Chinese -- New York (State) -- New York. |
Chinese -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions. |
Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York. |
Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions. |
Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York. |
Flushing (New York, N.Y.) |
China -- Emigration and immigration -- History -- 21st century. |
Chinese Americans -- United States |
Emigrants |
Foreign-born population |
Foreign population |
Foreigners |
Migrants |
Flushinge (New York, N.Y.) |
New York (N.Y.). |
Queens (New York, N.Y.). |
Флашинг (New York, N.Y.) |
Flashing (New York, N.Y.) |
פלאשינג (New York, N.Y.) |
Floshing (New York, N.Y.) |
法拉盛 (New York, N.Y.) |
Falasheng (New York, N.Y.) |
Cina |
Kinë |
Cathay |
Chinese National Government |
Chung-kuo kuo min cheng fu |
Republic of China (1912-1949) |
Kuo min cheng fu (China : 1912-1949) |
Chung-hua min kuo (1912-1949) |
Kina (China) |
National Government (1912-1949) |
China (Republic : 1912-1949) |
People's Republic of China |
Chinese People's Republic |
Chung-hua jen min kung ho kuo |
Central People's Government of Communist China |
Chung yang jen min cheng fu |
Chung-hua chung yang jen min kung ho kuo |
Central Government of the People's Republic of China |
Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo |
Zhong hua ren min gong he guo |
Kitaĭskai͡a Narodnai͡a Respublika |
Činská lidová republika |
RRT |
Republik Rakjat Tiongkok |
KNR |
Kytaĭsʹka Narodna Respublika |
Jumhūriyat al-Ṣīn al-Shaʻbīyah |
RRC |
Kitaĭ |
Kínai Népköztársaság |
Chūka Jinmin Kyōwakoku |
Erets Sin |
Sin |
Sāthāranarat Prachāchon Čhīn |
P.R. China |
PR China |
PRC |
P.R.C. |
Chung-kuo |
Zhongguo |
Zhonghuaminguo (1912-1949) |
Zhong guo |
Chine |
République Populaire de Chine |
República Popular China |
Catay |
VR China |
VRChina |
中國 |
中国 |
中华人民共和国 |
Jhongguó |
Bu̇gu̇de Nayiramdaxu Dundadu Arad Ulus |
Bu̇gu̇de Nayiramdaqu Dumdadu Arad Ulus |
Bu̇gd Naĭramdakh Dundad Ard Uls |
BNKhAU |
БНХАУ |
Khi͡atad |
Kitad |
Dumdadu Ulus |
Dumdad Uls |
Думдад Улс |
Kitajska |
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Searching... New Bedford Free Public Library | 920 HIL 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Norfolk Public Library | 305.895 HILG | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY
New York Times Critics * Wall Street Journal * Kirkus Reviews
Christian Science Monitor * San Francisco Chronicle
Finalist for the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Biography Award
Shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
The deeply reported story of one indelible family transplanted from rural China to New York City, forging a life between two worlds
In 2014, in a snow-covered house in Flushing, Queens, a village revolutionary from Southern China considered his options. Zhuang Liehong was the son of a fisherman, the former owner of a small tea shop, and the spark that had sent his village into an uproar--pitting residents against a corrupt local government. Under the alias Patriot Number One, he had stoked a series of pro-democracy protests, hoping to change his home for the better. Instead, sensing an impending crackdown, Zhuang and his wife, Little Yan, left their infant son with relatives and traveled to America. With few contacts and only a shaky grasp of English, they had to start from scratch.
In Patriot Number One , Hilgers follows this dauntless family through a world hidden in plain sight: a byzantine network of employment agencies and language schools, of underground asylum brokers and illegal dormitories that Flushing's Chinese community relies on for survival. As the irrepressibly opinionated Zhuang and the more pragmatic Little Yan pursue legal status and struggle to reunite with their son, we also meet others piecing together a new life in Flushing. Tang, a democracy activist who was caught up in the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, is still dedicated to his cause after more than a decade in exile. Karen, a college graduate whose mother imagined a bold American life for her, works part-time in a nail salon as she attends vocational school, and refuses to look backward.
With a novelist's eye for character and detail, Hilgers captures the joys and indignities of building a life in a new country--and the stubborn allure of the American dream.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A battle for freedom segues into a struggle for survival in this clear-eyed, humane look at modern immigration. Journalist Hilgers, who lived in Shanghai for six years, spotlights the journey of Zhuang Liehong, who made powerful enemies in the Chinese village of Wukan when he organized protests against corrupt officials. Fearing arrest and dazzled by visions of American freedom and abundance, he and his wife Little Yan left their infant son in 2014 and fled on a tourist visa, ending up in the Chinese immigrant neighborhood of Flushing in New York City. Zhuang and Yan eventually get asylum and working documents, and their scramble for overpriced, overcrowded rooms and low-wage employment (in nail salons, restaurants, and the like) mirrors the experiences of many in New York. Instead of trying to make this an immigration horror story, Hilgers foregrounds the way the husband and wife adjust to their new home: Yan, pragmatically focused on mundane jobs and financial security, grows increasingly exasperated with the dreamer Zhuang's fizzled business plans and his sense that political activism marks him for greater things. Hilgers's narrative intercuts between the dramatic rebellion in Wukan and a vibrant portrait of Flushing's Chinese diaspora built around fine-grained character studies drawn with equal parts empathy and humor. The result is a quintessentially American story of exile and renewal. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Elyse Cheney Literary Associates. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
THE OUTSIDER, by Stephen King. (Scribner, $30.) When police officers arrest a small-town English teacher and Little League coach for murder, the case looks watertight. But this isn't a police procedural, it's a Stephen King novel; so nothing, of course, is what it seems. OUR KIND OF CRUELTY, by Araminta Hall. (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In this searing, chilling sliver of perfection about a toxic relationship, the man is the crazy psychopath - or is he? That doubt lingers all the way through the stunning final pages of a book that may well turn out to be the year's best thriller. SAVING CENTRAL PARK: A History and a Memoir, by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. (Knopf, $30.) The inspiring story of how one woman, in the face of considerable resistance, created a partnership to privately augment the funding and management of Manhattan's beloved park, rescuing what had become "a ragged 843acre wasteland." ROBIN, by Dave Itzkoff. (Times/Holt, $30.) A generous, appreciative biography of Robin Williams by a New York Times culture reporter. The author, who had access to Williams and members of the comedian's family, is an unabashed fan but doesn't shy away from the abundant messiness in his subject's personal life. INSEPARABLE: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous With American History, by Yunte Huang. (Liveright, $28.95.) In Huang's hands, the story of the conjoined twins Chang and Eng is as much an account of 19th-century American culture as a tale of exploited individuals who themselves became exploiters. SABRINA, by Nick Drnaso. (Drawn and Quarterly, $27.95.) This graphic novel is a Midwestern gothic tale for our times, recounting the story of a woman's disappearance and murder, seen through the eyes of her bereaved boyfriend as he watches the trolls and conspiracy theorists dissect her death online. It's a shattering work of art. SOME TRICK: Thirteen Stories, by Helen DeWitt. (New Directions, $22.95.) DeWitt's manic, brilliant new collection explores her interest in "fiction that shows the way mathematicians think." Populated by genW'rí? iuses and virtuosos, the stories are zanily cerebral " and proceed with fractal precision. PATRIOT NUMBER ONE: American Dreams in Chinatown, by Lauren Hilgers. (Crown, $27.) This deeply reported account tracks an immigrant couple's struggle to remake their lives in America while staying connected to their hometown in China. SECRET SISTERS OF THE SALTY SEA, by Lynne Rae Perkins. (Greenwillow, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) An exquisite summer story about a girl's first beach vacation, in which she discovers the wonders of the ocean and shifts in sisterly bonds. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Kirkus Review
Affecting portrait of a Chinese dissident who found a home among like-minded democrats in faraway New York.Journalist Hilgers, who has covered China for the New Yorker and Businessweek, among other publications, met Zhuang Liehong in his home village on the southern coast of China. There, in 2011, as she reported, villagers had rebelled against corrupt officials, who had returned to power with a vengeance, backed by a brutal police force. "A proud former village leader on the ragged outskirts of Guangdong Province's manufacturing boom," Zhuang knew he had to get out while he could, and he weighed three plans to escape, including finding a boat to take him to the American territory of Guam. He settled on an expensive solution, signing himself and his wife, Little Yan, up for a tour of the United States that they then overstayed, making their way to Flushing, where, in time, they encountered other dissidents, notably the Tiananmen Square protest leader Tang Yuanjun. Hilgers closely chronicles Zhuang's travails, among them the struggle to attain legal residency against the backdrop of an immigration regime that worried about offending China and seemed reluctant to house so public a figure, even if his renown had not spread widely in his adopted country. Finally, thanks to the pragmatic Little Yan, he found suitable workand, thanks to Tang, continued his anti-corruption campaign in New York, protesting at Trump Tower, where an unimpressed Trump supporter yelled at him, "why do we have to pay attention to your problems?" Hilgers answers that question with admirable attention to narrative detail, giving a nuanced portrait of a vibrant working-class immigrant neighborhood comprising a "community of activists" who have lent dissidents like Tang and Zhuang their support.This excellent book makes a powerful argument for why the U.S. should always remain a place of sanctuary, benefiting immensely from those who arrive from other shores. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this affectionate portrayal of the -immigrant experience, journalist and first-time author Hilgers documents the trials and tribulations of the American Dream as witnessed by Zhuang Liehong, an idealistic protester from the Chinese village of Wukan, and his wife, Little Yan, alongside their small community of friends and fellow members of Flushing, Queens. Following Zhuang's journey from protester to asylum-seeker, this revelatory account documents the current political climate in rural China and among the Chinese exile community in New York. Hilgers explores the complexities of life, work, and family in Chinese America-the underground network of nail salon employees, green card schemes, the covert exchange of luxury goods fueled by Chinese demand-telling a tale of survival and hope in an unfamiliar land. Hilgers does a wonderful job of introducing her subjects. Zhuang and Little Yan jump off the page fully realized; it's impossible not to root for them and their friends. VERDICT This book is hard to put down. It would be easy to say that it is recommended for readers interested in Chinese-American communities, but at its heart is a highly readable story about starting over in a new land; a must-read for all.-Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright © 2018 Lauren Hilgers Escape 逃逸 / Táoyì MARCH 2013 - FEBRUARY 2014 Zhuang Liehong had made three plans to get from his village in China to New York. In the first, the American embassy would simply send someone to pick him up. He envisioned a midnight escape--cars waiting in the shadows along the uneven, trash-filled fields on the outskirts of his village. He felt sure, when he considered the plan, that the Americans would be sympathetic to his situation. He was a lover of democracy trapped in a corrupt corner of Guangdong Province. If the plan were to work, it would have to be secret. His friends would wake the next morning to find him vanished. By the time the news spread, he would be on a plane, heading toward a new life. In a second plan, Zhuang would flee by sea. He had learned that Guam, a mere two thousand miles from the Guangdong coastline, was U.S. territory. This plan made it closer to execution: he went to work on a friend's fishing boat in Wukan Bay in preparation--ten grueling hours on a wooden plank boat, fully exposed to the sun--and purchased slightly too much fuel each time, stockpiling it slowly, so no one would notice. He planned to buy two motors. "Just in case one died," he said. "I would use one some of the time and then switch them. Sometimes I would use them both, and vrrrmm!" He would wait until the two months of the year when the intervening stretch of ocean was at its calmest, the swells low and rolling, the water undisturbed by typhoons. Then he would take a tiny boat out into the expanse of the South China Sea. He estimated the trip would take about ten days. He could make it, if he had to. Zhuang was a man of Wukan Village, a proud former village leader on the ragged outskirts of Guangdong Province's manufacturing boom. He was on the verge of thirty, stocky and compact, meticulous about his appearance but always slightly out of style. His crooked teeth gave away a childhood spent in poverty, but he was not self-conscious about them. He grinned while greeting people on the street, pouring tea in his tea shop, or singing at the local KTV. He smiled relentlessly in the face of danger or embarrassment. He suffered from the occasional lapse in reading social cues and fought it with volume, warmth, and a strong handshake. During the summer of 2013, paranoia overtook Zhuang's home village, and he recognized the feeling of trouble on the horizon. The shadowy forces of the county-level government--people he had rebelled against a few years before--were returning to Wukan. His friends were sure that their phones had been tapped by local security forces, the lackeys of corrupt officials. A propaganda official had taken up residence in a local school. Zhuang took the extra precaution of hiding his cell phone in the back of his tea shop whenever he discussed politics. He had heard rumors that government spies could turn them on remotely and listen in. There was a time when Zhuang had run headlong into political turmoil. He had led protests, helped spark at least one riot, and argued with police interrogators over cigarettes. He had seen his friends kidnapped by thugs and his village invaded, and he had mourned a friend who died in police custody. But now Zhuang had a wife and a son. Now he understood the consequences of protest and revolution. He did not want to end up in jail, fearing for his life, worrying about his family. So he made plans and counterplans. He schemed while sitting in his tea shop, a storefront business he had opened along the smaller of the two main arteries that ran through his village. He pulled up the storefront barrier and sat behind sliding glass doors, watching the rain hit the metal awnings that shaded the shops, and the sun return to bake the scoured concrete of the lane. Zhuang first opened the shop in late 2012, when it was nice out and the political pressure more remote. He left the glass doors open to the street and blasted Michael Jackson. He brewed pot after pot of tea, serving it to his friends, who threw around cigarettes before they sat down on the pleather-encased stools Zhuang had placed around a monstrous wooden desk. Later, the more worried Zhuang grew, the more likely it was you'd find the store shuttered. Eventually, as the pressure increased, he gave up the business entirely and planned in his tiny apartment, still serving tea to passing friends, watching his son struggle to maintain a wobbly sit, and doing his best to put his schemes into action. Zhuang would subsequently tell people that, as he thought it over in his shop, he considered many possible destinations. An increasing number of Chinese emigrants were choosing Australia as a new home. Germany, he had heard, was welcoming. But the interest was passing. The moment he decided to leave Wukan Village, he thought of the United States. It had an allure no other country could match. It was a country of justice and freedom, a place with values that paralleled his own. He had to whisper when he said it: America. He had heard its asylum policies there were favorable, and he understood it to be a wealthy country that took care of its citizens. Work would be easy to find there. People would be friendly. Some might even know his name. He imagined a warm welcome from Western democracy advocates. He thought of returning to Wukan years later, a success. He envisioned himself on a boat passing Liberty Island, a little windblown and visibly, palpably free. At the tail end of his plan, the point at which it trailed off into a haze of hard work, success, and prosperity, was Flushing, Queens. Zhuang had carried out his scheming largely online, and had been wise enough to realize that New York City was too large a place to approach uninformed. He had skimmed through online discussion boards and squinted his one nearsighted eye at photographs. Manhattan's Chinatown, he decided, would be too dense and urban for his village sensibilities, and in the center of the city, real estate would most likely be expensive. Flushing, on the other hand, had become the destination of choice for most working-class immigrants from Mainland China. He looked up photos and saw a clutter of signs in Mandarin. He saw restaurants, driving schools, supermarkets, and even a sign for the Democratic Party of China. He made up his mind that this, at least temporarily, would be his destination in the United States. Flushing, as far as Zhuang understood it, was a new, more modern kind of Chinatown. It was dominated by the working class, the result of an influx of new immigrants from new parts of China--inland and northern provinces that had little history of exploration or emigration overseas. Flushing wasn't controlled by the family-based patronage systems that had once ruled Manhattan's Chinatown or by the human smugglers who had brought in tens of thousands of Fujianese in the 1990s. It was a neighborhood where people would speak Zhuang's language and the food would suit his palate. There would be opportunities for work and a community of activists who would respect him. He would make friends, explore the neighborhood, and plan his next steps from there. Zhuang had no family in the United States. He spoke no English and had never graduated from middle school. But he did not worry that he might get lost in a crowd of new arrivals or have to struggle to find work. After all, he had the advantage of being at least a little famous. Journalists had been coming to his village since 2011, when he had helped catalyze a particularly explosive protest. He had given interviews and appeared on Chinese-language television. He would wait until he got to the United States to contact the journalists he knew and make a statement, but he imagined it would create quite an impression--a man of Wukan in New York City. * * * Zhuang's third plan, the one that would finally bring him to New York, was the simplest and least flamboyant: he would acquire two tourist visas to the United States, one for himself and the other for his wife, Little Yan. This plan had none of the daring of a maritime or midnight escape. Its difficulties were largely bureaucratic. Zhuang had to hope that the local office would ignore his history of troublemaking and issue him a passport, and that the nearest U.S. consulate would grant them the visas. Then he and Little Yan would have to find a place to keep their infant son, Kaizhi, safe. And then the pair would join a tour group. Their exit from China would be led by a distracted young woman hoisting a tiny stuffed bear on a pole, bobbing through the crowds in the Shenzhen ferry port. If Zhuang had taken a boat, he would have traveled alone--it would have been too dangerous for Little Yan to come with him. Once he decided to go by air, however, he felt they should travel as a couple. He presented the plan to his wife one night, sitting on the long wooden bench that passed for a sofa in most Wukan homes. Baby Kaizhi was asleep on their metal-framed bed. He had just started to crawl, military style, around their one-room apartment during the day, bent on exploring the small concrete courtyard. Kaizhi regarded the outside world with great seriousness. He grabbed leaves and looked at Little Yan before shoving them into his mouth. He rarely cried. He slept well. Little Yan could watch him all day long and not feel bored. She did not want to leave China. Little Yan had known Zhuang for three years, and for three years she had stood in flattering relief to her husband. She was quiet and petite; pretty, but with a slight underbite that made her shy about smiling. She had grown up in a village in Guangxi Province, one even smaller and less prosperous than Wukan. She allowed Zhuang an air of worldliness. He could drive the conversation while she happily cooked for his friends and took care of their son. She didn't make too many demands or spend too much money. And she appreciated his dogged sense of right and wrong. He was honest, which was more than Little Yan could say for a lot of the men she had met in Guangdong Province. When Zhuang described his plan, Little Yan had concerns that came in quick succession, neatly pricking holes in his confidence. He had been prepared for some questions--he had thought carefully about what to do with their son--but she was persistent. She asked why she and Kaizhi couldn't follow him to the United States after he got settled. She wondered how hard it would be to get by in an English-speaking country with an English vocabulary that was almost nonexistent. She had studied the language in high school but could barely remember a word. She wanted him to delay so she could take classes. Little Yan had come to understand that the more stung Zhuang felt, the quicker and louder he was with his defenses. "You don't understand at all!" he told her. He did not want the local government to suspect the couple were planning to run, he said. He worried that any delay could put him in further danger. And she was dense if she didn't think he was in danger. He felt sure that, the moment he gave them an excuse, local officials would send goons to arrest him. And his fiery nature would eventually give them an excuse. Zhuang was more careful when he talked about Kaizhi. It was natural, he thought, that Little Yan would worry about their son--she would always be connected to him. But the affection between two grown people might not survive across an ocean. Kaizhi could stay with Little Yan's parents, who would take good care of their grandson, he told her, but no one could help the two of them keep up their relationship when they were separated. It could take him years to get a green card. They would find a Chinese neighborhood, he would look for work on a fishing boat, and she could study English. Kaizhi would come as soon as they could bring him over. "Suan le ba," she said, mid-discussion. It doesn't matter. It was a terrible choice--between her husband and her son--but she did not blame Zhuang for forcing it. He made his points, and she accepted them. If he could make the escape happen, Little Yan would go with him. Escape to America had to be undertaken in steps, each with the potential to derail the entire undertaking. Zhuang was so nervous about applying for a passport that he tested the waters by first applying for a permit to visit Hong Kong. It came in a little blue booklet that said Travel Permit on the front. He then took a ferry from Shenzhen into Kowloon and wandered the streets for a few nervous days. He met with a handful of journalists he knew from his days as a protest leader and told them about his plan. He asked them to help him keep a low profile--Zhuang had gotten the travel documents, he guessed, because local officials were too busy to monitor him, and he didn't want to give them a reason to start paying attention. He talked loudly on the phone about his vacation plans, in case someone was listening in. When he went back to his village, he applied for two passports. He stood in line for over an hour, and when he was face to face with the agent, the man barely looked at his name. He purchased two suitcases in his-and-hers pink and black and hid them, just in case. He researched the weather in New York, and Little Yan invested in leggings that were nearly an inch thick with padding. They bought impossibly puffy coats, the volume-to-warmth ratio as high as might be expected in a region where winter bottoms out around fifty degrees Fahrenheit. In with his clothes, Zhuang stuck a little clay teapot, some small cups, and a plastic bag full of tea leaves. Other necessities would be easy to come by in New York. There would be time for everything once they arrived. Excerpted from Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown by Lauren Hilgers All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
1 Escape: $$$/Táoyi | p. 1 |
2 A Fisherman's Son: $$$/Yufu de Érzi | p. 15 |
3 Wukan! Wukan! Revolution: $$$/Gémìng | p. 27 |
4 In Queens: $$$/Huánghòu Qu | p. 39 |
5 Work: $$$/Gongzuò | p. 55 |
6 The Chairman: $$$/Zhuxí | p. 67 |
7 Sanctuary: $$$/Bìnànsuo | p. 83 |
8 Wukan! Wukan! A Death: $$$/Siwáng | p. 99 |
9 Little Yan: $$$/Xiao Yàn | p. 109 |
10 Brewing Tea: $$$/Pào Chá | p. 123 |
11 Fortress Besieged: $$$/Wéichéng | p. 139 |
12 Paper Sons: $$$/Qìyue Érzi | p. 155 |
13 Wukan! Wukan! Land and Committee: $$$/Tudi hé Cunweihuì | p. 167 |
14 The Moon Represents My Heart: $$$/Yuèliang Dàbiao Wo de Xin | p. 179 |
15 Personal Shopping: $$$/Dàigou | p. 193 |
16 Strangers: $$$/Mòshengrén | p. 205 |
17 Services: $$$/Fuwu | p. 215 |
18 Wukan! Wukan! Rule of Law: $$$/Fazhì | p. 227 |
19 A Man of Wukan: $$$/Wukan Rén | p. 237 |
20 Dissent: $$$/Yìyì | p. 251 |
21 Politics: $$$/Zhèngzhì | p. 265 |
22 Labors: $$$/Láodong | p. 277 |
23 Blocking Traffic: $$$/Lánche | p. 289 |
24 Simplicity: $$$/Danchun | p. 301 |
Author's Note | p. 311 |
Acknowledgments | p. 315 |
Notes | p. 317 |