‘We Are Old and Don’t Have Many Years Left’ : Parents Struggle So Their Children Will Prosper

For as long as Yun Ju Yan can remember, the enduring, luminescent vision of United States--the “Gold Mountain” as America is known in China--beckoned.

In 1950, her older brother left China with his wife and young child and came to America, eventually settling in San Gabriel. Thirty years later, he returned for a visit and offered to sponsor Yan and two other sisters and their families in their effort to immigrate to the United States.

They arrived in 1984, poor rice farmers from rural China unprepared for the traffic and concrete and crime. One sister and her family settled in San Francisco while Yan and the other sister and their families moved to the western San Gabriel Valley.

Today, all three sisters work in garment sweatshops while their husbands wash dishes and bus tables at Chinese restaurants. Yan and her husband, Da Zhen, work 12 to 14 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. Together, they bring home $300 a week, or roughly $2 an hour.

Rent for their stark, tiny apartment in Monterey Park runs $550 a month. With two teen-agers to feed--two older children live elsewhere, and a fifth remains in China--their life in many ways remains as forlorn as it was in the old country.

Still, the Yans do not regret their decision. With no hope of upward mobility for themselves, husband and wife are buying time until their children can improve their still-limited English and one day prosper.

“We are old and don’t have too many years left,” Yun Ju Yan, 57, said through a translator. “We have done this for our children. Our dreams are for our children, that they will have a better future.”

Families such as the Yans have long represented the stereotypical Chinese experience in America. But with the emergence of wealthy Chinese immigrant communities in cities such as Monterey Park and Alhambra, that image has been at least partly replaced with one of conspicuous wealth. Chinese are now known for their tastes in Mercedes-Benzes and expensive homes.

Experts say the images of both the poor and the rich are half-truths.

“One of the most popular misconceptions is that the majority of Chinese newcomers are affluent,” said Marge Nichols, who oversaw a 1985 United Way study on Asians in Los Angeles County.

“Yes, a significant proportion do come here with lots of money. But an equally significant proportion are poor. There is much disparity in income among Chinese in particular and Asians in general.”

Struggling to make ends meet, Yun Ju Yan has never found time to visit Los Angeles’ Chinatown, which she has heard so much about. She rarely sees her brother or sisters anymore.

Instead, her life is taken up with work and adjusting to life in America: the hand-held stereos blasting outside her Monterey Park apartment, the gas stove on which she cooks and the refrigerator that offers her the luxury of shopping once a week rather than every day.

A proud, stoic woman with a smooth face and strong, unwrinkled hands, she now waits for the time when one of her children will become an American citizen, thus enabling the family to sponsor an older daughter and husband who remain in China.

“Then we will be whole again,” she says softly.