55 pages • 1-hour read
The Fortunes
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Symbols & Motifs
The Queue
The queue was a hairstyle historically worn by Chinese men during the Qing period, a Manchu-led imperial dynasty that was China’s last before the establishment of the Republic of China. All men were required to wear the queue as a sign of their loyalty to the emperor. In The Fortunes, the queue symbolizes Chinese identity as well as the cultural connection that Chinese immigrants felt to their home country. It also becomes a marker of foreignness, and Chinese men like Ling are easy targets of racist violence because they wear the queue and are thus immediately recognizable as Chinese. Although many Chinese men journeyed to the United States to work on the railroad or even strike it rich in gold mining, Chinese workers in particular were characterized by their willingness to leave the United States once they had amassed enough money to live comfortably in China. Because of this, many Chinese workers maintained especially strong cultural ties to their home country and were seen as a particular threat for their unwillingness to assimilate. That such an overwhelming majority of male Chinese workers continued to wear the queue became a point of contention for American workers already worried about their jobs being stolen by Chinese immigrants, and it was common for Chinese men to be targeted by white individuals. Ling experiences violence of this nature, and it is after one such incident that he stops wearing the queue. His adaptation of a western haircut is seen by Charles Crocker as a mark of civility, and although Ling feels a sense of cultural loss because of his shorn hair, he is better able to fit into American society because of it. Anna May Wong also recalls her father wearing the queue, and in this way the symbol speaks to the themes of Anti-Chinese Racism and Assimilation and Cultural Preservation, grounding the text within the history of China and Chinese Americans.
Laundries
Laundries become a motif within the text, and they speak to its interest in a historically accurate representation of Chinese American communities in America, particularly during the first large wave of Chinese immigration and its immediate aftermath. They also speak to the discrimination that Chinese immigrants faced in the United States. Laundries and restaurants were two of the only options for Chinese immigrants who wanted to start their own businesses. Ling is employed in Uncle Ng’s laundry, a business that the man had started after he made enough money prospecting to establish himself in a more permanent line of work. Anna May Wong’s father owns a laundry, and it is there that she is employed as a girl. Vincent Chin’s father worked in both laundries and restaurants. In each of these stories, laundries are depicted as difficult places to work. The labor was hot, grueling, and tedious, and although the work was steady, the pay was low. Additionally, laundries were seen as low-class businesses, and Anna in particular feels the sting of washing undergarments for white people.
The Railroad
In the early days of the development of the American railway system, many of the workers contracted were Chinese immigrants. These immigrants, who were mostly men, made up the first wave of mass-migration from China to the United States. Railroads become a motif within The Fortunes. They both ground the novel within the history of Chinese American communities in the United States and help the author to explore the themes of Anti-Chinese Racism, The Impact of History on Individual Lives, and Assimilation and Cultural Preservation. Ling, in the novel’s first story, works on the construction of the railroad, and both Anna May Wong and Vincent Chin’s mother have connections to Chinese railroad workers. John, in the fourth story, is writing a historical novel that explores the role of Chinese workers on the railroad and additionally sets one of his dime-store Kung Fu novels on the railroad. Historically, the Chinese workers who worked on the railroad were subject to all kinds of discrimination and were exploited for their labor. The underpayment and overwork of Charles Crocker’s railway men is thus accurate, and public sentiment against such workers ran so high that ultimately legislation went into place to prevent further immigration to the United States by Chinese workers. However, there were many years during which emigration from China remained steady, and many early Chinese American communities in the United States, particularly in California, grew out of settlements of railway workers. The railroad thus shaped individual and group identity among Chinese Americans. Part of the anti-Chinese sentiment that was so rampant during the railway years was rooted in a fear that Chinese workers would take American jobs, but part of it was rooted in the way that Chinese workers remained connected to Chinese culture and resisted assimilation. That so many workers still wore the queue, also an important focal point in The Fortunes, became just one example of the ways in which these workers maintained a cultural connection to their country of origin in the face of racist pressure to assimilate.
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