SOURCE: Karle, Katherine A. “Reconsideration: Flamingos and Bison—Balance in Chinatown Family.” MELUS 15, no. 2 (summer 1988): 93-9.

[In the following essay, Karle considers the Chinese and American cultural issues introduced in Chinatown Family.]

Lin Yutang's Chinatown Family may be read usefully on numerous levels: it is a story of Chinese immigrants in the U.S., a comparison of two cultures, and a Bildungsroman. Briefly, thirteen-year-old Tom, the novel's protagonist, immigrates to America with his mother and younger sister, Eva, to join his father and two older brothers who had preceded him in moving to America to make the family's fortune. Having for ten years been separated from his father and brothers, Tom literally begins a new life. Lin balances Tom's uneasiness over the old-world expectations of his “new” father with Tom's exuberance over American technology and its new ideas.

In addition, Lin contrasts Tom's gradual growth from Chinese to Chinese-American with the development of Tom's brothers. For example, Loy, Tom's oldest brother, immerses himself in a Confucianist Chinese tradition: he works alongside his father in the family's basement laundry, which is described at one point as a “rathole of a shop” (Lin 17), and marries only after receiving his father's consent. Tom admires Loy, but does not understand what seems to him to be Loy's placid, filial acceptance of the status quo.

On the other hand, Tom is fascinated by his brother Frederick A. T. “Freddie” Fong. Thoroughly convinced that he is “onto something,” Freddie supplants traditional Chinese values with the Madison Avenue glitter of American business. From being seen with the “right” people to showing his business savvy by writing “The Good Life,” a pamphlet explaining American etiquette, Freddie is obsessed with appearances (Lin 50). He wants no part of the traditional Chinese culture that sustains the other members of the family. Rather, he completely rejects any behavior that might be construed as “foreign.” At the same time, however, Tom does not want to abandon his cultural heritage completely. Lin uses Loy and Freddie to exemplify the extreme opposites of the lives from which Tom must eventually choose. It is this struggle for balance within Tom, an individual who is neither wholly Chinese nor fully American, that Lin focuses upon in the novel. And for some critics, this struggle between cultures creates a problem. For example, Elaine Kim in Asian American Literature notices the numerous “cultural adjustment problems” facing the individual characters of the novel (104). Yet she subordinates the importance of these problems to what she considers Lin's use of negative stereotypes. Granted, if one were to focus on Lin's characters as mere sociological representations of “typical” Chinese or Americans rather than upon Tom's individual struggles as a human being, one might fairly say, as Kim does, that this novel has a “soap-opera quality” (104). But this is, after all, not a novel intent upon presenting sociologically typical Chinese or Americans. And in the same way that Kim finds the “docile, grateful Chinese” offensive (104), so would most Americans find the cynical, brash Americans.

Clearly, then the importance of Chinatown Family lies in Lin's balance of his characters such as Tom, a young man struggling with his own identity that in this case is bound most importantly to the Chinese culture. And this individual struggle is a realistic one. As the Sinologist Frederick Mote notes, “Chinese ethical philosophy in all periods stresses the necessity to engage in self-examination and self-correction” (25). Further, in focusing on Tom's effort to achieve balance, Lin is obviously writing about something with which he is familiar. Kim herself points out that many “early Asian writers in English felt that they themselves understood two points of view.” The “West stood for modernity and the East for tradition—they [the writers] viewed themselves straddling two worlds” (24). Thus, in the same way Lin is caught between two worlds as a writer, so his character Tom straddles two worlds, trying to achieve a workable balance between two extremes represented by Loy and Freddie. Yet the relationship reflected by Loy and Freddie is by no means the only example of balance in the novel.

As a matter of fact, Lin balances not only the characters, but the novel itself, as well. For example, the father dies midway through the novel, and the second half of the book complements the first. Up to the point of his death, the father had limited the choices of the other characters by his old world strictness and his decisions based on the family's lack of money. In the second half of the novel, the characters' lives change drastically. With the money received from the insurance company after the father's death, the family opens its own restaurant, which Loy supervises. Freddie marries Sing, a nightclub performer, while Tom continues his academic studies and furthers his relationship with Elsie, a young woman from the old country who exemplifies the best of the Chinese culture. As Cheng Lok Chua accurately notes, Elsie is a “teacher of tradition and bearer of wisdom” (“Two Chinese Versions” 63). In fact, Elsie, introduced well into the novel, exhibits many of the deceased father's personality traits, especially his traditional spiritual beliefs. Clearly, Lin's characterizations are circular in nature and exemplify the novel's unique structure of balance influenced by Taoism's yin and yang.

Generally speaking, yin is associated with the negative, passive, and female; yang, with the positive, active, and male. Yet these “positive” and “negative” concepts are not necessarily indications of a moral judgment, one side being morally “correct,” the other “incorrect.” Rather, yin and yang, often considered “complementary to each other” (Chan 89), may represent, for example, a polar arrangement of the halves of a particular whole. Like John Donne's lovers in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” who represent opposite ends of a compass which is both stationary and constantly rotating within a fixed field, yin and yang reflect a universe which is in a “perpetual process of rotation” (Chan 89). Yet like the rotation of Donne's compass (composed of two distinct halves), this “universal” rotation occurs within fixed natural laws. For this reason, yin and yang also imply the “unity of man and Nature” (Chan 89). Lin Yutang shows this complementariness, this natural striving for “balance” throughout the novel, especially in his characterizations. From the appropriately named Mrs. Yang, Elsie's dynamic, surrogate mother, to Tom and Elsie, the novel's most complementary personalities, Lin presents his character in various stages of balance with each other. Further, this balancing of personalities is most evident within Tom's nuclear family.

Like his father, Loy has a strong moral character. He is practical and patient, and he respects old-country traditions. For example, when Flora, his wife, questions the fact that they live in an extended family, Loy answers, “Nothing is forever. But while the parents are living we are one family” (Lin 55-6). Loy does not say “Mom and Dad”; he says “the parents,” reflecting the traditional philosophy that parents represent an institution, an indispensable part of the family. The concept of an extended family is natural to Loy. He is not eager to fit into an American standard of success—the nuclear family.

In contrast, Freddie has no respect for the “old ways.” In this country of opportunity and opportunism he, like Arthur Miller's Willy Loman, is the ultimate salesman. He refuses to see the damage he is doing to his family. As he says to Tom, “You say, I convince, much better than I believe [emphasis added]” (Lin 18). And convince actually equals believe to Freddie. He has no qualms about selling anything, from life insurance to his soul. He is even willing to challenge cultural traditions directly in order to make money. As Cheng Lok Chua notes, “The question then becomes whether it is possible to attain the American dream of prosperity without imperilling the fabric of the family” (“Golden Mountain” 36). For example, Freddie sells life insurance to his father, thus horrifying the family with his disregard for a father's venerable position (Lin 104).

In addition, if the reader compares Loy's defense of old-world customs to Freddie's defiance of tradition, he sees that these two characters stand in opposition like the relationship between yin and yang. In fact, representing the old and new worlds, Loy and Freddie are perfect halves of one whole. Later Lin further develops this idea of balance using the character of Tom who serves as a balance between Loy and Freddie. With the same respect for tradition as Loy, yet with a spirit of adventure similar to Freddie's, Tom shows what Loy's and Freddie's personalities would be if they were tempered, balanced. In comparison to them, Tom is a well-rounded, emotionally healthy individual. Yet he is also a person who possesses an essentially different nature from either Loy or Freddie.

From the beginning of the book, the reader sees Tom's interest in science, a new world (American) association. For example, within the first few pages, Tom thinks to himself about the light in his room. “It was electricity! … symbol of all that was new and marvelous in this new world of miracles” (Lin 4). Yet Tom's natural inquisitiveness, unlike Freddie's thirst for excitement, is balanced with an old world (Taoist) reverence for “harmony with nature” (Mote 71) and the world as a whole. He wants answers to life's “unanswerable questions.” Is his life the “same as that of the flamingo?” Why does the “bison look at him as if he hated him?” (Lin 112).

Even Tom's questions reflect a balance. We note the opposition between the pale, delicate flamingo and the dark, sturdy bison. For example, besides the obvious balance in outward appearance, if the pale, delicate flamingo represents the Chinese culture (yin) and the dark, sturdy bison represents the American (yang), the questions Tom asks about each not only make sense, but lie in direct opposition. That is, Tom asks if his life is the same as the flamingo's (Chinese culture). Then Tom wonders why the dark, sturdy bison (American culture) seems to hate him. Tom ponders his place in these two cultures throughout the novel. Further, when Tom does not receive satisfactory answers to his questions, he is “seized with a vague feeling of sadness” (Lin 112). This existential sadness occurs because Tom exists as only half of a whole, and he has little clue as to how to balance his life.

At first it may not be obvious why Tom, an apparently well-balanced individual, needs anybody to complement his personality. After all, he constantly questions life and searches for truth. He seems to be on the right track. But ultimately, Tom is unsure about how to develop his spirituality, how to make it practical. On the other hand, he feels comfortable with American scientific inventions. Their tangible mechanical components are understandable. They do not overwhelm him like religious doctrines. In contrast to Tom, Elsie has developed a sound, spiritual philosophy. She often quotes Laotse to Tom, and does not believe that Tom's new world has much to offer her. In fact, she often feels the gap between her world and Tom's. As she says to him at one point, “There is a whole world back in China that you don't understand” (Lin 239).

Yet eventually, each of these characters supplies the other with the best of the missing world. Tom introduces Elsie to typically American poetry such as Whitman's “Song of the Open Road,” and teaches her to speak “American.” Elsie returns part of Tom's cultural heritage to him by teaching him to write ideograms and to apply Taoism to his everyday life. For example, when Tom first ponders Laotse's Book of Tao, he feels as if he has “met a new friend” (Lin 232). Thus, Lin shows that even well-balanced people are happier, more “complete” when they have their complement. In other words, “unity exists in multiplicity” (Chan 89). Neither Tom nor Elsie feels whole (balanced) until the other provides the missing complement.

Besides deliberately balancing his various characters, Lin throughout the novel balances images and events. There are many images, for instance, that include darkness and death. But often, Lin contrasts these bleak pictures with images of light. For example, the novel begins at night with Tom in bed. Eva is turning the light switch on and off, flooding the room with light—in fact, light derived from the modern technology to which Tom is attracted. In contrast, the novel ends during the day. Yet Lin includes a description of the father's grave, which clearly represents darkness. However, this particular darkness merely reflects natual laws. Man is mortal; man dies. Death is a natural occurrence that should be accepted. This idea clearly reflects the father's belief in Taoism, which focuses on “process” and “order,” that is, operation within a “pre-established harmony” (Chan 89). Thus, Lin personalizes these dual images of light and dark. Lin especially surrounds the father with images of darkness. For example, the father works in America in a basement, a narrow underground space. However, Lin does not leave the darkness of the father's death unrelieved. This death clearly has a light as well as a dark side. After all, the father's death gives the family a second chance.

Further, the narrative is so well-balanced that it has two distinct halves centered around the father's death. The first half leads up to his death; the second reflects the family's new life after his death. Lin emphasizes the balance between these two halves when Freddie takes a flash picture of the family at the beginning of the story and again at the end. Freddie takes the final picture in front of his father's grave, flooding the family with a light similar to that which floods Tom's room at the beginning of the book. It is no accident that the father's grave is in Freddie's picture. Not only does the father's death give the family a new beginning, but it serves as a catalyst by which the family members “grow” and attempt to balance their lives.

It is interesting that even though the father works hard to improve his family's life, his old-world customs and his very presence inhibit the progress of the youngest family members. In contrast, his death frees them. For example, neither Tom nor Freddie seriously unites with any one until after the father's death. At that point, Freddie marries, although the marriage is a disaster because he does not marry someone who complements his personality. The result is an unbalanced marriage and an unhappy relationship, a lack of the complementary yin and yang. On the other hand, Tom becomes engaged—and happy, again balancing Freddie's life. Thus, Lin presents the idea that the father's death gives life, just as his life causes a kind of death, a gradual stagnation for those family members who are attracted to American attributes (positive or negative). Yet Lin makes it clear that when the family members do begin making their own choices in this new world, there is a qualitative difference in the choices made, especially those made by Freddie and Tom. And, of course, Tom's positive relationship with Elsie complements Freddie's negative one with Sing.

Finally, combining characterization with form, Lin contrasts the father's position as head of the family in the first half of the book with Elsie's position in the second half. Obviously balancing each other in gender, Elsie and the father do share some traits. Like the father, Elsie is quiet and exhibits the confidence that comes with spiritual maturity. She calmly accepts what she cannot change, and like the father, she expects the family to do so as well. For example, she says to Tom at one point, “You are too American! Why be upset about what we cannot help? … Why can't you keep still?” (Lin 224). She does not understand Tom's new-world restlessness.

In addition, like the father's death, Elsie's near death acts as a catalyst for growth within the family. For example, it is Elsie's brush with death that forces Tom to declare his love for her, thus uniting the two of them, and giving her and Tom a second chance in the same way the father's death has given the family a new life. The money received as a result of the father's death has enabled the family to “grow” financially as well as emotionally. Loy has risen to manage a ground-level restaurant, and all the family members feel a common pride in and responsibility for the new business. Similarly, when Tom fears the possibility of Elsie's death, he grows psychologically by overcoming his fears of inadequacy and declaring his love for her, thus freeing her from her isolated, “diseased” condition. Yet the point here is that Elsie does not die. It is as if Lin is saying it is inevitable that the father, representing old world tradition, must die before the members of the next generation can balance their lives between the old and new worlds. Elsie is tied closely to the old world through spiritual tradition. However, unlike the father, she is open to the new world. In fact, it is the new world (modern medicine) that saves Elsie from death. Conversely, an automobile, a product of new world technology (the technology that fascinates Tom) destroys the father. The father dies; Elsie survives. Lin seems to suggest that Elsie is saved because her character is well-balanced.

Thus, by juxtaposing characters' reactions to new world “American” concepts with traditional Chinese philosophy and attitudes, Lin shows the characters' strengths and weaknesses in relation to their complement. Further, it is through well-balanced individuals like Tom and Elsie that Lin tempers the traditional spirituality of Chinese culture with the typical American ability to evolve new tradition. Presenting characters this way emphasizes the belief that individuals must be balanced, like the “complementariness” of the universe in Taoism” yin and yang, in order to become whole human beings. The result of using this technique is a novel that is as well-balanced as its individual characterizations.

Works Cited

Chan, Wing-Tsit. “Chinese Philosophy.” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Paul Edwards. 8 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

Chua, Cheng Lok. “Golden Mountain: Chinese Versions of the American Dream in Lin Yutang, Louis Chu, and Maxine Hong Kingston.” Ethnic Groups 4 (1982): 33-59.

Chua, Chen[g] Lok. “Two Chinese Versions of the American Dream: The Golden Mountain in Lin Yutang and Maxine Hong Kingston.” MELUS 8.4 (1981): 61-70.

Kim, Elaine. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1982.

Lin, Yutang. Chinatown Family. New York: John Day, 1948.

Mote, Frederick W. Intellectual Foundations of China. Studies in World Civilization. Ed. Eugene Rice. New York: Knopf, 1971.