The Fortunes

Clark Gable’s film Parnell is a box-office flop everywhere but in China, and Carole Lombard stages a stunt in which flyers promoting the film are dropped from an airplane.

Anna remembers purchasing her first movie ticket at the age of 10 using money she’d saved working in her father’s laundry in Los Angeles. She was nervous being the only Chinese person in the theater and hid in the bathroom until she heard the organist’s cue that the film was about to begin. When her father found out, he beat her. This punishment was not a deterrent, however, because after that first film, Anna was transfixed. Initially she enjoyed sitting in the darkened theaters, alone with her emotions, but ultimately she realized that she envied the attention that the film stars garnered: People looked at them not judgmentally, but with awe and admiration.

Anna is a well-known star now. She is noticed everywhere that she goes, from shops to airplanes to restaurants. People look at her with awe and admiration and she is asked to sign autograph after autograph. She signs them “orientally yours.” She has changed her name from Wong Liu Tsong to Anna May Wong in order to fit in better with the other stars in Hollywood, and although her father wonders about the change, Anna embraces it.

Anna recalls her father telling her about “rubberneck” tours, groups of people who were guided through Chinatown in the old days to gawk. As a girl, Anna sees what she thinks is a rubberneck tour, but it turns out to be a movie production crew. She is transfixed by the film’s young star, looking so glamorous in a fur coat, and begins modeling fur coats herself. Her father finds her burgeoning career shameful, but Anna thinks that it is much more shameful to wash other people’s undergarments, a task she grew up doing in her father’s laundry.

The family’s original home was their laundry, located in a Chinese neighborhood. Anna lived there until the age of six, at which point the family moved to a diverse neighborhood. After she became a star, Anna liked to point out that although many people come to Los Angeles to be stars, she had been born there. Still, she admits, she traveled “further” than most on her journey.

Anna is passed over to play the leading role of Olan in the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s famous and prizewinning novel The Good Earth. The male lead had been given to a white actor, and the Hays Code forbid interracial relations on screen, and so the role of Olan had gone to a white actress. Anna believes this to be a serious slight, and she remains Chinese enough in her cultural identifications to perceive it as a great loss of face. Although she does not publicly complain about the slight, she does take a break from her film career, sailing to China to visit her father. He moved back after her career took off, and she believes it to be because he disapproved of her choice and wanted to escape her notoriety.

Anna hung around movie sets as a child until she was finally cast as an extra. Chinese extras were paid more than their white counterparts because they were rarer, and Anna recalls wryly that this is one of the few times that she was paid more than a white person. When the film came out, she couldn’t find herself in the crowd and was disappointed. Her big break came a few years later, but in order to get into a role for which she would earn a credit, she had to endure sexual assault at the hands of a director who falsely claimed that he would marry her.

Even before the Hays Code, Anna’s on-screen love interests were limited by public perception and racism within audiences. She did not kiss her white lovers and typically her storylines ended in tragedy. She lost her white lovers and often died by suicide.

In the early days of her career, Anna was praised for her “Chinese-ness” and for the ease with which she cried onscreen.

Anna recalls that her mother had rarely left their home. At the time, the only women who went out and about (called “public women”) were sex workers, and it was considered improper for married women to leave their houses.

Anna’s father was born in a gold camp called Michigan Bluffs after her grandfather immigrated to California. Though she likes to imagine her grandfather coming to America to seek gold, her father has told her that he was a shopkeeper. Anna associates prospecting with her own pursuit of fame and fortune, while the life of a shopkeeper is more in line with her father’s idea of respectability.

As a child, Anna suffered bouts of depression. After one such episode during her teenage years, her parents took her to a Chinese healer who “cured” her by rubbing a gold coin down her arm until she bled. Anna thinks that the real cure was her father’s reluctant agreement to the beginning of her acting career. He was swayed by the director Douglas Fairbanks’s promise to guard Anna’s chastity on set. Fairbanks did the opposite, and Anna recalls him as one of her first lovers. Still, her father voiced objections to her career in acting. He pointed out that in China, actors were at the very bottom of the social ladder and that he could never be proud of her for such a choice.

Anna always had a head for business, and she invests her money well over the years. Her father never accepts financial assistance from Anna, although he does allow her to help pay for her siblings’ education.

During her twenties, Anna becomes a flapper. She has many wealthy, white, older lovers, but she is financially successful (and savvy) enough that she never has to rely on any of them financially. She becomes known for her slender frame, her stylish clothing, and her bobbed hair.

Although Anna is a successful actress, she is often denied roles due to her race. This rankles her, but there is little that she can do about it, and she has to resign herself to the limitations imposed on her career by racism.

Browning, Anna’s second lover, accidentally impregnates her. Anna has an abortion. She does not want a baby, but when she does encounter children, she stops to observe them at play.

Anna’s earliest memory is of her father cutting his queue after the revolution in China in 1911. She herself wore twin braids as a girl, and she recalls getting teased at school because of her Chinese heritage and scolded by her teachers for speaking Chinese.

Although Anna travels widely and meets many of the other famous figures of her era, she is a “leading lady without leading men” because there are so few Asian actors in Hollywood and the onscreen depiction of interracial relationships is forbidden.

Anna’s love life is of such fascination to the public that she voluntarily begins press conferences by addressing rumors about it.

On the boat as Anna journeys to China, she is asked to sing for the other passengers. She complies, but sings a song called “Half-Caste Woman” instead of the number that was requested.

Anna recalls her previous trip abroad, also taken during a difficult time in her career. On that trip, she went to Europe and met Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. She was struck by how little racism she experienced even though there were so few Asian people on the continent at that time. In Europe, she was seen as remarkably chic. Upon her return she was similarly lauded in the US, her European journey having given her an additional aura of foreignness (but white foreignness) and cosmopolitan charm. At 25, she began to lie about her age.

Anna meets a handsome Chinese cameraman who goes by the nickname of “Newsreel” Wong. She is still one of the media’s darlings and is often interviewed. She is asked frequently about her marital status and always replies that she is married to her art.

In China on her extended visit, Anna is popular and is the subject of much media interest. She cannot speak Mandarin and requires a translator when speaking with people who do not know Cantonese. She wants to fit in better and has an entirely new wardrobe made, full of Chinese-style dresses.

She does receive criticism in China, however, for many of the roles that she has played in American films. Unsympathetic figures like sex workers are common for her, and in China especially there is little respect for people seen to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

At the Ming tombs, Anna is encouraged to toss a small stone for luck.

In China she meets the Chinese star Butterfly Wu and opera star Mei Lanfang. They exchange autographs and compliments.

She and Newsreel attend a film together at an open-air cinema, but are shushed for talking during the show.

Anna and Newsreel discuss film and filming techniques. He admits that sometimes when doing interviews he doesn’t always have film in his camera. Generals, in particular, just like the attention that they get from being filmed, and not all of the footage ends up being necessary. Anna notes the way that films are shot out of order, so actors and actresses do not always have a complete grasp of what the film is going to look like when it is completed.

Anna does not have her first Chinese lover until years into her career. She feels that he is like “coming home.”

In Berlin, Anna experiments with her sexuality. It is her “first time with a woman” (143).

Anna learns that in Chinatown, there are sex workers who style themselves after her.

In China, Anna accidentally insults her welcome delegation and is informed by the nationalist government that she is not to travel inland to see her father until the public outcry has died down. She has a dim sum lunch with friend and fellow actor Warner Oland, a Swede who is famous in both the United States and China for playing in the popular Charlie Chan series. Anna cannot help but take note of the popularity of yellowface in Hollywood, and Oland explains to her that white actors who play Asian characters are lauded not only for playing the role of the character, but also for playing the role of an individual of another race.

Anna feels like neither a star nor an actress. By virtue of her race always being mentioned first in conversations about her, she is stuck somewhere between, just as she is somewhere between Chinese and American identities.

Warner Oland is one of the few film stars who can pass as Chinese. Everyone else must be made to look Asian through the taping of their eyes and through makeup, but Warner’s ancestry (rumored to be Laplander) seems to be enough. Yellowface continues to be standard practice in Hollywood, and Anna is once asked if she thinks that she should be allowed to play white roles. Even though it seems acceptable for white actors to play Asian characters, the reverse is not common.

Anna’s father moves back to China in spite of her protests. The original Chinatown is to be razed for a new development, and he feels it is time to go. There will be two new Chinese neighborhoods: a new Chinatown developed by Chinese businessmen, and a competitor called China City developed by a white socialite. China City is to be a kind of Disneyland version of Chinatown, with shop owners expected to wear “traditional” Chinese costumes and asked to speak in broken English. Her father is disgusted with China City, and Anna too finds it distasteful.

The night before she sees her father in China, she has a dream that she loses her face, literally. In the dream, her face is replaced with a smooth mask.

On the journey inland to see Anna’s father, Newsreel tells her that the railroad on which they are traveling was built by the same workers who had built the early railroads in the United States.

She returns to her father’s village at last. Newsreel is there to document the entire meeting between Anna and her father, and he films them over the course of several days. Her father, like many other Chinese men, went to the United States only to amass enough money to live well in China upon his return, and he urges Anna to return to China, too.

Newsreel and Anna spend their last two days in Hong Kong together, although no footage of the excursion remains.

Anna and Newsreel say goodbye on the docks, and Anna heads home. Newsreel admits to not really enjoying cinema, but the information does not seem to offend Anna. She plucks his pocket square from his jacket “to remember him by” and boards her ship (160).

On the ship on the way home, Anna sings in the lounge. She also spends time on deck, drinking while she looks out at the ocean and contemplates her life. Observing that many people live entirely on the surface, she drops her drink into the water.

There are four straight days of storms on her journey back to the United States.

She arrives back in San Francisco. It is 1935, and she contemplates the long history of Angel Island, where thousands of Chinese immigrants have been detained on their way into California over the years.

Anna enjoys going to movie theaters to watch her films. When the lights come on after the credits, there is a moment of recognition on the faces of the other patrons that she finds affirming. As she ages, fewer and fewer people recognize her and ultimately she feels invisible.Anna enjoys going to movie theaters to watch her films. When the lights come on after the credits, there is a moment of recognition on the faces of the other patrons that she finds affirming. As she ages, fewer and fewer people recognize her and ultimately she feels invisible.

Luise Rainer, the woman who played the role of Olan (in yellowface) in The Good Earth, wins an Oscar for her portrayal. Although the choice stings, Anna is moved enough by Japanese atrocities taking place in China that she puts less importance on awards shows.

Shanghai is bombed in 1937. Newsreel photographs a bloodied, crying baby, and the image becomes so famous that it is credited with turning international opinion against Japan. The following year, a film is made about a Chinese cameraman starring Clark Gable.

The Japanese invasion of China forces Anna’s father to return to the US. Although he is unhappy to do so and hopes to be able to go back to China once the war is over, he dies in the United States and is buried next to Anna’s mother.

Anna’s younger sister Mary, who was an aspiring but unsuccessful actress, dies by suicide. Both Anna and her father are deeply saddened and wish that Mary had never tried to go into acting.

The tide gradually turns in Hollywood, and Anna is able to find better roles. There is still discrimination in the United States, however, and Anna still experiences prejudice. In 1955, an Asian man wins an Oscar for the first time. Anna dies in 1961 of cirrhosis. She eventually comes to realize that Chinese immigrants only became Chinese Americans after the revolution. Once China was closed to them, the United States grudgingly admitted them.