At their monthly affinity group meetings, the characters in Chinese Republicans bond over shared cultural experiences in one breath and intensely disagree in the next. Though these four women share a common culture/ethnicity and workplace, finance firm Friedman Wallace, they are of different generations. Playwright Alex Lin has said of these characters, “I love them even though they’re crazy and complicated and sometimes I don’t understand them, but maybe that’s why I love them.” A lack of understanding between generations is not uncommon, and its ability to sow division is on full display in Chinese Republicans. One step towards understanding could be considering what circumstances or events made someone who they are. The women in the play sprinkle references to their backgrounds and lived histories that can serve as clues. Let’s dive into what we can discover about the historical context that shaped each character.
Phyllis.
Phyllis was born in 1954, 11 years after the repeal of Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, which prohibited immigration of Chinese laborers and denied Chinese people the right to seek naturalization. The repeal was due to China’s membership of the Allied Nations during World War II. Despite this repeal, Phyllis was growing up in the long shadow of these racist, exclusionary laws. During the Korean War, which ended a year before her Phyllis was born, anti-Chinese sentiment intensified. Chinese Americans were attacked and considered the enemy. To many Americans, being Chinese meant being Communist.
In 1966, when Phyllis was 12, the concept of a “model minority” began to take root in United States culture. The foundation for this pernicious label was made by sociologist William Peterson who wrote about the “success” of Japanese Americans after facing extraordinary racism and internment during World War II. In The New York Times Magazine he stated: “By any criterion of good citizenship that we choose, the Japanese Americans are better than any other group in our society, including native-born white. They have established this remarkable record, moreover, by their own almost totally unaided effort.”
This idea quickly permeated popular thought and became associated with all Asian Americans, placing a forced hierarchy amongst minority populations. Peterson’s myth of the model minority relies on the American Dream of meritocracy – that anyone can succeed regardless of race, class, religion or gender – being true. In the 2015 book Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, sociologists Rosalind Chou and Joe R. Feagin provide an in-depth exploration of the realities of life for Asian Americans. Beyond dispelling the myth of the model minority, they explore how internalization of this myth negatively impacts the very people it purportedly glorifies. They write:
[O]n a personal level, the stereotyping creates stressful and unrealistic expectations, self- and externally imposed, that Asian Americans should succeed in fitting the stereotype or be deemed failures…and the model stereotype creates unrealistic expectations within, and outside, Asian American communities that negatively impact all Asian Americans
In the play, Alex Lin writes that Phyllis was the first Asian woman as Managing Director at Friedman Wallace – which in the 1980s was an unheard-of feat. Asian women made up a tiny percentage of the workforce. She is no doubt someone who, whether consciously or not, internalized the myth as she fought to excel in a hostile environment.
Ellen.
At the same time that the myth of the model minority was developed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 passed Congress. This bill that sought to redress the racism in earlier immigration laws, which favored immigrants from European countries. The character of Ellen would have been six years old that year. During her youth, this legislation caused an influx of Asian immigrants to the US, compounded by the refugees from the Vietnam War. Many Chinese immigrants arrived in San Francisco as well as New York. Ellen was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown and was shaped by that community.
In 1972, New York created the Chinatown Manpower Project which trained Chinese immigrants in vocational jobs. Many Asian women worked in the garment industry which at the time was centered in of Chinatown. As the community grew, so did the demand for fair wages and better working conditions. In 1982, 20,000 members of Local 23-25 of the ILGWU organized in NYC’s Chinatown to protest wage and working conditions and won. Almost all of them were Chinese women. The 1982 Garment Strike, as it is known, had a massive impact on labor laws moving forward. Strikers also fought for a bilingual work environment. In Chinese Republicans, we hear that Ellen was first interested in working at Friedman Wallace because it was the only bank that offered paperwork in Chinese characters. This offered her parents access and took the burden off of her translating for them.
The impact of community powered change and impact was perhaps overshadowed for Ellen by the violence she also grew up around. The Chinatown of Ellen’s youth was dangerous, which she is quick to remind Katie. Journalist Chloe K. Li reports:
Between the seventies and nineties, Mott Street was feared. It was home to the Ghost Shadows Gang, or 鬼影幫, “gwaiyingbong”. Walking on Mott Street could mean risking injury or your life. Gang members often lurked on the streets, shadows watching over and controlling everything. They warranted fear. A peaceful afternoon could quickly be interrupted by a shootout. Business owners and residents alike agreed to the gang’s terms, with many regularly paying them in exchange for their businesses to run violence-free.
Ellen is keen to leave the less savory parts of her youth behind her and success within Friedman Wallace is key to that.
Iris.
Iris is a relatively recent Chinese immigrant, born in 1988 in China. She grew up during the one-child policy in China. This policy started in the 1979 when China’s population was growing towards one billion and the government was anxious about how this would affect economic growth. Traditionally, male children were preferred which led to large number of girls being abandoned, aborted, or placed in an orphanage. In some ways, Iris’s very existence is a miracle, albeit one with, perhaps, strings attached. As Carmen Fishwick reported in The Guardian:
The personal sacrifices made by parents transferred to their children in the form of excessive attention and expectation. The now dubbed “lonely generation” feel they must achieve and make their families proud, work hard to make good use of the years of financial and emotional support, and sacrifice.
Iris is on a H1b visa, which offers a path towards a Green Card, a visa that allows you to live and work permanently. In 2019, when this play takes place, the first Trump administration was beginning to put blocks on the processing of H1b visas, many of which were for those highly skilled in tech from Indian and China. It is therefore significant that Iris’s job is a tech analyst. She is someone who would be directly affected by Trump’s blocks if she is in the process of reapplying or renewing a visa.
Katie.
Katie was born in 1995, five years after the creation of the Immigration Act of 1990, which favored a selection system of immigrants that would further benefit the US economy. Considering her youth Katie is a core reason for Ellen to keep the affinity group going, as she is representative of the next generation of Chinese American women in the finance world.
It is notable that her character came of age during a time when income inequality skyrocketed amongst Asian populations in the United States. As Katie grapples with the reality of what it means to climb in a cutthroat financial environment, she questions the systems in place that have driven her in that direction recognizing there is a lot of work to be done to ensure true economic and social equality for the whole.
Alex Lin creates four distinct, strong, and opinionated women formed by the worlds they grew up in. The way they navigate life experiences through this play, is a reminder of how generations before us continue to impact our daily lives. A reminder to all of us, to investigate not only who has come before us, but why they came to being.