Author Lisa See Talks China Dolls on Golden Mountain [Exclusive Interview]

By Spun Counterguy on July 21, 2014

Lisa See is the best selling Chinese-American writer of such popular books as Dreams of Joy, Shanghai Girls and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, the latter made into a 2011 film for Fox Searchlight. Using such literary vehicles as family epics and murder mysteries, See’s books are so painstakingly accurate in their depictions of Chinese and Chinese-American history, tradition and social attitudes, that at least in this author’s opinion they should be used as references set next to the better works of Chinese non-fiction.

The author took some time out of her current book tour to talk about not only her newest release, China Dolls– a tale of three Asian-American entertainers during the 1940s- but of some of the other historical events her past books touched upon and their subsequent characters lived through.

(Entertainers at the Forbidden City in San Fransisco)

Brophisticate: What was the impetus for the unique story and backdrop of China Dolls? We you able to meet with some of the real ‘ponies’ and other performers from that era?

Lisa See– I started with the idea that I wanted to write about three friends. That triangle is so complicated – for men and women! I recently learned that NASA even did a study on the subject and learned that they should always send two not three astronauts into space, because otherwise the two-against-one scenario always arises.

But I’d also been thinking about writing about the Chinese-American nightclub scene of the 1930s and 1940s for years. I have fans who have sent me photos of their mothers, aunts, fathers, and uncles who performed. There were so many great stories. I also felt that if I didn’t do this now, then I might not have a chance to interview some of the earliest performers. I interviewed Dorothy Toy and Mary Ong Tom when they were 93; I interviewed Mai Tai Sing and Trudi Long when they were 88. (Trudi passed away very recently.) I count myself very fortunate to have captured their stories and had a chance to experience their humor, courage, and persistence firsthand. Those four women were my greatest inspiration for China Dolls.

One of the things I find so charming about the book is the girl’s use of the vernacular of the times. Especially with Grace- the country girl from Ohio- her use of slang and idioms growing the longer she is immersed in the show business world. How did you nail the authentic jargon or is there a 1940’s ‘wise acre’ thesaurus out there?

There’s actually huge a three-volume dictionary on slang. I mean, gigantic! Altogether it’s probably twice the size of the OED. I can’t tell you how many hours—probably weeks, if I’m honest—I spent poring over those pages. Slang is so specific, right? And it’s changing and evolving all the time. You’d be surprised, though, how much of our slang—even today—comes from Shakespeare. Aside from the slang dictionary, I also used three other sources. The Internet, obviously. I watched a ton of movies from the years 1938 to 1948. That’s such a fabulous—and fun—way to get a feel for the language of the day, especially for the world of show business. And last but not least, my half-sister Clara helped me a lot. She had a great-aunt on her father’s side who used to recite all those aphorisms that the character of Ruby uses in her letters. Things like: “Yours ‘til Austria gets Hungary and fries Turkey in Greece,” or “Yours ‘til the toilet bowls.”

(Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing)

You incorporate real life personalities within the book (such an up-and-coming Ed Sullivan, radio/gossip columnist Walter Winchell and various movie stars during that time), interacting with your fictional characters. How much did these historical characters have a hand in the real-life Chinese and Japanese entertainers during those times.

I spent a lot of time at the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas in New York, looking at old scrapbooks and other ephemera that have been donated by performers. As much as possible I also tried to use verbatim quotes from the actual gossip columnists—Ed Sullivan, Walter Winchell, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Lee Mortimer. Their language! I could never make that up. Nor would I want to, necessarily. I felt much more comfortable using, for example, Ed Sullivan’s actual words about the China Doll floor show—“It’s a slant-sational show”—rather than make up language like that or even have it rattle around in my head at all. There’s a lot of racist, sexist, and discriminatory language in China Dolls I personally would never use but I needed to write it to be true to the era. It always felt better to me to have it come out of someone else’s real mouth or from sources like Time or Life magazines.

I’d also like to highlight Lee Mortimer, the night-crawler columnist for the New York Daily News. In real life, as in the novel, he had what we might call a penchant for Asian women. He married several of them. He was also instrumental in the China Doll nightclub’s success. (Much as Walter Winchell was associated with the Stork Club.) The chorus girls were actually called “Lee Mortimer’s China Dolls.” When I interviewed Trudi Long, an American-born citizen of the United States who was of Japanese descent and who I also mentioned earlier, she described writing to all the gossip columnists she could think of from the Japanese internment camp where she was being held. She hoped that one of them would sponsor her to leave the camp. It was a big ask! Lee Mortimer was the only one who wrote back, and he did sponsor her to come to New York, where he eventually got her a job at the China Doll, even though she’d never before had a dance lesson. As you know, that particular story had an influence on what happens to one of my fictional characters.

In ‘Shanghai Girls’, you go into great detail about the handful of Chinese that were given small roles in Hollywood films. Growing up in Los Angeles, did you get to know any of these actors and hear about their reflections on those years?

Oh yes! I knew many people who worked as extras in films. Sometimes they played Chinese. Sometimes they played other Asians. For example, many Chinese portrayed Japanese in films during World War II, since actual Japanese-American actors and extras were in internment camps. I also knew people — my own family members included — who rented props and costumes to movie (and later, television) productions. Beyond that, I was very lucky to interview two sisters — Mary and Dill Louie — who had once worked for my great-grandparents, became extras, and then started their own casting agency for Chinese- American actors. We all live in Los Angeles, and the movies are here, so I guess it makes sense that I would know a lot of people who worked in the business back in the day.

Some of the Asian-themed films typical of early Hollywood

In contemporary times, there’s a tendency to condemn not only Hollywood for the practice of taping Caucasians’ eyes back to look Asian but of the Asian actors themselves that went along to reinforcing ethnic stereotypes. Do you feel that’s fair and do you see anything that occurs today that future generations may say to themselves ‘What was the 21st Century thinking’?

Well, I don’t know what Asian actors were supposed to do back in the day. They wanted to act. They wanted to perform. And taking menial or stereotypical work in films — as dragon ladies, Fu Man Chu-type characters, maids, and laundrymen — was the only way they could do that. But I think the whole dialogue should shift. These were very brave people, pioneers who literally broke the mold. They worked against terrible odds and it was often very lonely for them, yet they showed tremendous resilience and persistence. And I’ll add this: There were probably more Asian-American actors working in the 30s and 40’s than there are today. You don’t see many American-born Asian actors on television or in films these days. They aren’t even part of the background as butlers, cooks, etc. So is disappearing completely from “Hollywood product” better than being on the fringes of it, playing roles that might be considered stereotypical? Of course, stereotypical today might mean a doctor or an Internet billionaire, but we certainly don’t see those.

What are some films from that time period that you can recommend that might be of interest, both in positive and negative lights to the Chinese in early Hollywood?

Anything with Anna May Wong is worth a look, and I think some of the World War II films where Chinese are playing Japanese (because Japanese actors were interred) are interesting just for the sad history of the time.

Anna May Wong

Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the publication of On Gold Mountain, the history of your family’s journey from China to America over a hundred years ago. How has that book changed your own history?

Yes, the 20th anniversary is next year. Three years ago, my cousin found some letters written to my great-grandmother, Ticie, from her family. We had always thought that the Pruett family had cut Ticie off entirely, and I wrote On Gold Mountain as though that had happened. After the book came out, I actually met Ticie’s family, who were mostly still living in Oregon, and it turned out they had been in contact with her. But still, those letters that my cousin found really changed everything I thought I knew. I called my editor and said that the 20th anniversary was coming and that maybe I could do an update at that time. She said she thought that was a good idea, but we didn’t have to worry about the update for a while. About six weeks later, she called me back. She decided we should do the update right away, which I did. So in the 17th-year, Vintage put out a new edition — with a new jacket and a new chapter at the end (with all the new things I had learned and how the book had changed my life). You’ll have to read it to find the answers! And guess what! After 17 years, On Gold Mountain went onto the NY Times bestseller list! How crazy is that?

Did it’s initial publication bring more people/facts out of the woodwork?

Yes, and in often touching ways. Here’s an example. When I was on my first book tour, I had a stop at a morning talk show in Portland. There was an older Chinese woman named Helen, sitting in the green room. Helen’s daughter was the host on the talk show and had brought the book home to read. Helen saw the jacket and recognized all the people–my family! Helen had grown up in Los Angeles Chinatown. She told me some very sweet stories about my great-grandparents. After that first meeting in the green room, Helen came to every book signing I did in Portland. One of the first e-mails I opened after just returning from China was from Helen’s daughter. Helen passed away very suddenly just this week. I feel very lucky that I got to know her and that she shared so many wonderful stories with me. It’s going to be very sad going to Portland for China Dolls and not see her.

Finally, can you tell us about some event or nuance from your childhood, which might typify your ‘normal’ of being of both Chinese and Anglo heritages?

This is a hard one, because, now that I think about it, the two parts of my background weren’t all that blended on a day-to-day basis. We celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas; we ate turkey and ham. To me, it was more about being with my grandparents as they went about their daily lives. I spent a lot of time in my family’s Chinese antiques store. For lunch, my grandfather would walk me up to what he called “the little place,” go back into the kitchen, and then pick up dumplings to take back to the rest of the family. There was always a lot of talk about China: the big trip my grandfather and his siblings had taken to China in 1919, buying and selling Chinese art, and always conversations about where to get the best char siu.

[I remember] my grandparents and my great aunts and uncles had very unique gardens filled with bamboo, cymbidiums, and bodhi trees. They were beautiful places to me, but they also had one other element. They were filled with junk picked up from the side of the road: used electrical conduit, old motors, empty soy sauce cans. Still, I thought that was normal, and I loved those gardens. Then I started school and would go to other people’s houses. They had lawns and roses. I realized that actually my family was kind of weird and the other people with their lawns and roses were normal. OK. Jump ahead many years. I’m on my first trip to Guangzhou on the train from Hong Kong. Looking out the window when we crossed the border, I saw the houses of the poorest of the poor built right up against the railroad tracks. They had bamboo and cymbidiums and a lot of junk. It hit me then that as far as we had traveled, as much education as we’d received, as much money as we’d earned, as much as some of us had changed physically (I don’t look very Chinese, after all, although most of my father’s side of the family is still full Chinese), and as much as we may or may not have lost the language, we were still at heart South China peasants who needed to be frugal and pick up things by the side of the road because you never know when a yard of electrical conduit might come in handy.