Episode Transcript
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Welcome to listening with China Blue.
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This is a podcast that focuses on how listening not only informs us about what is occurring in the world around us,
but also helps us connect with others,
build stronger businesses,
strengthens our mental health,
and become more creative and compassionate individuals.
As more and more people practice attentive listening in a community,
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it becomes a community building practice that
strengthens our mental health as we learn from our neighbors.
I will be interviewing people from all walks of life to learn how listening has informed them in their field
and help them to make intelligent decisions.
They will be artists, musicians, composers, dancers, business people, psychologists, neuroscientists, and Buddhists, to name a few.
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About me, I'm an internationally exhibiting sound-based artist.
In my work, Discovering Unheard Sounds, I realized that the core component that drove my work was simply listening.
That realization put me on the path of speaking about and helping people learn to become better listeners.
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I began with leading sound walks, which I continue to do in the upstate New York region,
to help people learn to listen from nature.
And now, tune your ears to this podcast to learn about the power of listening.
And do pay attention until the end for further information on how to start your own listening practice,
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share it with others, and to support listening with China Blue.
Today I'm speaking with Alvin Eng, who is a longtime friend of mine.
We met when he and I shared the bill performing at the Brooklyn Museum many, many years ago.
I have always wanted to and been interested in talking with him about his Chinese-American experience
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being raised in a sonically bicultural environment and how that eventually impacted his writing.
About him, he is an author, playwright, performs in punk bands, and was raised in a Chinese hand laundry.
His book, Our Laundry, Our Town, My Chinese-American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond,
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is a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban experience of Eng's upbringing
in Flushing, Queens, New York in the 1970s.
It is inspired by Thurton Wilder's Our Town, a play about mortality that speaks to valuing life's small daily events,
the precious nature of life, and the fact that people often take it for granted.
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One notable quote from the play is,
everybody knows in our bones that something is eternal and that something has to do with human beings.
Eng's plays and performances, including The Last Emperor of Flushing,
have been seen off Broadway in Paris, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, China.
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He has received a Fulbright Specialist Residency at City University of Hong Kong,
NISCA, NYFA, and LMCC Artist Fellowships.
Welcome, Alvin.
Hello, China Blue. Thank you so much for having me in this wonderful series. It's great to be here.
Oh, I'm so excited to have this opportunity to speak with you.
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You know, I have been for a long time I have been interested in talking to you about your experience living and working in a Chinese laundry.
And, you know, it's because I'm also a Chinese American and there I was raised on the, as we on the East Coast say, the left coast
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in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Being Chinese American I was raised with lots of unusual images and sounds, but the stories that I read about Chinese laundries always captivated me.
These were always stories from the vantage point of those who frequented the laundry, not those who worked in them.
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At the time of the Goldrush when the laundries were started they were usually frequented by Caucasian men.
And a little background about that is that the laundries at that time became popular, or actually, I think I should say,
became very, very important, important service because during that time, men did not wash their clothes.
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That was women's work. And because they didn't, the Chinese men that lived in San Francisco started laundries.
And eventually that business became one in New York too.
So I was particularly interested in speaking to you since you are a unique person to speak about the experience of actually living and working
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in this environment that creates kind of a bicultural petri dish, if you will, of sounds and experiences.
And so I wanted to hear from you about your life living in a Chinese laundry.
Right. No, thank you. And I love how you described that too.
You say, you say sonically bicultural.
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Yes, yes, because, you know, your parents were Chinese and so they spoke Chinese in the laundry, but probably behind the scenes.
And your father, who managed the front, who had learned English spoke English to the customers. .
So you heard both Chinese and English growing up in the laundry.
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Right. Absolutely. And it set up a real, I guess, layers of intimacy in what was public, what was private, what was family.
And obviously, my father spoke English, fluent English, and my mother spoke very little English.
So my father dealt with most of the customers. You could tell for them, clearly English was the external layer.
(06:06):
That was the public layer with which they would deal with the customers.
And then they would speak with each other, often in a much different tone.
And we're both from Toisan and Toisan Cantonese.
And for people who don't know Toisan, I feel like sometimes I feel like Toisan Cantonese, it's almost like a real French.
It's like a small dialect of a larger language.
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And because these days, Cantonese is the smaller dialect where, you know, Mandarin is the dominant dialect.
I guess in the old, old parlance, you see Mandarin is almost becoming the quote unquote lingua franca of the world, if you will.
So Cantonese is a small part of that. And Toisan was a small part of that.
So they would talk about, they were talking Toisan a lot.
And my parents had an arranged marriage and unfortunately, it was a very, very combative marriage.
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So they would often argue in Toisan.
And as a kid, I would associate more when they would go into Toisan.
And you could tell of certain timbers in their voice, certain volumes and certainly cadences.
It's almost like the weather. You could feel like a storm was coming.
You could feel it building up just by listening to them.
And then inevitably, the storm would break.
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So that caused, I guess in the 21st century as a parlance, that caused a lot of triggers in me, just a lot of oral triggers.
Just by, I could tell by the voice and the frustration, where there was inevitably talking about destroying the oral layers of public to intimate.
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You could tell it was getting, it might start with a business difference and then it would lead to a personal difference.
It leads to an all out argument.
And that really put me into my own world.
And in that own world, I was lucky to find rock and roll.
And that was another series of escape for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I wanted to hear so much from you about that.
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But first, a little bit more about the laundry.
You had mentioned to me your oral experiences actually living and working behind the scenes.
As you were a young child and you lived actually in the same building as the laundry, right?
(08:19):
I guess I'm the spoiled one.
I'm the youngest of five.
And it's funny, one of the connotations of Aang is five.
So that's the funny thing.
I'm the fifth of five.
And just a little more context, someone as the Torsonese, we make a half joke, like at least on the East Coast, you know, I don't want to say the right coast, but the East Coast.
The Torsonese were almost like a good parallel of the Sicilians.
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You know, like we ran the Chinatowns and Little Italy's.
We were from the South and both China and from Italy.
And we had our own, say, our own systems of justice.
So by the time my parents would say was second or maybe third wave of the pioneering Chinese hand laundry men and women that really helped this country.
And in New York, at least, my parents came in and my mother came in in the 40s, my father in the 30s.
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And during that time, the 30s, the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance, in many ways, that was the first Chinese American labor movement, first Chinese American labor action.
So I could say, even though they were completely on the fringes of New York City society in some ways, even on that fringe, my parents' generation of Chinese hand laundry men and women had a little more agency than previous people.
(09:31):
Because of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance.
So they were not completely isolated.
So there was that.
And that's what it became.
So because I'm the youngest of five, I'm the only one who grew up where my family was doing a little better so they could actually afford a home that was separate.
All my other siblings were raised in the back of the laundry.
But I was the small one.
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We actually had a house in Queens.
So and that time, Queens, if you know New York City, yes, Queens is still in New York City.
It's one of the five boroughs.
And I'll let other people do the ranking of the boroughs.
But at that time, my family got their first laundry was actually in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Then they had a it's funny on the East Coast, laundries were often in prosperous neighborhoods.
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Because in those places is where people could afford to pay other people to clean their laundry.
Like there were there were rarely laundries in Chinatowns because in Chinatown, no one could afford to pay anyone else to do their laundry.
So I think there was that level in addition to not as you so rightly said before where it was like, quote, unquote, quote, quote, women's work, no one wanted to do it.
But also a lot of people could not afford to pay someone else to do their laundry.
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So after Hoboken, my parents had laundries and on the upper East Side.
And then they by the time in the 50s, Queens was still like like the country.
So there was like that part of flushing they moved to.
And people can't believe now where they were building houses there for the first time.
So they were like, it was like, wow, they were settling the wild East, if you will.
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And and there were two things now.
And the funny thing now when you mentioned flushing to people, people don't know flushing in the 80s and 90s.
Flushing became the second Chinatown in New York City after the Manhattan Chinatown.
And now it's the biggest Chinatown, one of the biggest Chinatowns in the world.
Not not just Chinatown, there's a huge Korean population there.
So when I talk to students in particular, they cannot believe that my family,
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we were one of the few Chinese or Asian families in flushing and and we had a laundry there.
So when my parents had their laundry, they had a little more agency in that sense that there had been
the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance and that labor action to make better working conditions
and collective bargaining for Chinese hand laundry men and women.
But also, but we were clearly still in the minority.
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And another, I guess, another sonic layer, too, is, of course,
being one of the few Asian families, definitely the only Asian, Chinese, Asian owned business
in that strip, we want to guess what's called a strip mall on the street.
We would hear abuse, people would open the door and scream out all sorts of racial epithets.
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And so that became another sonic jolt.
So many ways to the laundry was it was welcoming.
And of course, there were lovely, loving moments when I was with my mother in the back of the
laundry and when the work was done and just one loving moment was, I guess, our break from the
world was every every day at three, we'd have what we called the three o'clock coffee, no
matter what was going on. And we would make our instant coffee.
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Yeah. And it was just a moment of peace from the work in the world.
And that was actually a real joy.
And the funny thing is, it was most usually that's what you would hear,
which usually in silence, but just being together and not at war with each other was a real peaceful
thing. That's something I still carry with me. No matter where I am, I try to have a two year
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coffee at three o'clock, even in the middle of teaching a class.
No, I'm just kidding. But at three o'clock, I still try to have the coffee.
So that was a peaceful moment.
But yet, in some ways, outside of that, it was often, I guess, it was often feeling like on
eggshells because I never know when a storm was going to come from my parents, I've known when
a more verbal abuse would come from the street. So it was very, it was very tense time growing
(13:16):
up in the laundry. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I recall our off mic conversation where you were telling me
about how your father would go to the front desk and speak proper English and deal with the
customers and then step away from the desk. And then that would be the morphing into the Chinese
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or the Chinese slash English conversations that he would have with you and your mother offline.
Go ahead.
And oh, I was just going to say and how in the back of the laundry, your mother and you and
actually your father, each of you had sounds, music that you would listen to from the radio.
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Well, you would listen to rock and roll. Your mother would, when she walked into the room,
would listen to Chinese opera and your father would listen to the news so that the
the radios became the way to fill the environment with sounds that were particular to your own
particular likings. Right. Absolutely. That's very, very astute observation too where same thing.
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And just the way the laundry was designed, like where my father would be behind the front
counter welcoming all the people dealing with everyone. And then that and his station was in
the front room. And just beyond that was the entrance to the back room. That's where my mother's
workstation was. It's almost like my father was on the first layer, like dealing with the outside
world, speaking English and having his radio on. And he always played News Radio 88, which
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sadly just went off the air permanently. But in New York used to be, oh, yeah, there was listen.
And back in my day, you know, there were always two all news radio stations. WINS is still there,
1010 WINS. And for whatever reason, my dad chose CBS radio. I think I know why it was CBS Radio 880.
Of course, Chinese love the number eight. I bet that's why he chose it. It was
(15:11):
News Radio 88. Of course, that's why he chose it. It's lucky eight.
An epiphany discovery right here. So all like the outside world, we're coming into the front room
between the customers and their English. My dad's speaking English, even after the News Radio 88,
bringing in the news of the world into the room. And then the back room, looking back, it became a
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battle of the operas. You know, my mother blasting her Cantonese opera and me playing over and over
again. My sonic role was arguably the first rock opera, Tommy by The Who. And I could really,
I had such a connection with Tommy on so many levels. I mean, for those who don't know Tommy,
he's the English rock band The Who. That was their first rock opera. And the protagonist,
(16:01):
the titular character Tommy is a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who gets that way because
he saw his parents arguing. He sees a crime committed. And then he shuts down and becomes
this deaf, dumb, blind boy. And his only way to communicate with the world is he becomes a
pinball wizard. And that was a metaphor for, you know, Pete Townsend, the main composer of Tommy,
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leader of The Who, felt that the post-war youth of Britain were being lied to by their elders,
by their elders, by the government, and that they committed a national crime, which was,
it seems some of the lyrics in the song, they're trying to tell them, you didn't hear it,
you didn't see it. And that made them into their own world. And I could relate to that. And then I
guess the parallel between that post-war British youth, their quote unquote pinball, which was,
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they escaped their quandary and really had a creative community with the whole world was
rock and roll. So I really believed that. And I would go into my own world and I could sometimes,
I would really play it over and over again in our back room, the laundry, but then I would get
overridden literally when my mother would play her Cantonese opera records even louder. And all my
(17:13):
queens of eight-year-old worldliness, I would always call Cantonese opera that dreaded pots
and pans music, because that's, as an eight-year-old, that was my sonic vocabularies,
that sounds like pots and pans music. Because later on I get appreciated. And later on,
even on Mother's Day, I would even take my mother to see a Cantonese opera, back when you could see
(17:34):
Cantonese opera in Chinatown. Oh, wow. I mean, it was great. For those who,
in New York's Chinatown, were visiting, under the Manhattan Bridge, where of course now it's like
these sort of rundown Hong Kong-style malls, but those used to be little theaters under there.
And even in the 80s, I would take my mom to see Cantonese opera, and even then they would have
(17:57):
their own version of super titles, very crude, not like very slick super titles like you see at
The Met or Lincoln Center, but they had their own sort of projected super titles. But it would be
vertical, like with the Chinese characters. And so there I was, I couldn't understand what they
were singing, I couldn't read what they were saying, but I could love the music, but my mother
loved it. So, but essentially I love that arc, but of course, I guess I'm sure my mother did not
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enjoy Tommy, so after a while she'd had enough and she would take Tommy off and put on her own
Cantonese opera records. So that was a way too of also knowing, being put in my place orally too,
but Tommy was very symbolic. I could really relate to that, just shutting down,
like he was, the character was shutting down because of honestly violence that he saw in his
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household. And sadly, my parents sometimes would come to get to violent levels too. It was an
arranged marriage and a very troubled arranged marriage. So luckily we had that parallel.
So there was, but because of that, one thing that my mother would always, I quote rock lyrics a lot,
a lot of different lyrics now, but now it's in plays, but my mother would often pepper her
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lessons, if you will, with little Cantonese rhymes, Toisan rhymes too.
Oh, and did she translate them for you also?
I guess I would know them, like the legendary Talking Heads movie and saying,
stop making sense. I love when the languages would be, she would say, when she was so happy,
she would say things like, that is too much better, you know, those stuff like that.
(19:25):
How nice. That just gets to the core of things. Way too much better.
Right.
Right.
You know, I also recall you saying that because you were so dedicated to Tommy and the opera,
you knew the names of the members better than some of your own family members' names because
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you played it over and over and over again. No, absolutely. Like their basis was named
John Entwistle. And to be Entwistle, that seemed more comfortable and generic than
you know, than Chin or Wong or Ang or Lee. It was like, oh, what are those strange names?
I need regular names like Entwistle and stuff like that. So yes.
(20:11):
One set you related to.
No, exactly. And we'd walk around, of course, like all immigrant Chinese families of the 20th
of the 20th century, the 70s. If you didn't live in Chinatown, every Sunday you went to Chinatown.
So we'd pile up in the car. And we'd try to imagine, of course, rather than see Chinatown
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for what it is, my brother Herman and I, luckily, you know, I had my brother Herman
and my brother Vic before him, they were rock musicians. So I have to draw, because once we
got a house, there was always a garage band. There was always a band in our garage. You know,
there was always a rock band. And so they turned me on to great music in the 60s and 70s and 70s.
And but Herman and I would still, for a few years, we would still go with my parents to Chinatown,
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being the youngest. He only went for a year with me. But we would rather than see what Chinatown
was, we try to transpose the Who's World and Tommy's World onto Chinatown. Like, oh, well,
if the Who were here, where would they go? Where could they play? Who would be these characters?
So we'd be looking around trying to say, OK, rather than seeing Chinatown, what it is,
how do they fit into the Who's and Tommy's context? That's what Tommy ruled are my
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eight year old, nine year old psyche. It really it did a number on me.
Well, thinking back about the opera, I when I was in Guangdong, China, I actually stumbled upon an
opera. And I was surprised to discover that operas are not like in the United States, where they have
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a beginning hour and an ending hour. I think that operas in China start at sunrise and
go past sunset. The one that I saw, it was just it was one that people brought their meals to and
sat around and watched for a while and then left and then came back in at another point when they
wanted to be entertained at Samores. But on the stage, there was something that was always going
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on. I was surprised to see that that was the case.
Absolutely. That was the original Woodstock or Lollapalooza. You know, you would have your
all day and all night music events. And essentially, it was a very proletarian thing, too.
It's funny how operas become like this very, I mean, it's great work, but operas come this very
(22:32):
very expensive, very elitist thing in some ways, too, in some circles of America in the West, where
opera in Canton and China was a very public thing. But they would just play in the park.
People would come and go. People are eating their loud snacks, as we know, like some of these Chinese
snacks can be very loud. And always at all Chinese meals in China, slurping is encouraged, whether
(22:54):
you're having your noodles, whether you're having whatnot. So that would be encouraging.
Also, an element that stayed with me, I guess, from even though we absorb things in many different
ways, with your great listening series, we absorb things so many ways. And now that I know a little
bit about Cantonese opera, so much of it is dealing with supernatural characters and dealing with
(23:16):
characters from the other world and also some immortal summer spirits already. And that really
stayed with me for so long. And then as you talked about, and then as an adult, a turning point was
Thornton Wilder's Our Town, because in researching to teach a class about Our Town, I realized that
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Our Town had so much Chinese artistic influence, because Thornton Wilder's father was Consul General
to Hong Kong and Shanghai. And as a result, Thornton Wilder spent a lot of his childhood in China.
He absorbed that. And there's a great collection of letters between Thornton Wilder and Gertrude Stein.
And I love that she calls him Thorny, as only she can. Dear Thorny. And then he responds,
(24:02):
Dear Gertrude, for my next play, I am stealing all the ideas from your third part of The Making of
Americans, along with the concept of the property manager from Cantonese opera. And I was like,
Oh my God, from Cantonese opera and Peking opera. Really? Yeah. So what was the concept of the
property manager in Peking opera and Cantonese opera became the legendary stage manager, who is
(24:24):
the narrator and the otherworldly character and the trickster that really narrates
our town. So given that, I think, I don't know if you felt this, you know, as you started to enter
the visual arts world, sometimes, you know, sometimes I felt like, you know, at that time,
at least in my structure of the theater world, there was not a lot of Asian Americans. So sometimes
(24:45):
we all felt like we were walking around with an asterisk on our back, you know, we're here for
absolutely. Right. Yeah. So I know, I know. Absolutely. She felt that way. And then, but then,
then when I discovered this, I said, wait a minute, this is, this is what I rightfully saw
on, you know, one of the, one of the pioneering and landmark American plays, even some people even
(25:07):
call it an Americana play, but yet it's a foundational play, but yet it has so much Chinese influence.
That sort of gave me a little sort of internal agency. And, and we look at our town, it's like
a lot of Cantonese opera, like a lot of Peking opera, a lot of those characters are, are spirits.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's no ending giveaway where, you know, but by, by, by the midway through
(25:29):
the first scene, as it, as they introduce you to the town's characters, they say, well, here comes
editor Webb, he died in 1901. It's like, oh my God, realize, except for the stage manager, all
these characters have already passed away. And the stage manager, you need not show, it's like,
again, to me, the sort of trickster. And I said, wow, that's really clearly an element of a,
(25:49):
of a, of a Chinese opera. So, so that was, that was a big thing. And then luckily,
um, my wife, Wendy, Wendy Wastell, who's also a, she's a, she's a performance shadowing
theater company for many years, one of the first in Tribeca called Shared Forms. We were lucky to
get a, a full-part specialist residency in Hong Kong to teach, to teach our town. So we would,
(26:10):
we taught the students our town, we started to play, and then they wrote and performed their
own plays in response. And I love that after they read the script, one of the first things they asked
was, these New England families in our town, are they also from arranged marriages?
And Wendy and I looked at each other and said, you know, in many ways they kind of are, you know,
(26:32):
they, and they caught that immediately too, that, that most of the characters were spirits. So that
world, they put things together. And then, as, as you mentioned too, our town's so influenced, like
when my, when my mother died and in my memoir, she's called the Empress Mother. She's called, uh,
Fair. Yes. And, um, when she passed away and then, and a second parent passed away,
(26:55):
I felt I wanted to somehow keep their spirits alive and, and, and drawing on our town. Then I,
I wrote my, um, a stage play, a one-man stage play called One Person Stage, a solo performance play
called The Last Emperor of Flushing. Cause I felt that, that encapsulated so much, cause just
like, um, and again, I guess later on, not as much, but two of the, um, I guess big analogies of, um,
(27:21):
narrative analogies in our larger town, or looking at Tommy as a kid. Then later on,
Tommy was almost like the, uh, the last emperor and the real, you know,
Aisin Ghoro Puyi, who's the really, the real last emperor of, uh, the Qing dynasty, the last emperor
that Flushing ever had. So I think they're trying to have the emperors again now in Flushing,
and China, excuse me, in Flushing. So, um, so I felt the same way, like I said, I felt like, um,
(27:46):
being a caretaker for an immigrant Chinese family, like later on, my, my, my father died in 77. And
then at that point, just a little context, uh, they sold the laundry and, um, I became a caretaker to
my mother in many ways too. So, and in some ways too, like growing up in, you know, New York, 1970s,
New York city and, uh, that whole, you know, amazing punk world, the whole heroin chic punk
(28:08):
world and everything. But then I would go home to a family of a different century, I felt like taking
care of my mother. So dealing with that. And then when my mother passed in 2002, I, I felt like
I wanted to really honor them in an artistic and dramatic way. So the last emperor of Flushing
really draws on, um, the feel and the spirit of our town and, uh, but really trying to keep our
(28:31):
town was my family. And it was looked at the, and the other parallel, the last emperor, I feel like
he was, he was in his own sheltered world. And then he came out to, and it was being in that shelter,
he was being taught to maintain and honor a world and an order that no longer existed. By the time
he left the, uh, the Flushing, the forbidden walls, the forbidden city, excuse me. And I felt the,
(28:55):
I feel the same way, like in some ways too, I was, um, maintaining a lifestyle and, and all, an older
code that was, that no longer existed after my mother died. So that, that became that. Um, and
then thankfully that, um, in my older age, I'm going from my, uh, that's my stage to page phase
now too. And, um, I guess again, back, back listening, you know, my, my first artistic ventures
(29:19):
were in punk rock bands. And yes, in my old age, I call myself an acoustic punk rock and tour, but I
feel like, uh, using the punk rock and the rock, um, analogy, I felt, I felt like after years of
live performances, years of touring, it was time to make an album. I wanted to make a permanent
record of a performance and that became the book that became our laundry, our town. So I was good
(29:40):
to build on that. And then another piece that you was, you saw the precursor to the last Emperor
Flushing was, uh, the Flushing cycle. That was, um, uh, a piece. So those became that, the book.
Wow. Wow. That's a, uh, that's a long, long, long experience and story that you have behind you. And
it's quite fascinating. Yeah. I'm, I'm trying to find a way to go back to the sounds.
(30:07):
Right. Well, I guess, I guess in play, go ahead.
You know, I'm, I'm still stuck on in the, I'm still, my mind is still in the laundry, you know,
and I did follow you and all that. And it's really fascinating how, how you've been able to
mine your experience and bring it into life and bring it onto the stage in the way that you've
(30:31):
done in, in the form of a book. And you've just brought it forward in so many different forms to
keep that your world alive. It's, it's just an amazing, uh, adventure that you have had and that
you've marked in your life. Actually, I was thinking also about the, some of the details of it,
which is that, you know, you had mentioned earlier on about, I'm back onto the laundry.
(30:56):
Um, you know, in the beginning when the laundries were developed in, in, uh, San Francisco,
uh, people were ironing with, um, metal irons. They're not electric irons. People actually ironed
too. Nowadays I avoid anything that requires an iron, but they were ironing with these ironing
(31:18):
irons that you heat on the stove and then you, uh, iron the fabric with them with these heavy
weighted irons. Um, but the, the work I suspect was a really, really, uh, difficult and demanding.
And you had mentioned in the old days that, uh, the workers were working so hard that they would
actually receive their meals on a string. Yes, there was some iconic photos of Chinese
(31:45):
hand laundry men and women eating a meal on a string. And then as we dig deeper, I guess,
uh, we'll talk about that later and dealing with the whole, um, the, the opium effect, the opium,
you know, the effect of the opium wars on the Chinese diaspora. Uh, when, um, when opium was,
uh, deemed illegal, at least in New York city was deemed illegal in 1914. And then the times at that
(32:07):
time in Chinese times had been well established. They would start selling string that was, um,
that was laced with opium that was soaked in opium. And I wonder if they were in addition to having,
in addition to having their nutritious snack, they were having their, uh, their, uh, psychic snack on
that string. If they were, if there was a, if they would, if they'd eat their meal, that was suspended
by the string, if they would also take some bites of the opium, cause that opium, the opium string,
(32:31):
if you always meant to be, um, chewed. And I think that's one of the, you know, looking at the
etymology of it, I think that was some of the beginnings of us strung out, like how they would
really, um, they would really chew on this string that was soaked in opium. So, so yes, they would,
they would, uh, it was someone, cause a lot of the early laundries, they were one person operations.
(32:52):
So a lot of them, so that's why they were so busy. They would, oh, only one. So in the very beginning,
a lot of them were, I think I told you then, of course, by the time my parents came around,
by the, in the mid 20th century, it had become like, uh, so corporatized and so, um, and so outsourced
by most of America that, uh, that by the time, and I think my, my older siblings had more hands on
(33:14):
work, but by the time I got there, it was more like just collating the laundry and sending it out.
Like we were like, like everything by the, by the mid 20th century in America, everything was getting
outsourced and everything. So I would, right. And, and you said that, uh, the, the laundry was
packaged in, in brown paper. And so some of the sounds were of the rolls of the black, of the
(33:35):
brown paper, sorry. Some of the roll, the sounds were the rolls of the brown paper being unrolled
and the laundry being wrapped, which is, I don't know if people see brown paper anymore.
And now that I'm thinking about it, because I don't see it used as often as it was when I was
growing up, but it has a loud crickling, crackling sound, um, because of its weight.
(33:58):
Yes, yes. And it's, and the tearing of it also would, would, uh, would indicate that we were,
it was time for another package. Like we'd be tearing it off then. So, and, and those packages
created great visual things. But I think another way to talk about the sounds, I think with the
transposer, I think, uh, would inform me as a, how my listening as a child informed my playwriting
(34:20):
was, um, obviously my, sadly, um, I think our generation, we had different reactions to it,
but feeling like a real outsider, um, I regret it now, but I rebelled. So I rebelled in my home.
I refused to learn to speak Chinese that well. And, uh, luckily being youngest of five, my parents
did not force me to go to Chinese school or anything. I was, I think I know you had that.
(34:42):
Yeah, yeah. I went to Chinese school. The only time I was able to, I was instructed in Cantonese,
to tell you the truth. Later on, I learned Mandarin, but in my neighborhood, I was surprised
that I actually learned Cantonese growing up. And may I ask, was the Chinese school, was that
enforced? Or did you think it was a good idea or did you hate it? Or did you?
(35:05):
I was from a family where you had no choices.
You did what you were told. That was the way it was done. It was, my father was Chinese. And so
he was a very, very, uh, very dictatorial kind of guy. So you knew not to push back whatsoever.
(35:25):
Right, right. Wow. I think, I think just, uh, attrition, my, my, my, my, you know,
I think my parents had gone through, you know, coming in during the Chinese Exclusion Act and
it was such a, uh, uh, they had to fight each other. They had to fight society, fight New York
City, fight the laundry customers. So I think by the time I came around, I'm youngest of five,
(35:48):
they were just tired. So I was like, yeah, I've been worth a lot of freedom, but I was saying,
I think as a playwright and now as an author too, um, how that early listening was because I,
I couldn't understand, you know, literally what they were saying to each other. I would just
absorb the cadences and really absorb the rhythms of their arguments. And I would just know that,
(36:09):
in some ways too, became many of their arguments became almost like, um,
a battle of structure, if you will, like that one person would be screaming,
yelling in long phrases and long, um, and the other person would just have short rebuttals.
And ultimately say, well, who's going to win the other short rebuttals going to win
or the really long rants going to win. And I said, okay, that's something.
(36:31):
Someone's it's a, it's a, in addition to a battle of words, it was a battle of a
case in the short run. And that really influenced me as a playwright. Like I like to say, well,
how does the, how does the characters rhythm the way they speak? How does that, you know,
how does that really embody their psychological state and also their psychological state when
they're trying to convey and also the dramatic state, but they're what they want to achieve in
(36:52):
the scene in this play. And, um, and sometimes the characters very scattered, maybe want to cover
up those speak very staccato and very short, maybe, um, maybe short phrases where someone who's very
grounded and really in control will feel like they will speak in longer lyrical statements,
maybe full sentences and things. So that became, I learned a lot, a lot about that then too, and how,
(37:15):
how to, uh, how to do that. And I think that also transposes also going more, you know,
stage to page now, I think that also, you know, that also transposes to where thinking about,
okay, sometimes it really to feel the rhythm, because I think all words, you know, they,
they don't start as a, as a finished, like, um, intellectual thought. They, to me, words start as
(37:37):
a, as an impulse that you feel, and then, um, you try to struggle with whatever language you're
writing and to, to find the words and the phrases that capture these impulses. And then what I love
about being a playwright and in theater is how do these impulses, hopefully, how do they inspire
action, movement, and just visuals with, because, yes, no matter how many layers are there in the
(38:00):
theater, if it's a narrative piece of theater, inevitably that starts with the word. It starts
with the written word, and then from there it builds out. But then how do these words capture
these impulses and then inspire certain actions, certain motion even, and hopefully the way the
playwright captures it can also convey that same impulse, that same movement, maybe that same
(38:22):
kinetic energy to the director, to the actors, the designers. So you want to find that. And then
hopefully that captures over to the, to the, to the audience too, because that's the ultimate
conversation. And then looking at the parallel between, like, I love live music, but then
there's, I love the intimacy of an album or that tells a whole lot of an album or a CD or just
(38:45):
music that you're listening to. And that's why to me, that's like a live performance and a book,
they're very similar, like the analogy of a live performance and then an album. Like to me, the
book is the intimate experience where you experience, the reader experiences that in their
own environment, in their own time. And it's a different communication, which I love too.
(39:09):
And then my current project too, it also, of course you can't take listening away without
language too. As a teenage punker, I'm sure you felt the same way in your circles. When we were
growing up, there was no or very, very little Asian American representation anywhere in all the
(39:32):
spheres. So a eureka moment that's inspiring my current projects, when I heard the great Iggy
Pop and David Bowie song, Lost For Life. And the opening line is, you know, Iggy snarling is only
he can you, here comes Johnny Yen again. I thought, Johnny Yen? Do we finally have like a Chinese
(39:52):
American or an Asian American punk character, a punk artist? I was like, wow, this could be incredible.
And then I dug deep and I found out they were, you know, he wrote the song with David Bowie. So Iggy
and Bowie, they were paying homage to William S. Burroughs, who's this amazing writer. And then that
led me to truly look at, you know, Burroughs' work. And he's most known for the novel Junkie. And then
(40:15):
realizing he's such an influence on all the punk songwriters that really shaped my thinking as an
adult. Like Lou Reed in Development Underground, they were so influenced by William S. Burroughs,
Patty Smith. And they weren't punk in music, punk in attitude, even the band Steely Dan, that
their name is taken from a Burroughs book. So all of these things. And Benkel, Soft Machine and Pink
(40:38):
Floor, they all love Burroughs. So I realized, I didn't know about him until my 20s, but as a
teenager already, I was feeling his influence by how strongly he influenced all these other songwriters.
So that led me to find out about, he's most known for being like this crazy junkie writer and
everything too. And then another secret that came out after my mother died in 2002, then I found out
(41:01):
that, again, I know you're from a big family too. And also, you know, different siblings can have
different experiences with the same family. Of course.
Yes. And I found out that my grandfather was an opium overdose in New York City's Chinatown.
And I didn't know the extent of it until after my mother died. And then my older siblings would be
(41:23):
happy to tell me the stories. I don't know, but happy. But they revealed to me that,
look, my dad was much more vocal. My dad was much more like your dad earlier. But then by the time
I came around, he was, I don't know, he just was, I think just worn out. But sadly...
Sure.
Yeah. How could you not be? But he used to lecture them intensely, like these anti-drug tirades. And
(41:45):
I wondered why. And then there's a family lore, just like any urban folklore. Lore has it that
he was, of course, my father was totally traumatized because he had to go identify the
body of his father after the opium overdose. And so that changed everything. And the family lore
(42:08):
has that he had to go to a morgue and there were bodies there, like slabs of meat in a butcher
shop. So he became very anti-drug with them. And then I realized that that put a whole new spin,
growing up when we did, at least in New York, was the heroin chic 70s. I even say, nobody wanted
(42:30):
to be an addict, but everybody wanted to come home as if they were a heroin chic junkie, to be cool,
be detached, be sort of there, not there, in this world, have one foot in this world, one foot in
the next world at the same time. And I realized, God, here I was living this heroin chic teenagehood,
(42:50):
but then I wouldn't be here without my grandfather who died of an opium overdose. And one of the
reasons why he was able to escape China was because of the opium wars. The opium wars completely
decimated China, left China open to the world, open to the West against their will. But yet,
like Leonard Cohen says, it's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
(43:12):
And who knows though, without the opium wars, my grandfather would not have been able to escape
his extreme poverty in China. So in a funny way, without the opium wars, I don't know if I'd be
here. Who knows where? That's true. That's true. Yeah. That's one of the major exodus of China was
(43:34):
during the opium wars. Absolutely. And then trying to draw a parallel with our heroin chic 70s.
That sort of helped us escape. And that's actually inspired the next solo. And then the piece after
The Last Emperor Flushing was what I call an acoustic punk rock and tour work called Here Comes
(43:57):
Johnny Yen Again, or How I Kicked Punk. And that became... It's acoustic punk rock, it's songs and
monologues. And looking at these parallels between the impact of the opium wars on the Chinese diaspora
to New York and the world, and then also the impact of heroin and burros on the heroin chic 70s.
The late 70s New York punk counterculture really influenced American and world culture for
(44:20):
so many years. So that became another stage piece. And then I'm thrilled to say in my
stage to page evolution, I'm currently a fellow with the New York Public Library,
and I'm adapting Here Comes Johnny Yen Again into a book. It's going to be a second memoir,
nonfiction book. Right now, the book is titled Urban Oracle Bones. So I'm looking at how all
(44:45):
these things tie up with language and listening and how we perceive things. And it's funny now,
now we lead such well documented lives. Every moment is videoed and photographed, but there were
no video, certainly no videos. I wish there was some audio of my grandfather. I'd love to know
how he spoke. And being that music is such a big part of our lives, I wonder, did he listen to music?
(45:11):
Did he? So in some ways, as researchers were looking for clues, and it's just amazing to be
there in the New York Public Library, the main branch, 42nd and 5th, and all the resources they
had there. So in some ways, I'm trying to retrace my grandfather's steps here and how that was.
(45:32):
But I am finding really parallels where opium was, because of the opium wars, opium was policed
differently in Chinatowns than they were in other places. And even on the world stage,
there were different regulations for opium for China after that time. So putting that all together,
(45:53):
and one great parallel that I love, William S. Burroughs was born the same year that opium was
deemed illegal in New York City. So I just love that parallel too.
There's got to be something there. How sweet is that? I'm sure.
Yes. The original strung out author, right?
(46:14):
Well, it's so fascinating to hear how your life has become the inspiration for your work,
whether it's the language that was spoken in the laundry or the search for the stories of
your grandfather. As you're telling it, I'm thinking, oh, I want to hear more. I want to
(46:38):
know how he got to the United States. What was his route? I know my grandfather, the only story
that I have was told by my father's oldest brother, who was almost a generation older than him.
His story about their father was that he came on a boat, of course, at the time. And they were given
on the boat one bowl of rice a day with one tiny, tiny piece of, I guess today it would be called
(47:07):
beef jerky, dried beef. Feng sheng.
And I think one or two cups of tea, and that would be all that they would have all day long.
And it was a three month journey. From Guangzhou, actually my father's father landed in Vancouver.
So he landed in Canada. And so when you hear that kind of a story, obviously he was some version of
(47:35):
a step above a stowaway, I would think.
Absolutely. And even our family names, it's all the Romanization. They were fumbling at Angel
Island or Ellis Island trying to say, well, how do I make a Romanization sound of our names?
Oh, I know. I know. It's crazy. In my own family, the way that our last name is Wang,
(47:59):
the way it's spelled varies from person to person depending upon when they entered the United States.
Like my older aunt, it's W-A-L-N.
Wow.
But because Chinese is written in, I was going to say syllables, that's silly, in characters.
(48:21):
So translating the characters into the Greco-Roman reference to language, it just was whatever they
invented at the moment, really.
Right. And that's another parallel I'm trying to join now with my wife,
right? And that's another parallel I'm trying to join now in the quote-unquote, the page
(48:43):
adaptation of Here Comes Johnny Yen again in the book Urban Oracle. I'm trying to draw a parallel
between with the written language. They tried to make standardized characters sometimes. They
tried to make it simplify. And I'm trying to almost like transpose that concept to socialization
where the village represented, always East Village and the village, we are not going to be standard
(49:05):
characters. We're not going to be standardized characters. So maybe there's a way it appeared
in their writing. Because Urban Oracle bones themselves, those are the source of the original
language, original calligraphy, like a lot of the first writings in Chinese culture, which is some
of the oldest writings in the world. So this, as you know, just like when you're starting a new
(49:25):
work of art, like this were a recipe, those are the ingredients I'm starting with. I'm stirring
the pot with that now.
So you've thrown in characters and you've thrown in traditional Chinese writing and you've,
that's a really beautiful imagery to stir it all around and see what pops out.
(49:47):
Absolutely. And now trying to see how people feel the music on the page, because the stage piece
has songs and monologues. And then just going back to sounds and listening and again, in preparing
for our discussion, it was great to hear all in this series, there were many, Pauline Olivares
appears a lot in the series. And so, and of course Pauline was a great composer, but also
(50:11):
a real pioneer in what you called quantum listening. So I think-
Absolutely.
Yes. So drawing on that, like in theater and when you bring music into theater, also too, you wonder,
this like the same, the same like almost like sonic qualities that you have for the way a
character speaks. You want to have the, when you bring music into the theatrical stage, you want
to have those same character psychological things in the music. Like how can the music express these
(50:36):
same things? Like really literally even more than words, how the music make them move, how it's
making them sound and feel. And hopefully the same thing too, like just like you can have a bet,
like again, with the characters, it could be a battle of cadences, like maybe, I guess a battle
of musical motifs, like who will prevail, what will, or will they all merge and become something
new? So I think it's very interesting. And then I guess one of Pauline's, I guess, inspirations
(51:03):
or colleagues was Laurie Anderson. And Laurie Anderson worked a lot with Burroughs too. And
interestingly, she wrote a song inspired by one of Burroughs' theories about how language is a virus.
So we were talking about that a little bit too. And I'm thinking about how, if language is a virus,
like thinking about what our grandparents faced, like I'll talk about, they were in this new world,
(51:25):
they, I think, I think about what our grandparents listening had to be because
they didn't understand the language. So they were, I think they really had to
intuit a lot of meaning. And I think a lot of that was just listening to the,
and interpreting the structures, the cadences that they were hearing all around them.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in my family, my father's older siblings learned English at an
(51:52):
older age. And some of them, their English was, well, it was pigeon English, because it's what
they could put together into a sentence. And the sentences as a result were very, very, very terse
and short. And kind of off center in a sense, like when your mother was talking about something being
(52:16):
very, very good, it's just, it's not said as very good. It would be very, very, very good, or
or I don't remember. Too much better.
Too much better. That was it. Thank you. Thank you for interjecting that.
Too much better. It's just such a wonderful translation of very good.
(52:36):
But you would hear these really odd combinations of words that just
don't sit right, but they sound so perfect. Just like some of the translations,
my little, my tiny understanding, like in Toisan, like there's no word for socks.
They call them like foot gloves and things like that.
(52:59):
Oh, seriously? Oh, how funny.
No, no, hand socks. They call them, again, apologies in advance to people who can really speak Toisan
in Cantonese, like siu mat, rather than being like a glove, it's like a hand, it's like a hand
shoe or hand sock or something. So it's interesting. So just how, I guess, you know,
(53:20):
obviously they are dealing with these verbal linguistic constructions in their head and how
they transpose this now to the strange language. And then, of course, you know,
speaking of listening, just with some Chinese language, just the inflection determines the
meaning. That's true. That's true. And with Cantonese, there are eight inflections.
(53:44):
With Mandarin, I think it was, it's four or five. I studied Mandarin longer than I did in Cantonese,
but I can't remember if it was four or five. But Mandarin is shorter and Cantonese is eight
inflections. And that's what gives what I find makes the language musical, because an inflection
(54:08):
gives the word a tone. And it's fair, as you said, it's very, very specific. If you could say it
went with one tone, and it and it's one sound, wu, for example, that's with the U shaped tone means
I. But if you said it differently, it would mean something else.
(54:31):
Oh, no, maybe they took some Mandarin and Cantonese too. That's very different.
It's enormously different. I was shocked when I was in Guangdong when I was visiting because my
Mandarin was a lot fresher than my Cantonese. My Cantonese, I left behind at probably eight years
old. And so, and because I knew that Mandarin was the national dialect, that I figured, okay,
(54:54):
I'll bumble through it. My Mandarin is not fresh either, but I'll bumble through it. And I got
there and I was going, oh, no, nobody knows Mandarin here. Although it's the national dialect,
nobody knows it. And I realized when I was there, oh, it's only on the bureaucratic level that it's
the national dialect. When it filters down to the everyday people working in the fields, in the rice
(55:20):
fields, they don't care about what bureaucracy is saying about what the dialect is or isn't
because they're going to just speak whatever they want to speak. And that's the way they've
been doing it for generations and damn it. Absolutely. Another childhood thing that
reflected on that too, to me, and just in my tiny window, the first, almost like how
(55:43):
Mandarin always represented a different social class to me, again, just as a child.
Like the first Chinese people we met were not Chinatown people and they were college graduates.
My oldest brother, Gene, he married into a more upscale Mandarin speaking family.
Our family were Chinese hand laundry people and his wife's family, they were doctors and dentists
(56:08):
and they spoke Mandarin. And it was the first time I saw Chinese people outside of Chinatown
and they all spoke Mandarin. So I guess I'll always have this class association.
And then as music is such a big part of my life, I feel like the Mandarin I heard was always melodic.
It was like classical music, so melodic and so low flowing. They were like symphonic music where
(56:31):
Cantonese, that was such a guttural thing to me. Cantonese was like rock and roll, like rap.
It's like street music. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I was like, Mandarin was like flowing, melodic, like opera. Cantonese was like guttural, like
punk rock, hip hop. And also the people that spoke Mandarin came to the United States,
(56:51):
I think it started around the 30s, but those are the people that could afford to come to
the United States. And they were sent here by their parents to learn. Because Western education was
considered paramount to success. And in the Chinese culture, success in your life is everything. It's
(57:13):
everything that everybody focuses on, is making your life the most successful, financially
successful life. So if you had enough money, you would send your children to be educated in
the United States. And after that, it was in England to get the best education you could possibly
afford. So as a result, you were meeting people that came from the wealthy class. Absolutely.
(57:38):
Not that that would be an interesting study. I bet all the quote unquote exceptions, you know,
talking about the asperity exceptions to the Chinese Exclusion Act, I bet most of them were
Mandarin speakers, all the who all got those exceptions. They were manufactured. Oh, sure.
Yeah. But then there's a strange contradiction where Hong Kong became the British colony,
(57:59):
and yet Hong Kong was such a bastion of Cantonese. So it's an interesting parallel there, too.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it's your, your research will probably undercover why the
Shanghai Chinese sent their families and their children to be educated in the Western culture,
(58:26):
whereas the Cantonese couldn't. I mean, obviously, it's an economic thing, but it would be interesting
to understand how it evolved in, in northern China as a thing to do. Right. And as a result,
that's that's a little, a little aside is that's what has driven real estate prices.
(58:49):
For example, in, for example, in Vancouver, or Toronto, because there are those, those two
cities, there, there are large culture, there's been a large influx of Chinese people who want
who have been investing over over the years. But that's, that's a different, that's another,
(59:12):
that's an aside. Absolutely, absolutely. Very, very interesting aside, too. And looking in
and how these immigrations began, like where our families come from, you know, the Toisan region of
a of a outside of Guangzhou and Guangdong province, there was some sort of pipeline
established in there to Hong Kong to the west to Vancouver or to New York or San Francisco.
(59:35):
It's very interesting how the pipeline became there. Yeah. Yeah. And it continues. Yeah. And
growing up, we did like, all you heard was Toisan and Cantonese in the Chinatowns. Now, now you
don't hear much of it. But even in my horrible, horrible Toisanese, when I when I when I'm
brave enough to try it, it was so often I get an old, old time waiter, old time person in a
(59:59):
working in a Chinatown restaurant or a store, and they'll even hear glimpses of that. And that
brings up a little nostalgia for them now. It's interesting. Of course, of course. A little spoken.
Yeah. The language of your home is really primary to your existence. Absolutely. And then,
and always on the listening side, always looking for parallels with that, too.
(01:00:20):
Always looking for parallels. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Alvin and Ang, I want you know, we've
fulfilled our one hour slot. It's amazing how it's gone by so quickly. And I feel like we can
continue on this conversation for forever. But I want to thank you so much for an Oh, actually,
before I say thank you, I want to see if there's anything else you want to add. I think you had
(01:00:44):
mentioned your upcoming book that you're working on right now. What else are you working on?
Although those are looking on parallel things. And I'm looking to I'm finishing both the book
will be urban Oracle bones. Thank you. And, and still completing the stage play, which is
Here Comes Johnny Yen again, or how I kicked punk. That's the in parentheses. So working on
(01:01:05):
those two parallel things to it and down the line, I'm quite liking them. I feel like just as you're
finding different platforms for your visual art, and adding different elements for that, I'm liking
this, what I call my my stage to page phase, and thinking maybe down the line, maybe even
novelizations of some of my previous plays, too. So that's those are those are the main things I'm
(01:01:26):
working on. But thank you. And then thank you so much for including me in this wonderful series
that you have. Thank you, Alvin, it's been a great pleasure. And I look forward to our future
conversations. Thank you so much. Likewise. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of
listening with China Blue. I hope it inspires you to build your own listening practice. This begins
(01:01:51):
as a daily practice of attentively listening without judgment. And ask yourself, what is your
version of silence? If you want to learn more about me and my work, go to ChinaBlueArt.com.
And please follow me on Facebook and head to Instagram. Thank you.