100 學年員林農工英文科專題研究報告
The Mixed-Race Identity in Han Suyin’s The Crippled Tree
張婷筑老師
I. Introduction
This study aims to explore the issues of mixed-race identity in Han Suyin’s The
Crippled Tree. The book, published in 1965, is a mixture of Han’s autobiography,
biography of her family and the history of China, in which the characters are not
fictional, only some of them had their names changed. The protagonist, Rosalie, in
The Crippled Tree is the reflection of the author herself. She is a half-caste. Her
childhood spent in China was under the influence of chaos of warlords, the
Communist Revolution, political instability and racial confrontations and these had
raised her awareness of racial differences and cultural identity.
Throughout the story, Han seeks to uncover or discover the connections
between the individual and the family, the family and the whole country, and strives to
go back to the roots, finding her memories of childhood, whether good or bad. As she
writes, “The tree is known by its roots. I had to go back to the roots…I would not be a
crippled tree, marring the landscape with its own malady. At least I would greet the
tomorrow I had not made, even if it killed me” (10-11).
Many of Han’s novels, autobiographical volumes, and non-fictional books have
been highly recognized and some of them have been translated into up to 17 languages.
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Wang has discussed the significance of Han’s contribution to exchanges of the Chinese
and the Western cultures systematically in The East/West Relationship in “The Crippled
Tree”. Except this, few researches have discussed this book, especially concerning Han
Suyin's mixed-race identity and the conflicts of her complex selves. Thus, this paper
attempts to explore the issues of Han Suyin’s mixed-race identity from three
aspects—minority status, compassion for the Others, and cultural confrontations--in the
context of her own life stories as well as her family’ life stories in The Crippled Tree.
II. Mixed-Race Identity
(a) Minority Status
In The Cripple Tree, Han Suyin reflects the Chinese history through her parents'
family sagas. Her father stands for Chinese culture and her mother stands for the Western
culture. Han explores the history of her father’s side and her mother’s side and the
interaction and conflicts between the Chinese culture and the Western culture. The history
of her parents' families is a microcosm of the history of China and a reflection of her
multi-selves. In the process, she presents the Chinese struggle to restore lost culture and
national dignity and examines her complex self as well (Wang 226).
Hybridity features the whole book, either the settings or the characters
themselves. Rosalie’s mother is a Belgium and her father is a Chinese. This
corresponds to the complicated blend of races. The complexity of racial hybridity
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results in her inner-ethnic conflicts.
Looking back on the historical settings, during the nineteenth century, the exotic and
prosperous image of Chinese culture and civilization gradually turned into an oriental
fantasy. Because of the decline of the Qing Dynasty, Western powers intruded in China
and dominated it. China was exploited by European countries. As Han’s father
commented, “Already the system was crumbling, the predatory West within our gates,
feeding on our decay. Already all had changed”(Han 77). There was thus obvious social
hierarchy. Europeans had the highest status in the society. “This was something
Rosalie understood early, that the only protection was to be European. In fact Mama
invoked this protection all the time,” writes Han (368). The society was full of racial
discrimination. Chinese were treated as people of the inferior status. Han takes an
Italian engineer for example: “Mrs. Belloni could not write, but he got three times as
much pay as Papa, because he was European” (368). As a half-caste, Rosaline was
treated as minority status. Her mother, Marguerite, once told her, the French doctor
refused to save her brother, Sea Orchid, only because he was a half-caste. Rosaline
knew that she was a half-caste, too. Because of this, she understood why the Greek
doctor’s wife, who was a Chinese, was kept hidden in the house—for making her
daughter less half-caste, so that her chances in life might not be ruined.
According to Herman (2004), the mixed-race children tend to identify
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themselves as the minority status if they receive discrimination from others as a result
of their appearance. In addition, Brunsma also notes that White-Asian children with
Asian fathers are more likely to be identified as multiracial rather than White (1148).
For instance, Rosalie remembered that one day as her mom, Tiza and she got off the
richshaw carriage in front of Central Park, a European man leading a child by the
hand stopped and said to his child with disdain, ‘Look, Peter, these are half-castes’
(Han 383). She understood what the words meant: “It was Papa being Chinese, and to
be a Chinese in China was wrong, only being European was right” (384). Even though
Rosalie’s mom later told her and Tiza that they looked like her, Rosalie knew that she
was discriminated and treated as inferior status in comparison with those Europeans.
Robert Young has proposed that hybridity is “a radical heterogeneity, discontinuity,
the permanent revolution of forms”(25). Hsiao has also noted,“ The force of
difference produces power” (10). An example is Rosalie’s brother, who was racially
abused by three English schoolboys when he was in England. He then learned to box,
and beat all those who had hurt him (Han 458-59). His fight and protection of his
dignity implies his acquisition of power.
(b) Compassion for the Others
As a Eurasian, Rosalie has compassion for the Others. She develops
understanding of the race of lower status and ethnicity in her complex bicultural
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environment. For example, she paid one dollar to the rickshaw man to take a Chinese
beggar home, even though her mom would not approve of this. As Hsiao has noted,
“The crossing of boundaries has given power to the hybridized individuals” (10). She
showed her benevolence and her power of loving the weak ones in the society.
Moreover, she has sympathy for the small animals. As Han depicts in the book,
There were the Others: a hedgehog, a lamb, cats, puppies to be picked up in
the villages, brought home to be fed…Rosalie had a row of graves behind
the house, crosses of wood and tombstones of gravel…The hedgehog,
grunting love, was brought in the village where he was being tortured by
some children with sticks. Rosalie again burst into one of her fits and would
not be pacified until Papa…purchased it and it was led home.” (372-74)
Being Treated as one of the Others in Europeans’ minds in China, Rosalie shows
particular sympathy for those who are in similar situations, like the beggars, and the
tortured animals.
(c) Cultural Confrontations
Rosalie’s life was full of duality, mainly in terms of religion, food and school. As
Han commented,
One could and did become someone else, at different hours of the day. And
the exact, concrete imagination of the child, stretched by the knowledge of
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this identity of contraries, finds its own order and discipline among the
materials of chaos. (396)
Regarding religion, there were two churches, the European and the Chinese ones. In
Chinese church, the man sat on one side and the woman on the other, but mixed in the
European church. This shows the propriety between the sexes of Confucianism, which
is particularly valued in Chinese society—body contact is not allowed in handing over
and taking over between men and women (384-86).
In the aspect of meals, Rosalie could have European breakfast, Chinese lunch,
and again European supper. Breakfast could be coffee and bread, eggs and bacon;
lunch could be rice and meat and vegetables, belayed into the mouth with chopsticks;
dinner could be brown bread with cheese or sausage and tea. Or the whole family
went out to eat in a Chinese restaurant. Sometimes, Rosalie’s father cooked dishes
from Szechuan and sometimes her mother mixed macaroni and Chinese noodles. In
those days, only Europeans, half-castes, and a few westernized intellectuals drank
coffee with milk. Chinese people drank hot water, tea, or beancurd milk. Generally,
Rosalie could adapt to both the Western and Chinese meals. Yet, as most Chinese
people, she did not like milk because its smell made her sick. In addition, only rice
could satisfy her appetite (396-97).
As to the school, there were two kinds, Chinese school in the morning and
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French convent in the afternoon. When Rosalie received Catholic education, she was
puzzled with what the catechism book said or what the Bible told people to be. For
example, in the Bible, there was the injunction: ‘Give all thou hast.’ But no one did in
that way in China. In the Convent school, Rosalie learned to say prayers or make
confessions. She also read the history of French Revolution. In contrast, in Chinese
school, there was nothing about revolution, or communism. Religion did not exist.
People did not talk about “sin” as the Catholics did (397-401).
III. Conclusion
Rosalie, the recreation of Han Suyin, lived in the unstable political situation in
China. As a mixed-race child, Han received bicultural education, the Western culture
and the Chinese culture, from her parents and learned to cope with cultural
confrontation and transition as well. Her inferior status made her have more
compassion for the Others, including the beggars and the animals. She was not
ashamed of being a Chinese. Instead, she was a Chinese patriot1, who treated China as
her hometown and came back China each year. Wring the Cripple Tree gives her a
chance to look back the years “full of change and revolution” in her generation in
China (Han 9) as well as recollects her memories of childhood. As she points out,
China to me was of course my father and mother, and all I myself knew of
1
For details, see Diane Casselberry Manuel.
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China. To separate them from me would be to denude my story. Inextricably,
the tree of my book grew, an odd growth, yet more true than all the ideal
book written about China.” (Han 9)
In addition, being a half-caste, she opened up new perspectives on the history of China as
well as its relationship with the Western countries. Through her writing, the exchanges
and conflicts of the East and the West were presented to the world more vividly. As Wang
comments,
Her life has been lived on the boundaries of many worlds, personally,
professionally, and culturally; not surprisingly her writing is equally
concerned with exploring the margins, the intersections, the boundaries of
human experience. Before the 1970’s, she became the most significant, in
her own words, "bridge builder" between the East and the West. (226)
Writing her own version of China and her family, she simultaneously writes herself,
explores and redefines her complex selves.
Work Cited
Brunsma, David L. “Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of Mixed-Race
Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.”
Social Forces 84.2 (2005):1131-1157. Print.
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Diane Casselberry Manuel. "Han Suyin; A Fiery Chinese Patriot Who Opened Doors
to Her Country," The Christian Science Monitor 30 June 1982: 19. Web.
19.Jan. 2012.
Han, Suyin. The Crippled Tree. New York: Putnam, 1965. Print.
Herman, Melissa. “Forced to Choose: Some Determinants of Racial Identification In
Multi-Racial Adolescents.” Child Development 75.3 (2004):730-748. Print.
Hsiao, Yun-hua. “Meling Jin: Writing Social Exclusion and New Belonging.”
SPECTRUM: Studies in Language, Literature, Translation, and Interpretation 5
(2009): 1-14. Print.
Wang, Xuding. “The East/West Relationship in The Crippled Tree.” Journal of
Humanities 6 (2008): 225-240. Print.
Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. London:
Routledge, 1995. Print.
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