Journeys

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” Lao Tzu

Yunte Huang, author of “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History” (2010), came from a village near Canton, as did the fictional detective and real-life Honolulu police officer on whom the character is based.  While at Peking University in 1989, Huang participated in student protests that culminated in demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. Emigrating to the United States soon afterwards, Huang was a graduate student at SUNY Buffalo when at an estate sale he bought for a dollar apiece two hard-bound reprint volumes titled “Charlie Chan’s Caravan” and “Charlie Chan Omnibus,” each containing five Earl Derr Biggers novels.  Thus, his fascination with Charlie Chan commenced.  He subsequently learned that Biggers grew up in Warren, Ohio, near Canton, named after the Chinese city as a memorial to an early China trader.  Canton was also the residence of President William McKinley and home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  Huang discovered that more than 30 other American towns bore the name Canton, as well as an equal number of others named Peking, China or a variant thereof.

above, Yunte Huang; below, Biggers and Charlie Chan

In 2008 Huang visited Indiana University’s Lilly Library to make use of its Earl Derr Biggers Collection.  Beforehand, he embarked on a road trip to Canton, Ohio and nearby Akron, where he had discovered, consulting the 1900 census, that a Chinaman named Charlie Chan operated a laundry beginning in the 1890s.  Huang found the site to be a deserted lot, covered with litter and weeds, but near railroad tracks, indicating Biggers would have seem Mr. Chan’s laundry sign from a passing train.  Huang’s final stop was Warren, where the local librarian had not heard of the hometown novelist (“my mention of Chan made her look at me as if I were a Chinese orphan looking for my long-lost father”)and whose holdings were limited to a single 1970s paperback reprint. Before returning to Bloomington, Huang enjoyed a Chinese buffet at the Golden Dragon Restaurant, located in a shopping plaza.  Eying a red Chinese paper lantern hanging by the door, inscribed with a Chinese character meaning “Fortune,” a scene in Sinclair Lewis’ “Main Street” came to mind,where Mrs. Marbury, an insurance salesman’s wife, is showing off a Chinese lantern her husband bought during a business trip to San Francisco. Huang wrote:

Looking at that lantern, I had an epiphany.  I realized, sitting in that aromatic dining room of the Golden Dragon, that Charlie Chan to Biggers’s Ohio was the Chinese lantern to Lewis’s Main Street America. He was a whiff of Oriental mystique blown into the insular flatland.

In 1994 I visited Guangzhou, formerly Canton, arriving by catamaran from Hong Kong and returning by train after a memorable 6-day China Travel Agency tour during which time I fell in love with China.  Although familiar with the city’s 200-year legacy as the sole port of entry for foreigners, having read Walter LaFeber’s “History of American Foreign Relations,” Guangzhou seemed more western than I had imagined, with even a hamburger joint similar to McDonald’s where I purchased a palatable cup of coffee and used its bathroom facility free of charge.  The blend of Oriental mystique and cultural modernism was fascinating. 

 Ronaldo score 1998 gaol against Germany

James celebrated his eighteenth birthday with both bowling and Thespian Club friends. The groups intermingled doing karaoke and playing video games.  James was born while I attended an International Oral History Association (IOHA) conference in Istanbul. In for Kaela Horn’s high school graduation party, Phil reminisced about us being Rio 20 years ago at a previous IOHA conference and attending an exuberant neighborhood block party with a Brazilian historian for a World Cup soccer match. While Finland is not competing this year, both Sweden and Russia are, and I’m sure interest will be high when Dave and I are in Helsinki.  Phil’s daughter Alissa is in Spain and Miranda in London on the final leg of a European vacation.

above, Miranda at Harry Potter Universal Studios London

The suicide deaths of fashion purse icon Kate Spade and celebrity chef and travel documentarian Anthony Boudain were shockers. I knew little of Spade but was introduced to Bourdain’s innovative CNN travelogue “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” while waiting for an airport bus at O’Hare.  His life epitomized a zest for adventure; he famously said, “Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food.”  WXRT morning host Lin Brehmer eulogized Bourdain as one who decried hypocrisy and prejudice, “a rock and roller in a smooth jazz world.”  He concluded: “We all admired his wanderlust.”

For several days, I had all sorts of pain in my legs and butt.  I treated the symptoms with muscle rub, but it was hard to locate the source. At bridge Brian Barnes diagnosed the problem as my sciatic nerve, something that he suffered from, and recommended treating it with magnesium oil.  As soon as I realized what had caused the discomfort, the pain went away.  I plan to buy what he recommended at a health food store because I sometimes get symptoms after bowling.  Also Health line suggests lifting the left leg while on your back and then placing your right ankle on top of the left knee. Doubt my body bends that way.

Northwestern grad student Emiliano Aguilar Is researching labor activism among Region Latinos.  I recommended “Maria’s Journey” by Ray and Trish Arredondo for information about son Jesse, who became President of Local 1010, as well as his father Miguel, an early labor stalwart.  Aguilar, an East Chicago native, utilized the Archives papers of Roberto “Bob” Flores, a Local 1010 union officer who served at various times as safety representative, steward, and financial secretary.  Born in 1925 into a steel working family, Flores was a buddy of Louis Vasquez (author of “Weasal”) and helped form the Latin American Vets. Flores appears frequently in “Steelworkers Fight Back: Inland’s Local Union 1010 and the Ed Sadlowski/Jim Balanoff Campaigns”Steel Shavings (volume 30, 2000) subtitled “Rank and File Insurgency in the Calumet Region during the 1970s.”  In an interview, Flores told of hiring in at Inland Steel while attending East Chicago Washington High School:

Inland executives recruited about a hundred of us at an assembly to work from 4:30 to 8:30. Those under 18 had to wear a red badge, which meant you couldn’t handle mobile equipment.  It was hard work in the open hearth. If we stayed until 11:30, they paid us for 8 hours. Many times we stayed.  It was difficult to get up for school, but a lot of families needed the money.  On weekends we worked 8 hours.

Local 1010 participation in Bailly Alliance Rally, c. 1981; Flores third from left next to Mike Olszanski 
statue in Oahu of leper priest Father Damien

In a chapter describing Chang Apana’s apprehension of two Japanese lepers who resisted being exiled to a quarantined colony on the island of Molokai, Yunte Huang mentioned that Hawaiians named the contagious and incurable disease mai pake (the Chinese sickness) because its appearance coincided with the arrival of Asian immigrants. Huang wrote: “The dreaded journey was Hawaii’s Bridge of Sighs, a hopeless one-way trip.”  I was familiar with the Italian Bridge of Sighs due to a Richard Russo novel of that name, where the protagonist visits Venice, whose Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri),made famous by Lord Byron, was convicts’ last taste of freedom. In “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812) the English Romantic poet wrote: “I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.”

Leaving IUN’s library, I ran into History colleague David Parnell and a South African candidate for an Anthropology position. I mentioned having been in Pietermaritzburg for an oral history conference; he brought up an ultramarathon held every June in KwaZulu-Natal Province covering the 55 miles between Pietermaritzburg and Durbin. I told him about being impressed that trucks in South Africa had to remain in a single lane on highways. I’m pleased that the university has authorized a tenure-track position in Anthropology, which has fallen on hard times since Bob Mucci’s retirement.