Wooden Fish Songs

"Wooden fish songs" are laments sung by Chinese women who were left behind by husbands, sons and brothers in the 19th century when Chinese men were seeking new opportunities in the Golden Mountain (America). This novel Wooden Fish Songs is actually a historical novel told about Lue Gim Gong, an actual person who left China as a young boy, worked in various menial positions in the United States and though perhaps returning to China for a time, spent much of his youth and adult life in the United States where he developed a hardy grapefruit tree that bore succulently sweet grapefruits. He was ripped off by a marketer and his years of hard work only perhaps brought him satisfaction as he never got monetary rewards for his studies and labor. Little is known about Lue Gim Gong (188?~1925), but his obituaries estimate his work was honored in the Florida Pavilion at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and the 1940 New York World's Fair. His extensive library was sold, his personal papers largely destroyed, and in the 1980s the author was able to trace down a single volume diary but only to discover it had been burned as it was deemed "valueless". This novel, therefore, is the greatest contribution perhaps that exists for the man who sacrificed his country, his labor and his health ... for the Lue Gim Gong grapefruit.

This book needs to read for itself, so my commentary is limited to the cultural reactions of Chinese when they were confronted by white foreigners, most likely Americans, for the first time.

In the years of drought, many Chinese were forced to attend the white ghost's worship center because those who attended were given a bowl of rice, which eased their raging hunger. Lue Gim Gong's mother was one such person. When she went to the center, the foreign ghosts were ugly and their behavior was barbaric. Mounting a raised platform, the ghost man called for silence, then shouted and howled, flinging his arms and twisting his body so furiously that his unhealthy white skin soon blotched red. Sweat poured off him but he lacked the sense to take off his jacket or loosen the sash tied peculiarly around his neck instead of his waist. The mother was not surprised as from the ghost's broken Chinese, he was denouncing her gods, the tender-hearted goddess of mercy, praising the foreign-ghost God, the one who'd murdered his own son. Clearly the man had lost his reason, and Gim Gong had gone to live among the foreign ghosts. Had he lost his reasoning too?

Going to the white ghost's worship place was like going to the theater. The white ghost woman would make strange music by pounding and pumping a large box with her fingers and feet. Her lips moved but Gim Gong's mother couldn't hear well, but understood the problem when the lady beside her snorted and said, "How can she sing louder? She's bound her waist so tight it's a wonder she can breathe, let alone sing!" Another person chimed in, "And she's carried everywhere like a bound-foot woman, but her husband speaks out against foot binding!"

Gim Gong's mother feared also the bread given by the white ghost for the white ghost had said that the bread would become meat and spurt blood if bitten down on. This would not be good because Gim Gong's mother had taken vows to never eat meat so she put the bread in her grandson's mouth, but she was convinced the white ghost was up to more trickery when the bread neither became meat nor spurted blood. She, like other mothers, hid her grandson's face from the look of the foreign white ghosts to perhaps protect him ... but how could she protect her young son Gim Gong who was separated by a sea and many mountains?

The mother indeed thought something was amiss when Gim Gong sent a picture of himself with a ridiculous sash hanging around his neck and his hand resting on his female white teacher's shoulder. The mother was deeply troubled. What kind of woman could teach a man? And worse, could this white ghost, a female though twice his age, have entrapped her son in sexual behavior and was treating her son like the husband she lacked?

In America Lue Gim Gong was learning the language and the culture, which means he was also learning about Christianity but he wasn't readily accepting. When someone rebuked a fellow Chinese for bowing to pagan idols for ritual ancestry worship, Gim Gong defended the man saying that the ancestral tablet was no different from tombstones in the white people's cemetery, the incense his fellow lit before it had the same significance as the flowers white's lay on graves, the deep bows made reflected nothing more than respect, like the bows gentlemen made to ladies. Gim Gong refused to accept the white people's religion as superior to his own when they were so obviously similar, and he was made more stubborn when his white associates told him he would burn in hell forever for his beliefs.

When Lue Gim Gong returned to China, he was a Christian who advocated change in his very traditional isolated hometown filled to overflowing with superstitions and the ever-pressing desire to live in peace with or to placate the restless spirit world. Gim Gong preached Christianity, and was condemned for reading out of a white spirit book with a devil cross on it. He preached change. When people shouted for reverting more strongly to their traditional roots to fight against the coming of the white ghosts and their powers, Gim Gong said no. "We not only can change, we must. We must take the money from surplus harvests, the money you now borrow for funerals and weddings, and spend it on fertilizers, better seed, and improved tools that will bring advancement." His words were not well received ... for who would listen to a younger brother when the older brother and father and sages of the village still lived and freely gave their counsel and wisdom based on their years of learning. And so according to the historical novel, Lue Gim Gong returned to America where he pursued his passion of studying horticulture, the soil and grafting of plants to created his sublime, heavenly perfumed grapefruit.