A Direct Line
Columbus Park: This Ancestral Earth
By Megan T. Lui
The footsteps of selfie-snapping tourists are layered on top of the footsteps of Caesar, which are, in turn, layered on top of the footsteps of Romulus himself, and so on. This lasagna-like cross-section of the earth is what you will see from some corners of the Roman Forum. More than two millennia worth of dust and life separate the ancient ruins from the streets of modern-day Rome that rise above and around it. If I were to walk to the middle of Manhattan’s Columbus Park and extract a similar core sample of the earth beneath, I would have in my hands a geological and genealogical kuih—my footsteps layered on top of the footsteps of my mother, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great grandfather, the Astors, the Founding Fathers, all the way to the Lenape of Mannahatta. Here my family lived, played and, most importantly, fought for our lives. Columbus Park has been the site at which my ancestors, as Chinese in America, as Chinese American, have negotiated their sense of belonging in this country. On March 21st, this year, my sister and I became the sixth generation to do so when, with our mother, we attended the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Rally Against Hate at Columbus Park. After 150 years, our family has ended up in the same exact spot in the same exact park, still fighting the same exact fight.
The first in our family to arrive in America was my great-great-great grandfather Lai Lau Foon. In the mid-1800s, teenaged Lau Foon left his family’s village in Toisan, China for the Gold Mountain of America. He left behind a motherland torn apart by opium wars, rebellions, and banditry, for a fabled country where streams of gold flowed and men made fortunes from building a river of iron. After an arduous two-month steerage trip full of disease and violence, he arrived in California only to realize quickly that there was no gold at all, only the gold of his own flesh. He would have to work on the river of iron, the Transcontinental Railroad. For a “Chinaman” living in America then, surviving was difficult enough on its own, with arson, robbery, and mob lynching a daily occurrence. For a “Chinaman” living in America and working on the railroad, survival required a miracle—a “Chinaman’s chance.” For some stretches of the railroad, the Railroad Chinese had to hammer through indomitable granite mountains with only their bare hands and sledgehammers almost as heavy as they were—many died from exhaustion. For other stretches, they were lowered in baskets to set dynamite before they were hastily hoisted back up—many died from accidental explosions. In the high Sierra Nevada, avalanches, thin air, blizzards, falling trees, and cave-ins took many lives. In the flat desert of Utah, it was the blistering sun that took other lives. All the while, the Railroad Chinese were paid a fraction of what their peers received.
On May 10, 1869, when officials of the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad drove two symbolic gold spikes into the earth to mark the completion of the railroad, they posed for a historic photograph—not one Railroad Chinese was included in the photograph, even though they made up 90% of the workforce. By bridging the Atlantic and the Pacific, the railroad not only united and healed a divided nation postbellum, but it also helped make postbellum America an economic powerhouse. This new America was literally built on the bones of Chinese like Lau Foon but a single photograph erased them all from history. Shortly after, in the face of mounting anti-Chinese sentiment on the West Coast, Lau Foon rode on the very railroad that he helped build to try his luck in New York City, where he had heard there was a growing enclave of Chinese.
The land under present-day Columbus Park was once part of the Five Points, a notoriously lawless immigrant slum where Lau Foon once dared to live, a revolutionary act in itself at the time. The park was built on top of a corner of the slum once known as the Mulberry Bend. In his 1888 article “Some Adopted Americans” for The American Magazine, Allan Forman wrote, “Mulberry Bend… is an eddy in the life of the city where the scum collects, where the very offscourings of all humanity seem to find a lodgment…a seething mass of humanity, so ignorant, so vicious, so depraved that they hardly seem to belong to our species.” Poverty, police corruption, gang warfare, race riots, muggings, and murder were endemic to the slum, where alleyways were named only too aptly “Bandit’s Roost” and “Murder Alley.” Tensions between different immigrant groups often bubbled over, especially between the Irish and the Chinese.
Life in the Five Points was especially dangerous for Lau Foon. Until 1874, it was easy for a white person to get away with violence against the Chinese because the Chinese were not allowed to testify against white citizens. The 1870s saw white Americans blaming the Chinese for plague and smallpox outbreaks, and scapegoating Chinese for taking away their jobs during an economic panic. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, white mobs often burned down Chinese settlements, and either chased Chinese residents away or massacred them. The most notorious example was the 1871 Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles, often called “the worst lynching in US history”: 500 non-Chinese men murdered 19 Chinese immigrants (15 of whom were hanged). Anti-Chinese discrimination reached a fever pitch with the passing of the 1875 Page Act and then the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. The first federal law to limit immigration in US history, the Page Act effectively banned the entry of all Chinese women—only for the Exclusion Act then to ban almost all Chinese men as well seven years later. Lau Foon left the massacres of the West Coast only to discover that anti-Chinese sentiment was quickly spreading on the East Coast as well, only to find himself living in the most dangerous neighborhood in the nation, peering over his shoulder with every step he took.
Under these circumstances, for Lau Foon, the simple act of surviving, of drawing breath, of walking across Mulberry Bend every day was an act of protest itself. By giving the Five Points a try, by not giving up on a life in America, he was silently but defiantly signaling that he too belonged to this country, just as much as any other immigrant. We can never know what he endured in the Five Points but we do know that, despite his best efforts, after a few years, he ultimately returned to China to marry, and never came back. China, despite its famine and social upheaval, still felt more like home than America: even after his sacrifices for the railroad, America had made it clear that he was not welcome. And yet, in the twilight of his life, when he sat for the only photographic portrait of his life, he wore a suit and tie, with close-cropped Western-style hair, instead of a traditional tunic and Qing-style queue. Perhaps his belief in America and its opportunities endured, perhaps America did feel like home in some ways, because he decided to send his only son Cheong Lok back to the same country that had so violently expelled him.
In the twilight of his life, Lai Lau Foon (right) and his wife sat for the only photographic portraits of their lives. Instead of a traditional Chinese tunic and Qing-style queue, he chose to wear a Western suit and tie, and sport a close-cropped haircut. His wife Yoon Gum Dai (left) wore a traditional Chinese tunic with a Mandarin collar.
His son, my great-great grandfather Cheong Lok lived and thrived near Columbus Park for most of his life, during a time when the law considered him to be an “illegal” immigrant and made it nearly impossible for him to be there at all. In China, Cheong Lok had grown up hearing legends about the “beautiful country” of golden mountains from his father and every other man in the village: the Five Points, which had become known as “Chinatown” in the years since his father left, was like a second village for their family. However, due to the Exclusion Act, he had no way of seeing this second hometown for himself until after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which provided a loophole. With many official records destroyed, the Chinese who had already received US citizenship were able to bring over other Chinese, whom they claimed to be “blood relatives.” Once he found someone to claim him as a “paper son,” Cheong Lok left his wife and son behind in Toisan, and made the same journey across the seas that his father had made decades earlier.
He spent the entire journey memorizing a lengthy coaching book detailing his new identity. When he arrived on Angel Island, customs officials grilled him on his supposed biographical details, village history, and genealogy. How many steps do you have to take from your house to the village well? How many banyan trees frame the village gate? How many women have bound feet in your village? If his answers did not match the details provided by his “relative,” they would arrest him as an “illegal immigrant,” and then send him home or detain him for years. After passing the lengthy customs interrogation, Cheong Lok then took the very railroad that his father had built cross-country and settled in New York’s Chinatown, exactly where his father had lived decades before. He found work as a laundryman, wielding an iron press in lieu of his father’s iron sledgehammer. Mulberry Bend had recently been transformed into a new park called Columbus Park, a park that he would cross everyday to pick up and deliver laundry for his customers. He lived out the rest of his life near Columbus Park under his “paper son” name “Li Goon Bing” and, because of the Page Act, never saw his wife ever again.
Cheong Lok and his people were deemed “illegal,” as no human should be, while other immigrant groups entered unchecked into America, especially from Europe. Yet, he was still able to find a way into the country and have his own shot at the land of opportunity. By crossing Columbus Park on his deliveries day after day, by staying in America, he sought to prove that he had as much right to be in this country as any of the thousands of European immigrants arriving through Ellis Island every day. Not only did he survive, as his father did, but he thrived and accomplished what his father was not able to do: he was able to settle permanently in America and build a life for himself in this new country. Like his father, he too would send for his own son, Yu Pak, to join him in America because he too believed in his people’s place in this country and the possibilities that this country had to offer.
Columbus Park would be where Cheong Lok’s son, my great-grandfather Lai Yu Pak, would enlist to fight for the US, a country still new to him personally, a country that had violently rejected his ancestors, a country that would not offer his people citizenship. Like his father, Yu Pak left behind his wife and sons, and arrived in this country as a “paper son,” under the name “Li Leong Nan.” He joined his father in the punishing hand-laundry business and settled in Chinatown, steps away from Columbus Park. Sixty years after the Page Act and the Exclusion Act, it was still nearly impossible for Chinese to immigrate “legally” to the US. The Cable Act of 1922 took one step further and barred all Asian peoples living in America from citizenship completely. However, during WWII, the US government passed the Magnuson Act as a repeal of the Page Act and the Exclusion Act in order to encourage enlistment: now, not only were up to 105 Chinese per year allowed to immigrate, but Chinese men could become naturalized citizens after military service, and bring their wives and children to the US legally as well. Yu Pak, like thousands of Chinese men in America at the time, decided to enlist to fight in the US Army, even though he had only just arrived in the country. For men like Yu Pak, enlistment was their opportunity to prove their “American-ness” and the strength of Chinese men, and to shatter stereotypes of their homeland China as the “sick man of Asia.” By gaining citizenship, he could also bring over his sons, and even his wife, to America as “legal” immigrants. For the first time in almost a century, their family would not be divided across two continents and would not have to live in the shadows under assumed identities.
Lai Yu Pak/Li Leong Nan/“Jack” (right, standing) posed for a portrait with his father Lai Cheong Lok/Li Goon Bing (left, seated) after enlisting to fight in WWII at 70 Mulberry Street.
Yu Pak enlisted in the U.S. Army at 70 Mulberry Street, on the northeast corner of Columbus Park, and later Anglicized his name to “Jack.” Before deployment to Burma, Jack posed for a portrait in his new uniform, with his father Cheong Lok, who chose to wear a Western suit. In another photo, we see Jack, shorter than the Americans in his unit, carrying his pack with pride. During his service, he learned to love American candy bars and to cook hamburgers, but he also learned the meaning of the word “chink,” which he would later have to explain to his granddaughter, my mother, when it was her turn to immigrate. When he later died at the old age of 92, after living most of his life in America, Jack would have his funeral at Ng Fook Funeral Home on 36 Mulberry Street, on the southeast corner of Columbus Park. The American Legion Lt. Kimlau Post 1291 saluted his coffin and accompanied his hearse from 36 Mulberry Street northward past 70 Mulberry Street—where he had enlisted in the US Army half a century earlier—and so his path to “American-ness” came full circle.
Lai Yu Pak/Li Leong Nan/“Jack” (right, standing) posed for a portrait with his father Lai Cheong Lok/Li Goon Bing (left, seated) after enlisting to fight in WWII at 70 Mulberry Street.
Although Columbus Park was where Jack, like his ancestors, was forced to prove that he belonged in America, the park was also a place of joy for him. In Columbus Park, he played volleyball for the Chinatown Community Youth Center (CYC) and enjoyed post-game popsicles with friends. In fact, in one photograph, he blocks a spike from an opponent on the exact same spot where the podium for the rally this past March was positioned. 70 Mulberry Street, at the northeast corner of the park, was where he had enlisted for the war, but it was also the community center where he would meet up with his folk-music band to jam every day for decades. Being an AAPI, being a person of color in this country, is precarious: one day, you could be playing volleyball with your friends in one spot, and the next day, in that same spot, you could be signing up for war, fighting for this country to accept you; one day, your people could be nominated for the Oscars, and the next day, their bodies could be used as target practice for someone having a “bad day”; one day, your people are the model minority, and the next day, your people are a virus.
“Jack” (center, left) blocks a spike from an opponent during a volleyball game at Columbus Park in the early 1940s. Eighty years later, this is the exact same spot where the podium was placed during the AAPI Rally Against Hate on March 21, 2021.
“Jack” enjoys a post-game popsicle near Columbus Park.
When I was growing up in New York City, Columbus Park was where my grandparents would take my sister and me to play after school, but it was also where my grandpa was mugged when he first arrived in this country. When he first arrived, my grandfather Huan Ding, son of Jack, worked in different sweatshops across Chinatown. After work, he would pick up my sister and me from the Yung Wing School two blocks east of Columbus Park, buy us iced gem cookies and boxes of sweet chrysanthemum tea, and take us to the park to play on the monkey bars. I have only fond memories of Columbus Park growing up, but that was not true for my grandfather. Muggings were a regular occurrence for my grandparents when they first arrived in New York, but one especially heinous incident happened when my grandfather was leaving a sweatshop just north of Columbus Park. It was pay day, and he had hidden his week’s pay in his shoe for safety. Teenagers who had been preying on vulnerable immigrant sweatshop workers in Chinatown chose him, a Chinese man of short stature and slight build, as their target. They bludgeoned him, and stole his shoes and his whole week’s pay. No one helped him. Bloodied and barefoot, he took the subway home by himself.
There is a direct line from my grandfather’s assault in the 80s, just north of Columbus Park, to this past February’s stabbing on Baxter Street, just west of Columbus Park. The suspect stabbed an AAPI man, upon seeing his Asian eyes, because he “didn’t like the way [the victim] was looking at him.” The Baxter Street stabbing was one of thousands of anti-Asian attacks that have occurred in this country last year, and one of countless in the last two centuries. World wars have been fought, nations have formed and fallen, and billions of humans have come and passed. Yet, in March, my family found ourselves standing in the same exact spot in the same exact park, to scream to the world that our family belongs here and has belonged here for 150 years. After six generations, we are still walking around this country peering over our shoulders, afraid that someone will tell us to go back to our country or, worse, that someone will murder us on a “bad day.”
An age-old adage, commonly misattributed to Einstein, goes something like this: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” Even though many Americans were hell-bent on murdering his people, Lau Foon survived: every breath that he drew in America was a swallowed scream of “I belong here!” Even though America designated his people as “illegal,” Cheong Lok found his way into the country, and not only survived but thrived: by staying in America and creating a life for himself here, he too was screaming internally, “I belong here!” Even though he was still new to the country and not yet a citizen, Jack enlisted in the US Army and risked his life for a country that had been hostile to his family for generations: by surviving the war and by bringing his entire family over from China, he too was screaming internally, “I belong here!” Even though he had been mugged near Columbus Park, Huan Ding, undaunted, still brought his grandchildren to play in the very same park: by choosing to return to a place of personal trauma and choosing to make new joyous memories, he too was screaming internally, “I belong here!”
The author (center) with her mother (left) and her sister (right) at the AAPI Rally Against Hate in Columbus Park on March 21, 2021.
Even though this country has repeatedly and violently rejected our family for multiple generations, our family keeps coming back to this country and to this park because we believe that we belong here and we believe in the promise of this country. As we stand in the same exact spot 150 years and six generations later, it may seem as if nothing has changed. However, each generation made sacrifices not only to survive, but also to make the fight easier for the next. For every new generation that lived in this park, in this country, there was still terror but there was also more joy. I only have idyllic memories of Columbus Park—the culmination of layers of generational sacrifice. Another gift from my ancestors: I do not have to internalize my screams as they did—my family and I now scream out loud, “We belong here!” As our family and the AAPI community face one of our darkest moments in this country, perhaps we first need to look down, at the earth, at the layers of ancestral strength beneath our feet, so that we may hold our heads up high and look forward.
According to Chinese folk religion, after death, our ancestors may walk among us in the human world. On March 21st, at the rally, as I stood next to my mother and sister, in an ocean of thousands of other AAPI and our allies, I felt a tectonic ancestral force rippling through the crowd—my great-grandfather, my great-great grandfather and my great-great grandfather were standing there and screaming with us. As I write, my family and I are making plans to return to Columbus Park tomorrow afternoon to meet an army of ancestors there for a second rally. The day after happens to be both the Qingming Festival and Easter, both of which invite reflection on death and resurrection. For Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day), we will clean our ancestors’ tombs, burn paper money, and offer roast duck to keep our ancestors comfortable in the afterlife. This year, as my feet meet the earth of their tombs, where atoms of my ancestors and American soil mix, I will thank them for being with us as we screamed in Columbus Park. I will ask them: how can we not belong here when we literally united these states with our bare hands and fought for the freedom of this land? How can we not belong here when our bodies are buried in this earth, and alchemize into grass and trees and, in turn, into the very oxygen that this country breathes freely? How can we not belong here when our bodies literally give life to this country?
Photos used by author’s permission.
Megan Lui (she/her) is a born and bred New Yorker. By day, she works on a Wall Street trading floor. By night, she is a food photographer and a writer focused on AAPI history. She graduated from Princeton University, where she studied History of Art, and Chinese Language and Culture.