as in Paris, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, China. Eng is the interviewer/ editor of the oral history / play anthology Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage. His plays, lyrics, and memoir excerpts have also been published in numerous anthologies. Eng’s spoken-word videos, songs, storytelling, and commentary have been broadcast and streamed on National Public Radio among others. He is a a two-time appointee to the Fulbright Specialists roster of Theatre / U.S. Studies scholars and a three-time recipient of NYSCA/ NYFA Fellowships.
Eng applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new memoir, Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond, reported the following:
Page 99 is a very good representation of the scope and tone of my memoir. On that page is a passage that explores my 1987 visit to an English language class in Guilin, China in their equivalent of high school. My mother and I were traveling with a small group of North American tourists and we were the only non-Caucasians. On this day, a rainstorm had cancelled our planned outdoor activities and somehow we were invited to visit this English language class. My mother sat out this visit. To quote from the text:Visit Alvin Eng's website.As soon as I entered the English class, whispers started buzzing around and smiles grew from welcoming to cunning as the teacher introduced her visitors. Finally, a delegation of the tallest boy in the class and a petite pig-tailed girl came forward. If she had been born twenty years earlier, this petite pig-tailed girl would have definitely been a Red Guard. Acting as both his agent and interpreter, the petite pig-tailed girl declared: “He would like to arm wrestle you!”Page 99 is from a chapter entitled “A Sort of Homecoming: But Where Are You Really From?” The chapter compares vignettes from my first trip to China with working in the 1980s rock music biz of NYC in my early 20s. In “the biz” I was regularly asked, “but where are you really from?” by many of my peers and even some musicians. For an American-born Chinese, was this any worse or bizarre than being asked by teenage students in China, “who would you fight for” if a U.S.-Sino war broke out? The finale of the memoir is in direct contrast with the Guilin episode. The final chapters revolve around teaching and creating a Fulbright devised theatre residency. The residency’s primary theme was inspired by the Chinese artistic influences on Thornton Wilder’s Americana play, Our Town. The 21st century Hong Kong college students now accepted and appreciated working with an Asian American professor. Throughout the book, as throughout life, the questions remain more or less the same, but the answers and revelations are always very different.
Taken aback, I sort of uttered, “Well . . . gee . . . I don’t know about that.”
The petite pig-tailed girl relayed my response in Chinese to her tall comrade. A round of whispers whipped around the room, and a new strategy was whispered into the ear of the petite pig-tailed girl.
“The friendship is first, the match is second,” she counter-offered. But her body language was screaming, “Let’s get ready to RUMBUUUUUUUULLLLLL!”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I politely declined. But the students were just getting started.
“Hey! If there was a war between the United States and China,” challenged a boy from the back row, “who would you fight for?”
“Yeah, who would you fight for?” the class started shouting—more or less in unison. But most aggressively, they were chanting in English.
The teacher finally chastised the students and regained order.
After a long pause in this calm after the storm, I finally said, “I think I’d move to Canada.”
--Marshal Zeringue