Karen Yamashita - I Hotel

Best place for skeleton is in family closet.

— Charlie Chan

16.1 In the Year of the Dog, in the month of the ninth moon, the Gay Liberation Front recognized the Black Panthers as the vanguard of the revolution. Some gifts arrive like undersized lingerie for a heavyset woman.

16.2 Do you not know the stories told in our classical literature of the half-eaten peach or the cut sleeve? A beautiful lover offers the sweetest side of his half-eaten peach to his beloved lord. A Han emperor cuts away his silken sleeve, caught beneath his sleeping lover, rather than awaken such quiet beauty. The inscrutability of any story is to be deciphered by those intended to know the answers.

Those who have innate knowledge are the highest. Next come those who acquire knowledge through learning. Next again come those who learn through the trials of life.

— Confucius (16.9)

17.1 Jack Sung, the leader of the Poetry Boys Club, mischievously called the Chinatown Red Guard a Chinese minstrel show that mimicked the Black Panthers. He also presented a few choice episodes from his newest play, Dear lo fan, fan gwai, whitey, honey babe , with provocative lyrics like “Ching-chong Chinaman” and a monologue satirizing the proud leader of the Red Guard. After the real Asian American read-in on the old stage of the Hungry i, Paul rushed to see the leader of the Red Guard call out the leader of the Poetry Boys Club and punch him unceremoniously to the ground. Irony is lost on he who is satirized.

17.2 Later Jack Sung said philosophically, “I think I was beaten up kind of Western style. Maybe I was lucky in that I didn’t have one of these legendary forms of Oriental self-defense used on me.” In the full production of Sung’s play, G.I.Joe tossed a bloody cow liver into the audience. A woman felt the slop plop into her lap. Irony is lost on she who is splattered with blood.

Door of opportunity swing both ways.

— Charlie Chan

18.1 Who are the true heroes? The poets or the revolutionaries?

18.2 Who are the true men? The poets or the revolutionaries?

18.3 The answers to these questions are on page ___.

A journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet.

— Lao Tzu

19.1 Chen bid farewell to his French Maoist colleagues, who dreamed of an intellectual Maoism championing Third World revolutions. They tested their endless theories on Chen, who tired of the pretense that he might be Chou En-lai, their very own French interpreter. One man’s history is another man’s imagination.

19.2 Meanwhile, Chen received news from his colleagues in San Francisco. Student and union agreements to end the strike at the college in 1969 were in fact never signed by the president, nor the board of trustees; demands were never met, agreements were never enacted. Students were punished. Professors denied tenure. The trustees failed to protect academic freedom, and the California Senate drafted over one hundred bills to suppress campus dissent. But , they wrote, flowers are blooming on campus—daisies and petunias and marigolds . . .

19.3 Chen returned to San Francisco, but not before standing on the hill of le Cimetière de Marin and penning a final postcard to Paul: “Some have the merit of seeing clearly what all others see confusedly. Some have the merit of glimpsing confusedly what no one sees as yet. A combination of these gifts is exceptional .” Paul Valéry. But who among us is exceptional?

Old man, how is it that you hear these things? Young man, how is it that you do not?

— Kwai Chang Caine and Master Po

20.1 When Chen returned, he opened his long-closed and dusty garage, took the Siata 208s Spider coupe off its blocks, and bought new wheels for it. He made Paul, who had nothing better to do, drive it back and forth to the mechanic, replacing, testing, and cleaning parts, and polish its red body to a high luster. He had met his second wife at the Grand Prix in Monte Carlo; she was a race car enthusiast, and this was her car.

20.2 He said, “Listen to the soft purr of that engine. Can you hear it? That’s the Fiat 2-liter v8. Crafted in Geneva in 1952. Nica took the prize with this at the Targa Florio in 1957.” Paul and Edmund looked skeptical. When had their teacher become a mechanic? “Now listen to this.” He revved it up. What else does one do with a race car? One races it.

Okinawa is vital for the security of the U.S.

Korea is vital for the security of the U.S.

Indochina is vital for the security of the U.S.

The Philippines are vital for the security of the U.S.

Taiwan is vital for the security of the U.S.

The Tiao Yu Tai islands are vital for the security of the U.S.

Tiao Yu Tai?

Two Days after the Lunar New Year of the Pig (Boar) . . .

Now don’t get Maoist with me. You know I’m not a proselytizing kind of girl. Look who you’re fooling with. Do I look like I’ll do time with a naked face and/or nails? Not that I couldn’t, but girls like me don’t get starring roles in The Good Earth. There might be days I could do pigtails, and if you put beads and brocade on that Mao jacket, it might go over something more evocative. A red silk cheongsam slit to the hip, for goodness sake. I could substitute my bangles for some red star earrings. I’ll tell you one thing: I could go for the beret à la Che look. I would wear that man stretched over my bosom any day. Now, honey, would that arouse you?

Now, you know where you should be. You should be out there with your friend in Saint Mary’s Square next to Sun Yat-sen, protesting with five hundred others over the Tiao Yu Tai. It’s quite a crowd. All riled up good and Chinese-like. And there’s Father Sun presiding, looking all sun-reflective, proof that the Chinese padred California too. But no, instead here you are, humping with me in a pathetic little room in the I-Hotel. Oh no you don’t. Don’t come yet. I’m not finished with you.

Did you read their manifesto? What manifesto? The Tiao Yu Tai manifesto, of course. But who nowadays doesn’t have a manifesto? Even I have a manifesto. But as a good Oriental citizen, I’m all for their manifesto. Think about those beautiful little islands out there in the middle of nowhere, just waiting to be grabbed up like Hawaii. Wild flowers. Flying fish. Green and verdant. Just thinking about them makes me go paradisiac. But I hyperventilate. The Japanese and the American military need to keep their pesky hands off those islands. If anyone knows what to do with an island, it’s the Chinese. What? Oh well, overpopulate it, I suppose. Fill it up with all those number-one sons, sail them out on picturesque junks, come home to honey with a big catch, and make a lot of babies. Turn it into one big happy i-land commune.

AN INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY!

U.S. government succumbs to Japanese secret demands and agrees to deliver the oil-rich Tiao Yu Tai islands to Japan. The Tiao Yu Tai islands, 20 miles north of Taiwan and 240 miles south of Ryukyu, are rightfully Chinese. Chinese fishermen have used these territorial waters for centuries. The recent discovery of rich oil deposits around the islands—almost twice the deposits of California—is too attractive to the Japanese militarists. The Sato regime has secretly demanded that the islands be included in the Ryukyu group and be returned to Japan in 1972. The U.S. had yielded to Japanese demands and had agreed to return the islands to Japan without the consent of the Chinese people. Our Chinese people strongly protest this Tokyo-Washington plot and tell the world you may forget Pearl Harbor, but we will never give away Tiao Yu Tai.