Telling the story
For Asian Americans, especially Chinese Americans, entering the US and obtaining official documentation during the period of racial discrimination was extremely difficult.
"This story particularly establishes how the Chinese were sort of pushed into the edges of San Francisco, into what became Chinatown," the show's director Ralph B.Pena tells China Daily, saying that he wanted to share the history with the audience.
Pena is an award-winning theater maker based in New York, who has worked with Suh on other productions that explore the history and struggles of Chinese Americans, among them the play, The Chinese Lady.
"It's a continuation of the experiences of the early Chinese in America and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882," he says. The play reveals what happened in the detention center, explores the topic of "paper sons" (immigrants who used fake identification papers to "prove "they had relatives who were already US citizens), and depicts the way Chinese immigrants lived marginalized lives in San Francisco's Chinatown. "So it's basically 100 years of Chinese American history," Pena says.
The play records the journey of a chosen family to San Francisco, along with the representation of thousands of Chinese who migrated to the US for economic reasons.
"It is transactional in the beginning but actually builds a real family in the US. It's another layering of the Chinese American experience — they come here with chosen families, but they end up creating their own," David Shih, who plays Han Sang Gee, tells China Daily. He shares his understanding of the show and how he sees the immigrants suffering during the process but still persevering through hard work and hope.
"Despite all the obstacles, it's about creating better opportunities for future generations. It's not a selfless act," he adds.
"From the beginning, the play analyzes the transactional nature of many relationships in America and how this necessitates putting human relationships on the back burner," David Lee Huynh, one of the actors, says.
"It is showing historically how people came together to create the Asian communities in America that we have now and how they endured," he says, adding that the show also reminded him of his own immigrant family, who would have suffered from financial difficulties if he hadn't helped out at his small family business when he was a child.
