Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend

Five: China

Five China As the cameras rolled for The Good Earth, Anna May was preparing her own production. While the Hollywood magazines were ablaze with stories about the filming of Buck’s novel, Anna May celebrated her thirty-first birthday with preparations for her trip to China. She knew that above all living well is the best revenge. She arranged with the Hearst Corporation to have the skilled cameraman Newsreel Wong travel with her in China, signed a contract to do several articles for the New York Herald Tribune, packed her trusty Leica, took all the cash she could afford, and set sail for the Middle Kingdom. Newsreel Wong was a top cameraman and had strong political connections with the Nationalist government in China. Before Anna May left Los Angeles, Harry and Tai Lachman gave her a big farewell party, with “all Hollywood there.” At the party, Warner Oland joked that it would be amusing to go to China with Anna May, “But I am still Charlie Channing. This time in The Circus.” He did have plans to meet her over there. Anna May wrote to Carl Van Vechten on January 7, 1936, thanking him for his birthday telegrams and hoping that she would receive the latest batch of his photos before her departure from San Francisco for Hong Kong through Honolulu on January 24. That was the Chinese New Year, which she considered a very good omen. Her departure, however, was delayed until January 26 by a dockworkers’ strike. While she waited, Anna May took in a few nights of ballet and theater. She made sure her departure was well publicized. The Hearst newspapers , especially the Los Angeles Examiner, gave her lots of ink.1 Anna May publicized her reasons for going to China largely in family terms. She wrote that she was fulfilling a lifelong dream of visiting China and planned to learn its language and culture. She added that most of her family waited for 142 Anna May Wong her there. Just before she departed from San Francisco, Anna May announced that she wanted to visit Peking Theater with Mei Lanfang in hopes of returning and building a theater company to tour the globe. She told reporters that “I want to study the Chinese theater—I’ll be a neophyte there, for all of my stage experience. I want to work with the old Chinese plays, and, eventually, I want to select two or three of them, find good translations, and take a group of Englishspeaking Chinese on a world tour.”2 Anna May armed herself intellectually for the trip to China by reading Lin Yutang’s famous book, My Country and My People. Lin was a highly respected compiler of Chinese dictionaries and had emerged as a leading philosopher. My Country and My People was published in the United States in 1935 and immediately became an important source on Chinese customs and beliefs. Anna May reveled in Lin’s interpretations of Chinese character and found much of herself in them. Lin’s discussion of the importance of mellowness and patience in life reflected her relations with Hollywood. His emphasis on femininity resonated in her writings. Lin’s discussion of women’s contemporary status had to impress Anna May. Lin argued that, after centuries of oppression, Chinese women now controlled their homes. Men dominated public society, Lin acknowledged, but the “married women with their fat handbags” were the envy of “salesgirls in the department stores of Shanghai,” his reference to the Modern Girl. Fashion did not matter. Modern independence, Lin argued, did not amount to much, compared to the private freedoms of the married women, who controlled their homes, their sexuality, and their motherhood. Lin’s historical analysis and philosophy directly challenged Anna May’s public life and had to make her wonder if she would not have lived better in China as a mother, rather than sparkling in the illusory fame of Hollywood. Lin’s recommendation that each person rely on humor was advice Anna May had taken for many years. Lin was in Shanghai and openly discussing a trip to the United States; Anna May looked forward to meeting and befriending him.3 Anna May’s first reports back to mainland America arrived soon after her departure. She seemed ambivalent about her visit because she was traveling to a “strange country, and, yet, in a way, I am going home.” She recalled her father’s descriptions of his village and the gods who were worshiped in...