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We all love our families, but spending over 24 hours with them in close proximity during a time when joy and good vibes are mandatory can be a mental hazard. Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to adapt-
1. Submit to the dress code: My brother used to make fun of me when I’d come home dressed up like a flight attendant – pants or skirt suit, sensible heels, pearls and a silk scarf for a touch of color. Looking like my mother’s “mini me” was an easy way to preempt any clothing critiques.
A few years ago, Judy Yung, who was my Asian American studies professor back in college, was in Los Angeles to give a talk at the Chinese American Museum. I had been Judy’s teaching assistant for her Asian American Experience class and she had been my faculty advisor when I had taught my own course in Asian American literature at UC Santa Cruz and we’ve kept in touch since I graduated. It was at that event when she introduced me to her “new” husband, Eddie Fung.
Although Eddie was in his 80s when I met him, there was nothing frail or elderly about him. Judy introduced him to the audience during her talk and I remember he jumped up and moved around and spoke with the energy of a man a third his age about the new book he and Judy had collaborated on that told the story of his life entitled The Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War. And among his many amazing accomplishments, he had the distinction of being the only Chinese American soldier (and one of only two Asian Americans) captured by the Japanese during World War II where he was put to work building the Burma-Siam Railroad made famous in the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai.
I loved you Michelle Kwan, I loved you hard. Did not my sexy love poem scribed with the blood of my loins inspire you to become a Fan? Twas my offerings of eternal love, worship, and a lower, middle-class life not enough? Apparently not. 48 hours of silence can truly deafen a wanton heart. My soul is cracked and my audacity to hope, guillotined. All I have left now is my Ni Hao Kai Lan doll with aluminium foil skates (I made them myself) and an ego the size of an ant testicle. I loved you. I love you. I will forever love you. But I’m a big boy and I can take a hint…
If you think it’s difficult being an Asian American director today trying to make Asian American-themed projects, imagine what it must have been like 94 years ago. Up until recently, it was, in fact, thought that no Asian American filmmakers existed that far back (Sessue Hayakawa wouldn’t start his own company, becoming the first Asian American producer/actor, until 1918). That is until 2006 when two reels of a 1916 silent feature entitled The Curse of Quon Gwon were discovered. The director and writer of the movie was a Chinese American woman named Marion Wong.
Documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong was researching Hollywood Chinese, his excellent look at the history of Chinese Americans in Hollywood, when he unearthed the two 35 mm reels (about 35 minutes of footage) in an Oakland basement. The film was preserved on highly flammable nitrate stock and had to be carefully handled and restored (among other dangers, old nitrate stock has a tendency to suddenly explode). The Curse of Quon Gwon was the first narrative feature made by a Chinese American and also one of the first films to be directed by a woman.
