EDSEL FORD FONG & SAM WO

Elizabethan England censored the Catholics and Catholicism out of the English in used at the time William Shakespeare, a Catholic in a Protestant world, wrote his poems and plays. The poetry and plays made money. The metaphors and similes so loved as devices invented by Shakespeare, were also invented to disguise the Catholic feeling being expressed in public. Literature as activism.

An injustice perceived by an individual created Shakespeare’s poetry. Writing is fighting. Writing is fighting has been an essential of Chinese writing since the Ming, and the emergence of Kwan Kung, the Exemplar of War, Plunder, and Writing.

The world was witness to the Chinese people’s response to government censorship of information and the knowledge that results, at Tienanmen in 1989.

The people of China have fought the censorship of the state since before the creation of the first empire.

The Chinese approved by state censorship has kept the writing of the people from Chinese readers in America.

The Chinese-Americans have been censored for 140 years. The Chinese-Americans have no complaints. Whites say Charlie Chan is Chinese and there is no Kwan Kung, and the Chinese-Americans say “yes,” to Charlie Chan and they’ve never heard of Kwan Kung in their 140 years in America.

EDSEL FORD FONG-CONFUCIUS- &

THE CAMERON HOUSE OF HORRORS

Responses from people who claim Chinatown as home. The question was “What is the name of the restaurant where Edsel Ford Fong (May 6, 1927 - April 1984) a Chinatown-born waiter worked?”.

Edsel Ford Fong and Sam Wo came to my mind because of George Woo and his appetite for Chinese food taken in old old restaurants on Washington Street. He took Tom Wolfe to dinner in an old old restaurant across the street from Sam Wo. Looking through Wolfe’s article I see he’s heard that George is the “reincarnation of Kwan Kung” but sees the manly walk of Chinatown boys as mimicry of the Blacks, as the Chinese never had their own style of manhood. In the same vein the Chronicle and Examiner insisted the two man dancing lion was a many footed “Dragon” Chinese new years after Chinese new Year and probably still get the Chinese wrong because the White papers are insistently White., and the Chinese-Americans lie good servants never correct the White press.

I didn’t know that Sam Wo was in its last days. It was built in 1907. The year after the Earthquake & Fire.

Sam Wo has no structure of its own. Its three stories are supported by the walls of buildings on either side. Sam Wo is a structural hyphen between China and America. The name of the “hyphen” Chinatown born Edsel Ford Wong. When Sam Wo goes, the “hypen” suspended between permanent walls goes.

Have we understood the “hyphen” or just removed it from our lives, and eventually our cultural identity (a more accurate term for “race.”)

Edsel named after the son of an auto manufacturer yielded a curious variety of reactions to the place, to the rep or act or performance, and the food. I got a lot more than the name. I have more than enough to Sherlock Holmes examine and sniff for every fact.

Edsel Ford Fong, the White God of Frisco love him, was the living unmentionable waiter jeered and smeared and generously tipped of by the same whites that enthroned Jade Snow Wong, FIFTH CHINESE DAUGHTER, and Cameron House in the reams of prose singing their praises for civilizing the Chinamen into Chinese Americans.

Edsel Ford Fong was the closest thing to an unspeakable Chinaman that made the White papers of San Francisco. He was Chinatown gas and a regular character of gassup in Herb Caen’s Baghdad by the Bay, and Jade Snow was society on the Society Page, and literature on the Books & Arts Page. She made the radio news when Arthur Godfrey, the father on his CBS family show joking with Haleoke, of Hawaii, Irish tenor, Dennis Day, the three singing McGuire Sisters and the Italian singer Julius LaRosa of his radio-tv family who became involved one of the 3 McGuire Sisters. The self-deprecating “Old Redhead” told a joke about having four redheaded daughters but “the fifth came out Chinese.” Everyone questioned in Chinatown about the ukelele playing Arthur Godfrey’s joke said they liked Arthur Godfrey and his joke was a funny and friendly.

The Chinatown responses to Edsel Ford Fong come from personal experience. Unquarded personal experience. Whites never ask a Chinaman about the food or service at Sam Wo, or Edsel who works there. If they do, no matter what the Chinatowner says, the Whites correct him with their knowledge. Whites know from talking to Whites or reading Herb Caen. Add to this all white brew the Chinatown personal experiences in the words of the speakers themselves and a more complete portrait a more accurate picture of Chinatown begins to blur into shape.

Let’s say the different Chinatown reactions to the question of Edsel Ford come up in a discussion between Confucius and his students.

The Beats –Kerouac, Ginsberg, looked on Chinatown the other side of Adler Alley from Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, looked on Chinatown as a foreign country and treated Edsel Ford Fong as a testy and comic servant. San Francisco White still regard Chinatown as a lower class of human than the Whites. The White papers make remark on the Beats frequenting Sam Wo and having fun with Edsel. This is the Chinatown reaction to Edel and Sam Wo.

Confucius dealt with people high or low, face to face, eye to eye He insisted his students be eye to eye honest. He gave contradictory advice to different students to achieve the same behavior. He didn’t seek uniformity, but “harmony.”

How to find harmony between the different reactions to Edsel Ford? That’s the problem for Confucius to solve. How does Confucius apply his five books summarizing the works of civilization?

Connie C. on EDSEL FORD FONG & SAM WO

Sam Wo, the jook place.

Scary restroom.

My friend was his nephew and lived with him briefly, said he often had hookers over.

Shirley Fong Torres bought Sam Wo shortly before she died. [Shirley Fong-Torres (November 16, 1946 –Fong-Torres died of leukemia on June 18, 2011. The Fong-Torres emigrated from the Phillipines to Oakland. Philippine discrimination against the Chinese forced the Catholic name of "Torres," on the family, for the privilege of limited citizenship on the island nation. Shirley Fong Torres had two older brothers: Ben Fong-Torres- editor of Gordon Lew’s EAST WEST JOURNAL and editor of the rock journal ROLLING STONE, then the Broadcast column in the Chronicle. He’s forgotten that once upon a time, he published CHINK! A book that did not do what the title promised. Her older brother Barry Fong Torres was Oakland cop who became head of a Frisco project to clean Chinatown of youth gangs just as the youth of Chinatown were increasingly from Hong Kong.]

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CUSTOMERS OF SAM WO,

FROM JULIE HO

To Our Loyal Customers & Fans:

After a century of operation, Sam Wo is forced to close. Our last day is Friday, April 20th 2012. As of yesterday, the SF Health Dept has deemed the restaurant unsafe and hazardous since the building is not up to code. And yesterday was when we negotiated to have the restaurant open to as late as Friday. We are not ready to close shop but have no choice.

Sam Wo has been opened since 1907, after the 1906 earthquake, when Chinatown was rebuilt. Since then, it has stood on the same location as a restaurant with the same name. Over the decades, the restaurant had been known for the infamous "rude" waiter, Edsel Ford Fung who harassed and ordered around the customers, and not to mention the groping and kissing of unexpected female customers (especially blondes). Later came Mr. Lee, Becky a.k.a. "Mama San" or "Mama", Becky's sister- Annie who were labeled "rude" but not to the same degree as Edsel. The remaining quasi-old-timer waitresses and waiter are Fanny, Julie, and Jason.

After Friday, all the things that scream "Sam Wo" would be just memories. Hopefully, this can be a place where we can keep some of those memories around. Generations of customers, their family, friends, co-workers, strangers, ex'es have gotten together in this cramped up space. Please share with us your memories, stories, photos, video...anything! Let us remember: the dumbwaiter, walking through the kitchen and up the narrow staircase to the dinning rooms, the BYOB, the wooden stools, the graffiti- filled bathroom- with the sink outside (which many of you seem to overlook), the marble tables, the low second floor ceiling, raw fish salad, chow mein, chow fun, "jook", NOODLE ROLLS (with or without the mustard), eavesdropping on the next table, canned sodas, the non-itemized bill, the screaming down the dumbwaiter, the screaming ladies from the kitchen, the cash only, the late-night reminiscing of the "good old days", things you don't wanna tell your children about Sam Wo and much much more...

This is a very emotional and shocking time for us and we will miss all of you dearly. Please come and share with us the remaining time of Sam Wo with us. Today, Fanny (11a-9p) and Julie (8p-3a) will be there. Our final day/night: Fanny (11a-9p), Julie (6p-3a), and Jason (9p-3a). There are no official plans; like always, we're just going to go with the flow. So just come out and have your final noodle rolls, jook, chow mein, chow fun, won tons, canned sodas and whatever with us.

Friends of the restaurant- we have been through all sorts of times with each other. May those memories live on and we not forget one another.

-Julie Ho
Owner of Sam Wo

RUSSELL LEONG

On Edsel Ford Fong, a waiter at Sam Wo

Edsel with the white cap,
a mile a minute,
just standing tied to the
dumbwaiter's rope.
A plate of sliced raw fish
on the table,
whiff of green onion slivers.
You dipped in soy sauce
or vinegar
depending on your taste.
The wood chairs and tables
Had been wiped down 10,000 times,
at least.
The dumbwaiter was a moving tray
that carried
thick flat restaurant plates of fried rice noodles,
or bowls of congee with ginger and meat
floating on the white pebbly surface of the broth.
Footsteps up and down the narrow
staircase, dumbwaiter's dance,
Edsel, intuitive, in two-step with
time, shouting until he was hoarse,
never out of breath until finally
he reached his last one:
the dumbwaiter didn't stop this time,
carrying his body still in apron and cap
past the second floor, up and
up shredding tar paper and tiles
and denting pipes, up and up to
absolute, greaseless blue sky,
leaving corpses of living customers
with empty bellies and loose change,
mouths agape—
Edsel Ford Fong moves,
is
moving,
gone.

Russel Leong /NYC

ANONYMOUS on THE OLD DAYS and EDSEL FORD FONG

Yes, I've eaten there a thousand times, and experienced his groping white girls, although not the white girls I'm with...He knew the gang I hung with. We would have thrown him off of the second floor balcony.

One of the guys that I hung with was murdered on Jackson street by unknown rivals that were preparing to challenge Hop Sing Tong, during the Wah Ching period. He was a member of Wah Ching. And later he robbed the Suey Sing Tong's gambling house in Sacramento. I went to Los Angeles Suey Sing Tong to tear down their flag! All this happened while I was in the Air Force. He knew the white girls that we were with, then were prostitutes. But he didn’t didn’t grope or joke with them when they were with us.

Edsel might have been be crazy but he was not suicidal !

Anonymous

CONNIE H,

I had no idea that Sam Wo was closing until I saw the article last night on the Chron Website edition. Have not been there in decades.

I grew up in Chinatown. I read about Edsel the waiter but never encountered him in the one or two visits to Sam Wo.

I always thought of Sam Wo (after it became famous due to Edsel Ford Fong), as a place for tourists to gawk at this Uncle Tom so they could have something memorable to talk about afterwards to the folks back home.. Patronising and demeaning. No Face.

Connie H

KGO-TV SAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Sam Wo restaurant in Chinatown has a rich history and a building that's in disrepair. The San Francisco institution is closing its doors.

Every day, in a cramped kitchen, the cooks at Sam Wo make fresh rice noodles, fry them up and then lower the dumbwaiter by hand to send them upstairs. It's been that way for almost a century.

Loyal customers have been eating there for decades. Very little has changed in that time.

Related Content

Story: Historic Chinese restaurant closing

"It's the same old marble tables and the old stools; nothing has changed since I was a kid," one customer said.

Not even the recipes. But the rice noodle rolls being made on Friday could be some of Sam Wo's last.

"We're shutting down the restaurant and it's just like the end of an era," Julie Ho, whose father owns the restaurant, said.

The health department is forcing them to close -- possibly forever.

"Both for public health concerns and issues, and also equally important, the worker safety issues that exist in the old structure here in Chinatown," health inspector Terrence Hong said.

The concerns about Sam Wo's structure are interesting; Chinatown historians say, by some definitions, Sam Wo isn't even a building.

"It's basically an alleyway," Chinatown Ghost Tours owner Cynthia Yee said. "This building has no walls and it's basically supported by the bldg to the right and to the left."

It's been that way for 100 years.

It was a beatnik hangout in the 50s and home to man known as the world's rudest waiter -- Edsel Ford Fong.

"He would get mad at the cook downstairs and shout down the dumbwaiter until you think he was going to have apoplexy," customer Palmer Kimball said.

Some say he still haunts the place.

"Edsel was such a playful ghost," Chinatown historian and tour guide Chuck Gee said. "He would slide the teacup across the table."

But ghosts are the least of the problems. Never mind the citations for rats and cockroaches, bringing the place up to current fire code would be nearly impossible.

Then again, for the food, some patrons don't seem to care.

"It's well worth it; it's well worth dying for," a customer said.

Friday, customer lined up around the block for a chance to eat what could possibly be their final meals at Sam Wo. But there is hope; on Tuesday, Sam Wo's owners will plead their case before the Department of Public Health for an extension on the deadline to fix the violations.

(Copyright ©2012 KGO-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Ben Tong, PhD: CONFUCIUS & EDSEL FORD FONG

As for "style of manhood," two things come to mind. One, Confucius was enraged one day that some guy holding court to a large crowd was teaching lies in broad daylight. Lies about what virtuous living was supposedly all about. The Sage went straight up to the man and struck him dead with one blow to the heart. "That man lied. You all come and do tea and talk with me sometime. I'll tell you something different." True story.

Second, turn on your computer and go Netflix , and John Woo's "The Battle of Red Cliff” from the Ming Dynasty novel of the fall of the Han, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”

I was in a 90-year-old Chinaman's house in the Richmond District (SF's 'New Chinatown')with other Yellows both young and old when Gwan Gung came on scene. The old dude leaped to his feet and nearly blew out his lungs shouting (in his Cantonese dialect), "That's it! That's the very exact the look of Gwan Gung! That was exactly the way he swung his Gwan Doh, the way he dispatched enemies so boldly and efficiently. I never thought I'd live long enough to actually see on a screen what was only described to me by gung fu people, old relatives, picture books and storytellers back in the village."

Benjamin R. Tong, PhD

From: KOON WOON: More on closing of Sam Wo

To whom it may be of interest:

Personally I have been to Sam Wo only once around 1971 or 1972. A fellow student at the University of Oregon, H.F.Lee (from Hong Kong) and I went to eat at Sam Wo after drinking at bars during our visit to SF. Edsel did wait on us and I had spilled a pot of tea due to my inebriation and clumsiness. Edsel without blinking and without hesitation threw a towel at our table. He did not offer to wipe it; I did. He was flirting with a white patroness. I knew he was Edsel from my friend Lee who told me so.

Later on that night, my friend H. F. Lee drove his Jaguar to Oakland where his brother lives. His brother was a graduate student in physics at the University of California at Berkeley. But before we could enter the house, I had to vomit and out came all the noodles I ate at Sam Wo. That was about it.

But I feel a kinship with Edsel and Sam Wo because my family operated a small restaurant in Washington State in the coastal town of Aberdeen. I been a waiter as well as cook, as well as chief bottle washer and manager. Restaurant work is hectic. Yet for many first generation immigrants, this is what they are consigned to and it is still the case for newly arrivals.

Therefore, I feel that this is part of our heritage in America that we should have some memory and mementos of.

We may be doing well now as a group, but we still are not given full credit for what we contribute to this country.

There is a little quote from Nietzsche that I like to quote lest we forget our heritage:
"'I couldn't have done that,' says my pride.
"'But I must have done that,' says my memory.
And so the argument is inexorable.
Finally, Memory yields."

-- Nietzsche

Here is my poem in memory of Edsel and Sam Wo
and a tribute to all who have worked in Chinese restaurants:

Chinese Waiters
Edsel of Sam Wo is forgivably curt
and flirts with single, white patronesses.
He smiles, dabbing sweat with a restaurant towel,
like Louie, Louie Armstrong.

And Sam of Tai Tung
smiles, smiles smiles of an imperial fool, but no fool is he
thinking of his kids in school and his wife in a garment shop.

I haven’t forgotten this when tourists ask
to see the Chinese menu. (The menus are the same, actually.)
I wear a waiter’s yellow jacket
that has been worn for three generations.
My smile is almost genuine –
You like our food, we like your money.
And with tips I buy a brand new Nietzche.
(I figure someday I’ll want to be a writer, not a waiter.)

On the stone of my great-grandfather,
The grass has grown (it’s hard to find).
And I see for a moment that Nietzche has written
the inscription: “History walks on the back
of those like so many stepping stones.”

Koon Woon
Seattle

F. Chin Shot Down (figuratively)

Friends, Chinamen, Bystanders

Three scripts, Three rejections, You heard from me first. How do I know? It just happened.

STORIES FOR SAM; THE HEROIC TRADITION; and a novel in progress.

Donaladina Cameron and her San Francisco Oakland clones and Charlie Chan have won the hearts of the San Francisco Yellows and White America.

No sympathy from my friends, please. I don't like sympathy. C can keep the great Lucien Barnes. The other C got her cappuccino.

Those that want a shot at me, now's a good time to take it while American opinion is on your side.

I'm going to Seattle.

Life is war. Kingdoms rise and fall. Nations come and go. Its a good day to die.

Let the goodimes roll.

I need a joint. Or three, maybe four....

Frank Chin

CHINESE CHLDREN’S LITERATURE vs A CENTURY OF SAN FRANCISCO TREATS

San Francisco led the nation in White racist stereotyping of the Chinese fresh off the boat, then got serious when missionary Donaldina Cameron hit town and invented the cruel woman-hating Chinaman and his victim woman stereotype whole cloth. Joseph Conrad loved only Poles and Englishmen and hated the Yellows and other non-Whites. California writer Pierton W. Dooner hated the Yellows with charm and delight in his fanciful Social Darwinist shrill THE LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. Donaldina Cameron imprisoned Chinese women in her Cameron House brainwashed them, converted them to Christianity and sent them back to China to discourage their countrymen from coming to America. Social Darwinists at Stanford said America was White Man’s Land. Her stereotype was a lie that was repeated and made “authentic” by brainwashed Cameron House daughter Jade Snow Wong and her ghostwriter for FIFTH CHINESE DAUGHTER. The invention of the Cameron House stereotype has since been repeated and advanced in books and plays by Maxine Hong Kingston, David Henry Hwang, Amy Tan, White Carolyn See and her half Chinese daughter Lisa See, and the films by Wayne Wang. The bars on the windows were there to keep the girls in, not to keep lusting Chinamen out. They have falsified Chinese culture and children’s literature to gibe with their picturesque lies about Chinese culture.

San Francisco and Sociology, the museums, the historical societies, the English departments, Asian American Studies, all say faking Chinese literary culture’s all right. Just don’t touch sacred White culture. I speak from Confucius’s lowest of the low: a Chinaman artist.

As the lowest of the lowly Chinaman artists I say, mucking with a Chinese children’s story is not all right. As the lowest of the low, I’m talking to you, Chinaman. It’s time you shucked this awkward “Chinese-American” crap you’ve been swallowing since 1889,and took back what you used to call yourself, “Chinamen,” Chinaman. Not “Chinese-American.”

The schools of San Francisco are teaching the fake Cameron House Jade Snow Wong Maxine Hong Kingston Amy Tan as the real of Chinese culture to your kids, Chinaman. All their Chinese characters Far Mulan, the Woman Warrior, the Kitchen God, Kwan Kung, the God of war are all written and have been read sung and told for centuries. The real is kept out of American air and print by Cameron House propaganda and Christian prejudice. Fake work breeds fake work. The star of your San Francisco Chinatown Film Festival was a Charlie Chan movie? The Chinese preacher read from his book, on the Gospel of Charlie Chan at City Lights Bookstore and said the Chinese have to accept Charlie Chan as the stereotype of ourselves, because we have no stereotype of our own. And he wasn’t run out town screaming like a girl? The fakes being taught in your school in your town are all White racist fakes. Why do you take it, Chinaman?

It’s time the Chinese of San Francisco woke up. China men don’t beat up their women for fun or ego. The women are not punishment freaks. You’ve been lied to long enough.

In the long gone uncertain days of Heaven, Man, and Earth and men were men like Kwan Kung, just a man. An observant man. A man who could respect a man like himself no matter where he was from. Kwan was a soldier. Kwan could respect a soldier he had crossed weapons against in combat. He learned the character of the men who clashed weapons against him. Learning that your opponent is skilled or inept is understandable. But the Chinese say a “Hero recognizes a hero” in passing. Kwan Kung the soldier is the lowest a man can go and still be a “hero” He didn’t read anybody a hero that I can recall, but everybody goodguy or badguy read Kwan Kung as an unquestionable hero. From Chinese history, to the opera, to the first novel in the world.

Confucius warned parents to not allow their children to grow up to be soldiers or actors, the lowest of the low. By actors Confucius meant artists, marketplace clowns and storytellers in common language, the artists of the opera. The most common of the common people. Confucius had democratic principles but he was a snob. The Chinese loved him anyway Confucius was dead for centuries before Kwan Kung entered Chinese life through popular history and the people’s opera fashioned his mercurial nature into accord with Confucian thought.

Cameron House swept the Chinese of Chinatown San Francisco clean of real Chinese literature and sold San Francisco the story of stalwart Christian White Racists who wiped out the cruel Chinamen beating up the few Chinese women in town, for Chinese fun.

The turn of the Century myth of Cameron House goes, Donaldina Cameron ran the slimy Chinaman rats back to China, swinging an axe over her head. But their rancid Chinese Godless misogynist culture is still here. Beware! Christian zealot Donaldina Cameron has brainwashed generations of San Francisco Chinatown youth since 1889. The Christian might of Cameron House, Chung Mei Home for Chinese Boys, Mills Girl’s College, the hotbed of Social Darwinists at Stanford can’t be wrong! Beware! Jade Snow Wong cries, BEWARE! Maxine Hong Kingston cries and cries “BEWARE! BEWARE! A CHINAMAN IS AFTER ME! SAVE ME WHITE MAN! SAAAAVE ME! I’ll give you the secret of the ‘Forbidden stitch’ (I made it up. Wasn’t I clever?) The opera secret of cutting the frenum (the membrane connecting the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth) of future stars, at birth, is a practice I made up to offend the Confucian abhorrence of the very thought of mutilating the hair or skin of a newborn. Oh, the White feminists just loved it! And the secret of the ‘Fifth Book of Peace’ is: there are no ‘Books of Peace’ in Chinese literature! I fibbed. The Fifth Book of Peace is really the first! Cute, huh? And you bought it, you darling believer, you. Believe what I say is Chinese about my writing and we’ll get along just fine, White Man.”

Six generations of Christian Brainwashing later, it’s no surprise nobody Yellow in Frisco ever heard of a Chinese hero. To say nothing of Chinese children’s literature. Frisco doesn’t think it strange that the Chinese of San Francisco don’t know the literature of the Chinese childhood. Chinese-Americans in Frisco won’t read, they refuse to admit the real Chinese children’s stories and literature into their schools of the San Francisco Unified School District. San Francisco is a fanatically Christian town. Missionary Cameron House has been the voice of the Christian truth of Chinatown San Francisco since the Gay 90’s.

Between then and now Chinatowns good Christians have has lost the stories of Leong Hung Yuk and Mook Guiying and Far Mulan, Kwan Kung, Kwan Tak Hing. Christians have wiped out the Chinatown storyteller as too Chinese. Only the low artists of the people and place are conversant with the stories that made the place. I am one or more of the artists with a small “a” of the people and 224 places with a Chinatown throughout the west served by the Wells Fargo Express Co

No one notices the Yellow experts and curators of Asian American literature exalt the fake FIVE CHINESE BROTHERS and ban the real old and still told Chinese stories. Our representatives published, public, notorious in White news are all proxies, stand-ins for the phantom White racists that drive their hateful decisions against Asian content in Asian American history.

Gary Locke a Chinese American son of immigrants is the new Ambassador to China. What if he invites the Chinese Ambassador to the United States of America and his family and the staffs and their families to his home in Seattle for an evening of Chinese storytelling in America. And the feature of the evening is Kingston’s version of THE BALLAD OF MULAN with Ngawk Fei’s tattoos on her back?

Of course, Kingston’s fake would never be mistaken for the real in Gary Locke’s home. One reason why the former Governor of Washington State was appointed the Secretary of Commerce was he knew the difference between the real and the fake in Chinese storytelling.

He’s from Seattle the town where operas of heroic tradition fell on Chinatown like rain when was a kid through his term as King County Executive when the artistic soul of Cantonese opera in Seattle Lau Yuet Mun passed. The last of the soul of the opera in Seattle recently passed. Yellow Intellectuals and Yellow Whitefeminists closed in preaching the fake Mulan of Maxine Hong Kingston. Bill Clinton gave her the Humanities Medal of 1998 for “revealing the truth about Chinese-America” when he was President of the United States. There are Chinese that love the Presidential approval of an American rewrite of a Chinese children’s story as “the truth.” There are others around the world that shudder with anger at the President’s correcting Chinese literature. Where will the U.S. strike next? Will the US rewrite Hansel and Gretel because the President hates Hitler? Ask your Yellow selves what Gary Locke has to ask before his American tellings of Chinese children’s stories.

Locke goes east as the first Chinese American US Ambassador to China in interesting times.

The Modelmaker

Download Frank Chin's new article here.

CHINESE TV KITCHEN OF FOOD PORN

I’ve just seen a Chinese cooking show on PBS, I’ll call COOKING SONG: COOKING WITH ANDRES SONG, owner THREE STARS OF CHINA in Boston to save myself a lawsuit. I was in the world of my cartooning when the sexual vibe alerted me and I heard her voice talk to Andres Song on my tv. She ran five or six “RICEFLOUR” restaurants around Boston as one of the owners of Conners and Yang the flagship restaurant in the heart of a Boston under reconstruction.

She discovered her feel for the art of baking at an early age and worked in kitchens around the world before returning to Boston. She went to Harvard to please her family and graduated with honors. Andres Song went to Yale at the same time. They trade Harvard-Yale rivalry secrets. She named her first restaurant Riceflour to honor her past as a baker. Then opened another Riceflour, then another. And so on.

“Where did you get the name Andres,” she asks.

Electricity excites off of Song as he tells a story of his father the Chinese cook who wanted to play soulful classical Spanish guitar like Andres Segovia. “He named me Andres after the great classical guitarist Andres Segovia and I naturally grew up with a taste and a talent for Chinese cooking.” You could feel his volts crashing through the feel of her skin and tickling here and itching there, gradually oozing warm sugar all over her body. They were east coast Chinese-Americans who were uncomfortable with “Chinese-American” and would both bridle and fight over “Chinaman.” Alone in the kitchen they call each other Chinese and leave the “American” unsaid. Whatever they like to be called the references to Chinaman universals shared with reluctant Chinese-Americans – “I was going to say your Chinese is better than mine,” what’shername says in response to Song’s, “Pardon the pronunciation, Harvard. Your Chinese is better than mine.” Out of the blue what’s her name Yang says “Chinese swearing.” Her head is down and I see her lower teeth are in front of her upper teeth in the closed position, what dentist’s call an underbite. Her demeanor is tall, graceful, dignified.

The electricity zapping silently begins to burst crackles and flash in the air.

And Song bursts out laughing. I’m laughing too. TV has reached the state of Chinese-American art. At last I feel a void being filled with goodies, at least momentarily filling a specific Chinese empty in my life with touch of bitterness, from the outside at last; I was shown a fact. I wasn’t alone in my awareness of Chinatowns literary past. That was funny and tickled the Chinese blood trickling inside me as I imagine an episode of Redd Foxx’s SANFORD & SON tickles the Black sense in the trickle of Black blood. The Chinese were swapping the humor from their Chinese childhoods. But they were so old childhood was a lifetime ago.

Andres Song says, and he says a lot that sets what’shername Yang the very pretty woman who owns a world of Chinese restaraunts around town giving come ahead you naughty boy stop and go speaking. Finds a groove and everything he says stops her stutter in her professional all business grape seed oil and two egg yolks beat into a mayonnaise. Farlic chives, chopped, Dijon mustard and any kind of chili powder. Andres Song says something unintelligible and she blushes in the stutter. She likes Szechwan chili, and that’s the dip. The only difference between COOKING SONG and childish lowclass burlesque is the two cook with real food on real stoves. Prop theater food or real food and real cooking, the verbal fencing was real and the only recognizable Chinese-American behavior I’ve ever seen on the movie or tv screen. It has to be a fluke. I haven’t seen anything like this episode of COOKING SONG: COOKING WITH ANDRES SONG in the movies , or tv even other tv episodes of COOKING SONG, anywhere, not even the IRON CHEF. Nowhere till now.

It has to be a freak. An accident. American tv was never this real to Yellows like me. Attempts at Asian American channels were all comic and entertainment and no news. The Yellows of America was nothing happening, nothing doing, nothing cooking, no news, no art, no sports This episode of COOKING SONG is real cooks with Chinese Americans, people I know as Chinamen, at ease, joking and teasing trades of vintage Chinese Americana in pure American-bred accents on tv. It is sweet. It was delightful. It was beautiful. This is a strange August.

Andres Song says it all, or puts it all on the line, when he says, “It isn’t often that two Chinese cook together.” Ah now the size of his eyes make sense. He doesn’t flutter his lashes but the stutter in the timing of her recital of the recipe says SEX echoing all over the screen. He doesn’t have to do a thing. Just listen. The air is electric. Any girl cook in the kitchen says sex! A Chinese girl in Song’s kitchen is SEX! I am learning that’s a characteristic of watching out of a Yellows black eyes like mine.

“Do you cook with MSG?” Song asks. The dimples in his cheeks show attractively. She flicks her fingers at his face. No. I can’t lie. I cannot tell a lie, as Rev. Weem’s George Washington said in his myth of George Washington to honor George Washington’s honesty. Kwan Kung in the novel ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS likewise cannot tell a lie but phrases it differently, in words designed to be taken personally, “You’d better not lie about me.” Song didn’t tease and she didn’t flick her fingers. I indulged my urge to fict everything up with a cartoon fiction to explore the nasty plot turns this story of an extraordinary Yellow boy meeting an extraordinary Yellow girl might take. All, of course, ridiculous and impossible from the start. The flagship is named Conners and Yang. It sounds like a marriage. Conners and Yang as a corporation own a Boston kingdom of restaurants named “Riceflour.” She’s an artist baker. Conners retired young from Wall Street is the husband and Yang is the artist chef who designs the menu and the casual atmosphere of RICEFLOUR and the wife. I expect them to fight off the universe side-by-side and back-to-back, and have children.

I categorically, absolutely, and truthfully say that my cartoon of COOKING WITH SONG is simply a cartoon. A crude parody. A harmless cartoooooon.

The Chinese-Americans who would have appreciated this moment most, didn’t notice, and my friend the tv, showed another show.

My cartoon IN THE KITCHEN OF CHUR FONG and his guest chef WARM ICE WHO MELTS LIKE ICE CREAM set in Boston is a cartoon. All names and places are fiction. Any resemblance to any person , plant or place living or dead is purely coincidental. All hanky panky is in my mind, in my dreams. Certainly not on my American friend the tv. The hanky panky I saw was a glitch, a fluke, a freak. And fine. Really fine.

I think of e-mailing Cookingsong No. I’m too old to make new friends and enemies.

Frank Chin

This week is Yuriko Hohri birthday. She is the unsung worker bee to William Hohri’s NCJAR lawsuit against the U.S.A. to redress the Constitutional wrongs committed against Japanese Americans by the WWII concentration camps

Frank Chin

BAD DAY AT BLACK BLOCK

I was surprised to receive an e-mail that criticized the cartoon strip I drew in tribute to William Hohri. He died. He was a great man.

His daring lawsuit against the US Gov’t twisted the conscience of the U.S. Courts up the ladder to the US Supreme Court. Once the highest court in the land heard Hohri’s suit, it would have no choice but to to order redress for the unconstitutional concentration camps that held Japanese Americans during WWII. The JACL had to make sure the suit never reached the ears of Supreme Court.

In 1942 the US government winked and took the word of the Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) -Shhh!. The JACL spokesman Mike Masaoka ( a Secret Agent of U.S. Intelligence ) said it was the will of the Japanese themselves to volunteer themselves into camp for their safety from White mobs. The JACL ruled Japanese America during the camp years with secret knowledge of White racism (everyone knew the JACL were dogs inu ,) and the internee (polite for prisoner) fear and delight over the JACL’s gift to the oppressive government– the voluntary delivery of the Nisei to White racist camps. The government wreaked patriotic White racist American vengeance on the Nisei for Pearl Harbor. The Nisei were Americans and hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor but the JACL Nisei took responsibility for the foreign act as the American way..

My strip was based on a color movie by John Sturges, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK with a bowtied and bespectacled Nisei William Hohri as black hatted Spencer Tracy, the one armed man that rides a raging diesel past Manzanar, in the American desert.

Tracy lost his arm in the war. Komoko lost his life but won a medal for saving his officer’s life. Tracy is taking Komoko’s medal home to his father in desert whistle stop called Black Rock. The locomotive growls the diesel high rpm heart that turns the watts out of coils that move the wheels of the metal mechanical wonder past Jerome and Rohwer in the Arkansas desert and straight into the desert west.

Heart Mountain, Wyoming, Minidoka, Idaho. Night and day the locomotive pulls the cars rolling and clicking past Amache, Arizona closer and closer to Black Rock.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK was about a desert town closed inward, on itself to keep secret Robert Ryan’s patriotic murder of a Japanese pariah and the confiscation of his land. Robert Ryan, slim snaky small-eyed owns most Black Rock and all the people of Black Rock wants the out of town land for himself. There’s water on Komoko’s land. Ryan wants it.

The presence of WWII and Japanese America dominates the atmosphere, the characters, the very dialog of BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK without one Japanese American appearing on the screen.

My BAD DAY AT BLACK BLOCK cartoon was all White people played by Japanese American actors from life and history.

This train runs straight past Heart Mountain, Wyoming and all the camps in all the emptiness of the American desert to the all Japanese American signal stop at Black Block on the edge of nowhere. The rage of the locomotive slows to hisses and spits of steam out of hot valves all over the hog. The metal slows to vibrating from the long run it has run, and can’t wait for Spencer Tracy to step off the rolling stock to the ground. William Hohri steps off instead, with Spencer Tracy’s black fedora on his head and Tracy’s one hand of his one arm lost in the war. The one hand holds a suitcase. Both of his feet hit the ground. Everything in moderation, even moderation.

The train rattles metal, wheels into a roll and lifts its shadow off Bill Hohri. The sun sucks the water out of bodies so fast, it hurts. Luckily, Bill Hohri thought to have water on the train.

Bill Hohri has come from WWII to Black Block with a Bronze Star for the soldier who saved his life in his pocket. The sun beats the land and raises wobbly heat mirages.

Black Block presents Bill Hohri with a dusty dirt street, wooden buildings with dried up wooden sidewalks along the sides. There’s the Japanese American Walter Brennan, the toothless telegraph operator, a good man gone bad and Japanese Dean Jagger the town-drunk as Sheriff, the Japanese American bad man who’ll get it right. Hohri is met with snarls and scared looks at the newspaper, at the gas pump wherever he goes looking for the dead soldier’s father and a glass of water. He walks toward the café.

Before he can take the step up to the sidewalk, out of the sun, he’s stopped by the JACL’s Mike Masaoka in the Robert Ryan role of the Fascist Boss of the town who wears a white hat. “I hear you’re looking for a Japanese named Komoko.”

“Yes. Do you know his whereabouts?”

“Komoko is not a name, not even a word in Japanese,” Town Boss, Moses Masaoka says.

“Did ya hear that? Komoko’s not even a word, in Japanese!” a fat and ugly eyebrowed Yellow Ernest Borgnine smiles his gap tooth, and stands behind the boss and bares his hairy navel.

“It’s his name,” Hohri says.

“My boys are official, meaning, ‘paid’, Confidential Informants to the FBI.” Boss Masaoka says. “All of them. You can take the word of anybody in town.”

Hohri attempts to step out of the sun into the shade under the second story gallery. But Japanese Lee Marvin, steps forward, spilling drool from his hanging lower lip. “I also goon for the Boss.”

“ We don’t have to speak Japanese here in Black Block Black Block speaks for all the Japanese. Everything we say has the truth of FBI behind it.”

“And the truth of G-2 Army Intelligence,” Yellow Ernest Borgnine says. “And the Office of Naval Intelligence.”

“That’s a lot of truth,” Moses Masaoka says.

“The County Sheriff vouches for them all by radio,” Japanese Lee Marvin rumbles rocks in his throat. “Direct to FBI headquarters.”

“Oh, by radio!” Hohri marvels. “To Headquarters.” How appropriate! Hohri thinks. The JACL Jr G-Men code named by the FBI T-1 through T-11 still pretends that the resistance to the JACL-backed camps never existed. All memory of the only journalist, Jimmie Omura , the salty soil scientist expert on the U.S. Constitution, Kiyoshi Okamoto and Judo superman Frank Emi is missing from the weekly paper.

“Never heard of’’em.” Moses Masaoka says. “Have either of you?”

Japanese Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin shake their heads, no.

“ There’s no evidence they ever existed,” Boss Masaoka says, “My slate is clean..”

“My plate is clean too, boss,” Japanese Ernest Borgnine says enthusiastically.

“I believe your Boss said ‘slate’ not ‘plate,’ ” Hohri says.

“You see,” Moses Masaoka says. “This is Black Block the 100% American camp run by my JACL boys. If they say slate is the same as plate, it’s the truth. That just the way it is in Black Block.”

“ The most American of All the camps,” Japanese Lee Marvin adds.

Hohri “I came to Black Block to give Mr. Komoko a medal that belong’s to son Pvt frst class Komoko.”

Yellow Earnest Borgnine says, “Why don’t you give it to Pvt Frst Class Komoko?” Japanese Lee Marvin toward Yellow Earnest Borgnine and whispers in his ear.

One armed Hohri continues, “His boy gave his life to save mine. His father lives here in Black Block.”

“The JACL signed up all the boys in town to go fight.”

“Komoko volunteered for the US Army, not the JACL.”

“You saying there’s a difference?” Japanese Ernest Borgnine thrusts his belly forward. Toward Hohri. Masaoka stops him by raising his hand. “U.S. Army not the JACL. Yes, now I remember. I’ve heard that before. There was a young man. I remember now. His father, Komoko was an internee at Black Block. Komoko was a Jap.”

“A Jap? His son volunteered for the Army! I have his son’s medal.”

“Yeah. His being a Jap, surprised me too! But only 100% Americans here. I’m sorry. I put him on the train to Tule Lake in California.”

“And you are?”

“Everybody in Black Block knows all-American, Mike (Call me “Moses”) Masaoka!”

“Why ‘Moses?’”

“Why Moses?” Masaoka laughs. Gap toothed Japanese Ernest Borgnine laughs menacingly. Japanese Lee Marvin laughs his voice clattering boulders down his throat..

“Yeah, Boss,’ Japanese Lee Marvin speaks up in a dry gutteral voice. “Why do we call you Moses?” “

“Have you read the Bible, stranger?” Masaoka says to Hohri.

Hohri nods.

“Look around you.,” Masaoka says. “As Moses led the Jews out of the cities into the desert, for forty years, so has my JACL led all my people out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle into desert camps!”

“Forty years, Boss?” Yellow Earnest Borgnine asks.

“Healthy desert camps! Desert health camps!”

“For forty years? A generation with no memory or experience of Pharoah. Know only what they have been told.”

“What’s that? You’re talking crazy, boy.” Yellow Lee Marvin says..

“And that makes you Moses?”

“We’re here for our health, right Boss?” Japanese Ernest Borgnine says.

“You’re damned right, it does. The Congressional Record of the United States agrees with me.”

Japanese Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin burst into applause that’s immediately swallowed by the bright dry heat. “Brilliant, Boss!”

“Very eloquent, Boss. Very eloquent.”

Hohri proves Mike M. Masaoka is a paid FBI Confidential Informant, names names and unites the sixty years of a variety of Japanese American writing by John Okada, a novelist, Lawson Inada, a poet, Michi Weglyn, a fashion maven, David Mura, a novelist with no direct experience of camp. His book seems to say there is no such thing as a Japanese American not affected by the camps. What the writers say about life in camp, seems from different times, different places, different languages until the differences developed into a community of causes for William Hohri’s lawsuit against the US Government for $224,000 American money to redress each of the 123, 313 American citizens unconstitutionally imprisoned in ten U.S. concentration camps that are still administered by the same U.S. Dept. of the Interior that built them as concentration camps. Would the Jews tolerate a concentration camp still administered by the Nazis that ran them in the 40s? So why are the same treacherous JACL and the Dept of the Interior still in charge of the Japanese Americans and the camps in the desert?

Hohri waits for the train at the small station with no shade.

“Hohri,” the Japanese Walter Brennan calls from the dirt street.

He hobbles closer and says, “I want to thank you for getting off that train. You faced down the sheriff, the bully, the telegraph operator, and then united us as good people against the evil ick Moses Masaoka.”.

“No thanks necessary. It was a pleasure.”

“The town would like that medal you brought for Komoko.”

“You’ll take care of it?”

“It will take care of us. What you have in that box is our conscience. You have vindicated what we knew was true, as George Washington vindicated the good words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by not accepting the throne as king of the United States. Instead of Kingship, George Washington accepted the office of President allowed by the U.S. Constitution.” That was a bit much for a week of cartoon strips to carry. But I drew and lettered it, and signed it with love and gave it away free, to the Los Angeles Rafu Shimpo, the only Japanese American newspaper left in the country.

Iron Chef and Japanese International Politics

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