Karen Yamashita - I Hotel

Chinese Six Companies

San Francisco, California

I’m here today representing the Japanese Community Youth Council, and we Japanese in America condemn the government of Japan for this act of international robbery against other Asian people. Just as we condemn the American government for its criminal acts in Southeast Asia, we condemn the Japanese militarist government of blatant pig acts against the Tiao Yu Tai islands. This pig activity, whether in the oil fields of these islands or the rice fields of Vietnam, this pig activity is called imperialism. Down with Japanese imperialism! Down with KMT traitors! Down with U.S. imperialism! All power to the people!

A revolutionary

Federal Building

January 29, 1971

Around noontime on April 9 . . .

I saw Ike and Tina Turner the other night at the Fillmore. Tina worked the mike, you know what I mean? She worked it, like it was her object. She tongued the machine. I was there, right there in the front watching her try to wrap her body around and get into that thing. Right, disgusting. By now you’d think it would be a cliché, the mike thing, but it’s the music that gets into your system. So we’re gonna pump those speakers into the floor. Take your shoes off. Now feel that. Oye Como Va. The floorboards are vibrating like they got a pulse.

Old Chinese guy below is probably deaf, don’t you know. But he’s not there anyway. He got his old Chinese brothers together to march around Portsmouth Square with Edmund and the others. Want to imagine it on KPFA? Come on. Stretch yourself out, and feel it happening like we’re there. Let’s do some island lovin’. Oh, we’re in luck. It’s Arthur Ma reporting. Listen. They’re singing the Tiao Yu Tai song in Portsmouth Square.

Arthur Ma: About fifty demonstrators, mostly students from China going to school here, are gathered today in Portsmouth Square in Chinatown to protest the U.S. and Japanese takeover of the Tiao Yu Tai islands. They have been making their speeches in Cantonese, and the student organizers of the rally urge their supporters to keep up the pressure against the oil grab of these islands. The students are showing their support by putting up their fists in power signs.

Down with Japanese militarism!

Down with U.S. imperialism!

Down with the KMT sellouts!

Ma continues: Now you notice in the park, there are the usual Chinese elderly folk sitting around playing checkers, reading the paper, and sunning themselves, but with these excellent speeches, some of them have begun to perk up and take notice. You can see their shy smiles and quiet claps of appreciation and approval. The speaker is saying: “Chinese must have pride and not allow foreign governments to step all over us and then allow the Chiang Kai-shek government to do nothing! It’s because of this that our Chinese people have had to leave China.” Now they are standing up and clapping. What the—? Who are these guys?

Who are these guys? The Wah Ching of course, hired by the KMT sellouts come to beat up the Communists. What did that ruffian yell? Death to the Communist traitors! Oh, it’s kung fu time. Oh baby, come get me like a Water Margin outlaw. Just rough me up a bit. Oh yes.

Ma: Eight guys dressed up in black have just rushed onto the stage! They’re attacking the speakers and throwing around the sound equipment!

Oh, the commotion! But check this out honey, the Chinese elders from the park are rushing to the stage! Oh, that’s gotta be my old man downstairs. Spinning around with kung fu kicks and punches! Truth is, only real men with experience can fight like this. It’s like a kung fu motion picture! Baby KMT gangsters are just no match. They’re scattering like black mice. There now. There’s our interlude. The rally can go on. Oh, but can you hear it now? Oh baby, it’s the Tiao Yu Tai song! Nothing moves me like island patriotism.

Student speaker: We will march as planned! We will not be intimidated! Follow the monitors in black armbands. First we will march to the KMT Chinese Consulate. Then to the Japanese Consulate. And then we will march to the Federal Building! Follow us!

Hey hey hey!

U.S.A.!

Stay away!

From Tiao Yu Tai!

Ma: This is Arthur Ma for KPFA signing off at one thirty p. m. from Portsmouth Square in Chinatown on April 9, 1971.

The Ping Heard Round the World

On April 10, nine ping-pong players, four officials, and two spouses stepped across a bridge from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland, ushering in an era of “Ping-Pong diplomacy.” They were the first group of Americans allowed into China since the Communist takeover in 1949.

On the Anniversary of the May 4 Chinese Student Movement . . .

I’m just like that little Mowgli feral child in the Jungle Book. Can you believe I cried when I saw that cartoon? That was me: a little Asian girl raised among drag queens. Now, they’ve dropped me off in the forbidden city to hide my sorry ass. But who in Chinatown isn’t facing the same circumstances? Look at you. We were all left here in the tribal village to fend for ourselves. Honey, pass me that pipe. I’ve got some forgetting to do.

Edmund’s going to have to make some choices. Five hundred academic sinologists can sign off on a letter, tell Taiwan what for and so on about how to run its business, but in the end, what does it mean? You can’t stir up a pot with five hundred sinologists. Honey, you need five million sinologists.

My old man downstairs explained it all to me. He was right there on the very day at the birth of the revolution. He told me that he arose a new man on that day. But I’m confused. May 4 is the birth of the revolution, but which revolution? The one for Sun Yat-sen, for Chiang Kai-shek, or for Mao Tse-tung?

The land of China can be conquered but not ceded; the people of China can be slaughtered but not bent. The nation is falling! Fellow men, rise!

Luo Jialun

Tiananmen Square, May 4, 1919

Overseas Chinese will never forget the motherland!

Well, you should know more than I. Your dear professor friend is always advising Edmund, isn’t he? He’s the one who suggested tying the island protest to the May 4 Chinese student movement. I’m with RG, Mr. Red Guard himself, who said who gives a shit what happened in China over fifty years ago, but obviously Professor Chen knows how history works on people’s psyches. If people see history repeating itself, they get all nostalgic and riled up. I know. I was there, sitting next to Edmund in that same movie.

You know those movies. They’re showing them every weekend downstairs at the Asian Community Center, like entertainment for the old folks, to give them a peek of the homeland. You see maybe millions of Chinese in black-and-white, standing room only, in that square in Peking that looks likes it’s a mile wide, red flags flapping around everywhere. They’re going crazy. Now that’s a rally! What’s a mere one-fifty at Portsmouth Square, or even five hundred at Saint Mary’s? All right, I agree. Each of those five hundred represents five hundred more. At least Chinese know how to count.

Edmund’s over at Portsmouth Square again, rallying the folks. They’re all making speeches in Chinese about the anniversary of the May 4 student movement. But notice that the Red Guard is doing security backstage with their Mao caps and shades, packing loaded revolvers behind their flack jackets. No one’s taking any chances this time. No eight KMT gangsters dressed in black are going to disrupt this session. They’ve got Red Guards posted on the roofs above the square with loaded rifles. Wah Ching could only arrive to a bloody surprise. The Tiao Yu Tai college types are making their speeches in Cantonese, with translations in English for the ABC. Please be patient, darling.