Journal entry #42 Sui Sin Far

Siu Faat Jimmy Wong
English 48b
March 14, 2008
Professor Lankford

Quote:

“It won’t harm the boy to stay where he is, and your wife may get over it all right.” “Well, I will need at least five hundred to start with”…“You not one hundred man good; you just common white man”…”what about four?”

Summary:

This is the conversation among James Clancy, Lae Choo, and Hom Hing

Response:

When I was reading this part, I felt so sorry to Lae Choo and Hom Hing. At the same time, I was very angry about the lawyer’s behavior. The lawyer was just grabbing the chance to cheat the couple’s money. Since the lawyer understood that they were so hurry to get back their son, they didn’t have other choices, but paid the “five hundred” dollars to him. Moreover, from this quote, I can see that the bad image of “white man” in the Chinese perception at that time period. In the quote, Lae Choo didn’t scold the lawyer as a bad white man. Instead, she scolded him as a “common white man” after she felt that he was cheating her money. After the lawyer realized that the two couples were not able to pay 500 dollars. He immediately decreased the amount to 400 dollars. Moreover, he even said that the 500 dollars was only “a little money” (Norton 884). At that time, 500 dollars was actually a lot. He was just trying to persuade the couples to give money to him. Since I was not born at that time period, I really could not have the right to say whether all of the whites were bad or not. Nevertheless, I can feel that Sui Sin Far somehow disliked the white people. In her mind, white people, just similar to the lawyer, are very selfish, indifferent, and greedy. I think that the reason for her to have such an idea was that the Chinese immigrants were terribly suppressed during her time period. They encountered a lot of problems when they were trying to go inside America which was supposed to be “the Land of the Free”.

Apart from the quote, I think that the title of the story was very ironic too. After reading the story and the title, I feel that America was just opposite to the meaning of the title. It was not really free. Indeed, there were many restrictions which were set to the foreign immigrants.