Paper Angels – Page 1
Paper Angels
A play about Angel Island
by Genny Lim
[to be read aloud in class]
This short play has been borrowed from: Unbroken Thread—An Anthology of
Plays by Asian American Women, Edited by Roberta Uno, The University of
Massachusetts Press, 1993; adapted for a 5th grade classroom by Mary Jackson
for a Social Studies Project, SFSU, 2003
Characters in the play:
Lum, an able-bodied, strong peasant youth. He is bold and ambitious,
moody—an aggressive fighter with honest motives.
Fong, a cynical, mercenary, middle-aged peasant with an innate sense
for making money and surviving the system
Lee, a high-strung young poet, inexperienced, and idealistic. He wants very much to be
“western”.
Chin Gung, an old timer, with a taste for freedom and adventure, who’s been in the
United States long enough to cultivate American habits, but who’s never lost his
traditional Chinese values and outlook on life.
Mei Lai, the devoted young wife of Lee. She possesses all the virtues of an ideal Chinese
woman. She is patient and loyal, gentle and loving, graceful and considerate. Yet there is
a profound sense of loss and insecurity underneath her outward appearance.
Ku Ling, a moody young peasant girl from extreme poverty. She is all alone in the world
and possesses all the qualities considered unacceptable to a well-bred Chinese girl:
headstrong and rebellious, independent and unladylike. Her hostility is equal to her lack
of sophistication and simplicity.
Chin Moo, an old village woman with a simple, practical outlook on life. She’s at home
in the Toisan hill country; in American society, she’s a fish out of water.
Miss/Mr. Chan, a Christian convert, who carries out her duties as interpreter with
distinction and objectivity. While she is sympathetic to the immigrants, her loyalty is to
her job. “Chan “ can be played by a male or there can be two interpreters, a male for the
men and a female for the women.
Miss Gregory, a Christian missionary who has devoted her life to the saving of Chinese
women’s lives. She is fearless of the authorities because of the latitude they give her on
the Island.
Paper Angels – Page 2
Paper Angels
Time: 1915
Place: Angel Island Immigration Detention Center, San
Francisco Harbor
Scene I : The men’s dormitory. A low, continuous moan is
heard from off-stage.
Lee: Why does he do that?
Fong: Poor guy. He’s been on the Island three years now.
Lee: Three years! What happened?
Lum: (jumping down form the bed) He’s driving me crazy. (Moan grows louder.) Shut
up, you hear me, be QUIET!
Chin Gung: Oh, please be quiet!
Lum: Why don’t they lock him up!
Fong: Don’t mind him. He’s possessed by ghosts. (confidentially) He got a message
four months ago that his wife died back in China. He’s convinced it’s a trick to keep him
locked up. (Moan.) He talks to his wife in the dining room, as if she was right there in
front of him!
Lum: (yelling at him) Ngow gwei! Wake up, you fool! Your wife’s dead! You hear?
She’s dead! (The moaning becomes a hummed folksong.)
Fong: You may as well tell a dream to an idiot.
Lee: I don’t blame the poor fool. If China wasn’t so weak, we wouldn’t be excluded
from coming. We wouldn’t have to be Paper Sons.
Lum: I’m no Paper Son. My father was high-class—a genuine U.S. citizen. Owned the
biggest gambling hall in Chinatown. That’s right, he didn’t have to go back to China to
report any phony sons. He could buy off the immigration people any time he wanted to!
Fong: Liar.
Lum: Hey, would I kid you? My father was a big shot. Anytime there was trouble,
they’d go to him. He could claim you were an Earthquake Son and you’d be an instant
citizen.
Fong: Your father never had shoes!
Paper Angels – Page 3
Lum: And YOUR father had to cut his feet to fit his shoes!
Lee: (Goes to the wall and starts carving a poem.) King Hsiang knew he was
surrounded when he heard the songs of his people.
Lum: Ah, a Chinese poet in a western suit. (He examines Lee’s clothes.) When you get
out of this prison, you’ll be mistaken for an American. (He looks over Lee’s shoulder.)
What’s that you’re carving?
Lee: A poem.
Lum: A poem? (He laughs.) How’s this for a poem?
Pat your thigh, sing a song,
Everybody says I have no wife!
Let them laugh, it won’t be long,
In Golden Mountain, I’ll buy three wives!
Lee: I said a poem, not peasant drivel.
Lum grabs Lee by the lapel. Lee’s coaching book drops to the floor.
Lee hurriedly stoops to pick it up, but Lum beats him to it.
Lum: Why you son-of-a-dirty-snake, what are you doing with this?
Lee: It’s none of your business!
Fong: (looking around and checking the door to make certain no guards are in earshot)
What’s going on in here?
Lum: (accusingly) He’s got his coaching book here!
Fong: (looking around) Sh-h-h! Keep it down, keep it down.
Lum: Why didn’t you get rid of it? Why didn’t you memorize it?
Fong: Burn it! Do you know what they’ll do to you if they find it? They’ll ship you
back to China so fast!
Lee: (defensively) I’m the one taking the chance!
Fong: I can hide a note in an orange, a pork bun, but where are you gonna hide a whole
book, huh? The next thing you know, we’ll all get deported.
Paper Angels – Page 4
Lee: You hypocrite, I’ve seen you taking money for those coaching papers! I’ve see the
kitchen help sneaking you notes past the guards!
Fong: That’s different! If I didn’t slip the notes, some of you wouldn’t get through one
hearing! If people like you got your stories straight, I wouldn’t need to sneak ‘em in!
Lee: I am Lee Sung Fei, not whatever his name is in your book! I am a scholar, not a
merchant’s son!
Fong: Not anymore, you’re not!
Lum: See? The only people who exist (tapping his head) are in here.
Lee: Lies, all lies!
Lum: Come on, Li-Po, this is just the beginning! You’ll be living it up good in
Chinatown—while us low class bums’ll still be here singing our peasant rhymes.
Fong: Stupid paper son. I don’t know what the parents teach these days.
Lum: Hey, look at me, I’m big and strong,
Not skinny and ugly like my old friend Fong.
Let him laugh, let him sneer,
When I get rich, he’ll still be here.
Fong: Those with the emptiest heads make the loudest noise.
Lum: (squatting down on the floor as he sets up a game of
pai-gow) Let’s play some pai-gow. Today’s my day. I can feel
it in my bones!
Lee: (standing alone by his wall carving) It’s been three weeks since I’ve seen my wife!
Fong: I’ve been here a year this coming January sixth.
Lee: (to himself) I want to get Mei Lai a western style house with a toilet that flushes
and a stove that turns fire on and off. I’ll take our son up to the highest hill on Gold
Mountain and we’ll fly the biggest dragon kite you ever saw to heaven!
Lum: When I get to the Big City, you know what I’ll get? A wide-brimmed hat. The
kind the rich white men wear. I’ll walk down Chinese Street like some rich Mandarin and
all the ladies will turn their pretty heads and whisper, “Who is that handsome fella?”
“Why don’t your know? That’s brother Lum, a big-shot—made a killing in Gold
Mountain. Yessir, big brother Lum—even the white folks call him ‘Mis-tah Lum!”
Paper Angels – Page 5
Fong: (opens a newspaper) Ask me, I think you’re all dreaming! Hmph, you’ll be lucky
if you can wash a basket of dirty laundry and earn twenty-five cents! A big heart and an
empty pocket will get you nowhere!
Lee: Chin Gung….can you do me a favor?
Chin Gung: What do you want, boy?
Lee: You’ve been to Gold Mountain, will you teach me
English?
Chin Gung: What for?
Lee: I want to become an American.
Chin Gung: And you think by speaking English you will become American? (No
answer.) So you want to learn the language of the White Demons? (No answer.) When
you want to start?
Lee: Now! As soon as I set foot in San Francisco, I will work hard to become a success.
I will make my family proud.
Chin Gung: Are you number one son?
Lee: Yes, I am. They worked hard just so I could come here. Chin Gung, tell me, what
is America like? Are the streets really paved with gold?
Chin Gung: (laughs uproariously) Paved with gold!
Lee: (hurt) If I am disrespectful, I apologize.
Chin Gung: No, no, my son. I can’t help laughing. For one moment I thought I was
looking into a mirror. Look at these hands! I’ve shoveled enough tons of sand , I’ve
blasted through enough granite hills to know that this mountain is no mountain of gold.
And I say all of you on this Island will taste fool’s gold. You know how I know? Because
America is just a faraway place in the mind—a piece of a dream that scatters like gold
dust in the wind.
Lee: Then why are you going back?
Chin Gung: Why? Because, my son, as you will learn someday, once a Gold
Mountain boy, always a Gold Mountain boy. I have one foot in America and one foot in
China!
Paper Angels – Page 6
Scene 2: Women’s dormitory. Miss Gregory, a Christian missionary, is leading the
women in song with the help of Chan, an interpreter. In spite of their unfamiliarity with
the pronunciation and text, the Chinese women sing along with gusto and animation.
Women:
My bonny lies over the ocean,
My bonny lies over the sea,
My bonny lies over the ocean,
Oh bring back my bonny to me.
Bring back, bring back,
Bring back my bonny to me, to me.
Bring back, bring back,
Oh bring back my bonny to me.
Miss Gregory: Wonderful. You are all doing so much better. (She looks at Chan for
the Chinese word.)
Chan: Ho-ho.
Miss Gregory: (to the women) Ho-ho!...Oh, I haven’t forgotten. (She hands the
women some candy, then addresses Mei Lai.) I suppose you want a boy. Perhaps the lord
will bless you. Well, that’s all for today.
Women: Bye-bye, Missy!
Chin Moo: Bye-bye, Missy Je-sus! (To Mei Lai) You are so lucky! I just checked the
lunar calendar and you will bear a son!
Mei Lai: Oh, I certainly hope so, Chin Moo! I already have a name for him—Yang
Lee.
Chin Moo: Ah, Curious One! You know, a good son is the backbone of a family. More
precious than jade. But a daughter is an empty rice sack. She exhausts the family bin.
Ku Ling: (disgustedly) The gods forbid a daughter with a stomach. She’ll eat you out
of rice and home!
Chin Moo: (ignoring her) They say girls always favor their fathers and sons, their
mothers.
Sound of a foghorn. Ku Ling crosses to the window of the dormitory and looks out.
Ku Ling: The ship’s here.
Mei Lai: The witnesses have come in for the day.
Paper Angels – Page 7
Chin Moo: Hmph! Is that all?
Mei Lai: It might be one of our relatives here and we can’t even
see them!
Chin Moo: Tsk-tsk! It’s no use wondering. When the melon’s ripe, it will drop from
its stem. When the time comes, we will each have our turn to testify—and we will each
get our turn to leave.
Ku Ling: I have been here five weeks and others have come and gone in two!
Chin Moo: Pah, five weeks! I have been on this Island for three months.
Ku Ling: How can you stand it?
Chin Moo: What is three months compared to forty years? Forty long years…I was
fifteen when I married and I was fifteen when my husband left me. He said, “I’m going to
make my fame and fortune and I will come back for you!” So off he went to Gum San,
this husband of six months!
Mei Lai: Did he come back for you as he promised?
Chin Moo: When two persons are in love, they can live on water alone. Everyone said
we were heaven’s match. I was never happier. Then he got itchy feet. He had a burning
desire to see the Beautiful Country, so he left. He described everything he saw when he
got there. But after awhile, the letters stopped coming. What could I do but sit on the
doorstep and wait?
Mei Lai: (thinking about Lee) Did you ever give up hope?
Chin Moo: The women used to get together and gossip about Gum San and the
demons who bewitched men’s souls and they’d forget about home!
Mei Lai: I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t see Lee again.
Chin Moo: I was ready to live out the rest of my days alone. (Pauses.) Then one day
there was a knock on the door. Who could it be? I opened the door and there was my
husband! Home after forty years! We both just stood there and stared at each other.
Mei Lai: I like happy endings.
Ku Ling: Hmph! to be faithful is to be foolish!
Mei Lai: For shame, Ku Ling! You had better mend you tongue before it is too late.
Paper Angels – Page 8
Ku Ling: Too late for what?
Mei Lai: For you to remain a virtuous Chinese girl.
Ku Ling: The trouble with all of you is you have no spirit! You come all the way
across the ocean, dragging your useless kitchen gods and superstitions. You remind me of
ox tails, swinging back and forth from the behind, without a head or a brain! I hate this
place!
Mei Lai: You say what your heart feels, but if you allow yourself such thoughts, you
will lose hope.
Fong enters and the women rise in one group and exit. Fade out on women and fade-up
spot on Fong.
Fong: If you want to be a Gold Mountain boy you got to pay the price. For one
thousand dollars, you can be a merchant, a doctor, a teacher, an official…but no laborers,
according to the Chinese Exclusion Act. That’s why I’m here. On account of the law.
Now that their railroad’s built, their factories are humming, and the harvest is in, it’s time
to kick us Chinese immigrants out by our butts! What can you do? I always make the best
of a bad situation, you know?
I’ve been in this wooden cage over a year now. I seen ‘em come and go. I can tell you
how many coaching notes have slipped through my fingers without ever getting caught.
If it wasn’t for me, some of the fellas would still be rotting here—like me.
Fade out.