“Wing Sing” Enters the Picture

Among the most interesting—but until very recently very little known—writings by Edith Eaton are a series of articles she wrote for the Los Angeles Express newspaper from February to July 1904. These recount a cross-continental trip she herself made during these months, during which she traveled across Canada and then back, through the United States, to Los Angeles. She stopped in many different places along the way and described most of them, and she also met some memorable people—and had some memorable experiences—both on and off the various trains on which she traveled. Even if she had simply written up the trip in her own voice, Eaton would have produced an intriguing series of articles. But she did more than this: she created an entirely different persona, a Chinese American male businessman from Los Angeles whom she called “Wing Sing.” Perhaps—or perhaps not—the name puns on her decision to “sing” while winging her way back and forth across the continent. In any case, Wing Sing has a mind and character all his own, and half the interest of reading “his” accounts of “his” journey involves the fact that he is a fictional male character created by a woman author. “He” encounters and comments on Canadians, Americans, Chinese, whites, Native Americans, African Americans, Irishmen, and so on, and he even brings in an anecdote about Jamaica. In short, Wing Sing both is and is not Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far herself. Her decision to adopt the voice of a male persona adds extra interest to her tales.

These articles are not, to be sure, “great literature.” Sometimes they are mundane and pedestrian. But often, they are intriguing both for their phrasing and for their content, both for their “plots” and for their characters, both for their varied settings and for their multiple glimpses of different kinds of local color. “Wing Sing’s” accounts of his travels certainly deserve far more attention than they have received. They provide vivid, valuable insights into the experiences of Asian immigrants in North America that are not easily available elsewhere. They will, therefore, be the main focus of this essay.

“Wing Sing of Los Angeles on His Travels”

Each article in the fifteen-article series Eaton composed was titled “Wing Sing of Los Angeles on His Travels.” The first article, which appeared on February 3, 1904, began with an immediate piece of fiction—an editor’s note that read as follows:

Ironically, then, the series opened not with one lie but with several: “Wing Sing” was an invented name; the “well-known American Chinese merchant of this city” was not, in fact, the writer of the articles; and the invented merchant was not even a Chinese man but a half-Chinese woman! Moreover, Wing Sing never makes it to China, and why he would plan to do so by leaving from Montreal, of all places, is anyone’s guess. Eaton seems to have enjoyed having fun with her readers, and with her characters, as the editor’s note already suggests and as the ensuing articles amply demonstrate.

The fiction in this half-fake but half-true series of mixed-genre autobiographical pieces of partly fictional travel writing continues in the very next paragraph:

Instantly, in almost her very first words, Eaton is already indicating several of the main themes, several of the major tones, and several of the key character traits Wing Sing establishes in the series as a whole. Wing Sing is not only a Chinese American; he is a Chinese American who is proud of his Chinese culture and language. Far from being intimidated when white people (usually men) make fun of him, he gives it right back to them. He is, throughout the series, anything but aggressive, but neither is he a shrinking violet. When challenged or insulted, he always responds effectively. Perhaps one reason Eaton adopted a male persona was that this decision made her alter ego’s combative side more credible and acceptable than it would have been if the narrator were a woman. In any case, it is completely typical of Wing Sing that when he tries to pay a compliment to Los Angeles, he does so by comparing it to China. He is proud of his Asian heritage and is not afraid to say so, either to people within the articles or to the articles’ readers, most of whom were probably not Asian.

Eaton’s decision to have Wing Sing write in pidgin English was probably also designed to add credibility to the writing, and although some Asian readers may have disagreed with this tactic, it typifies her own pride in the Asian aspects of her heritage. Rather than having Wing Sing sound like a highly educated Anglo, she lets him speak in a voice that was probably very close to the actual voices of many Asian Americans (and Asian Canadians) at this time. Ways of speaking are often mentioned as the articles continue; such ways become an important theme of the series as a whole. And while Wing Sing sometimes talks in ways that may have contributed to comic stereotypes, his language is also often vivid, fresh, and poetic. Thus, when he explains that he decided to visit Montreal after a cousin living there invited him, he quotes his cousin as saying “that train fly fast with you to me” (Eaton 202). This is wonderfully inventive English. Eaton could easily have made her character’s voice more conventionally “Anglo” and “educated,” but she wisely chose not to do so.

Some of the key traits of Wing Sing’s character (and some of both the humor and defiance of his and Eaton’s own tones) come through almost immediately. For instance, he reports that on the train ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco, some people “in the car they look at me and old man say to his friend: ‘See that Chinaman,’ and his friend look at me and laugh at me. So I look at him and I laugh at him—plenty funny people in America” (Eaton 202). This is splendidly typical of the way Wing Sing acts throughout the trip whenever anyone tries to denigrate him. He immediately makes the denigration boomerang, and he almost always does so in a way that not only preserves his self-respect but makes fair-minded readers respect him all the more. That last comment (“pretty funny people in America”) is typical of his wit. He manages to make an intended insult roll off of him as if he has just enjoyed a joke. He is rarely if ever at a loss for words.

At one point, a well-intentioned but ill-informed white woman speaks to him as follows:

Almost always, after an encounter with someone who is either deliberately rude or foolishly ignorant, Wing Sing turns the whole thing into a joke. His last six words here, for instance, will make many readers laugh out loud. His jokes, however, are never mean-spirited, and when he does joke at someone else’s expense, he is usually responding to another person’s provocation.

Wing Sing, however, meets surprisingly few unfriendly people along the way. If anyone imagined that nearly all whites treated all Asians with disrespect in the very early twentieth century, Wing Sing’s reports do not support that assumption. Perhaps because he is a well-dressed businessman, he is treated not only with good manners but with genuine kindness in most cases and most places. He even notes, for instance, in his first article, that before a voyage from San Francisco to Seattle, a white man helped him get on the right ship. And then, while on the ship, he reports that all the Anglo sailors “make voyage pleasant to me.” In a moment that might have come from the pen of Whitman (if Whitman had written in a Chinese American dialect), Wing Sing comments, concerning a particular member of the crew, “I think sailor very good man, he not drink, he have no girl and he look solemn at the sky and the sea and think big thinks and talk big talks” (Eaton 203). Having celebrated the nobility and thoughtfulness of a common man, Wing Sing continues:

As always, Wing Sing turns what might have been interpreted as a joking insult into a clever retort. One reason fair-minded readers increasingly grow to admire Wing Sing is that he seems a good, simple, well-intentioned man, willing to be friends with anyone who shows him the slightest bit of friendship. Wing Sing is capable of letting unfortunate remarks slide right off his back, sometimes with a clever quip in response.

Having arrived in Seattle, Wing Sing notes the area’s appeal, but he does so in his typical way—a way that often involves a compliment to China: “I say to me, ‘Los Angeles fine sun, this country, fine air. In China, fine sun and fine air too’” (Eaton 203). It doesn’t take long, however, before he meets another somewhat ignorant American, who asks him if he is married. “I say ‘Yes.’ He say, ‘How many times?’ I see that he think he have some fun so I think I have some fun too so I say ‘Four time.’” The American thinks it scandalous that one man can have four wives. Wing Sing responds as follows, in a passage that concludes the first article:

The effectively abrupt ending is typical of Eaton’s talent, while the fact that Wing Sing—an Asian—is wealthy enough to employ an Anglo clerk is mentioned in passing, never emphasized, but telling nonetheless. This is a “Chinaman” who is quite willing to respect others but who first of all respects himself.

Wing Sing Crosses Canada

In the second article, Wing Sing makes an Irish friend—whom he explicitly calls a friend—as his train begins moving east across Canada (Eaton 205). This Irishman is more than willing to make jokes at his own expense (206), but he also at one point inadvertently insults China. Wing Sing immediately sets him straight, and their friendship continues and even grows (206). Eaton, then, does not romanticize or sentimentalize the friendship between these two, and the fact that she does not makes the relationship more credible than it would have been otherwise. Soon they are back to admiring the landscape together. Seeing the Rocky Mountains, Wing Sing is stunned, and, in a wonderful bit of unintended irony, he expressively says, “I not can say nothing. My expression it not express me” (207). Actually, he could hardly have said it better than this. Anyone who has ever seen the Rockies or the Grand Canyon for the first time will know exactly how he feels. Later, when he sees some Canadian Mounted Police, he again expresses himself more vividly than he realizes: “All the people that I see wear big coat and plenty fur, their face red, and they look as if they had much blood. The Irishman tell me it is the climate make them so juicy” (209). The adjective “juicy” is exactly the kind of natural poetry we might expect from someone using a second language.

It is worth remembering that when Wing Sing comically comments on the talk of two women, the actual writer of his words was a woman herself: “The car go very fast, but I think six Canadian Pacific cars not near so fast as two lady tongue” (Eaton 210). But as we have already seen, Wing Sing is not only capable of cracking jokes but of admiring natural beauty, as when he praises “the beauty of the scenery that belongs to Lake Superior. We ride by the north shore in the morning, and in the evening we see the sun set over the big white lake. It is the sky of heaven then” (210). For a businessman, Wing Sing has a fairly poetic mind. By endowing her “Chinamen” with so many of the thoughts, feelings, and imaginative insights many Anglos took for granted in themselves, Eaton subtly helped humanize “Chinamen” in general. The more Wing Sing travels, the more he seems to have in common—mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—with the people who were reading about him. They probably assumed good qualities in themselves; Eaton helps them see good qualities in her alter-ego.

Part of the fun of reading Wing Sing’s reports involves both their style and their frequent, often understated humor. At one point, for instance, Wing Sing explains the Chinese calendar: “The moon go round the earth thirteen times in the last Chinese year. One moon to a Chinaman same as one month to American. See!” (Eaton 212). That final word—“See!”—exemplifies the strongly oral nature of the narrative; it is as if Wing Sing is speaking to readers rather than writing for them. He comes across less as a remote, objective author than as a real personality—even a “character.” For example, he explains that the Chinese, on the first day of a new year,

And that’s where he leaves it. He raises an intriguing topic but then refuses to explain its significance. He arouses curiosity and then refuses to satisfy it, creating a sense of mystery but also showing, once more, that he is in control of what he will say or not say. He will not kowtow to his readers; in fact, he seems to enjoy having fun with them. But his humor is also often balanced by touches of more profound feelings, as when he reports that during the Chinese New Year ceremonies, “all the Chinese people are merry. They enjoy pleasant food, they get pleasure from music and they live comfortable,” but then he continues “and not think of what make them mourn” (Eaton 212). Just when he perhaps leads us to think that the Chinese are an unusually happy people, he suddenly reminds us that they, like all people, know what it is to grieve. Their happiness is partly a way to cope with, or at least temporarily to forget, their grief. In touches like this one, Wing Sing creates a sense of the Chinese not as some “foreign,” exotic people but as fellow human beings. Some of them have, for instance, many of the same subtle character flaws as their Anglo counterparts, such as an interest in showing off. Thus Wing Sing offers the following anecdote:

This story exemplifies much of the substance and tone of Wing Sing’s narratives. He is less interested in making grand observations than in providing little character sketches that reveal more than Wing Sing himself makes explicit. In the sketch just described, however, Wing Sing lets his cousin suggest that Lee Chu is just a bit full of himself. Wing Sing reports his cousin’s words and then immediately moves on to other topics, rather than commenting any further in his own voice.

Often Wing Sing suggests some of the interesting ways in which traditional Chinese culture was beginning to change in its new North American environment. The anecdote just cited, in fact, is one small instance of that recurring theme. But an especially fascinating example of this kind of change is revealed in the following story:

Even North American Chinese culture, then, was beginning to be affected by the rise of the so-called “New Woman.” When Wing Sing suggests that it may not be a good idea to bring his own wife from China to America, his cousin reassures him but advises that he just not talk to his wife too much if he does so; too much talking to a wife can make the “woman lose her humility.” Wing Sing, on the other hand, replies that too little conversation between a husband and wife can make her discontented. He concludes: “It is difficult to know how to behave toward a woman” (Eaton 213). The fact that these words were actually written by a woman makes the joke all the more amusing. Again, Wing Sing makes it clear that complexities in relations between the sexes are universal, not simply confined to Anglo culture.

Yet whatever Wing Sing describes, he describes in his memorable style, as when he reports, “I never see no city more better than Montreal.” Citizens of that city make lots of money, but they also enjoy outdoor wintertime activities: “The cold, it is very cold, but the Canadian man and the Canadian woman they not like stay in the house too much. They sport like little child that is strong like man”—a splendidly paradoxical simile (Eaton 213).

Wherever Wing Sing happens to stop or stay, he makes intriguing observations. Commenting on New York City, for instance, he reports that most of the Chinese there “engage in the laundry work. That is, because it is a business that requires but little capital—beside it is a business that the Chinaman is allowed to go into. The white man he keep the Chinaman out of the millionaire business” (Eaton 215). Everything up to the point of the dash simply reaffirms common Anglo stereotypes about the Chinese. But everything after the dash puts an intriguing critical spin on standard assumptions. Wing Sing is often critical in just the same way: he makes one telling observation after another, never hectoring, never lecturing, and perhaps making his points all the more effectively for that reason. His satire is over with almost before one realizes the sting he has delivered. Consider, for example, the way he deals with the common charge that Chinese immigrants were addicted to drugs and illegal games of chance:

These comments are intriguing for several reasons. First, Wing Sing never tries to deny that some Chinese people in North America are indeed involved in drugs and gambling. Their involvement, however, stems only from a desire for “fun”—a desire to which most people can relate. But then he once more turns the tables on accusers: some Chinese enjoy the “fun” of learning new languages and even new religions—as many as possible, in fact! This is an entirely different kind of amusement, and Wing Sing leaves it unclear whether Song Long is devoted to amusement, to a desire for education, to a sincere interest in religious ideas, or to some combination of all of these possible motivations. Here, as so often elsewhere, Wing Sing’s comments are more subtle and thought-provoking than they might on the surface seem.

Chinese Canadians and Chinese Americans

In one especially intriguing report, Wing Sing recounts how one of his cousins in Montreal, married but childless, was melancholy about having no children. Therefore, he and his wife decided to adopt a baby from New York City:

This is a kind of multiculturalism that probably would have astonished—or even shocked—some of Wing Sing’s Anglo readers, but Wing Sing doesn’t bat an eye when reporting it. Yet just when one might assume that Wing Sing is entirely at ease with the adoption, he ends his report by recounting how he walked in on his cousin and wife as they were bathing the child:

And that’s it: another ambiguous moment in a series of articles full of such moments. Wing Sing seems unbothered by the idea of his cousin adopting a non-Chinese baby, but he does seem disturbed by the idea of having so much fun bathing the child. In moments like this, we realize that even Wing Sing has his limits as an advocate for multiculturalism. Adopting a non-Chinese baby is one thing, but laughing while bathing the child seems to be crossing some important cultural line. Perhaps Eaton is here having fun at the expense of her own Chinese narrator.

On the whole, however, Wing Sing comes across as a man of cosmopolitan tastes and values—a man who has been broadened by his travels and whose narratives perhaps help broaden the mindsets of his readers. At one point, for instance, he recounts advice a cousin gave him about travelling:

That phrase—“small shrewdness”—can be interpreted in at least two ways: either his cousin shows very little shrewdness, or his cousin is shrewd in a small, limiting, and quite provincial or even petty way. Either way (or in both ways), the words imply Wing Sing’s own confidence that he is wiser than his cousin. But, in his typically wise way, he never says so to his cousin. Wing Sing knows how to be tactful, letting others preserve their self-respect unless they blatantly threaten his own.

Conclusion

It would be easy to continue recounting various details of Wing Sing’s narratives – easy if space were unlimited. Since space is not unlimited, however, suffice it to say that in creating Wing Sing, Eaton created one of her most memorable characters. And, in doing so, she revealed more of the wit, humor, wisdom, and complexity of her own personality. Everything Wing Sing says or does suggests something or other about Eaton herself. Surely she admired this figment of her own imagination: there is, after all, quite a bit to admire. He is intelligent, perceptive, sensible, wry, imaginative, diplomatic, and shrewd not only in his assessments of other people but also in his responses to the various cultures to which he is exposed and in his reactions to cultural changes. And, in all these ways, he reflects many traits of the woman who created him and set him on his journey.

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Works Cited