Lotus & magnolias

Southern Living, May 1997 by Ford, Gary D

A big Southern family gathers in Marks, Mississippi, on a summer evening. They carry covered dishes into the rambling brick home of Noah and Gene Chinn (at left) for Pang Potluck, an occasional family event.

Three generations of Mississippians gather vegetables from Noah and Gene's garden, help in the kitchen, and sizzle meat on the gas-powered outdoor wok. Andy and Pap Pang, Gene's brothers, are here, along with Andy's son, Victor, and nephew Tedford Pang. Sammy and Sandra Chow have driven up from Clarksdale, along with Gilroy and Sally Chow, and their children, Lisa and Bradley, who have paused in their college studies for the gathering. Soon all is ready, and Gilroy asks the blessing. Then this group fills plates with long beans and bitter melon, stir-fried vegetables, rice and fried chicken, pie and coffee, and enjoys the flavors of both China and the American South.

The Chows, Chinns, and Pangs represent three generations of AsianAmerican life in the Mississippi Delta or the country they call Kim San, meaning "Golden Mountain." They descend from men who came here as laborers in the late 1800s. Later, many opened small grocery stores, then returned to China for wives. Together they worked hard, reared their children in rooms behind the stores, and sent them to college.

Now the children of those immigrants, who came with nothing, enjoy the full prosperity of America. Time, death, and distance have faded memories of China. Today some 1,600 Asian-Americans hold dear the ways and ceremonies of a land of long ago.

So easily do the Asian and Southern cultures blend, especially the love of home and family and the heritage of hospitality. "One culture reinforcing another," Gilroy calls it. Over several months, Gilroy introduces me to the people and ways of this community. One morning we meet Wilson Yue, who offers to serve us orange juice while we visit in his small Clarksdale grocery.

"If someone has come a long distance, you offer them something to drink," Gilroy says later, then shakes his head and smiles sheepishly. "You know that's a Chinese custom and I had almost forgotten about it."

The older generations remember it, but only a few, such as Jack and Sue Chow, remain. I meet this couple in the home of their daughter, Alice, Sally Chow's sister-in-law. Alice and Sally are in the kitchen making a wedding cake. A Chow cake is a coveted tradition in any Delta wedding. Sue, fluent only in Cantonese, nods a greeting as Jack chats about their marriage in China, the birth of their son, and his trek to America in 1938. Jack planned to get established and then return to bring the family to Mississippi.

But Japan invaded China, and when America entered the war, it sent him back to his homeland with the Flying Tigers. When the war ended, Jack had to return to America with his unit.

Seven years passed before he knew whether his wife and child were dead or alive. Then in 1947, Gilroy's father helped Jack gain passage. Jack finally brought his family home to the South.

Slowly, the Asian-Americans stepped into the mainstream of Delta life. Churches in the region reached out to them. Jack and Sue are members of the Chinese Baptist Church in Cleveland, where services were held in Cantonese as recently as the 1980s.

Jack and Sue, working night and day, built a small store into Gold Star Grocery and reared five children, all but one completing college. The generation of Delta Chinese born after World War II still stand in awe of that perseverance.

"My parents raised seven boys out of a corner grocery," recalls Frank Seid, a Greenville, Mississippi, pharmacist. "You could see the ground through the cracks in the floors. Our parents and grandparents worked 70to 80-hour weeks. Before my grandfather died, he told dad, `Don't spend a lot of money on my funeral; use it to send the children to college.' "

Frank sips coffee with Raymond and Cathy Wong at How Joy, the Wongs' Greenville restaurant. In their lifetime the Delta has grown more hospitable. Asian-Americans now live in any neighborhood, work in any business, and hold local office.

But as they adapted to Mississippi life, many Chinese customs were swept away in the current. So was the language. Cathy teaches me a few slang words in Cantonese, which she understands but speaks little. She is Hon Yen, or "Chinese." We all live in Nam Fong, "the South."

The language drowns quickly in the new vocabulary of Nam Fong. America already echoes in the voices of Wesley Huang, 13, and his sister, Allison, 4. They are children of Terry and Louisa Huang, who arrived from Taiwan in 1980 and own Hunan's Restaurant in Greenville.

"We speak Mandarin to Wesley," Terry says. "He understands, but he answers in English. Allison speaks Mandarin, but as soon as she goes to school, she'll come home speaking English just as Wesley did."

Lisa Chow knows little Cantonese. Tall and elegant, she greets me one afternoon at the Chi Omega sorority house at Ole Miss. People sometimes forget she's Americanborn. Lisa laughs. "Last semester my accounting professor was teaching international currencies and asked me about the exchange rate in Malaysia. I said, `How should I know? I'm from Clarksdale.' "