Journal of Chinese Australia, Issue 2, October 2006

Branching out the Banyan Tree: Conference report

Amanda Rasmussen

I found it very exciting and stimulating to be amongst Chinese American enthusiasts in San Francisco at Branching out the Banyan Tree, a conference hosted by the Chinese Historical Society of America and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University from 6-9 October 2005.[1] The conference opened on Thursday evening at the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum and Learning Centre, where Philip P. Choy evocatively introduced his collection of anti-Chinese American political cartoons and drawings. We were then led through the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown to the new Manilatown Heritage Center. There, Abe Ignacio's reading of Filipino political cartoons at the launch of his exhibition gave an American-Filipino historical context to familiar racial images.

The following morning, I took the long walk from my hotel in Chinatown to the Radisson Miyako Hotel, and was launched into two days of my first hands-on experience of the depth of research on Chinese America. I was absorbed by the accounts of violence, resilience, organised resistance and legal and political protest in the panel on late nineteenth century rural expulsions, the 1905 anti-American boycott, the 1970s Diaoyutai movement, and 1999 Wen Ho Lee case. I felt enriched by stories which explored the lives of Chinese American families, and educated by genealogists who shared their methodological secrets. Mae Ngai's seminar on her new book, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America introduced a whole new set of theoretical approaches which I've yet to master.[2] In another panel I was overwhelmed by the diversity and richness of current and developing Chinese American museums, and impressed by the quality of exhibitions and the knowledge and effort of curatorial staff. Arthur Dong's presentation of his next screen project on the Chinese in Hollywood was enticing and thought-provoking.

The collaborative commitment by San Francisco State University and the Chinese Historical Society of America to teaching Asian American studies was made very clear at the conference opening luncheon on Friday. At the following night's conference banquet, held at the Empress of China restaurant, the success of that collaboration was commemorated through birthday celebrations for Him Mark Lai and Philip P. Choy. Both 'Grand Historians' are pioneers in the teaching and writing of Chinese American history and in Chinese American community activism.

On Sunday I joined a field trip to Locke, about 120 kilometres west of San Francisco in the Sacramento Delta. Built in 1915 by Chinese who lost their homes to a fire in nearby Walnut Grove, Locke is the last remaining rural Chinese American town in the United States. The visit was powerfully evocative because the school-room, the church, the grocery store, the restaurant, the shop for overalls and boots, the gambling hall, the association building, and the row of cottages gave me a glimpse into life as a Chinese American in the early twentieth century. As we returned to San Francisco in the bus, I certainly felt I had been enriched by wandering right down the length of several branches of the banyan tree over the preceding few days.

Notes

[1] The conference website can be found at http://www.chsa.org/events/conference2005_home.php, accessed 19 April 2006.

[2] Mae M Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004.

About the author

Amanda Rasmussen wrote her Honours history thesis at the University of Melbourne on the Chinese Australian diplomat Charles Lee and his years in China. She is currently working on her PhD thesis at La Trobe University on the experience of Chinese at Bendigo Victoria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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