Thousand Pieces of Gold

Chinese-American author Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s A Thousand Pieces of Gold (1981) is a fictionalized biography of Polly Bemis, a Chinese-American pioneer woman, who lived in Idaho during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. McCunn’s narrative follows Bemis—born, in McCunn’s telling, Lalu Nathoy—from her childhood home in rural China to an Idaho mining camp, where she is sold into slavery and eventually freed to become a pillar of the community. Critics praised the novel’s handling of its interesting and challenging material, although some reviewers noted that its prose is merely workmanlike. Kirkus Reviews called it a “homespun fictionalized biography of a Chinese pioneer immigrant-woman of rare courage.” A Thousand Pieces of Gold was adapted into a movie of the same name, starring Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper, in 1991.

The novel opens in the rural Chinese village where teenage Lalu Nathoy lives with her parents and younger siblings. They are desperately poor, but Lalu’s father is determined to ease the family’s burden. After four years of living even more frugally than ever, the family manages to save a small lump sum.

Lalu’s father decides to spend all the money leasing land to plant winter wheat. His neighbors caution him against this plan: typically, only the wealthiest landowners plant winter wheat, because it is a fickle crop. In a good year, it can make you rich; in a bad year, you might be left with nothing. Nevertheless, Lalu’s father feels lucky, and he cannot bear the thought of more years of toil and deprivation, so he proceeds with his scheme.



The crop fails, leaving the family on the brink of starvation. It is not unheard of for families in the village to sell or even kill their children in straits as severe as these, and Lalu’s parents consider selling her into slavery. Desperately afraid of this fate, Lalu begs to be allowed to help her father farm instead. He agrees to give this alternative a try.

With the threat of slavery hanging over her, Lalu works hard in the fields; she discovers an aptitude for farming. Finding the work rewarding, she is moved by her new relationship with the land. The farm begins to do a little better with her assistance, and Lalu’s father decides that she does not need to be sold.

Soon, however, a roving gang of bandits raids the village. They burst into Lalu’s home looking for plunder. With nothing else to offer, Lalu’s father tries to get them to accept a slim sack of potatoes. The leader refuses this offer, instead, offering a trade: he will buy Lalu in exchange for two bags of seed. Lalu’s father has little choice but to agree.



As she travels in captivity, Lalu witnesses terrible violence: men are killed and animals mutilated. She sees a woman hang herself after being raped by the bandits. She also learns that the bandits are as fatalistic as the people they harm when one of them tells her that, just like her, he has “no choice except to follow the paths Heaven has allotted” him. One night, spotting a chance to steal some jewelry from the bandits’ hoard, Lalu manages to pull off the theft.

The bandits take Lalu to a brothel, where she is sold for a hefty sum because she is still a virgin. Once she is no longer a virgin, the brothel’s owner, Li Ma, has no further use for her. Lalu offers Li Ma the stolen jewelry in exchange for her freedom. Li Ma refuses the trade: Lalu still has value. Li Ma sells Lalu to a slave trader bound for America.

After landing in San Francisco, Lalu—now called “Polly”—is taken to Warren, Idaho, a mining camp with a female population of eleven. There she is sold to the elderly saloonkeeper Hong King, who is looking for an “exotic” attraction. Hong King rapes Polly repeatedly and sets her to work as a waitress-cum-prostitute.



Polly slowly learns English (beginning with the word “Git!”). In time, she comes to befriend one or two of the miners. One of these, Charlie—a fearless sharpshooter—becomes her protector.

One night, Charlie and Hong King are playing poker and the stakes are high. Hong King offers Polly against Charlie’s bet, and when Charlie wins the hand, Polly becomes his.

At first, Polly fears she has exchanged one kind of slavery for another, but Charlie frees her, and then works to convince her that he loves her. Chinese people are forbidden from owning property, so Charlie buys a boarding house for Polly to run.



Eventually, Charlie proposes, and they make a home for themselves on a remote claim by the Salmon River. Polly secures the claim by digging a deep ditch around their property in midwinter.

After happy years together, Charlie dies, nursed by Polly in his last illness. Polly, however, lives on into the twentieth century, riding a train and even seeing a movie before she dies in 1933.