A Temple of Forgotten Spirits

Introduction

Introduction

“Where are you from?”

I’ve been weary of this question since I was very young. My parents have often told how, on my returning home from kindergarten in a suburb of the Kansas City area on the Kansas side, I asked them why everyone at school, teachers as well as other kids, kept asking me where I came from. My mother told me in a firm tone, “You’re a Chinese American. You were born in Kansas City, Missouri.”

Years later I realized that the hard but supportive edge in her voice came from being asked the same question during her childhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Yet the question never stopped. It was not the everyday version of the same words, often heard at social occasions or business meetings when people are merely getting acquainted; this was something apart, a question I was asked at times when my white companions were not being asked. I heard it all through my childhood, then in adulthood—and answering “I’m from Kansas City” often brought exchanges like this one, which occurred in my early twenties in Kansas City, Missouri:

“Where are you from?”

“Kansas City.”

“No, I mean, where were you born?”

“Kansas City.”

“Uh, no, I mean, what’s your nationality?”

“I’m an American.”

“Uh, yeah, but I mean, where are you from?”

“Kansas City.”

“No, but I mean, what’s your origin?”

“My ancestors were Chinese, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s what I meant.”

The unfortunate white man speaking to me was courteous, curious, and meant well. He had, however, stumbled across the question that I had not only heard all my life, but had largely come to hate hearing by that time. I was giving him trouble partly to make a point—that he should ask the question he intended, and phrase it correctly; he knew very well I was an American—and partly to amuse myself because the question was so old and unpleasantly routine to me. I also let him off easy; to the word “origin,” I was tempted to say “Kansas City” again. Of course I knew what he meant all along; he meant what most such well-meaning white acquaintances meant: You don’t look like my idea of an American, so to me “your nationality” means a foreign country.

How is this different when another Asian American asks the same question? Among us, it’s a step in bonding. When I meet an Asian American of any ethnicity who also grew up in a suburb or small town in the interior of the country, I know we have certain experiences in common regardless of our ages and our locations during our formative years.

On the coasts, Americans of all races tend to imagine that the Midwest, and most of the nation, is empty of Asian Americans. In fact, even Kansas City, in the middle of the country, has had a continuous Chinese American population since the 1870s. America’s cultural beliefs about Chinese-American history have more to do with image than facts. Chinese Americans from the Midwest and South present a puzzle to other Americans of all backgrounds in that we don’t fit the mass media images of Chinese Americans.

As I was growing up, our home had contemporary American furniture mixed subtly with Chinese furniture and artwork. At a friend’s house down the street, where my friend’s father was from New Orleans, I discovered I liked grits; from friends who were one generation removed from the Ozarks, I developed a Midwestern accent with southern Missouri flavors, though years of living away have now mostly washed it out; from family trips to Chinese restaurants, I found the joys of dim sum long before our white friends had ever heard of it. Like many of my generation, I grew up on both classic rock and folk music, and I also became a fan of Johnny Cash and a fair amount of classic country music.

In the world of entertainment, that would be a comedian’s one-liner: An Asian American who sings “Folsom Prison Blues” with the car stereo.

I learned, however, that I was not alone as a Chinese American growing up away from the big coastal cities. Among the friends and acquaintances I’ve met are Chinese Americans from Junction City, Kansas; Terre Haute, Indiana; Moscow, Idaho; Stevens Point, Wisconsin; and many other places around the country never seen as the homes of Asian Americans in most books, films, and television shows.

Yet even wearing jeans and a t-shirt, eating grits for breakfast and talking a bit like Johnny Cash, I still had people wanting to know, “Where are you from?”

And they did not mean Kansas City, Missouri.

This series of adventures about Jack Hong, a young American of Chinese descent, tells a distinctly American story. The tales range throughout the nation, including some major cities but not limited to them. The character, despite the first-person narrative and occasional similarities to the author, is not me. His knowledge about his cultural background is limited and sketchy when his adventures begin; in fact, he is not even interested in the subject.

While the story is American, Jack is led on his quest by a creature out of Chinese folklore. A “unicorn” in the strictest definition, it has no connection to the unicorn of European lore. According to tradition, the creature is very gentle, never stepping on any living animals or plants. It appears fleetingly, always at auspicious moments. With the body of a deer, tail of an ox, the hooves of a horse, and one fleshy horn, it does not tread on the grass or eat anything living. A traditional saying about it, “Qilin guo shan,” or “The unicorn passes over the mountains,” meant that it showed great spiritual power. However, in recent centuries, even its place in folklore diminished, until it became little more than a common symbol of good luck rather than a creature of great importance.

In keeping with the folklore tradition of the Chinese unicorn, these stories are themselves fantasy, as Jack lives not only in an everyday world much like ours, but at the same time finds it a world where ghosts, deities, and demons also thrive among and around humans. In that sense, the stories about Jack Hong are a continuation in the long trail of the elusive creature he follows.

During Jack’s personal search for a meaningful direction in his own life, he discovers the variety and geographical range of his heritage in America. In finding others, he finds himself. He learns, in his own way, where he’s from.

Author’s note: Each individual adventure is followed by an author’s afterword. If these seem intrusive to the flow of the story, skip ’em!