OPINION
March 21, 2016
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
Island rules
An Old World compass on our chaotic new continent
Why old ways and old
guys matter so much
Second of two parts
Last issue I talked story about our island elder aunties
telling and telling us, since the time of early Homo
erectus (Java Man), to be kind to strangers. Last issue
also, I recalled Ma Nghia (Chinese-Vietnamese man)
suddenly appearing soaked and chilled at my desk
while I was daydreaming about a lovely lady in her
office window across rainy S.W. Stark Street.
met Ma Nghia exactly 30 years
earlier. He coincidentally (or not)
carries the same ancestral family
name as that Chinese mariner also
appearing in last issue’s column — the
Muslim Han admiral whose grand fleets
left Chinese veggies and medicinal herbs,
white porcelain and stubborn genes,
ev-ver-rywhere. All that, mind you, about
a century before Columbus sailed the
ocean blue — as the saying goes.
It was February 1986 when Nghia
brought his heartbreak to our Saturday
law office — back table of Phan Pham’s lit-
tle Eiffel Tower café. In grim East Salem.
Me and my crazy Samoan cuz David were
discussing a case, while our kids were
working felt pens one table over. Mr.
Phan’s crazy Dalat coffee was coursing our
veins. His savory French pastries were
fulfilling my fondest dreams. I threw down
three.
We introduced ourselves. He tenderly
took a picture of his pretty girl and his
very-very ill son out of his worn wallet.
They were the same age as our Carícia and
Aden. When he looked up from that photo,
a river of tears and snot was streaming
around his mouth, then over his chin. He
was desperately wiping with both back-
hands. He was struggling for control. He
got it. He lost it. He got it. He lost it. He
firmly grabbed it back with two deter-
mined breaths.
When I put my hand on Nghia’s
shuddering shoulder — aduh’illaah
(OMG), the man really-really lost it.
A quick explanatory note: I’m an Indo-
Catalan mix. That first, more thoughtful,
part of me cannot control this other, more
immediate, part. Because of this, because
of my Latin impulse to comfort this
hurting brother, Nghia tumbled into wave
after sobbing wave of sorrow. There was no
way to slow them or stop him. So David and
I retreated into our flakey pâté chaud and
scalding rocket-fuel coffee. Our kids, used
to our kind of work, went back to their
coloring.
Here’s why he cried: Nghia’s second
grade boy was growing an ugly brain
tumor. Generous Oregon Health & Science
U docs were doing their best, but Nghia’s
debt was already deeper than those dark
seas discussed last issue. And many more
critical medical services ordinarily pro-
vided by the Social Security Administra-
tion, were also denied to this ill boy. Our
federal government had deemed Nghia’s
refugee family owned too many assets for
the kid to receive public (free) benefits.
Here’s how that happened: Two years
earlier, Nghia’s family and about 80,000
others shoved out into the dark South
China Sea. They slipped out at night, in
unlit fishing sampans. Parents drugged
their babies and toddlers to prevent their
cries from alerting Communist Viet Nam’s
soldiers and sailors.
Like two centuries of New Americans
before them, though Nghia’s family landed
I
here with little cash, they arrived with
boatloads of cultural and spiritual capital.
And like every dignified immigrant dad,
Nghia immediately inventoried his elders’
and ancestors’ assets, and got to work. He
connected with his overseas Chinese busi-
ness association, and borrowed enough
bucks to buy Woodburn’s abandoned
Greyhound bus station café.
Ma Nghia did what 20 centuries of
Mother China’s streams of merchants —
dealing in pots and pans, pens and papers,
fast-fried chow mein and steaming green
tea — have always done out of small shops
on every street corner of our pretty little
planet: He secured a traditional Chinese
business loan and he got to work. From
that his wife paid rent, bought groceries,
dressed their kids real well for school, and
made payments on their debt.
The problem for Nghia’s critically ill boy
was that Anglo-America statutory law did
not recognize Chinese customary law.
Nghia’s solemn promise to his stern
creditors, our government declared not a
legal debt. Meaning, that his secondhand
stove and exhaust, those platters, pans,
plates, and tableware, were evaluated as if
Nghia owned them. Meaning, he had too
many assets for his sick son to be eligible
for Social Security medical benefits.
Nghia’s case was one, among a hundred
bad intersections between many of
Oregon’s ethnic streams and our unkind
mainstream, that our community law firm
worked year in year out. It was one more
instance of mainstream American institu-
tions failing to value ethnic-minority
America’s tried and true systems of social
and economic organization.
Not an enforceable contract, the feds
declared. “Oh really?” every Chinese busi-
ness owner in each vigorous little shop of
every sleepy village and robust city on eve-
ry continent, could be heard exclaiming. In
chorus. Because it couldn’t be more un-
true. Not among traditional people. Every
borrower’s “face,” and his family’s “place”
in good society, binds Chinese business-
men and businesswomen to their word.
Punto (period). It’s always been so. Ask
anyone. Dude.
Repaying is not optional. Sure, if things
go busuk, you can ask a U.S. federal
bankruptcy court to get your Chinese
creditor off your back. But there’s nothing
a judge, a Vatican pope, or a U.S. president
can then do to restore your or your parents’
or your children’s honor. Or to reconstruct
trust in your family. You’re done.
It took six years to win Nghia’s son’s
case. It took a Malaysian physician and a
Chinese Portlander, a Republic of South
Viet Nam Air Force commander and a Lao
community auntie, a mixed Samoan/
Chinese/Hawaiian/Missouri Band of the
Choctow Indian Nation legal researcher
and an Indo rice sparrow. It took us
arguing against floor after tidy floor of
Men’s Wearhouse U.S. attorneys and their
well-salaried and abundant staffs, until
ultimately a judge justly reinterpreted
that staid 2,000-year-old business
convention — and declared legal Nghia’s
debt. His boy got Social Security.
Three decades passed between all that
and right now. When Ma Nghia and all
those memories snuck up behind me, I did
what every worn time traveller asks
another. I offered him to silah’kan duduk.
To please sit. Because he looked dog tired.
“Thank you, Mr. Polo,” he said. “But I
cannot sit with you.” He pointed his gray
stubbly chin outside. Out to a blue Union
Cab below, parked five floors below my
white-blouse neighbor’s warm window.
Nghia told me he’d opened an Asian
supermercado in South Central L.A.;
angry men torched it after the Rodney
King beating; but he’d built it up again. I
told him that David and I had expanded
our practice into a political extraction
business; built up a billion frequent-flyer
miles; but lost it all when communism
crumbled and United Airlines collapsed.
And then there was that big love I made,
the one gone so wrong. Which brought me
to today, a natty government guy.
He smiled. I smiled. At our memories.
Out my window.
“I fly Viet Nam, tonight,” he said. “My
father passing away —” He paused. He and
me paused. We examined then examined
some more the unremarkable Monsanto
carpeting between his black loafers and
mine. His eyes moved up, onto my desktop,
into a picture of my father and me, my kids
and grandkids. Smiling and all. All that
exile and building, all our losing and
rebuilding, mattering less than us near
each other. Smiling.
Aduh’illaah, I thought he was burst-
blubbering, again. Like 30 years ago. But
he didn’t. He reached around and took out
his wallet — my heart skipped a beat,
thinking he was going to deal me some Ben
Franklin bills. Instead, Nghia handed me
a photo of his handsome son with his kind
wife, arms around their two bright and
beautiful babies — Nghia’s grand-
daughters, same ages and attitudes as
mine. Then he said, “If you let me Mr. Polo,
I must offer you something small, please.”
Then before my heart could resume a
regular rhythm, he undid two coat buttons
and pulled out a manila envelope. A thick
one. Thick and heavy as a Gabriel García
Márquez novel.
He held it between him and me, in two
hands. A humbled gesture no one, nowhere
— not since Java Man sauntered about,
looking for little munchables, skinny mice,
fat tilapia, and the like — can turn away
from. Tidak dudes. Not ever.
I took it with two hands, I touched it to
my hot forehead then to my thumping
heart. I stuffed it into my triple-pleat
khakis (Bi-Mart, $12.99 with coupon). I
took a quick scan left-right for my nosey
office buds, I took another quickie left-
right for our blinking office cams. I took a
long-long look at that pretty lady across
busy Stark Street and bluesy Oregon rain.
Aduh’illaaah! I mean: I’m no longer a
community mechanic like back then, back
when his boy was sick, back when crazy
commies were shoving our families out to
sea, and America was adding hurt to a
world of hurt. Now I’m a gov guapo. I do da
public’s business during City Hall hours on
regulation gray wall-to-wall rugging.
I live the daily dread of official discipline
— smackdowns of a much smaller scale
than denying medical coverage to your
cancerous kid — but it’s still the same
humming fear of white folks’ awful ability
to pull that proverbial rug out from under
any of us. The one pulled out after 300
years of European colonial rule on our
precious Indonesian archipelago, and in
Nghia’s homeland; the one carpeting this
continent, the one at constant risk of
getting yanked out from under Nghia’s
livelihood and mine, all the same.
Today, me plus almost a third of
Portlanders live this status quo, the one
built upon awfully asymmetrical power
relationships between our muscular
mainstream and our many energetic
ethnic streams. It’s an uneasy stasis. One
we might easily make more civil and more
sustainable by applying that old-old rule
our abuelas told and told us. The one that
started this story. Be kind to everyone you
meet on the street. Es-spec-cially strangers
in rags.
Instead of humiliating my brother Ma
Nghia, a refugee dad of a terribly ill boy,
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Today, me plus almost a third of Portlanders
live this status quo, the one built upon
awfully asymmetrical power relationships
between our muscular mainstream
and our many energetic ethnic streams.
imagine all that institutional might mov-
ing in the same direction as our elder aunt-
ies, as our overseas Chinese, as our jihadi
crew of New Americans working the back
table of Mr. Phan’s heavenly Eiffel Tower
café. Imagine us that way, thick envelopes
of grace and gratitude in our hands, near
our hearts. Stuffed in our pants, too.
Imagine a place and time thus shared by
Americans new and settled. OMG, the love
and time and money not squandered.
Imagine our peace.
Editor’s note: If you missed part one of “Island rules,”
visit <www.asianreporter.com/columns-Polo.htm>.
w
The Asian Reporter’s
Expanding America Lexicon
Abuela (Spanish, Indo patois, Pilipino patois):
Grandma. Affectionate address for an elder who
may or may not actually be your grandma.
Aduh’illaah (Indo patois from Koranic
Arabic): Oh my God.
February and father passing: Reference to
Lunar New Year. A most holy day for traditional
Chinese, and neighboring national populations
recipient of Mother China’s enormous cultural
largesse, a week of making right past mistakes
and past obligations. Especially, when also
taking into account a passing parent’s karma, i.e.
the spiritual debts intrinsically tied to that elder’s
descendants.
Café back-table crew: Our deepest affection
and respect for making this case into case law
goes to OHSU’s Dr. Paul Leung; PSU professor
Phyllis S. Lee; RSVN Air Force Col. (Ret.)
Nguyen Quoc Hung; Chanhoung Sikhamsouk;
NWCC researcher David Tagaloa Ah Soon.
Catalan: A nationality, ethnic population, and
language group of northern Spain, southern
France, northern Italia. Our father’s father.
Dalat: A cozy city in Viet Nam’s highlands.
Historically, a cool retreat for southern royalty
from the heat of southern cities. Recently, a
region of revived coffee plantations dating back
to French colonial rule. Then and now, a great
cash crop.
Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014):
Colombian writer. 1982 Nobel Prize winner.
Popularly attributed as originator of Latin-
American Magical Realism. Generally awed as
the grandpa of the grandest run-on sentences,
ever. Entire pages without periods. Marvellous.
Guapo (Spanish, Pilipino, Indo and Hawai’i
patois): Good-looking guy. In this instance, a guy
attractive because of his stable government
paycheck, insurance, pension.
Jihadi (Arabic): As used here, a true believer,
an actor singularly guided by his or her faith.
Pâté chaud (French): A hot flakey pastry with
savory meat inside. One of those great gifts left
behind after French imperialism was shoved out.
Political extraction business: The urgent
need and mad market for getting vulnerable
voices out from under awful political regimes.
The business: bribing politicians, policemen,
prison officials (the 3 Ps) into giving a loved one
back to sorrowing families and communities.
Reference here is to U.S.-made disasters when
nation-building in faraway places collapses,
when the 4 Ps (poets, priests, professors,
politicians) get tortured and killed, turned into
forced labor, or sold back to loved ones.
Tilapia (origin not clear or important): A
freshwater fish grown everywhere with minimal
care. Great source of protein and calcium. Great
flash-fried with just fresh garlic and Walla Walla
onions.
Union Cab: City of Portland licensee, owned
by refugees from the collapsed Ethiopian King-
dom. Like other taxis run by refugees from the
disintegrated Soviet Union or Somalia, these
hard-long-working men without the workplace
skills necessary for hip urban Portland, need this
kind of dignified business to earn honest in-
comes. Gracias mil to Mr. Musse Olol and to
Mme. Judith Mowry for advocating for these
drivers and their familias.