Why the Lonely Bones?

I am Chinese American. For as long as I can remember I have been Chinese American.

I was born in Hong Kong and came to the US as a child. And while a piece of yearns for Hong Kong — feels like my molecules are embedded in its dirt, its streets, its muggy, pungent air — I am an American. For better or worse, America is my home.

I can say “America is my home” is confidence. I can tell that to you, the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker (do they still have those?) and unless you, the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker are complete ass burners, nobody questions me. I say, “I’m an American!” which is how I begin most of my meat or bread transactions (I don’t have a candlestick maker…yet), and then the person I’m talking to says, “Yes. How much meat/bread are you in the market for?” And we carry on.

But there’s no question of my Americanness. Despite my Chinese face, I read to (mostly) everyone as American. Even in my beloved Hong Kong, I’m American before I even open my mouth and Apple Pie Accented Cantonese comes tumbling out.

In 2020, contrary to what some dorks say, skin color and birthplace are not indicative of citizenship in the US.

But this wasn’t always the case for people who looked like me. For Chinese people (and Japanese people, and Flipinx people, and South Asian people and…)

From 1882 to 1943 Chinese people could not be US citizens.

Encyclopedia Britannica (because I never really left my parents den from 1989) defines the Chinese Exclusion Act as:

formally Immigration Act of 1882, U.S. federal law that was the first and only major federal legislation to explicitly suspend immigration for a specific nationality. The basic exclusion law prohibited Chinese labourers — defined as “both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining” — from entering the country.

“Skilled and unskilled labourers” that’s basically everybody. If you want to read more about the Chinese Exclusion Era (and you should), I’ve written about it here and here.

Let’s be clear here: there was a time — not that long ago — that I would not have been allowed to be an American citizen. Not me, not my parents, not my Uncle Ken, not my Auntie Mabel, not my Uncle Houdini (who never immigrated but maybe he did?), NONE OF US. No naturalization, not for me, not for mom, and not for Mabel. And probably no entry. Because women.

Chinese men, single men (whether they had ever been married or not), vastly outnumbered Chinese men and that was on purpose. Women were assumed to be “undesirables” (sex workers, either former or future) and were barred because of the disgusting things they might do to the good ol’ US of A.

Plus, more insidiously, fewer Chinese women meant fewer Chinese people. With anti-miscegenation laws in effect, the US government figured that in a few generations if there were no Chinese women to BREED with there would be fewer Chinese people. And then there would be none.

But nature finds a way, like Jeff Goldblum said in the dinosaur movie.

And there were and there are Chinese people in America.

And you know what happens to Chinese people in America? They die.

Well, everyone in America (and elsewhere) dies. But so do Chinese Americans.

And that’s where my fascination lies. In all those years that Chinese people were coming to America against America’s better judgement to build their railroads and take their jobs and sell them sin, Chinese people were dying. What became of them?

There is a lot of ritual and belief and tradition tied up in dying while Chinese. And a lot of it has to do with where your bones end up.

The goal is always for your bones to return to your home soil, the place from whence you sprung. And a lot of Chinese bones got to make that final journey home. And some didn’t.

I wonder about those lonely bones.

Bones left in a strange land. Forever separated from the country of their soul. Their ghost forever searching for a familiar face.

Of course, there are a lot of opportunities for one’s bones to be lonely. There was often a lot of time that passed between being born in China (or Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau), time for you to live between worlds. Time to be neither Chinese or American. Time when belonging anywhere felt like a fantasy.

Where did a Chinese person’s bones belong after being in the US for 10, 20, 50 years? Was it Chinese ritual that put those bones to rest, or American rituals?

Or a combination of both?

I am not an expert. There’s no realm here in which I claim to be an expert. Not Chinese history, not American history, not death history, not immigration history. Basically none of the histories.

But I’m curious and I feel a need to know more. More about what became of the bones of my people. The people whose skill helped build America, whose flesh fed its soil, and whose bones cry out in the hum of the ages.

Crying for home. Wherever that may be.

And I’m listening.

I’ll tell you what I hear.