Imperial (80 page)

her Chinese history quite well . . . Terrie,
my Spanish-speaking interpreter,
took one of the ceramic bowls/plates, but I taught her how to pray forgiveness from the dead the Buddhist way so no spirits haunt her. My mom said it wasn’t good to be down there too long due to her superstitions and respecting the dead and their possessions. Her suspicions were confirmed when, on our way out, climbing up the stairs, we spotted a swarm of cockroaches in the nearest corner to us. Being girly girls, we sprinted out of that place as fast as our fat legs could carry us.

“WE’RE VERY NICE TO THEM!”

Next to the Victoria was a passageway whose lefthand wall was comprised of double-padlocked doors. I knocked on a door, which was finally opened by a scared young Chinese girl who denied being able to speak Spanish. I knocked on another door. Through the bars of the inner door, another girl said
no
and
no
and
no.
At the very end of the passageway, a young man said through bars that yes, they all came from Canton, and no, the Mexicans were not nice to them. At this, Yolanda bristled and cried out:
We’re very nice to them!

The young Chinese man and the old Mexican woman stood hating each other.

No, the man then said, I could not interview him. He didn’t want my money. All the Chinese were in a panic now; they were all hiding, locking their doors. As we departed, we passed a grating through which our flashlight revealed winding steps and rubbish. A Chinese woman said that she didn’t know what was down there or what it was for. I looked over my shoulder, and saw her anxiously polishing the grating.

“I’VE NEVER REALLY HEARD ABOUT THE TUNNELS”

After that, I was more than willing to admit that I needed at least two sorts of people if I were to investigate these tunnels. On the one hand, I needed somebody like Yolanda, whose local knowledge and connections had made it possible to find the tunnels at all. On the other hand, I needed somebody Chinese, and not just any Chinese but an adventuresome individual who
wasn’t
from Mexicali, who couldn’t be controlled by Señor Auyón, and who had nothing to lose by discovering secrets and sharing them with me. Originally I had hoped that Calexico would be far away enough, but my experience with old Mr. Wong was typical; I’d had several others; after my first peek beneath the Victoria, when I actually had a sheaf of letters from a Chinese tunnel, and wanted only to translate them, I went to the Yum Yum Restaurant on Imperial Avenue, an old-timey sort of place whose owner had been recommended to me; he wasn’t there, but members of his family skimmed several of the letters as I stood before them, cast hard gazes upon me, and insinuated that I was a bad man to have stolen these dead people’s letters. I assured them that I had only borrowed the letters, and with full permission of that tunnel’s current owner, but the restaurateurs only became more and more unfriendly. So ended my attempts to hire a Chinese Calexican.

Sacramento, my home town, seemed far enough away. My little girl’s piano teacher is Chinese, so I asked her whether she knew anybody who could help me, and she did; I hired the mother-daughter team of Clare and Rosalyn Ng on the spot. A couple of weeks later, while I lay in bed, I mean at Headquarters, those two ladies were flying off to San Diego, where in a well-coordinated espionage operation of almost inconceivable scope, they would rendezvous with Terrie, who now knew where to take them. As a sample of what they got out of Mexicali Chinese
versus
what I so often did, here is an interview I conducted with a fourteen-year-old boy named Tim, with insertions from their own interview.

On that hot October night, across the street from the red-skirted whores in the doorway of the Nuevo Pacífico, the alley where the boy lived, the night-roofed passageway as I should really call it since it was so narrow and high-walled, ran like a deep slit into the night. This was the place where Yolanda had shouted:
We’re very nice to them!
An old man stood just within the mouth of that slit, gazing out. When the interpreter and I entered, he began to follow us. The interpreter told him the name of the boy we were seeking, and he nodded and kept following. At the second flight of steep wooden stairs we began to ascend, and he stopped following. Then what? On our right and below us stretched the nightscape of a torn flat roof. Below us a pigtailed Chinese girl five or six years old darted back and forth in the brighter part of the passageway we had entered. The interpreter tapped on a screen door, and the brother of the boy we were looking for came; he remembered Terrie but could scarcely communicate in Spanish; all that we established was that the boy was not there; perhaps he was working at the restaurant. The next morning I got him out of bed, and the interview went like this:

Why did your parents want to come to Mexico?

My father thought that here would be easier to find work.

From what province did you come?

He thought a long time, digging his thumbnail into the cleft of his chin.—Kuong Tong, he said, and helped me spell it. It’s a very big city. Tai San is the province.

(Rosalyn Ng’s note:
Canton/Guangdong.
As it happened, the owner of the Golden Dragon Restaurant, where Tim worked as a busboy, came from Tai San.)

What do you remember about that province?

Prettier than here, he said after a long hesitation.

What did it look like?

Lots of really big houses and buildings.

And were the people more friendly or less friendly?

Of course they are friendlier there.

How do the people treat you here?

Like an immigrant.

So when they treat you like an immigrant, how do they treat you?

I’m not sure how to say it. They think that I don’t know.

How does that make you feel?

It makes me feel that I don’t know how to speak so well, to communicate so well.

Do you want to go back?

I don’t know.

(Rosalyn’s note:
The kids hate it here and don’t have many friends. Kids think parents do not particularly like it in Mexicali either. However, it is very hard to just pick up and move back to Canton because plane tickets to go back home are extremely expensive and they’ve yet to pay off the tickets they bought to get to Mexicali . . . Kids don’t really keep in touch with old friends. Not only is talking on the phone expensive and writing letters time-consuming, everyone back home thinks they are living a [more] wonderful and better life than they had in China. They are too embarrassed to reveal the truth to their friends. By not keeping in touch, they neither have to lie [n]or tell the truth, but their friends will continue to imagine them living “the” life.
)

How long have you lived here?

A year.

Are you in school with Mexicans?

Mexicans and Chinese.

What do you study in the school?

Spanish. Everything is in Spanish. We study math, history, science . . .

What is your father’s job now?

Restaurant.

What is your job and what is your father’s job?

He is a cook and I am a busboy.

Why did your father decide to come to Mexico and not to another place?

He wanted to come here.

(Rosalyn’s note:
Dad first came from China ten years ago for work. It was hard to find a job in China and the pay was bad. The mother, Tim and his younger brother came here a year ago.
)

Who told him about Mexico?

He has family here.

For how long?

Oh, for a lot of years.

Do they live here in the Chinesca?

No, in San Luis Río Colorado.

Why do you live here and not with them?

Because my father likes it here. You can buy a lot of things here in Mexicali.

(Rosalyn’s note:
Whole family was basically tricked into coming. They were told that Mexicali would be a huge, beautiful, and cosmopolitan city booming with possibilities and jobs to make money. However, especially compared to Canton, the city turned out to be an absolute disappointment. Not only is Canton better than Mexicali, it is actually harder to find a job and make a living in Mexicali than in Canton. The language barrier also proves to be a drawback.
)

How often do you go to San Luis?

A few times.

What is your mother’s work?

Same as me.

What does your brother do?

Works in a shoe store.

Is that better money as you or the same?

The same.

What do your parents say about Mexico?

They think it’s really bad.

Why?

Because this area is very old and very poor.

In San Luis is it also old and poor?

Yes.

Which is worse?

Here.

When your father came here alone, how did he know where to go in Mexicali?

When he got to Mexico City there were friends here who told him where to go.

Is your father a member of a Tong?

No.

So how did your father meet those friends who helped him?

They’re friends of my uncle.

Your relatives in San Luis, have they done enough for you, or are you disappointed?

They’ve done plenty. They come and they visit.

(Rosalyn’s note:
The family has relatives in Mexicali, but don’t see much of them.
No mention of the San Luis relatives.)

How much is the rent?

Ninety dollars a month.

(Rosalyn’s note:
The family lives in a one-room apartment and pays twelve hundred pesos,
nearly a hundred and twenty dollars,
for rent. The room is divided in two by a curtain, so there is a bedroom for all four family members to sleep in and a living room. The bedroom consists of one queen-sized bed and a bunch of sleeping bags on the floor. When the dad lived here alone, the space proved to be sufficient. But now that the whole family is here, the parents are looking for a larger place to move to . . .
)

In one month, how much do you make at the restaurant?

Three thousand pesos.

Must you give all the money to your family, or can you keep some for yourself?

A little bit for myself, and the rest I give to my mother.

Do you know what
pollos
are?

He shook his head quickly. So I told him what
pollos
were.—Yeah, he said, I’ve heard of that.

And what Chinese word do you use for that?

I don’t know.

Do you ever wish to go to the United States yourself?

Of course.

If you could cross like a
pollo,
would you do it?

He shook his head very quickly, laughed nervously and said: Very dangerous.

(Rosalyn’s note:
Gaining legal status . . . is very easy to attain and keep, as long as you don’t try to escape to the United States. Takes ten years to get a Mexican passport.
)

He wanted to bring me back to Mr. Auyón’s office, so I asked him: Are you friends with Mr. Auyón?

No, he replied dully.

Now that I’ve showed you photos of the tunnels, do you believe that the tunnels exist?

He shook his head.

I don’t know, because I’ve never really heard about the tunnels.

But now that I’ve showed you pictures of the tunnels, do you believe in the tunnels?

Today is the first day I’ve heard about them.

If you told your father or mother or brother about the tunnels, would they be interested or wouldn’t they care?

I don’t know how to answer. My Dad wouldn’t want to go down in one.

Why?

Because it’s better here. He wouldn’t be interested even to see one. And I wouldn’t be interested even to see one.

Why are the Chinese losing their power in the Chinesca and more and more Mexicans coming in?

The Mexicans are coming here because they need work.

But why can the Mexicans take over the Chinesca?

The Mexicans are taking work from the Chinese because they can and they like to.

Does it make you angry?

No.

Why doesn’t it make you angry?

I like to talk with the Mexicans.

When you see the girls standing across the street in the doorway of the Nuevo Pacífico, what is their work?

Their work is to stay at home and take care of the children.

So are they doing their work?

No, they’re just talking.

Tell me a story about something interesting that has happened to you.

When I first got here, I felt very unhappy, very bad. I felt as if I were in the middle of nowhere. But then as I got to know Chinese people here and Mexicans, I started to like it more, and now I can speak Spanish, and it’s good to know another country, another language.

So you have a lot of Chinese friends now?

Yes.

Can we meet one who has been here a long time?

I have one friend who lives very near here but he doesn’t speak Spanish at all.

Then you can translate.

I don’t know where he lives.

If he lives so near, then how come you don’t know where he lives?

Tim declined to answer.

DAYS OF IVORY

I’ve never really heard about the tunnels. The tunnels don’t exist. Meanwhile, I kept going into tunnels, sometimes with José López from Jalisco, who remained alert but unimpressed, sometimes with Terrie the Mormon girl, for whom it was as much of an adventure as it was for me even though her friends usually got disappointed when she showed them the photographs. Half a dozen times I had the experience of descending below a Mexican-owned boutique or pharmacy, asking the owner where another tunnel might be, getting referred to this or that shop a door or three away, going to this or that shop’s proprietor, and being told: There are no tunnels here. Sometimes they’d say: There is a tunnel but I don’t have a key. The boss has the key. How long are you here until? Tuesday? Well, the boss will be in San Diego until Tuesday.—One lady assured me that the tunnels were a myth; another said that her establishment’s tunnel was being rented out as a storage space and she didn’t have the key; a third, who’d operated her business in the Chinesca for twenty-two years, assured me that there had never been any tunnels in the Chinesca. For some reason, of all the people in the Chinesca it was most often the female Mexican shopkeepers who lied and denied.