Cheung, Floyd. “Afterword: The Political as Personal in H.T. Tsiang’s ‘And China Has Hands.’” And China Has Hands, Kaya Press, 2016, pp. 205–31.
And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang focuses on two protagonists who never find the success they dream of and whose love story does not quite work out, and through these two protagonists’ daily lives, the author shares his political ideologies, which was Tsiang’s intention with this novel. In his afterword to the 2016 Kaya Press edition of the novel, Floyd Cheung, professor of English language and literature and American studies at Smith College, examines how Tsiang draws from various genres of fictional writing to share a deeper political message about Chinese emigration to the U.S., being Chinese-American before that was a recognized identity, war between the Japanese Empire and China, and Chiang Kai-Shek’s rise to power. Cheung also identifies how Tsiang broke away from conventions and expectations to write a novel that surprises readers and to manage to leave a mark in American literature at a time when Chinese writers and artists in the U.S. were usually ignored.
Tsiang left China as Chiang Kai-Shek rose to power because Tsiang had been a youth activist and low-level official in the revolutionary government of Sun Yat-Sen. He came to the U.S. as a student while the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was still in place, which prohibited Chinese immigration with exceptions for students and merchants. This background helps explain the anti-Chiang Kai-Shek sentiment throughout the book, as well as Tsiang’s intimate understanding of Chinese immigration policy and how that would affect the lives of the characters.
Cheung writes that the setup of And China Has Hands seems to be one of a success story: it follows two protagonists with clear dreams, and they could easily end up together as a couple. However, this is not what happens, reflecting Tsiang’s understanding of the harsh reality of being a working-class Chinese-American person facing discrimination in the 1930s. Tsiang’s writing at times resembles psychological realism by showing the world through the characters’ thoughts, and at times resembles an ethnographic piece through its detailed exploration of quotidian life. Cheung also adds that the novel’s critique of capitalism by showing how it interferes with the characters’ dreams makes it resemble a proletarian novel. Mixing these various styles of writing makes the characters relatable to the reader and allows their stories to play out such that their initial hopefulness that they can “make it” in the U.S. becomes less hopeful as the reader experiences the discrimination and corresponding financial constraints that the characters experience. Cheung argues that Tsiang essentially shows awareness to “double-consciousness,” a term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois to refer to the experience of people of color in the U.S. as they try to pursue their dreams but realize that they are constrained or affected by the context of oppressive dominant society. This double-consciousness is further complicated in the character Pearl Chang, who is a biracial, Black-Chinese-American woman trying to pass as being solely Chinese.
In addition to investigating Tsiang’s portrayal of the struggles of Chinese-American life, Cheung examines Tsiang’s views on affairs in China. For example, Tsiang uses this novel to express opposition to Japanese imperialism in China and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Cheung interprets the opening dedication of the novel as being a reflection on the futility of war. He also emphasizes that Tsiang is not advocating for the death of Japanese people but rather for the death of the Japanese Empire. The title of the book is a reflection of the strength of China through its numbers, though Cheung argues that Tsiang also wanted to convey that “every single Chinese person is more than just a simple statistic” (222). News about Japanese-Chinese conflict happening overseas punctuates the book, indicating that this is a matter of deep importance to the protagonist Wan-Lee Wong and that Chinese nationalism and affairs are a theme of the novel.
The final major point that Cheung makes in his afterword is that Tsiang advocated for himself. Tsiang had self-published and sold over 10,000 copies of one of his books prior to getting a publishing contract for And China Has Hands. As a Chinese-American author and activist in the 1930s, gaining recognition and support of those with power in the U.S., particular when writing about Chinese affairs and Chinese-American experiences, was difficult. Cheung views Tsiang’s fight for his personal success as a fight for recognition of Chinese-American (or more broadly, Asian-American) people and their humanity. Cheung also points out that Tsiang includes his own struggle in the book by writing himself in as a recurring side character, which Cheung views as being in line with Tsiang’s “trickster methods” (227).
Without context, And China Has Hands could at first be read as a failed romance/success story novel with bits and pieces of Chinese and Chinese-American context scattered throughout. However, Cheung’s interpretation helps readers to better understand that Tsiang aimed to make statements about the U.S.’s treatment of Chinese immigrants, multiracial struggles, capitalism, the Chinese government, and the Japanese Empire’s conflict with China. In around 150 pages, Tsiang manages to express opinions on all of these topics while telling the stories of two people living in New York City in the 1930s.
