Wang Ping, in this magnum opus, has combined the Chinese culture with the bitterness of immigrant life, which every Chinese confronts as he comes across to explore the culture of his homeland as well as the land of opportunities. Ping points toward the broad immigrant masses that have been most vigorous and dynamic and include a positive impact on educational institutions while continuing to survive in a harsh society. The stories interwoven by Ping involve the impact of the cultural movement that has spread from the Chinese cultural sphere and has ended up in modern American economy, politics, and throughout all spheres of immigrant society.
Ping has constructed the stories and has tried to escort the readers toward the cultural oriental problem as an intellectual that has built and defined the place of Chinese in American life. This way, she has discussed cultural reshaping, as well as the origins of giving Chinese American immigrants a common language to understand their origins themselves. Ping had highlighted the second-generation American-born Chinese intellectuals who, when they came into contact with New York-style sociology, emerged with a vision of hope and placed the perception of modernized social identity that though helped them to construct their future but lagged behind in giving them their true identities. Moreover, what Ping has tried to present is a true picture to argue that without recovering the ways in which Chinese American identities have been affected by old and what ‘modernize Chinese’ calls ‘backward’ theories, one cannot fully situate the tract on which Asian American consciousness arose.
The critical aspect suggests that if such an oriental problem is so harsh to the newcomers, there is no need to understand why Chinese immigrants get involved in the struggles of the Chinese Americans, who constantly suffer from defining themselves within the boundaries of uninviting America. Ping mentions this with the following statement “Where is it from? How does it grow? From seed, seedling, or root?” (Ping, 2007, p. 13). We can analyze some background of the passing of the oriental problem that emerged and occupied the position of an institutional framework in the 1950s. It also points towards the revision of immigration laws which in 1965 defined and de-constructed the coherent framework of the oriental problem. American sociologists at that time gave the name of the oriental problem to the experiences of the Chinese in being excluded from the American experience of successful assimilation.
Ping has demonstrated in her novel the position of a common marginal thinker who, after reaching the borders of America, gave him the authority to share his interest in this new economy as a man, woman, or child. However, Ping, unlike other authors, has not avoided explaining the possibility that the opposition between traditional and modern gender roles and that between Chinese and American culture has mapped onto each other. Instead, she has openly expressed America as a land devoid of modern women and has remained strongly connected to the developmental phase of her belief that Americanization is not only a process that has saved her personality, but it could also do the same for all Chinese immigrants in America.
Ping has tried to figure out through various stories the crux of the difficulty that Chinese American women had to undergo to break out of the traditional Chinese gender roles. In one way, Ping has rediscovered the significance of being an American as it is inextricably linked with her ambitions to be a modern, educated, professional woman. Her stories reflect that she has been proud of her Chinese heritage but has been modernized and selective in choosing only those traits that define her own ‘Chineseness.’
Ping has talked about the loss of China to communism and has indicated it as a blow to American confidence, which has resulted in American frustration and annoyance. For America losing China to communism distracted it from even Chinese immigrants, and with anger, America considered China the gateway to a sudden change. This changed the status from friend to foe and, with the passage of time, caused anger in many Americans. In order to prove their loyalty to America, Chinese immigrants have not stopped even giving up the practice of their dual citizenship. They have demonstrated and claimed both Chinese and American citizenship, which acts as an exclusive claim to American citizenship in favor of America over China.
Ping has actually addressed issues that are helpful in bridging the barrier between China and the U.S, and while doing so, she has illustrated how the immigrants’ lives are influenced by the hardships they confront while settling in the U.S. This does not mean that she has ignored what ancient China upholds for the younger generation. Instead, she has focussed more on the cultural roots than on the modernized culture; the contemporary generation has developed.
Work Cited
Chin Frank. Donald Duk. Coffee House Press. 1997.