had flowing tears during the whole trip,” Wong recalled, somewhat jokingly. “It was difficult to go and not meet any close relatives.”

Many former interns said the quest to find their identity through the program led to a greater feeling of closeness to their families.

“In asking questions of my family members, it opened up a new dialogue between us,” said Elisa Ong, an intern in the 1991 pilot program. “I gained a whole new respect for my parents. It opened the door with the older generations. I understand more about my identity, where I come from, and what things contributed to make me what I am today.”

Ong, a 22-year-old second-year medical school student at Stanford University, said that the program also prompted her father to open a chapter of his life that he had left behind in China.

“It gave my dad an opportunity to reflect on his life and to teach me about his experiences,” Ong recalled. “It was a great learning experience.”

Tony Tong said many of the gaps in his life were filled after his participation two years ago.

Tong grew up in a suburb of Cleveland and was the only Chinese American throughout grade school and high school. The 24-year-old mechanical engineer also had very few extended family members who lived near his Midwestern town. He said he did not have a sense of community there and it was not until he went to California to attend Stanford that he discovered people who were comfortable with being Chinese American.

Tong, who started and now produces a quarterly “Roots” newsletter to keep former interns connected, recalled stories his parents told him about their past, but it was not until he had a chance to visit those villages and talk to his relatives that he was able to completely understand what they were describing.

“My dad had mentioned relatives and the ancestral village before,” Tong said. “But going there, seeing the people, made it more real for me. I now understand my parents better and it gave me a perspective of the cycle of generations. It made things more complete. I feel more connected to my community.”

Lai said that there is a need for programs like “Roots” because traditional history courses exclude almost all of Chinese American history. As a result many Chinese Americans grow up confused about how they fit into American society.

“If you go to a history class, teachers talk about the Mayflower and how our ancestors came here that way,” Lai said. “How can a Chinese kid identify with that? They feel left out.

“Identity seems to be the biggest problem for a lot of the kids who go through ‘Roots,’” he continued. “They wonder if are they white or yellow. They look yellow, but they feel white.”

For Terence Chuck, a three-and-a-half generation Chinese American who grew up in the mostly white, affluent suburb of San Rafael, said he always felt left out of both the Chinese and the American culture and the program gave him an opportunity to meet people who shared his feeling of isolation.

“Being Chinese American is something in between being Chinese and American,” Chuck said. “And I don’t fit into either culture perfectly.”

After going through the program three years ago, the 28-year-old psychology graduate student continues his genealogical quest to understand his lineage and said that he believes that his research has enriched his ability to be a psychotherapist.

“I’m piecing together things about my family that I can see in myself,” Chuck said. “And a little light starts to go on and I gain a better understanding of my father, my grandfather, filling in some of the story of what they had to go through.

“I have a better understanding of the culture from where I’ve come,” he continued. “It’s like waking up from a dream.”

For more information about the “In Search of Roots” program, contact the Chinese Culture Center at 986-1822 or check the program’s web page at http://www.c-c-c.org.