00:00:04.740 - 00:00:19.410

Morton Marcus: Today we're going to do something slightly different. We will travel from the land of the poem across the border into the country of history. I think we'll see that the inhabitants of both places are very similar. Language is

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important to both of them, so important that style is a common word in the historian's vocabulary as well as the poets. And I maintain so is vision, the historian, as the title implies, is a storyteller, whose unique view of facts, and the way he

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gathers those facts, causes him to reconstruct the past as he sees it. And it is my great pleasure today to welcome Sandy Lydon who has just written a book called, "Chinese Gold," and gives me the excuse to welcome him here. Welcome, Sandy.

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Sandy Lydon: Hello, Morton. Morton Marcus: I'm going to do something different with Sandy today. I'm not just going to interview him about the usual questions of how he came to write this history but I'm going

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to have him read from his book, "Chinese Gold," a beautiful volume just jam-packed with beautiful old photographs of Santa Cruz County. And I'm also doing this on the occasion of a celebration, which is coming up on Friday, I do believe. Why

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don't you tell us about it, Sandy? Sandy Lydon: Yes, on Friday, at eight o'clock, the Capitola Book Cafe will have a book signing, and this will be our first public debut as it were with the book. And then on Saturday, at

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four o'clock in the afternoon, at the Tea Cup Restaurant on the Pacific Garden Mall, upstairs off the street, the Octagon Museum is having a book signing at four o'clock. So there's two signings coming up: one at eight on Friday night at Capitola

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Bookcafe and one on Saturday afternoon at four at the Teacup Restaurant. Morton Marcus: Well, very apt places, both of them actually, but it's very nice to see the Teacup also being used by the

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Octagon Museum. Sandy Lydon: I thought that was nice too. Morton Marcus: Sandy, I guess we have to- well, let me introduce you, first of all. Sandy is, of course, a historian, and many

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people here know about it. I know him as a colleague but more than that, I know him as a dynamic teacher. I've actually taken two of his classes, and his energy, his humor, but more than that, his real profundity and the way he cuts to the heart

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of certain questions have made me want to get him on the show for a long while, actually, ever since I started it. But Sandy, how come the Chinese history in the Bay Area, in this bay area? Sandy Lydon: You mean?

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Morton Marcus: How come you got interested in it? Sandy Lydon: Why did I do that? Well, it's really interesting. I was trained as a Chinese Japanese historian, and when I was being trained, and was doing my work at the University of

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Hawaii and East-West Center and ots of other places, it was not ossible to go to China. If you emember, during the early, middle, and late 60s, it didn' even seem that it would ever b In many ways, this is- when you came to Cabrillo College, it was

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possible to go to China. An it's seemed to me that with som of the training I had in Chines culture and Chinese history, that the next best thing -- wh ch in fact has turned out to b the best thing for me, I t ink -- was to deal with the

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overseas Chinese that the, in many ways, traditional Chines culture, if there was such thing since 1949, has really o ly been preserved intact if it h s been preserved outside China b cause of the incredible c anges that have been brought b

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the revolution. So that in m ny ways, the overseas Ch nese sort of kept the flame al ve, I think, in a lot of the t aditional Chinese cultural p actices. And that was true, w ether it was in Southeast Asia o in South America or North A

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erica. And so I did some work o the Chinese in Hawaii while I as with East-West Center. nd then when I came to Santa Cr z County in 1968, to Cabrillo I just brought that inter st with me and began to do some ork on that, and went to a very

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very important convention in 1 69, held by the Chinese Hist rical Society of America, whic is headquartered in San Fran isco. And that convention, that conference that they held, insp red me to start really work ng avidly on this part

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cular subject, and it's been- it s taken fifteen, sixteen yea s to get this thing all put ogether. That's from whence t cam really a return because you are yourself from Hollister.

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Yeah. Morton Marcus: And this area -- it has always impressed me if I can become metaphorical with you -- that in seeking the past and reconstructing the past of this area, you're really seeking your

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own past and you're building a whole sense of where you're coming from historically, all your ghosts, all your forebear. Sandy Lydon: Of course, in fact, what's- it's very interesting that I'm moving east from here in a lot of ways, east in a

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geographical sense. The focus of a lot of myself has been on Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County and then I moved down in Monterey County, done a lot of work down in Monterey, but I' finding myself, slowly bu surely, as you well know, I'v

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done some work on San Jua Bautista. And I'm slowly moving finally, back; I did a recen little history for th Japanese-American Citizen League in San Juan on the history of the Japanese in San Benito County. Well, that's my

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first real final landing back to Hollister. When you grow up in a place, you're not really convinced that- that it probably has any history anyway, you d n't pay much attention to it hen you're, you know, you' e a teenager cruising up and

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own the street, that doesn't eem that important. But yeah, I ave very strong feeling for his area. And I'm finding that ost of the time it stands me in ood stead, sometimes it gets in the way that you have preconcept ons that are probably incorrect

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rom myths and folklore and s uff that you've heard over the years, but there's always a ice sense of geography and smell and all the things that you it takes the time to develop and I'm very, I think I'm ery fortunate to be able to wor

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in this area, where I do ha e a sense of smell if anything e Morton Marcus: Well, you also give it to other people, and as I said, I have taken Sandy's classes. And Sandy, what classes do you have coming up? I mean, I think it is very important for

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people to know the history of the land on which they are living, to know the social pressures and traditions that have formed as it has become today. What are you doing this Sandy Lydon: This fall, I've got I think four classes that I'm

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fall? oing. I'm not doing the history f Santa Cruz County this time, or the first time in ten years. 'm learning that sometimes you ave to let a field go fallow or a while, you have to let it

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est. And I think I was working oo hard, and so I'm going to let that one rest. But I'm doing, let's see, on Monday afternoon, starting in September, a rather interesting kind of a class on the history of the Asians in Santa Cruz County and

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particularly Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz mid-county, focused on Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, bring it right up to the present, dealing with Korean. It will be designed as a kind of a seminar, lecture-format combination. And

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it'll be taught at Soquel High School, although it's a Cabrillo College class, on Monday afternoons. I'm doing Chinese history on Tuesday nights, which I have not had a chance to do Which is, by the way, a rugged hiking class.

00:07:35.870 - 00:07:48.470

for a couple years. And I'm doing the history of the Chinese in the Monterey Bay region, which is the focus for the book on weekends, weekend classes two weekends in October. And think I'm doing, yeah, I'm doin the Forest of Nisene Marks

00:07:48.470 - 00:08:03.380

which is what I always do as my Yeah, right. It's should be crosslisted in PE for those people who have taken it. In fact, I had several PE teachers who took it last semester, who wanted me to give them credit in

00:08:03.380 - 00:08:13.690

PE, which I couldn't quite figure out. But that's, yeah, they saw the obvious PE crossover when they came down from the hill sweating. Morton Marcus: Let me urge the reader to remember these classes

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and to very, very possibly take them because it will really enrich his sense of where he lives and the experience of having Sandy as a teacher, his humor, and his energy that just has students coming back again and again for one course after

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another, even if they're not interested in what the course is all about. Now, with that out of the way, because I wanted to get that plug in, Sandy, I would love you to read and give us obviously several readings from the book. And what I'm going to

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ask Sandy to read at his own time are character sketches that he gets from actually talking to people who've lived here, or from old documents, descriptions of what Santa Cruz looked like, and any of those profound insights and very, very

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interesting ideas that he has formulated about the county and about the whole bay. Sandy Lydon: Well, one thing I'd like to do is, recently the fire, the Lexington Fire that was called- has brought a lot of

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attention to the mountains. And if those of you that are listening, remember there's been a lot of discussion about a road called Morrow Road and a road called Wrights Station Road. Well, in the late 1870s, a railroad was built between,

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actually, all the way now up to Alameda and Santa Cruz called South Pacific Coast Railroad. And the workers on that railroad were all Chinese, as they were throughout the state. And the place called Wrights, which was just on the Santa Clara County

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side of the summit, is the mouth of a tunnel and the mouth is still there. In fact, when they relaxed the regulations against going up in that county, I want to go back and see what the fire has done to that particular spot because it's a very important

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place for me and it's an important place for the Chinese in the state. Well, at this place called Wrights, they were building a tunnel through the ridge that was going to be over six thousand feet long. And they were drilling both ends to the

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middle as tunnels were constructed in those days and the Chinese were working twenty-four hours a day in two twelve-hour shifts working on the face of this tunnel. And what I'd like to share with you is the scene of a very

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horrendous explosion that in some ways I think is almost a harbinger of things to come, the place has been somewhat cursed, obviously the fire recently gives one that feeling. So let me do that section just a little bit of that on the tunnel.

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The Wrights Tunnel site may have been lovely, but the experiences the Chinese had in the Wrights Tunnel were not. By mid 1878, as Chinese crews worked at both ends of the tunnel, a pocket of coal gas was struck at the north end of the tunnel. Oil seeped

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from the walls of the tunnel, collecting in pools on the tunnel floor while gas mixed with the air in the tunnel, creating an extremely volatile and dangerous situation. The oil was scooped up and removed in tins while the gas was burned

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off or "flashed" every ten minutes so that the Chinese could work at the tunnel face. When the crew changed at the end of the shift, the supervisor of the next crew had to crawl into the tunnel pushing ahead of him a lighted rag on a pole, which

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burned off the accumulated gas. The Chinese crews and their white superintendents grew increasingly apprehensive about the danger in the tunnel. But by February of 1879, they had drilled almost one half mile into the mountain from the north

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end. On February 13th, 1879, during a routine burning of the coal gas, some oil caught fire, and a sheet of flame roared to the tunnel. The Chinese fell to the floor of the tunnel to avoid the fire, but the intensity of the heat burned everyone in the

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tunnel. It acted like a huge cannon, and railroad cars and equipment standing outside the tunnel were blown about like toys by the force of the explosion. Those who heard the explosion believed that the entire powder magazine for the

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railroad had exploded. Amazingly, none of those in the tunnel were killed in the initial blast, but many were thrown violently against the tunnel walls and badly burned. A dozen blackened and moaning Chinese were brought out of the

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tunnel. [Commentary] Once the explosion was over, the railroad attempted to improve the safety situation there, but we're not successful, and I'll continue:

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Gas and oil continued to seep into the tunnel and the Chinese workers were not enthusiastic about working there. In June, Foreman Nick Borossey, frustrated by a Chinese who seemed to be shirking his work, told the laborer to leave the

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tunnel and when Borossey tried to forcibly eject the man, the crew charged the foreman and amid "a shower of picks and drills," Borossey ran back towards the mouth of the tunnel. As he did so he turned and fired several shots at the crew,

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killing one of the Chinese. Several days later, all work stopped when gas and oil in the tunnel ignited and burned steadily for two weeks. The suspicion grew that the Wrights Tunnel was cursed.

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are burning, the perfume from which serves somewhat to temper the sickening odor of roasted flesh. Eventually thirty-two Chinese were buried outside the mouth of that tunnel and their graves are still there to this day.

00:14:25.110 - 00:14:45.900

Morton Marcus: Well, that is just one of the incidents, shocking, horrifying, that occur in this book. And certain incidents make for the narrative reading of this volume really fascinating. As you got the information, as you gathered it,

00:14:46.230 - 00:14:59.220

what ideas, in other words, you got facts, you put them all together, and what- did you begin to realize a pattern of either behavior or concepts? Sandy Lydon: Well, there's a couple of- a couple of basic

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stereotypes that historians have carried around with them for a long time about the Chinese in California and the rest of United States. One of them is that, and it still pervades, I think, is that the Chinese were basically passive people who

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came here, worked hard, when anyone said boo they ran away, and there's a sort of a Bret Hart kind of concept of the fleeing Chinese with his cue flying up behind him as he raced away in front of Chinese mobs- excuse me, of racist mobs of one

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kind or another. Well, what's interesting is that it's not true. As we begin to go back into the specific accounts, the Chinese were very, very capable and able and ready to resist, if they felt that they were being pushed too far. One example is

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the one I just read, where Nick Borossey, who worked for the railroad, began to what they thought harass them, well, they just turned around and threw stuff at him and literally ran him out of the tunnel. And of course, he fired in what he

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later claimed to be self defense. There are many, many incidents of that; they hired attorneys when they felt that their rights were being abused. Chinese fishermen over at Monterey felt that they were being hassled by some Portuguese

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whalers, they went out and hired attorneys, went into court, and used whatever means they had at their hand to resist what they felt was unfair treatment. So it seems to me that the first stereotype that began to wash away as I worked on this was

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that notion that the Chinese were passive and basically weren't too interested in fighting for their rights. It's just not true. There's a guy over in Monterey, a wonderful man named Tim Wong, who I spent a lot of time in the book with,

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who was born in Monterey, which made him an American citizen, was born in the- actually born in, I believe, born in Sacramento, in the 1850s. But he was in Monterey in the 1870s and he would have been in his twenties, an American citizen,

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we believe he's the first Chinese-American to vote in California. And he always resisted any efforts on the part of the majority group to push his community around. So that's the first thing, and it seems to be the other one is that

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basically, the Chinese came with no intention of staying, and I'm wrestling real hard with that and I've spent a lot of time in the book, we call it the "sojourner idea," the idea that the Chinese came and didn't intend to stay, and were here

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temporarily and were eventually going to go back to China. Because we have a large number of families in Monterey, for example, a large number of families in the fishing village of Monterey and lots of women, and many of them came in the

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1850s directly from China by junk, which sort of precludes the idea that they were transients, they came with bag and baggage in hand, chickens, and pigs, and kids. So that my sense of it is that a lot of what happened, at least in the

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view of the Chinese themselves, I think, was that after 1882, when the racist legislation really got strong, they began to alter their own view about staying for good reason. Things weren't going well, that the anti-Chinese legislation was

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voluminous, and so they began to save face, I believe, partly by taking the idea that well, they didn't really intend to stay anyway. And it blocked their ability as a community to make a good foothold and to get a good launching pad for that second

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generation. Most other immigrant groups have, although a lot of them went home, a lot of immigrants went home. I think maybe that's one of the most important things to remember is half of all the immigrants the United States eventually

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returned, whether they're from Europe or wherever they were from, and for the Chinese, it was a lot more than that. But I think a lot of it had to do with that they just met resistance which other groups just didn't see.

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Morton Marcus: There was even many more restrictions placed on them. Sandy Lydon: Yes. Morton Marcus: And they were much more visible than

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Caucasians were because they had yellow skin and epicanthal folds. Sandy Lydon: Yeah, you can get one generation into an Irish family and the brogue will be gone and a lot of the customs

00:19:11.190 - 00:19:19.670

are gone. And if you dress the way everyone else dresses, you can't tell an Irishman from a German second generation, but it wasn't true with the Chinese. Morton Marcus: You take a Jew and you change his name, and you

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let him be over here for another generation, get rid of the accent, same thing. Sandy Lydon: Exactly, exactly, but of course the Chinese had not only- and there was a cultural thing they held, as

00:19:29.960 - 00:19:40.700

they the resistance got stronger, they held on to their culture harder. And then of course, you know, the majority group would say, well, so you don't really plan to become American, you're still speaking Chinese and you're all sticking

00:19:40.700 - 00:19:51.560

together. Well, they were sticking together because they were being pressured intensely and they had to gather together for safety more than anything else. Morton Marcus: I've always thought that history is really-

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and the keeping of traditions, it's always pressure from the outside as the cause of such things. And I felt that the Jews, though I have no historical proof of this, notice I'm on my guard as I say it, that they would have assimilated

00:20:05.630 - 00:20:20.240

in a lot more places if they had been allowed to. And I say this with a good reason, they were allowed in one place and that was in China, where twenty thousand Jews came in, and were welcomed, and the Chinese listened to their ideas and

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said, "Well, we don't agree with them but you can stay here as long as you want." And by 1938, there were eighteen Jews left in China officially, and they were all Chinese. Sandy Lydon: Now, do you know- I hope you know, that in

00:20:31.580 - 00:20:41.690

September, in San Francisco, there's going to be a remarkable, remarkable exhibit on the Jews of Kaifeng, which is exactly what you're describing. Morton Marcus: I'll be darned.

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Sandy Lydon: It's being sponsored, I believe it's in a Jewish center somewhere in the southern part of San Francisco, I don't have it off the top my head, but people should be alert to that because it's one of those remarkable cultural things

00:20:52.760 - 00:21:06.140

where people had dietary practices which they had kept for centuries, and had, by the time we get into the 20th century, had no knowledge of why anymore, and were all of a sudden rediscovered. It's sort of like little time capsules,

00:21:06.140 - 00:21:17.220

it's a wonderful story. Anyway, it's going to be a wonderful exhibit, the Jews of Kaifeng, watch for it. Morton Marcus: Great. Well, see, all this information coming up. We are talking with Sandy Lydon and we are doing it on the

00:21:17.220 - 00:21:34.980

occasion of his new wonderful volume called, "Chinese Gold," the Chinese in the Monterey Bay region. And again, we are doing it because this book will be celebrated in two signings, and one will be at the Capitola Bookcafe Cafe at 8pm this Friday

00:21:34.980 - 00:21:49.950

night, that's on 41st Avenue, and the second will be at the Teacup Restaurant in the city of Santa Cruz put on by the Octagon Museum, and I believe you said it starts at four o'clock on Saturday. Okay, this is the Poetry Show and we are taking a

00:21:49.950 - 00:23:33.490

slight detour in- from the realm of poetry today. This is Mort Marcus and we will be back in a moment. This is Mort Marcus and the Poetry Show, and today we're talking with Sandy Lydon who is the author, as we said, of the

00:23:33.490 - 00:24:01.270

new book, "Chinese Gold." But before we get back to our discussions with Sandy, some announcements. On July 17th in the Wednesday night, Sweet William readings, Anya will play the piano and will read original poems. Bert Glick who has

00:24:01.270 - 00:24:19.930

written, "Cookie Aura," will read from his poems, and Sharon Gladden will read from, "The Moon Juice Collective," and that of course is tonight, 7:30 to 10pm at Sweet Williams at 538 Seabright. And what would a Poetry Show be without talking

00:24:19.930 - 00:24:35.800

about the greatest bard of them all, and that is Shakespeare. And Shakespeare Santa Cruz begins this weekend, and the outdoor production is here, directed by the wonderful Marcia Taylor is, "As You Like It," and that previews this Friday, the

00:24:35.800 - 00:24:57.130

19th, and then opens on Saturday the 20th. For further information for the Shakespeare Santa Cruz events, call 429-2121. And now we will continue our discussion of, "Chinese Gold,"

00:24:57.130 - 00:25:10.960

and our talk with Sandy Lydon, the eminent historian. And I have mentioned this beautiful book and I mean, I like books that feel good in the hand. And this does and it opens up and it lies flat and it's got wonderful photographs in it. It is

00:25:11.710 - 00:25:25.960

obviously a production of love. And Sandy, how did the production of this book come about? Sandy Lydon: Well, I would like to think that I think some of those Chinese pioneers are pushing me around from door to

00:25:25.960 - 00:25:42.370

door and keeping me going. And when I was doing some interviewing a couple years ago of some of the descendants of some of the early Chinese pioneers in Santa Cruz, I happened to interview one day George Ow Senior. George' Ow

00:25:42.370 - 00:25:56.770

Senior developed the King's Plaza, a shopping center on 41st Avenue, as well as the shopping center up at the King's Village up in Scotts Valley. And in the process of interviewing him, the go-between for that was this young man named George Ow Junior

00:25:56.770 - 00:26:13.030

who I had not had much contact with. And so while I was interviewing George Junior's father, George was intently watching and listening to the interview. And when he got up, we spent several hours talking to his dad about all kinds of

00:26:13.030 - 00:26:27.160

things and when we got finished, on the way out, George said, "How do you plan to have this published?" And I had already talked to several publishers about it but signed no contracts. And he said, "Why don't we do it?" And I said,

00:26:27.550 - 00:26:48.220

"What do you mean, we?" He said, "Well, why don't you and I publish this?" And he said, "I have the resources-" [cut-off] -became the midwife in a lot of ways of the book. He urged me on to finish it. We hired a freelance editor named Cate

00:26:48.220 - 00:27:04.930

Brady in San Francisco who was absolutely superb. And we then hired the designer, who was Mark Ong, who was a Chinese-American young man who lives in Berkeley, who designed the book. And it was really a labor of love for everybody involved in it.

00:27:05.260 - 00:27:22.210

Everybody got such wonderful feelings from George Ow Jr. about the ability to- basically, he'd said, do your best work, do what you like to do, do what you think would look good. And Mark Ong just literally took off and ran with it as you see. I mean,

00:27:22.210 - 00:27:37.840

it's gorgeous, the color photograph on the front, we flew over the Pebble Beach Golf Course one afternoon, I think we made twenty-six passes to try to get that color photograph e actly as Mark wanted it to f ame Stillwater Cove because t

00:27:37.840 - 00:27:54.370

at was a Chinese earlies v llage site. So I feel I was e tremely blessed. Most authors, a you well know, have very l ttle to say and very little to d with how things look when t ey're finished, and I had verything to say about how it

00:27:54.490 - 00:28:14.380

ooked when it finished and I eel absolutely blessed that I as able to do that. So a lot of hat is George Ow Jr. and a lot f his grandfather who was, xcuse me, Lam Pang, who was a pple dryer in Aptos, alifornia, who was here, who

00:28:14.380 - 00:28:25.870

ent back, and then George's dad ame. And I like to think that hey're somehow pushing this round to make sure this project urned out very nicely. Morton Marcus: But at the same time, and I know you know this,

00:28:26.560 - 00:28:40.750

George Ow Jr. is the nearest thing this county and maybe the United States has to a renaissance prince patron of the arts. And he certainly in the, "Eight Ecstasies of the [unidentified]," he was the important mover that really got

00:28:40.750 - 00:28:50.670

that thing finally put on, especially the second time. Sandy Lydon: And the the wonderful movie that was done on the Filipinos, "Dollar a Day, 10 Cents a Dance." Morton Marcus: Wonderful stuff, and again, helped out young

00:28:50.700 - 00:29:05.400

artists who really had something that was important to say, and what's great about him is that he lets you do your thing and he has confidence in you to do it. It's something that I'm afraid artists and historians are going to need more and more of as

00:29:05.430 - 00:29:24.570

economics and the culture of this country goes its own way. But having taken care of that, I would like to spend the rest of this program having you read about these wonderful people who emerge, as I said, one time out of the fog of anonymity of the

00:29:24.570 - 00:29:38.250

Central Coast. And so take it away. Sandy Lydon: For me, and it's true, as a matter of fact, there's very much- part of the reason for the anonymity was that a lot of the Chinese, out of necessity, wanted to be

00:29:38.280 - 00:29:51.690

anonymous. And so it's not always that division of the majority group that was watching was bad, it was that also that a lot of times, Chinese did what they could do obscure their vision. But one figure that emerged, just jumped out of the

00:29:52.050 - 00:30:07.330

record at me, comes in the early 1870s and it's kind of a remarkable opportunity to hear the opinion of a Chinese who was here, his name was Chung Sun. He came to the United States in 1871 with six hundred dollars

00:30:07.330 - 00:30:19.960

and a plan to start a tea plantation in Southern California. He arrived in Los Angeles at the height of the 1871 anti-Chinese riots which, by the way, were one of the more serious. Lots of Chinese were killed in the horrendous series

00:30:19.960 - 00:30:35.680

of riots in LA in 1871, in which at least twenty Chinese were killed by mobs. Chung Sun was beaten and robbed, apparently saved from death only by his ability to speak English and plead with his attackers. Now, Chung Sun is obviously a scholar

00:30:35.740 - 00:30:49.000

here, because he's not only bilingual but he also can read and write and which was something fairly unusual for a lot of the Chinese immigrants that came in the 1870s. Soured on Southern California, he came north, working as a laborer to

00:30:49.000 - 00:31:03.130

meet his living expenses. In early November 1871, he found work as a ditch digger in Watsonville, earning a dollar and a half a day, as he helped to put in Watsonville's new gas lighting system. A mutual friend acted as a go-between for Chung

00:31:03.130 - 00:31:13.840

Sun and the editor of the Watsonville Pajaronian who at that time was C.O. Cummings. Though Chung Sun spoke and understood English, he did not write it with confidence, so this mutual friend, who also read Chinese, translated two of

00:31:13.840 - 00:31:26.290

Chung Sun's letters for Cummings, the editor. The first of the two remarkable letters was directed to Cummings and conveyed Chung Sun's response to the treatment he and other Chinese immigrants had received in America. This is Chung Sun:

00:31:26.810 - 00:31:40.940

Unlearned as you may think us to be, we are not wholly ignorant of your history. We Chinese are taught to believe that the sublime teachings of our own Confucius and other sages of the East are in the United States reduced to a practical

00:31:40.940 - 00:31:54.680

philosophy, regulating, governing, and harmonizing all your civil and political conduct, that your government is founded and conducted upon principles of pure justice, and that all of every clime, race, and creed are here surely

00:31:54.680 - 00:32:08.750

protected in person, liberty, and property. I left the loved and ever venerated land of my nativity to seek in the United States that freedom and security which I could never hope to realize in my own. And now after some months residence in your

00:32:08.750 - 00:32:22.160

great country, and with the experience of travel, study, and observation, I hope you will pardon me for expressing a painful disappointment. The ill treatment of my own countrymen may perhaps be excused on the grounds of race, color,

00:32:22.160 - 00:32:39.020

language, and religion, but such prejudice can only prevail among the ignorant. Being a man of education and culture, I am capable of other work than digging in the streets. But my philosophy teaches me any useful work is more honorable than

00:32:39.020 - 00:32:53.030

idleness. I shall therefore with patience and resignation continue to dig with an abiding hope for something better. I shall try to be charitable as well as just to all mankind, but as a people will hardly correct their faults without knowing

00:32:53.030 - 00:33:07.210

them, I write this in a spirit of kindness, notwithstanding my ill treatment, and ask you to publish it. Well, Cummings published the letter, and apparently, from what I've been able to determine, Sun Chung then went

00:33:07.600 - 00:33:26.860

to San Francisco and eventually departed and went back to China. And just before he left, he wrote a second letter. And there's one line in that letter, which I think is very striking, because he is- it was a letter that was written to a friend of

00:33:26.860 - 00:33:40.010

his in Hong Kong, but it was published here in Watsonville. And Chung Sun was puzzled by the contradictions he saw in American society, and I quote him again: They (Americans) have no purely national settlement in anything.

00:33:40.340 - 00:33:54.740

There is no uniform mode of dress or manner of living, no system, regularity, or order about anything. But all is a jumble of confusion and a labyrinth of contradictions. Chung Sun saw the Confucian principles turned upside down in

00:33:54.740 - 00:34:06.980

America, people without education becoming rich and the learned starving. Finally, reluctantly, Chung Sun admitted that thought Americans should be given credit for technological advances, their treatment of each other and the Chinese

00:34:06.980 - 00:34:20.740

earned them, in his eyes, the most traditional of all Chinese judgments. And I quote him again: In civility, complacence, and polite manners, Americans are wholly wanting, and are very properly styled barbarians.

00:34:23.300 - 00:34:39.800

Morton Marcus: One of the things that history has always done for me is come with these ironic portraits, which are so apt in the contemporary world. And certainly, that is one of them. Another one that I like is the Mark Twain description of the

00:34:39.800 - 00:34:56.420

settlement of the Spanish-American War, which sounds exactly like what went on in Vietnam in the last several years and caused more and more American deaths and untold Vietnamese deaths. Yes, and this book is filled with nuggets such

00:34:56.420 - 00:35:08.100

as this, and also estimations by Sandy. Okay, Sandy, more character or description of places? Sandy Lydon: Well, there's one- get chided, some of m historical colleagues get little bit distressed with m

00:35:07.110 - 00:35:19.020

THE LEGEND OF CHINA'S WAR WITH MONTEREY, and it dates around sometimes because I do like t include legend when I label it ery clearly as legend. And one f my favorites is this onderful story that comes out f Monterey, which I will r

00:35:19.020 - 00:35:32.710

count here. It's called: 1875. According to local Monterey legend, Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi was angered by accounts of Chinese citizens being

00:35:32.710 - 00:35:53.750

mistreated by anti-Chinese mobs in California. And vowing revenge, she dispatched a punitive expedition of seven war junks under the command of Admiral Dao to go to California Admiral Dao and his junks stood off Monterey, and when they

00:35:53.810 - 00:36:06.690

discovered no reaction from the shore, the Chinese fired a warning cannon shot, which fell harmlessly in the water short of the shore. The cannon shot attracted a crowd. But Monterey did not return fire and after several hours of waiting,

00:36:06.740 - 00:36:19.570

Admiral Dao and some of his troops went ashore to investigate the situation. The Monterayans welcomed Dao with flowers and a fiesta, and faulty translation led the admiral to believe that Monterey and all of California had surrendered to

00:36:19.620 - 00:36:33.590

his forces. At the conclusion of the parties, Dao and his soldiers returned to their junks to await the formal surrender documents. Days turned into weeks, and as the time passed, Admiral Dao's forces began to defect, slipping overboard and swimming ashore.

00:36:33.640 - 00:36:57.820

Finally, when the surrender did not seem forthcoming, and a return trip to China seemed impossible, Admiral Dao took all the valuables from his junk and deserted. The junks swung at and teach the barbarians a lesson. The fleet, according to

00:36:43.650 - 00:36:57.020

anchor for a while until they were finally broken up and used for building materials in the Point Ohlone's fishing village near Monterey. The war junks are not mentioned in any of the contemporary newspapers in the region and since the alleged

00:36:57.070 - 00:37:06.700

attack occurred at a time when such an event would have been the legend, sailed into Monterey Bay in the fall of 1875. recorded, somewhere, it appears doubtful. The only reference to a Chinese fleet attacking Monterey appeared in the

00:37:06.750 - 00:37:21.030

Monterey Gazette newspaper, February 19th, 1864, when the editor made a vague reference to and I quote, "The rumored approach of a hostile fleet from China," unquote. We will never know whether Admiral Dao really did come. But

00:37:17.820 - 00:37:29.550

Morton Marcus: Or at least a second lieutenant. if he didn't, I'd like to believe that he should have, it would have taught somebody a lesson. Although obviously, i didn't make very much of a impression on anybody i

00:37:29.550 - 00:37:44.070

Monterey. But anyway, the story haunts us because it appears in numerous different forms in a l t of different places. So as i always true, it seems to me, ith with legends, there' probably a kernel of trut hiding in there somewhere. An

00:37:48.310 - 00:37:58.920

Sandy Lydon: [Laughs] But promise not to [cross talk], Mort. Morton Marcus: I promise not to do that, I'm sorry. In this book, of course, there is one of the great legends of them all,

00:37:58.920 - 00:38:10.040

which is getting more and more close to being proved. And Sandy's just shaking his head, I don't have to tell him what it is, so why don't you tell us? Sandy Lydon: You're talking about the idea of Fusang, the

00:38:10.040 - 00:38:24.950

land of Fusang and the Chinese coming here in the fourth and fifth century. I am convinced, and this is, you know, for a historian, you get to a place where if you can't get enough good evidence, and you just leave it alone, but there was so

00:38:24.950 - 00:38:37.190

much indirect evidence, and there's so many Chinese scholars and sinologists all over the world who are now convinced that yes, indeed, the Chinese did make extensive contacts in North America in the fourth and fifth century. We're not precisely

00:38:37.190 - 00:38:53.420

sure where some of these contacts took place, but ther are so many indirect things tha lead me to believe that th Chinese made early contact o the Monterey Peninsula. And i goes all the way from thei knowing, their apparen

00:38:53.420 - 00:39:07.790

knowledge of the place even whe they arrived in the 1850s, a d how quickly they came to th s marine resource, which was o rich. And recently, and I s y recently within the last coup e of weeks, a young man was doi g some work in- near Carmel and

00:39:07.790 - 00:39:27.260

he has found pottery shards, wh ch he is convinced now, based on some identifications he's do ng against records of porcel in dictionaries and porcel in catalogs, are actually Ming nd probably early Ming dishes t at are very near the monast

00:39:27.260 - 00:39:45.110

ry right down near Monastery Be ch down between Carmel and Po nt Lobos. I'm not surprised at a l. And I will never be surpri ed now when the archaeologi ts probably put the nail into it and finally, are able to w th certainty nail down Chin

00:39:45.110 - 00:40:02.330

se contacts along the coast. We ve got weights, anchors that re donut shaped that were fo nd down off Southern Californ a. There's cultural attributes t at are up in the Northwest, they re everywhere. And it seems to me that one of the reasons that

00:40:02.510 - 00:40:15.620

e, one of the stereotypes -- nd maybe that's the way I sho ld conclude this -- one of he stereotypes that we have ab ut North America, is that or Europeans to come here se ms quite logical and for he Chinese come here, it seems v

00:40:15.620 - 00:40:32.060

ry amazing. It's not amazing. It is closer to China. It was clo er as a matter of fact, in 18 0, from Canton to San Franci co than it was from San Franci co to New York in terms of time. So the West Coast of North Amer ca is a logical extension of peo

00:40:32.060 - 00:40:42.590

le coming out of East Asia. And it seems to me we ought to st p, you know, we should take it a a matter of fact, we're st ll going, ooh, wow. And I even go ooh, wow, once in a while. An I think we should stop sayi g, ooh, wow, we should say, o

00:40:42.590 - 00:40:51.860

h, wow, when the Spanish show p, that's a remarkable story I mean, those guys came half ay around the world, whereas for the Chinese it's just across a ig lake. It's a fairly big l ke b

00:40:51.950 - 00:41:01.060

Morton Marcus: Well, as you say, in your classes, and in the book, there are certain tide factors also which make that trip more than possible. Sandy Lydon: In fact, one historian has always put it that

00:41:01.390 - 00:41:13.870

it wasn't a question of coming here, it's a question of avoiding coming here because if you fall off the coast of Japan, you can get swept right to Oregon, and in a twinkle of an eye- well, a couple of weeks.

00:41:13.960 - 00:41:25.810

Morton Marcus: I know there's a fascinating book called, "Fusang," but I really love the way you handle the whole thing in the beginning of this book, because you asked us to take our eyes and make them look at this country and how it was settled

00:41:25.840 - 00:41:38.830

from a different direction. And like- again, over and over in this book, there's this sense of place, that we know this place, as looking totally different and it becomes layered and enriched. And I know that since your classes and since reading this

00:41:38.830 - 00:41:48.800

book, I have never seen this county and the different places in this county in the same way. Sandy Lydon: I just like to think of it this way: rather than take the perspective of say someone like Isaac Graham who

00:41:48.800 - 00:42:00.830

comes in from Tennessee and flops into the county, and he's out of breath standing on the shore looking up to the Pacific, I'd much rather think of some of those very early pioneers, that Zhong family, for example, as they came by junk directly from

00:42:00.830 - 00:42:16.070

China and landed on our beaches looking inland. It seems to me that the pioneer, the notion of pioneer, needs to include those people as well as it does Isaac Graham. We have no sandwiches named after any of our Chinese pioneers yet down at Eric's

00:42:16.070 - 00:42:27.950

Deli, although there are a number we're working on. Morton Marcus: Great. Sandy, how about reading us again, either another character sketch or a sense of place, a sense of what we know today and how different it was?

00:42:28.440 - 00:42:45.360

Sandy Lydon: Well, let me do a more recent one. I was wandering around Salinas and came into contact with a delightful gentleman, his name is Sam Chinn. There were a lot of Chinese farmers here in the 19th century. We are now down to one,

00:42:45.750 - 00:43:02.130

one Chinese family is still farming in the Monterey Bay region, and he was very, very amenable to my interviewing him. I spent a lot of time out on his farm, I learned a lot about growing carrots, and I want to share with you a small sketch

00:43:02.130 - 00:43:13.950

that I did on him where I conclude, because he is the end of a tradition, the end of a major contribution the Chinese made to farming in the Central Coast. When you realize how many Chinese farmers have been

00:43:13.950 - 00:43:25.740

winnowed out over the years, Sam Chinn's physical precedence- presence does not surprise. He is a strong man. You first notice the twinkle of humor in his eyes, then the direct, forceful voice, and then beneath the work shirt, the shoulders

00:43:25.740 - 00:43:37.770

and arms toned by decades of hard work. Sam Chinn and his son Ronald are the last Chinese farmers in the Salinas Valley. And the history of Chinn Farms demonstrates those Chinese traits which appeared so often in the historical record:

00:43:37.980 - 00:43:49.710

tenacity and ingenuity. Sam Chinn was born in Castroville in the early 1920s. His father had come to the United States in 1905, surviving in the ship's hull for almost a month on a box of crackers. He

00:43:49.710 - 00:44:03.330

came on someone else's papers and went by the name of Jim Toy. Jim Toy came to the Salinas Valley because his grandfather before him had worked in Salinas as a gambler before returning to China. In 1916, Jim Toy sent for his wife, she also came in on

00:44:03.330 - 00:44:15.240

false papers, leaving behind a young daughter to be raised by the family in China. Jim Toy was a farmer and he entered into reclamation leases with landowners who still did not know the value of the "willow land" they had. Eventually, Jim

00:44:15.240 - 00:44:27.600

Toy had moderate success growing potatoes, sugar beets, and beans. As a young man, Sam Chinn drove a six-horse team which hauled sugar beets to the railroad dump near Castroville for shipment to Spreckels' Sugar Beet Factory south of Salinas.

00:44:28.200 - 00:44:41.850

Sam was the only child born to Jim Toy in America. And he did not meet his sister until a trip to China several years ago. "It was uncanny," Sam said, "I picked her out of the crowd at the airport in Hong Kong easily. She looks just like my mother."

00:44:42.740 - 00:44:54.260

When Sam Chinn was fourteen, he lost his left hand in an auto accident and a high school counselor convinced him to forget about farming as a career and concentrate on commercial/business training. Sam took a job in a bank after

00:44:54.260 - 00:45:09.230

graduation. In the middle of the depression, he quit his job at the bank. "The job had no challenge," he said, "anyone can push a pencil with one hand." In spite of the council he received from all sides ("How can a man with one hand be a farmer?"), he

00:45:09.230 - 00:45:21.470

got a job digging ditches clearing land for a landowner just as his father had and all those Chinese pioneers before him had done. While a ditch digger, he studied farming and impressed those he worked for with his drive and tenacity. As

00:45:21.470 - 00:45:33.720

a United States citizen Sam Chinn did not face all the legal obstacles that his father, uncles, and their forebears had and he evolved from ditch digger to sharecropper to farmer. In 1941, he bought sixty acres of that worthless willow land

00:45:33.720 - 00:45:45.720

and began to farm on his own. He learned quickly that he could not compete with the larger lettuce growers, so he developed peripheral specialty crops in which large farmers had no interest. He pushed back the willows and reclaimed the rich

00:45:45.750 - 00:46:00.720

black peat soil, which is so much like a sponge it retains an even moisture content, providing excellent conditions for his crops, particularly carrots and cardone. Today, he grows parsley, table beets, broccoli, anis, cardone, and carrots. Sam

00:46:00.720 - 00:46:10.050

Chinn found Chinese gold in his carrots. He has grown carrots for Gerber's Baby Food for almost forty years and his carrots have the highest quality and the highest sugar content of any carrots the Gerber's buys.

00:46:10.600 - 00:46:23.530

An Italian from Castroville first urged Sam to grow cardone which is an Italian spice, and he planted five acres of it. He said, "Though I didn't know what the hell it was," his cardone sold so well that he expanded the acreage and began shipping

00:46:23.530 - 00:46:37.330

it all over the United States. A busload of Italian tourists from New Jersey made a special trip to Salinas to see Sam Chinn's farm and the source of all that wonderful cardone. "Cardone is Italian soul food," says Sam with a smile. It is also a

00:46:37.330 - 00:46:49.210

winter crop providing income at a time when most farmers are forced to let their land lie fallow. Sam knows and appreciates the contributions of the Chinese pioneers who came into the Salinas Valley and drained the swamps to farm the

00:46:49.210 - 00:47:01.930

rich black soil beneath, but he is somewhat bitter about the meager resources with which the second and third generation of Chinese in the valley had to work. With no capital or land base to work from, each farmer worked from scratch. Sam wishes

00:47:01.930 - 00:47:13.420

that his uncles and their peers had not given up and returned to China, but he understands the pressures that drove them back. He also speaks with fondness about the 19th century Chinese pioneers who used paddle wheels and flumes to irrigate land in

00:47:13.420 - 00:47:22.570

the Salinas Valley. And over the years, Sam has become a missionary, preaching the value of reclamation and soil conservation. Today, he is secretary treasurer of the National Association of

00:47:22.570 - 00:47:33.760

Conservation Districts and has been an advisor to the Secretary of Agriculture under many different administrations. He makes frequent trips to Washington to testify before congressional panels, writing legislation affecting American

00:47:33.760 - 00:47:44.050

farmers. "They don't know very much about real farming in Washington," Sam says. He also arranges tours for visiting dignitaries so that they might better understand the realities of Salinas Valley agriculture.

00:47:45.320 - 00:47:58.370

Sam is a living reminder of the Chinese contribution to the Monterey Bay region, particularly in terms of hard work and ingenuity. Faced with a strike by his carrot pickers in the early 1950s, Sam went into his barn and began building a

00:47:58.370 - 00:48:12.350

machine that would pull, clean, and pack his carrots. And over the years by trial and error, Sam has built just such a machine. He says, "I have the Chinese trade of pondering. I just pondered about the problem a lot and eventually solved it."

00:48:13.550 - 00:48:23.390

The machine works extremely well but has been difficult to duplicate. Agricultural engineers from all over the world have come to Salinas to measure and photograph the machine but have been unable to make a replica of it that will

00:48:23.390 - 00:48:38.000

work. Something spiritual? "Nah," says Sam, "it's just that most of the engineers don't know very much about real farming." Sam Chinn's carrot machine stacks up with Won Yee's dried-squid cleaner and baler as monuments to the fine art of

00:48:38.000 - 00:48:53.840

Chinese pondering. Like his predecessors, Sam has worked the edges. He hands me a carrot with a lump of thick black soil still stuck to it. "Break it open," he says proudly. And when I do, I can see no discernible core, only pure golden carrot. Chinese

00:48:53.840 - 00:49:07.910

gold. Morton Marcus: We have been talking with Sandy Lydon, who has been reading from, "Chinese Gold: the Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region." And he has ended by introducing us to one

00:49:07.910 - 00:49:20.900

of the people he has gotten to know and who appear in this book. And he's gone into one of the many things we could not talk about, which is how the Chinese worked around the edges. And the book is a goldmine of information and analysis, as

00:49:20.900 - 00:49:37.910

well as mood and atmosphere and people. And I would urge you to get a copy, and there's no better chance than at 8pm this Friday night for the first of two celebrations, this one at the Capitola Book Cafe. And then on Saturday afternoon at 4pm at

00:49:37.910 - 00:49:54.230

the Teacup Restaurant where the Octagon Museum is putting on another book signing for Sandy. I would like to remind you also that this is the Poetry Show. Next week Joe Stroud will be back with works from the land of poetry. And I want to remind you

00:49:54.230 - 00:50:15.800

that William Shakespeare arises once more on the 19th and 20th of this week, the preview and the opening of, "As You Like It." For more information, call 429-2121 for Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Again tonight, the only steady poetry reading series at

00:50:15.800 - 00:50:29.690

Sweet Williams on Seabright will feature Anya, Bert Glick, Sharon Gladden. This is Mort Marcus and I will see you in two weeks.