When Ng Lei left a pregnant wife and two aging parents back in the Middle Kingdom for the Land of Gold Mountain, also known as America, he didn't expect to be greeted by an angry mob of pale demons ready to lynch the Chinamen stepping onto their shores.
"You've been banned! Go back!" he heard one waving a pickaxe around shout. Lei, who'd spent the better half of the journey hiding in the hull to avoid his faulty papers from being checked, could not understand English. But his gut told him to get out of there as fast as possible. So he slipped through the crowd and into the nearby slums, his head hidden beneath a blanket. Later he realized how lucky he was to escape; two of the Chinamen hiding with him in the hull had been lynched by the savage throng.
Even later than that, when he had learned some English, Lei found out about the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning laborers like him from coming to American shores in search of work. Too many Orientals would overrun the righteous, white population and colonize the young United States of America. He learned that immigrants were rarely welcome in new lands, that the gold rush had dried up decades before, and that he was an illegal immigrant in a harsh land far from home.
So Lei learned to adapt. This country would not change to accommodate him, so he would change to settle nicely into it. He cut off his long braid (a mark of shame the Manchus forced all Han men to wear back home) and stopped speaking Chinese, doing his best to hide his accent. He avoided other Chinese when he could help it, working extra hard to fit in with the "normal" Americans.
At first it was a step in the process, a way of coping until he figured out what to do. He would not go back to his parents in disgrace, not after years of nagging them them to let him leave the rice paddies he so loathed. But over time, he forgot to plan his next move. And so the lie, that he, not the country, was the problem, grew and grew until he changed so much that he almost forgot he was Chinese. He disregarded his Chinese wife at home, figuring she had moved on after no letters for three years, and married a poor, legal Irish widow Aileen, who brought with two daughters, Maire and Bridget; they moved from California to New York City, where the younger husband found work in the various factories. Lei couldn't find any other home besides a flat on the edge of the city's Chinatown, but he managed.
Aileen shared his same quiet disdain for anything un-American, but unfortunately for Lei, that scorn applied to him as well. In 1890 she bore him a son- Michael Dan Sullivan. Ng Lei, the Chinaman whose family name came before the individual, was no more, replaced by Gerald Sullivan.
Gerald sometimes pretended he was Irish. He knew they had their share of hardships coming to America, but their faces did not mark them different from the rest of the populace. Aileen's stories of her parents and her first husband's journey to the New World both excited his imaginings and caused him to sigh in envy, wondering why God did not make him Irish instead of Chinese. The Irish had assimilated; why couldn't he?
Shortly after Michael was born, Gerald's firstborn, a scared eight-year-old fresh off the boat, arrived. He clung to his Motherland, hoping to someday return to his grandparents. Gerald found it odd how this child loved the old country so much when he'd done everything leave it behind, but slowly the American-ness began to seep into the boy's bones. Slowly but surely. It gave Gerald hope; perhaps one day people would realize they'd changed from backwards farmers to deserving, model citizens worthy of respect.
000
Jack Kelly hated his father for the longest time. This man ruined his life. Sure, he had good intentions, but those silly dreams of living the good life in America landed him in an early grave and his family on the streets. Jack's horrid stepmother left him on the doorstep of a random house with a baby brother- her actual baby, not a stepson- to run off with her two daughters by her first husband. Piece by piece, like charred paper slowly disintegrating and blowing into a thousand particles, the life his father built disappeared. The home, the meat around his ribs, the energy to summon good memories, and finally the baby brother. All gone in less than six months.
Jack never asked for this change. He never wanted to leave his grandparents to fend off impending starvation alone, nor change his beautiful birth name Mau Jau-Lung (Horse Like/Tantamount to Dragon) to Francis Sullivan. He hated missing the Chinese New Year festival and the rice harvest, but children, both in America and China, obeyed their parents. So he was a good boy. But the filial piety they preached so heavily in his beloved Middle Kingdom destroyed him.
It was then Jack began to lose faith in his Chinese. Just like the rest of his old world, it crumpled into a burning ball and floated away on the wind, weak, smoldering, an unrecognizable remnant of what it had been in his young mind. He found himself stuck between two mindsets: one where he hated America, the other where he hated China. It was pretty clear which one his father sported, so Jack steered clear of that. But his view of China was tarnished in a single bitter thought dreamt up on a rainy night without food.
Jack often wished he could change who he was. Be more polite, more understanding, less rash, less stupid… But he wasn't Lei. He couldn't change for New York. So he needed a change of scene.
A change of scene. Far away, to the west, where the sun retreated. Where sunsets streaked across the sky. Where the land was open, the air clean, everything green and pretty. Santa Fe…
With his pal Crutchie, Jack had a whole fantasy schemed out, along with some actual planning. He'd earn enough money as a newsboy to buy a train ticket west. He'd herd cattle, build railroads like the earlier Chinese immigrants, and earn enough to buy a farm. He'd plant crops and breed more cattle. A trusty horse to aid him in his heroic feats must be included, of course. Not to mention someone to sell his artwork to. The artwork was what kept it going: murals of the desert sloping over America's sleeping form, kissing the sun just before night. This was a dream, an absolutely necessary change.
But she- they- changed it all. The boys, a little rubberneck who wouldn't stop pestering him. The strike, their parody of a revolution, must be seen through. The fight for changes in child labor, the way the whole stinking system was built.
Change. Such a funny word. Change rarely did him good in life. Change took him far from home, to a hostile land, where his father died and his brother had to be given up to an orphanage. Ten years later, he still struggled to buy food with meager pennies. Even Santa Fe lost her glow, thanks to the new kid, the boy with a crutch, and the rubberneck girl who incessantly tormented him. How could anything get better here?
But things began to turn up with her nagging. For one thing, the strike actually worked. Not just for the newsies, but for the entire city of orphans slaving in sweatshops and factories. They rose up, chanting and chanting, "CHANGE! CHANGE! CHANGE!"
No more poverty. No more kids breaking their backs (and sometimes their necks) to keep this wreck of a city afloat. For him personally, no more people on the street refusing him service or yelling at him to "go back to China." No more, no more.
Obviously it would take more than a new century and a strike to right the wrongs. He would not see the end of this in his lifetime, and his descendents probably would not either. It was a sad truth, but he could live with it.
New York was a nightmare. Santa Fe was a dream, a panacea for all that New York cost him. But reality called for something in between. Something he had to earn, to find for himself and the millions like him, for the generations to come. A grueling cycle, but one very much worth it.
000
Change. Once and for all.
They came to America, leaving behind China. One cast it aside completely, the other kept it alive in America within the confines of his heart. One gave up everything up for a dream. The other gave up his dream.
None of this is to say that Lei or Mau Jau-Lung did the right or wrong thing. It's just a testament to the profoundness of change.
For Task 4 of S3 Newsies Pape Selling Competition. Sorry, I had a lot of internal issues and had to take a break.