Interview for Oranges on Golden Mountain |
By Judy
Green Elizabeth Partridge's picture book "Oranges on Golden Mountain" (Dutton, $17, ages 4 to 10) fills a chapter in California's history from the vantage point of a young Chinese boy. Readers meet Jo Lee when his family in China is starving, and his mother must send him off to California to work. Jo Lee faces a lonely and hard life in a strange world that the Chinese called Golden Mountain. What comforts him are two special qualities that Partridge adds to his life. These qualities were as much a surprise to Partridge as the book itself. A tall, slim mother of two young adult sons, Partridge came to Davis last week to deliver her one son to the campus. During that trip from her home in Berkeley, she talked to The Bee about the children's picture book she had not set out to write. Her project had started as research in Chinese herbal medicine. "I have been an acupuncturist for 22 years, and I love Chinese medicine," she said. "I love its spiritual aspect and that it sees the whole person as a body, mind and spirit. "That part of my life got me interested in the early Chinese in America. Chinese herbalists were extremely valuable in the time before antibiotics," she said, explaining that she found they treated a lot of Chinese and Caucasian patients. Much of her background information came from research at the Chinese Library at the University of California, Berkeley. With the help of the bilingual librarian and lots of e-mail queries, she pieced together development of the Chinese community around the time of the Gold Rush. When she discovered the extent of the early Chinese fishing villages in the San Francisco Bay, a story about life in these early villages started to form. She wanted to answer her own question: "Why do we know so little about them today?" Partridge said she found no trace today of these earlier villages with the exception of China Camp State Park in Marin County. That many of the early Chinese businesses were subjugated by discriminatory laws is not an issue Partridge wanted to tackle in her book. "A lot of people are nervous about writing outside of their culture," she said. "It's not my place to write about racism because I am not Chinese." But, she added, "I like telling stories out of the mainstream." To keep from stepping on toes, Partridge asked some of her Chinese friends to read a draft of her story. As Jo Lee's story was taking root, Partridge said the mother in her wanted to find a way to keep Jo Lee linked to home. At the time she was studying the Hun concept and doing a lot of gardening with her father. The spiritual aspect of the Hun concept captured Partridge, and she made it part of Jo Lee's life. Everyone has a Hun, a spirit, Partridge explains. In the daytime, the Hun lives in the eyes and its spirit shines out. At night, the spirit roams free from the body, as in dreams. When Jo Lee gets ready to leave China, his mother assures him that he will never be alone, that his dream spirit, his Hun, will be with him. She also gives him a dozen cuttings from her precious orange tree and tells him to plant them as soon as he arrives. The idea for those cuttings came to Partridge one day in her tiny Berkeley back yard, where she was grafting some of the 10 fruit trees she and her 83-year-old dad have cultivated. In "Oranges on Golden Mountain," it takes several years for Jo Lee to grow strong enough to be a good fisherman with his Fourth Uncle and for his precious cuttings to mature into budding trees. When Jo Lee finally feels set, he pays seven copper coins to have a letter writer tell his mother that he is happy in his new land and plans to send for her and his sister. Partridge concludes her story with an author's note about the Chinese in California and some of the exclusionary laws they faced. For youngsters, the strength of the story is in Jo Lee's determination to succeed. Aki Sogabe illustrated "Oranges on Golden Mountain" with a superb combination of paper cut shapes and watercolors. Her authentic depiction of the era will impress and challenge sharp-eyed youngsters who know their history. Partridge said she was grateful for the chance to review the art proofs. She found a few things that needed changing, mainly that the Japanese writing be Chinese, and that the pointed bows of the rowboats be squared off to look like sampans. The Web site for the China Camp State Park is www.cal-parks.ca.gov/. The ranger at the park is Pat Robards. According to Partridge, a descendant of the site's original Chinese residents still lives there, fishes in the bay and runs a small cafe. |