It’S a Long Way from China to Hollywood

By Grace F. Yang

From communism to democracy, from the sixties to the modern day, from the smallest villages to the largest cities, from film to real life, Its a Long Way from China to Hollywood travels halfway around the world and shares the life story of Grace Yang.

In this memoir, Yang narrates the story of her journey and the events that molded her lifefrom her birth in China in 1964, living under the Communist rule of Mao Zedong, growing up with her parents as an only child, immigrating to America, and coordinating a successful entertainment career. From her school days to her friends, to her marriage and daughters birth, she provides a glimpse of life in China and the many differences between it and life in the United States.

A story of life on two continents and in two different cultures, Its a Long Way from China to Hollywood communicates the trials and tribulations of one familys struggle to obtain an unimaginable dream. It shows how immigration has become a phenomenal part of our civilization that merges humanity through many generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450296618

Grace F. Yang

Grace Yang has appeared on television shows such as 1000 Ways to Die and the hit series 24. She and her daughter, Yvonne, acted as mother and daughter in the movie Still the Drums. Yang has also performed music videos and in theater and has done print and voice-over work. She currently lives in California.

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Congratulations

I:   The Mei Puo

II:   Growing Up Communist

III:   An Only Child

IV:   My First Bra

V:   The Red Money Bags

VI:   Uniforms

VII:   Road Trips with Dad

VIII:   Arranged Marriages

IX:   A New World

X:   She Arrives

XI:   She Was Gone

XII:   Girlfriends, and the Way Life Is

XIII:   Red Ink

XIV:   Together Again

XV:   Disaster in America

XVI:   Talent in the Family

XVII:   The Big Move

XVIII:   Teenage Angst

XIX:   Home Schooling

XX:   The Worst Fight Ever

XXI:   Trip to China

XXII:   Into the Future

Epilogue:   Poems Written by My Father

For my family: You honor me

by always being there.

For my daughter, Yvonne Lu:

My best friend in life.

You bring me all the joy

and happiness in the world.

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My father, my mother, and I in Zhengzhou, 1977

Foreword

America is a country of immigrants from all over the world. These days, more and more immigrants are arriving from Asia than ever before. But most of their personal stories will never be known outside of their families and close circle of friends.

One wonderful exception to this rule is this book, It’s a Long Way from China to Hollywood, by my personal friend Grace Yang. Employing a very detailed and intimate approach to her and her family’s journey from Communist China to America, Mrs. Yang, in a very engaging literary effort, tells her story to us as if we were members of her extended family. Once we finish reading her story, that is exactly how we feel.

Rather than writing in generalities about the circumstances of her life, Mrs. Yang relates to us in specific detail the events that molded her and her family’s lives, displaying her personal and unique sensitivity to her journey and her powers of observation.

In the end, it becomes very clear that she wants us to understand that whatever level of success she has achieved, it has been attained through hard work and dedication. There have been no guarantees on her path, but plenty of love and determination.

We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mrs. Yang for bringing us this book. In a way, it could be the story of many other immigrants who, in spite of many challenges, have found their own ways of overcoming life’s obstacles. With this in mind, Mrs. Yang’s book can bring us only timeless inspiration.

Wea H. Lee

Chairman/CEO

Southern News Group

ITV International Television

ITC International Trade Center

Houston, Texas

July 2010

Acknowledgments

I never thought about writing a book like this. I intended only to tell my daughter’s story. If anything I have said offends anyone or hurts anyone’s feelings, forgive me. That was never my intention. This is just one person’s view and the memories of a little girl growing up. I am proud of what I have written, and of my family, and I feel honored to tell our story. In doing so, I found that I love America as much as I love China and that I’m torn between the two.

Grace

I never thought about writing a book. I have been a songwriter and performer most of my life. I met Grace and Yvonne in the summer of 2007. I became great friends with Grace and was intrigued by the fact that Yvonne has been working since she was five years old. Grace kept telling me she wanted to write a book about her daughter’s success. We talked about it several times, until I finally agreed to help her with it.

It became so much more.

Sames

Congratulations

Congratulations to my beloved daughter on her first book

It takes ten years of hard work to grow a tree

But one hundred years of hard work to rear a person

Like a stick in a relay race that my father handed to me

I gave it to my only daughter

Who then passed it on to my only granddaughter

Who received the star of USA-Sina award

And has now been recognized by China and America

Your father

Bingli Yang

missing image file

Old China—I am on the right

I:   The Mei Puo

It is May of 1964, in Henan Province, China, just outside of the city of Kaifeng. A young couple ride their bike up and down a narrow stone road. The woman is pregnant, past due. She is sitting on the back seat of the bike and holding her husband tightly. They hope that riding on the rough stone road will induce labor.

He has fifteen days of vacation. On May 8, he left Beijing. He picked up his wife in the city of XinXiang. They traveled three hundred miles to Kaifeng, where their parents live, arriving on May 10, so they could be with them when the baby is born.

It is now the evening of May 22. He will be leaving for Beijing the next morning at 7:00 a.m. Things have gotten desperate. If this baby doesn’t come tonight, it will be almost a year old before he ever sees it. He’d thought he was coming home to see his new baby. Instead it seems like he is going to have to leave without seeing it at all.

Finally, resolving themselves to the fact that this baby is not coming tonight, he and his wife retire for the evening. Around 2:00 a.m., they wake with the bed soaked. Her water has broken. They walk to the hospital with her parents. The baby arrives just before 6:00 a.m. on May 23. He has just enough time to hold his new baby girl and kiss her tiny cheek before he is off and running for the train station.

That’s how I was born.

My mother told me that three months later, she managed to take me to Beijing to see my father. She said she had me dressed in a traditional blue doupen outfit, with handmade red-tiger shoes and a red-dragon cap, because I was born in the year of the dragon.

My birth name is Yanyan Yang; Yanyan, loosely translated, means beautiful Beijing. I was an only child. My father and mother went to the same school. My mother was in her last year of middle school and my father was in his last year of high school when they met. They were both fifteen years old. In China, school is structured differently than in America. Before my mother’s time, girls were not encouraged to go to school at all. It took my mother a long time to convince my grandparents to let her go to school. Girls were expected to stay at home, and learn how to be domestic. My mother told me that it was mostly my grandfather she had to fight with. It was 1955. My mother was the leader of girls’ gymnastics, and my father was the leader of boys’ gymnastics at their school.

My mother was lucky to even be attending school. China’s new leader, Mao Zedong, had started the New Republic of China. When my mother was ten years old, girls were allowed to attend public school along with the boys. Before that, the only way a girl could go to school was if her parents could afford to send her to a private school for girls or to hire a teacher to come to their house. Both of these options were very expensive.

In China at that time, most marriages were prearranged. There was supposed to be a Mei Puo involved, which is basically a professional matchmaker. All couples were supposed to be brought together through the Mei Puo. If you weren’t and got married anyway, your family would not accept your husband or wife. You would be considered shamed. You just were not supposed to go against your family in any way in those days. But my mother and father lived at a time when young people didn’t want to go through the Mei Puo anymore. They had new ideas about a lot of things.

During my mother and father’s time, there was no dating at all. The boy’s family would go to the Mei Puo, who would then approach the girl’s family. If her family agreed to the match, they would then be engaged to be married. They did not see each other until the night of their wedding. The bride would wear a piece of red cloth covering her entire head, so that the groom could not see her face. After a complete day of celebrating, which would usually start early in the morning, and after all the friends and family were gone, just the two of them would be left. Then the groom could remove the cloth from his new bride’s head.

The morning after their first night together, the groom would show his parents a special piece of white cloth, revealing a red blood stain that showed that his new wife had indeed been a virgin. If he could not produce the white cloth, or if there was no stain on the white cloth, there would be an uproar between the families. The girl would be considered trash and sometimes would even be sent back to her family. At the very least, she would be looked upon terribly by her new in-laws.

My mother was considered a bad girl by some people in the community. When my grandfather found out my mother was dating my father, he actually put a gun to her head, ordering her to never see that boy again. My mother told me that story. She said it was one of the most traumatic moments of her life. She said that when my grandparents spoke to my father the first time, they scared him so badly that he disappeared for a while. My grandfather had a gun due to his position in the community; he had once formally held a high rank in the military. Not just anyone in China could get a gun.

I view my mother and father as heroes for thinking for themselves. They were in love with each other and did not want to go through the Mei Puo. Needless to say, my mother and father got married, and they have been married for forty-eight years. When my grandparents finally gave in, they still insisted on going through the Mei Puo so they could keep up appearances in the community.

My mother worked in Xinxiang City, and my father worked in Beijing; the cities are about five hundred miles apart, but on the train, it seemed like twelve hundred miles. The trains stopped everywhere along the way. In China at that time, when you graduated from college, the government assigned you a job. Those jobs were not always close to your loved ones. You had no choice but to go. My father worked six days a week and got vacation once a year. So I mostly stayed with my mother in Xinxiang City and saw my father for fifteen days each year until I was twelve years old.

The earliest thing I remember about my childhood is waking up before daylight with my mother to get on the back of a military truck to go visit my grandparents and relatives in another city. We traveled all kinds of ways when I was growing up: trains, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, and carts drawn by horses, cows, or tractors.

My mother, a doctor, had all kinds of contacts. She would get us rides on vegetable trucks, mail trucks, all kinds of delivery trucks, and many military trucks. I hated the military trucks. They had flat beds with railings on the sides. Sometimes they had a canopy covering the top and sides. If we were lucky, we would get to ride up front. But more times than not, we ended up in the back.

During the winter, it was so cold. The wind cut through me like needles. The drivers always drove fast, and the roads were in poor condition. I always held onto the railings until my hands were sore. In the winter, we could feel the trucks sliding on the icy roads.

They often stopped because of mechanical problems. Then we had to sit there and wait forever while I froze to death or baked in the heat. Sometimes it got worse and started pouring rain. The trucks didn’t have batteries, so the drivers had to crank-start them. The worst was when they could not get the truck running again. Then we had to sit and wait for the next truck to come along, one that had enough room for us.

I think my mother chose the military most of the time because she trusted the military. But it didn’t always work out, and when it didn’t, it really sucked. It seems like my whole life I’ve been traveling; even back then we were always moving somewhere new, or I was going back and forth between my mother and father.

Once, when I was about six or seven years old, a truck broke down on us in the middle of a snowstorm. This one wasn’t a military truck; I think it was a delivery truck. The snow was coming down hard, and it was hailing. There was no traffic on the road at all for a long time. I was so cold; I thought we were going to die there. My fingertips were red like tomatoes, and my toes were completely numb. Finally, a military truck showed up and got us started again, but my mom chose for us to ride with military.

The reason I was born in Kaifeng is that my mother and father went to be with their families when it was close to my delivery time. That is how they usually do it in China, so the family can take care of the mother and the new baby. My mother told me that for the first thirty days, the mother and baby were not allowed to go outside. So the family would take care of everything. That sounds logical to me. A lot of things about Chinese culture are very logical.

When I was a little girl, I had lots of dreams. I loved singing and dancing. Even though my mother was a doctor and my father was governor, my family was poor. Well, we weren’t poor, but we lived in a Communist country. We had the same as everyone else. In fact, I think we had a little more than the average family.

II:   Growing Up Communist

In China at that time, it didn’t matter what your job or position in the community was; you still got paid the same as everyone else. If you were a mayor or governor like my father, your job may have gotten you more respect, but not more pay. Only with seniority would you get a little bit more pay. With my mother’s and father’s positions, I guess we were better off than most people. But everyone was pretty much equal in China at that time.

When I was five or six years old, my father bought ten baby chicks and one rooster so my mother and I could have eggs to eat. The only way you got food in China at that time was if you raised it yourself or if you had coupons from the government that you could use at the market.

The coupons allowed you to buy certain things, but only in certain amounts. Take meat, for example. If my family had a coupon for meat, we could buy one pound. If we had no coupon, we couldn’t buy any meat. There were coupons for meat, eggs, tofu, material, household goods—just about everything. There wasn’t enough for everyone, so they were rationing. Basically, China was paying back its debt to Russia. At least that was the rumor among us kids.

You got only a certain number of coupons depending on the size of your family. My family was just my mother and me. We never had enough, so my father got us the chickens. It was going to be my job to feed them. This was the first time I had seen my father in a year. I hardly knew him at all.

Calm those chickens down before you go in there, Yanyan, my father yelled as I opened the door.

I couldn’t have been more than six years old at the time, and I was scared. We had them in a pen, and I had to go inside it to feed them. All the chickens knew I had food. They pecked at my ankles and legs. They jumped on my head and bit my hair, and I dropped the pan of food. Right away, I could see the disappointment in my father’s eyes. That was my first feeling of being ashamed.

You have to be strong, he told me. Don’t ever be scared of them.

But I couldn’t help it; I was scared of them. I was scared of everything at that age.

Every time I saw my father, it was a big deal for my mother. It was a big deal for me, too, but in a completely different way. She would start cleaning the house a month ahead of time. I would start getting nervous a month ahead of time. We both had to get dressed in our best clothes the day he arrived. Sometimes my mother made my clothes, and sometimes I wore hand-me-downs from my cousins. You couldn’t just go to Kmart or Walmart and pick out a nice dress for yourself. Remember, this was Communist China in the sixties. There were no department stores, no malls.

We always went to the train station way too early. We would stand there and wait forever for the train. I would think to myself, Who is this guy? I barely even knew him. My mother was always so happy, singing and telling me all about my father.

I can see them in my mind right now, hugging and kissing at the train station. When he kissed me, I hated it. He had a beard that scratched my face, and he was so tall. I was just intimidated by him.

The whole time I was growing up, my father was like an uncle I had who lived far away. He was family, but he didn’t live with us. It was a big deal when he arrived, but as soon as I got used to him being there, he would be gone again. It was one of the hardest things I had to deal with growing up. Some people thought I had no father.

When we went to the train station with him on the day he was leaving, my mother would start crying, and then I would start crying. I would cry because she was crying. My mother would cry for days afterward. I hated my father for a long time because of that. Years went by before I realized it had never been his choice.

Each time my father came home, he brought bright-colored material from Beijing for my mother to make clothes out of for me. In my city, and in most cities in China, you could get only solid green or solid blue, or gray if you were lucky. Sometimes he even brought patterned material. My mother would use the different colors to patch the holes in my pants, skirts, and jackets.

Another good thing about my father coming home was that he would take us out to restaurants. Plus, he made different food at home than what my mother made. He had gotten some different recipes from Beijing. My father is a very good cook. When it was just my mother and me, we always ate at home. I don’t ever remember my mother taking me to a restaurant. She is a good cook, but not nearly as good as my father. I’ve never been good at it.

My father would take us to a restaurant as soon as we left the train station after picking him up. Are you hungry? was always the first question he asked when he saw us. Unfortunately, I have to tell you that most of the time when I was growing up, I was hungry. It wasn’t unusual for people to go a full day without eating in China back then.

My father would also take us to a restaurant before we dropped him off at the train station when he left. When I was growing up, going out to a restaurant was a really big deal, especially for a child my age. My friends would ask me what it looked like inside the restaurant and what kind of food they served there.

I can’t remember ever seeing any other girls when I went to restaurants with my parents. I might have seen some boys, but it was mostly just adults.

Food was not in abundance at that time. Eating was always a problem. While I was growing up, people did not say, How are you doing? or Good morning. Instead, Have you eaten yet? was the greeting of the day.

From the time I was born until I was twelve, my mother received thirty-four Chinese yuan a month from the government. At that time, that was about four American dollars. She also received food coupons, which were almost more valuable than money. You couldn’t replace them. I remember my father made a special drawer for the coupons so my mother could keep them locked up. The whole time I was growing up, whenever my mother gave me money and coupons to go to the market, she would say, Don’t lose the coupons. She never said, Don’t lose the money. Of course, there was never much money anyway, but, like I said, there was no way to replace the coupons.

We never had enough money for extras. Communism isn’t bad, though; we had no rent and no power bill, phone bill, or any other bill. We had no phone, no radio, no TV, no refrigerator, no microwave. Believe me, four dollars did not go very far. We used coal for heat and for cooking, which cost money too. We were lucky: my father got a coal press so we could make our own. You could buy the coal powder for a lot cheaper than you could buy the chunks of coal.

I used to have a great time pressing coal with my father. I would be covered from head to toe in black coal dust. Before we had the coal press, my father would take the powder in his hands and squeeze it as hard as he could to make a coal ball—that’s what I called them. With the press, I had to hang my whole body from the handle so that I could use all of my weight to smash the coal.

Come on, bounce on it, Yanyan, my father would encourage.

Look at that, he would say, pulling the piece of coal from the press. You did a great job. My little girl is so strong.

By the time the day arrived for him to go back to Beijing, he would have chunks of pressed coal stacked up for my mother and me to use while he was gone. I remember that when the coal ran out, I would try to make the pressed coal myself, but I couldn’t.

Once I was crying when my mother came home, and she asked why.

I had no problem pressing the coal before, I told her, and now I can’t.

Don’t you know your father helps you? she said. He pressed that coal before you ever started working on it, baby.

Then I really started crying, realizing how much I missed my father.

My father did so many things like that. He was trying to make things as easy as possible for my mother and me, because he was never there. These are some things I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older.

When I think back, it seems like my father didn’t sleep in the fifteen days he was home each year. All he did was fix and make things for my mother and me. He knew he was going