| The character, Uncle Toisan, is an eyewitness to Chinese American history who bridges the Exclusion Era (1882-1943) experience, the modern post-civil rights experience (1965-current) and emergence of Asian American consciousness. He will have entered the country as a 17 year old “paper son” (immigrants who purchased legal immigration status as a “paper son” of an American citizen) and persevered a two month detention at Angel Island Immigration Station on the eve of its closing in 1939. He is drafted in 1942 to serve in Europe during World War II, returning from the battlefield to face discrimination at home as a laborer in the restaurants and laundries of SF Chinatown. He however, witnesses and experiences the tremendous changes in Chinatown stemming from the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the final lifting of Exclusion, the growth of Asian American political empowerment and the changing demographics of California due post Vietnam war rounds of immigration.
The premise of the piece will be Uncle Toisan playing the Chinese two stringed fiddle called the erhu on the street in Chinatown to make a few extra dollars to supplement his retirement in a small apartment he shares with his nephew’s family who recently immigrated from the People’s Republic of China. It is the early 1990’s and Uncle Toisan is in his late 70’s. A group of students from UC Berkeley Asian American Studies Program is on a walking tour led by CHSA guides; they stop to talk to Uncle Toisan and inspire him to share his story.
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