Paying the Price The Adventures of Eddie Fung Essay

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was tailored to cripple the immigration of Chinese into the United States, because they were deemed inassimilable and seen as uncivilized, unclean and filthy, creating an anti-Chinese fervor (Zia). This era promoted resentment towards Chinese which further escalated, with the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 that extended to other Asian groups. Nonetheless, this did not prevent Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. Chinese found loopholes in the law that allowed them to bring their family members as ‘paper sons’. The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco destroyed municipal records, which catalyzed immigration from China by allowing Chinese-men to claim US citizenship and bring their family from China†¦show more content†¦His family would depend on local-markets to provide free or discounted food, such as buying hard bread as opposed to fresh bread. Over the summer he would be sent to a camp, to improve what school-officials ca tegorized as malnutrition. Although he enjoyed the close-knit community of Chinatown he â€Å"Hated the fact that the boundaries of Chinatown were so limited† (Yung 23). Eddie’s father influenced Eddie to be the chaperone in the family despite his age. At an early age he felt as though he had a financial responsibility, which influenced him to get a job as both a shoe-shiner and a paperboy. He describes his family’s structure as the father being the head of the family, and the mother as the heart. This helped create a balance within the family, but caused tension between Eddie and his father’s expectations. Eddie experienced two spheres of education, American school and Chinese school. â€Å"I loved going to American school, but Chinese school was another matter.† (Yung 25) He disliked the limited exposure of Chinese education, and felt that he had been exposed to a wider world in American school, which eventually led him to flunk out of school. This came as a disappointment to Eddie’s father, and added immense pressure to Eddie. The confinement he felt in Chinatown frustrated him, his overprotective mother crippled his adventurous-ambition and the pressure added by his father to lead the family caused him to runaway when at the age of 13. He