The struggle and triumph of Chinese-Americans are an integral part of US history

In the final chapter of "The Chinese in America," Iris Chang writes, "I can only close this book with a fervent hope: that readers will recognize the story of my people - the Chinese in the United States - not as a foreign story, but as a quintessentially American one." Indeed, covering the huge expanse of almost two centuries, Chang's story offers a thought-provoking overview of how the Chinese have been an integral part of American history - that in fact, the country as we know it could not possibly exist without the participation and contributions of Americans of Chinese descent.

"There is nothing inherently alien about the Chinese-American experience," writes Chang, best known for her 1997 international bestseller, "The Rape of Nanking." "Chinese shared the same problems as all other immigrants - universal problems that recognized no borders."

Chang carefully traces the evolution of this American people through an interwoven history of both China and the United States, including written memoirs and recorded oral histories, countless interviews, and pieces from her own family's narrative.

From building railroads to the earliest rockets, from agriculture to pioneering AIDS research, Chinese-Americans have been at the core of the American infrastructure. At the same time, to celebrate Chinese-American achievement is to recognize and understand institutionalized racism.

But throughout American history, Chinese immigrants, later joined by other immigrants of Asian descent, have maintained a legacy of political activism: They upturned laws that not only excluded new Asian immigrants but those that kept whole families apart for decades, laws that robbed Asian-Americans of their basic civil rights, including testifying against murderers and other criminals who happened to be white, and laws that banned Asian immigrants from being naturalized or owning property or marrying white people.

Asian-Americans have endured other struggles, including perpetual anti-Chinese violence, from early "yellow peril" purges to dehumanization in the media, symbolized by such insulting representations as Fu Manchu to Icebox.com's animated Mr. Wong. They have survived unfounded challenges to American patriotism, like Tsien Hsue-shen, who pioneered the US space program only to be deported on false charges.

In spite of such a legacy, Chinese and other Asian-Americans have achieved vast success in virtually every field. They have also gained considerable status economically. Even now, however, writes Chang, "Despite this long legacy of contribution, many Chinese-Americans continue to be regarded as foreigners.... Accents and cultural traditions may disappear, but skin tone and the shape of one's eyes do not. These features have eased the way for some to regard ethnic Chinese as exotic and different - certainly not 'real' Americans." That sense of being perceived as foreign is not limited to the ethnic Chinese, as most Asian-Americans, regardless of how many generations their families have been American, can remember being asked, "Where are you really from?"

Chang, herself the American-born daughter of immigrant parents, developed her interest in Chinese-American history during the mid-1990s after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Inspired by the Chinese-American leaders she met, she "feared the subject might be too broad, but I couldn't let go of the idea of exploring the history of my people."

While Chang's book might first appear basic in its history lessons, even the most knowledgeable Asian-American scholar will likely find little-known facts and challenging theories within. Chang tells how gold-rush miners - both Chinese and Caucasian - sent their laundry to Hong Kong for lack of local services, hence opening up a business opportunity for entrepreneurial Chinese to take over the "women's work" that Caucasians would not do.

She writes of "Gold Mountain families" - the families of immigrants left behind in China - who lived so well on wages sent back from the US that entire generations, especially in Toishan County, lost any working skills and lived a life of leisure devoted to pursing pleasure.

Chang also weaves little-known stories about Chinese-American communities in the deep South and their long history of intermarriage as they navigated the tensions of being neither black nor white.

A few tiny points might raise grumbles. For example, her use of the term hapa, which refers to someone half Asian and half of a different ethnicity, is problematic. Also, Chang writes that in the 1960s, Chinese-Americans in the South won "acceptance as honorary Caucasians," but two pages later she claims, "They could not earn full acceptance ... even as honorary Caucasians." But nit-picks aside, this is an exemplary achievement.

The book's publication follows the recent PBS-airing of "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience," a three-part Bill Moyers special that irked numerous Asian-American communities, not least due to its telling title. "When will we just be American? Why are we always becoming?" some Asian-Americans asked. Unlike Moyers's message, Chang's is clear: People that look like her (and me), with ancestors that originate from Asia, are indeed true Americans.

Hong is project director of the Korean-American Centennial Commemoration at the Asian Pacific American Program of the Smithsonian Institution.

Helping Us All Understand

Iris Chang's book tries to shed new light on Chinese-Americans

At an awards dinner just a few years ago, a United States Air Force captain of Chinese descent, clad in a blue uniform dressed up with medals and military insignia, received a surprising query from a fellow guest: "Are you in the Chinese Air Force?"

Capt. Ted Lieu wrote about the episode in 1999 - an op-ed piece author Iris Chang remembers well.

Chang, who wrote the best seller The Rape of Nanking, had just begun thinking of writing about the history of Chinese-Americans. And Lieu's anecdote made her realize her book idea was, unfortunately, a necessity even in the 20th century, more than 100 years after Chinese began settling in America.

"Many Chinese-Americans are still seen as perpetual foreigners," said Chang, 35, who is based in San Jose, Calif. "It's important for people to realize that they have made tremendous contributions as Americans to America."

And so Chang began a mission to educate America that has culminated in The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (Viking, $29.95). Tonight, Chang's book tour takes her to the Asia Society in Washington.

Chang's book arrives at a time when Chinese-Americans have popped up in the national consciousness, especially with the recent three-part documentary Bill Moyers did for PBS, Becoming American: The Chinese American Experience. Chang, however, is quick to point out one difference between her book and Moyers' series.

"When you watch the documentary, it starts off describing the Chinese as being persecuted and downtrodden," she says in New York over a Peking duck dinner on the eve of her book tour. "There's a sense of linear progression, ending with them being these model minorities and you have this uplifting ending. The argument I make in my book is that the Chinese have endured cycles of acceptance and abuse and sometimes things don't always get better. Sometimes they get worse.

"My book is largely a book about the American democratic experiment, how the Chinese often had to fight for civil liberties," she adds. "It's not a job that can be easily finished and done. Every generation has to champion democracy in their own way."

And to help young Chinese-Americans understand the battle that has to be fought, Chang set out to chart the storied history of their ancestors in this country.

Beginning with the first documented Chinese woman in America - who was brought to New York in 1834 to be exhibited in a museum diorama - Chang wends through the extensive history of Chinese here leading up to the present. Along the way, she provides detailed accounts of Chinese immigrants attracted to California by the promise of gold and the prevalence of Chinese-Irish intermarriages in the late 19th century.

The book also delves into recent events and includes stories of Mattel Inc.'s decision not to make an Asian-American doll for a 2000 collection of Barbie presidents that included white, black and Hispanic versions, and that of Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who was accused of leaking classified nuclear data to the Chinese.

Chang's narrative includes many heartbreaking stories. One chapter is devoted to the Chinese laborers who helped build the transcontinental railroad, drawing less pay than their Irish counterparts yet being forced to work the more dangerous jobs. Chang notes in her book that at the end of construction, after more than 1,000 Chinese workers died: "The Chinese workers were not only excluded from the ceremonies, but from the famous photograph of white American laborers celebrating as the last spike ... was driven into the ground."

"I had always felt there was a need for this kind of history, an honest history of the Chinese-American people, because all my life, I felt sickened by the prevalence of racial stereotypes in American popular culture," says Chang, who grew up in Urbana, Ill., where her parents were university professors.

"For example, as I was growing up, there were these Fu Man Chu, Charlie Chan, Suzie Wong images in the old films you would see on television," adds Chang, a former reporter for the Chicago Tribune who began writing books after graduating from the Johns Hopkins University writing seminars program. "In Saturday morning cartoons, you would see the buck-toothed, slant-eyed, pigtailed Chinese caricatures."

Many Chinese-Americans have embraced Chang's book with great hopes. Ling-Chi Wang, professor of Asian-American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, feels there is much that all Americans can learn.

"We're in our sixth or seventh generation now and yet when we walk down the Main Street of America, people still view us as if we just got off the boat," Wang says. "We would never look at a black man walking down Main Street as a foreigner. We are very much defined by our skin color, and even our allegiance is defined by our skin color. ... To really help America understand, we need a lot of TV shows and a lot of books like this."

Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang says Chang's work provides an important reminder for Asian-Americans today.

"One of the points that Iris makes in the book is that the history of Chinese-Americans continually swings between these extremes - periods of great acceptance and periods where the perpetual foreigner image leads to injustice," he said. "It seems to me that's an incredibly invaluable insight at a point when simultaneously, some Chinese-Americans and Asian-Americans might be feeling complacent about our status here, and we're just coming off Wen Ho Lee ... and various other things which have the potential to demonize us and portray us as not really American."

To emphasize the "American-ness" of the Chinese in this country, Chang's book points to contributions that Chinese-Americans have made. Florida horticulturist Lue Gim Gong, for example, harvested an award-winning orange in the late 19th century that could withstand frost and shipment over great distances. And Min-Chueh Chang, a scientist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, was a co-inventor of the birth-control pill.

"You can view this book as a history of the United States as seen through the perspective of the Chinese-American population," Chang says. "People have to realize that the same kinds of trends of the 19th century can still be repeated today, and we have to examine why that happens. It's not just true for the Chinese Americans - it's true for any ethnic group. After 9/11, I saw a sudden backlash against Middle Eastern Americans and immigrants, and ... it happened very quickly.

"I just feel that, as long as any racial group is being scapegoated," she adds finally, "none of us are safe."