Roots of the Banyan Tree
By Joann Lee

My family took a trip to China recently. There were twenty of us, spanning four generations.

For my Dad, it was a return to his village, a place he had not seen for well over fifty years. For the rest of us, it was the first opportunity we had to see where he came from; the first time to really connect with our roots.

Taishan is on the southern tip of Kuangdong. Most of the early Chinese immigrants to the United States came from that area. They boarded ships to the United States, lured by stories of the California Gold Rush; others came because they heard there was work to be had, building the railroads.

The village sits peacefully tucked away, about half an hour from the nearest cosmopolitan area. From a distance, the lush overgrowth of terraced greenery offered the promise of fertile earth and bountiful harvests. But as we got closer it became clear that this land had not been farmed in years.

The brick houses stood firm, albeit a bit worn from time, a testament to the money that had been mailed back lovingly, year after year, by the sons of the village who had left decades ago.

At the end of the village stood a tall Banyan tree -- regal, cool, generous in its shading. This afternoon about twenty villagers sat under it, seeking relief from the burning Canton sun. This was the tree my great-grandfather planted before he left for the United States. When I was a child, my dad repeatedly told us stories about this tree: how he was forbidden to climb it; how he enticed his cousin to scale it when they were children; how they fell down from the tree and were severely scolded by his grandmother.

Throughout these stories, there was never mention about my great-grandfather, or even my grandfather. It was clear my father was raised solely by my grandmother. His was a matriarchal family. The men always sent money back, but they were never there. I didn’t quite understand why. When I asked my grandmother about it, she was often complaining and bitter. “They wouldn’t let us go to the United States,” she said.

My great-grandfather immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century. He arrived in San Francisco and managed to find work in a fish cannery in Washington State. Ultimately he landed in Detroit, where he opened a hand laundry. Throughout those years, he sent money home to the village. Eventually Son Number One -- my grandfather -- joined him.

Great-grandfather left for the United States in his 30s, only returning to his village when it was time to retire. Unaccustomed to the village water, however, he died within a week of his return.

As for my grandfather, local people fire bombed the hand laundry sometime during the Depression. My grandfather moved on, eventually opening the first Chinese restaurant in Washington, D.C.

Grandfather left China in his early 20s, when Dad was still an infant. He never went back to China, either. He just sent money.

These were the stories I heard growing up. I kept thinking that it was all a matter of choice -- that the men in the family just did not want to come home. They only sent money. Then as I grew older, I found myself judging them: What was it with these Chinese men? Once they left, they never returned. Why?

That day, standing under the Banyan tree in my father’s village, I realized the answer was always there, hidden in the murkiness of the history of the Chinese in America. The tree was planted about a hundred years ago, to mark my great-grandfather’s departure to the United States. Our family history in the United States stretches across a century. By all rights, I should be a fourth-generation American.

Yet I am, instead, a first-generation Chinese American, born in Hong Kong because the U.S. immigration laws prevented Chinese men from bringing their families over.

Congress passed a series of Chinese Exclusion Acts beginning in 1882 to stop the immigration of Chinese to this country. Those already here were not allowed to have their wives and families join them. Some of those who left the United States, found upon their return that their re-entry certificates were rescinded. They were “aliens, ineligible for citizenship”, and were required to carry certificates of residence.

The first Chinese documented as arriving in San Francisco dates back to 1848. By the 1880s, intense agitation and widespread violence against the Chinese in the West triggered a series of restrictive immigration measures in Congress. It was not until 1946, during World War II, that the political tide began to turn.

My family’s story is not unusual. Generations of Chinese men learned to live in America without the hope of ever having their families join them because of historically racist and discriminatory laws. What if a Chinese man were to marry an American woman? Congress even passed a law that stripped a woman of her citizenship, if she married an “alien ineligible for citizenship.” This was known as the Cable Act, passed in 1922.

Great-grandfather probably did not realize when he planted the Banyan that embarking to the United States in search of the American dream would mean a lifetime separation from his family. The story about the men in my family has been filled in a bit more with this realization. I know now they could not return to their wives or their village. I have connected the dots, and it has led me to a direct connection with a sad and shameful point in American history.

History is a collective memory. It is the stories we tell our children.

History leaps out from the past and brands the present, redefining the future. I started out looking for roots in China. Ironically, it was there, under the Banyan tree, that I gained ownership of a piece of my family’s historical identity, wrapped tightly in the history of the United States.

My father said his next project will be to relocate my great-grandfather’s grave, so that it would be next to my great-grandmother’s. She is buried on a hilltop, serenely overlooking the village. I think I understand why he needs to do this. This is more than a gesture of love; it has much to do with filial piety, a sense of family, duty and honor. In the end, they will be together, after a lifetime of forced separation.

It is a debt of gratitude, the final triumph, after four generations.

Joann Lee is author of Asian Americans (New Press, 1992), and has written extensively on Asian Americans and the media. She currently directs the Journalism Program at Queens College (CUNY). Her next book, Asian American Actors will be published by McFarland, in 2000.