After leaving the church, we made our way through the two short blocks to my grandmother’s home on Elm Street. The night was dark, and the hour late. My brother parked the rental car and shone the headlights on the front door. My mom and I stood in the bright glare while my husband, Mark, struggled with the key my aunt had handed him during the fellowship dinner held in the church basement following the funeral. To the left of the entrance, the screened porch sagged, its once-vibrant mesh now torn and the wooden floorboards decayed, revealing gaps where dirt and leaves could be seen below.
As we entered, we reminded one another which lights were safe to turn on and which ones to avoid, as instructed by my uncle due to the dilapidated wiring. It was January 2004 in Marks, Mississippi, and the air inside was cool and slightly damp, carrying a hint of mildew. My grandmother—whom we affectionately called Por Por in Cantonese—had spent most of the last decade moving between her children’s homes. However, the small, one-story house, with its pitched roof and towering tree out front, remained the family’s heart, the place my mother had left behind when she moved to New York City, and where we celebrated Christmases as children, huddled together on the floor with our cousins. Nothing had changed.
If Por Por had seen us huddled around her coffin, slipping handwritten notes, a small piece of jade, a pecan tart, and a crayon-drawn ticket to heaven into the satin lining, she might have pretended to scold us. At 87, her face was still smooth, and I could imagine her pursing her lips at me—her way of saying “Oh, shush”—if she had known I spent the entire night crafting four single-spaced pages to read at her funeral. She would have waved me off if I had mentioned that writing four pages was tougher than writing forty.
I aimed to share the truth about her life, and I believe she would have appreciated it. There were the usual glowing descriptors: a kind-hearted churchgoer, the lady who baked pecan tarts for church events, and a devoted friend who had maintained a pen pal correspondence since childhood. Best grandma ever. Sunday school teacher. Thoughtful neighbor. She would have reveled in that list, but I also think she would have chuckled, secretly pleased to hear me tell the congregation at First Baptist Church, nestled in one of the reddest states, that she was, in fact, a spirited liberal who sent me typo-filled emails with random slashes, all in caps, declaring, “DUBYA IS AN IDIOT. THESE STUPID MEN ARE SENDING THIS COUNTRY STRAIGHT DOWN.” That was a part of her she never displayed openly, especially while alive.
So much of her life remained unsaid. I wished to share everything about her with my cousins, friends from church, and even the mayor of Marks, who were all crammed into the wooden pews. I wanted to give her what she desired most: the chance to be truly known. I would have revealed her lingering anger towards my grandfather, Gung Gung, over some undefined grievance, even 33 years after his passing, and her frustration in trying to find her place in the busy lives of her adult children.
Por Por and I often clashed. I urged her to voice her true feelings; she nudged me to be more compassionate. She grappled with the emotional restrictions shaped by her upbringing—caught in the sorrow she experienced at age 10 when she lost both her mother and grandmother, yet lacking the words to express it. She was still the young mother who not only lost her firstborn son at just 34 but also felt the disconnect from her other children on that fateful day.
I wanted everyone to see her as I did. We frequently debated, with me pushing her to assert herself while she encouraged me to take a step back. I insisted that Dr. Phil wasn’t a genuine doctor, and she brushed it off. I rolled my eyes, and she simply smiled.
Not everyone has the fortune of knowing their grandmother until they are 34, but she was my confidante, and I was hers. We always looked out for one another. In her 70s, I nicknamed her “Grambo” for her indomitable spirit. Standing before her coffin, reading from the neatly typed pages, I recalled all the times she said I was the only one who truly understood her. For years, I cherished that connection but now wished to share the blessing—and the weight—of it with others.
Por Por moved to Marks—population aspiring to 1,500—in 1935 from Chicago’s Chinatown to embark on her married life with Gung Gung. Family lore suggests that when Por Por arrived, the entire town flocked to the tiny train station to catch a glimpse of her. She often shared that it wasn’t just geography that distanced her from her past life as a Chinese girl from a bustling city. At just 20, she faced a new world.
Marks, the seat of Quitman County, is known for its challenging history. Reportedly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the town in 1966, witnessing a teacher in tears as she divided four apples and one box of crackers among impoverished students. He returned in 1968 during his Poor People’s Campaign to combat poverty and racism, delivering a poignant speech where he referred to “Quitman County, which I understand is the poorest county in the United States.” A month after his assassination, a symbolic mule train departed from Marks heading to Washington, D.C.
It might seem unlikely that Por Por would abandon her urban lifestyle for the rural South. The transition was tough as she traded streetcars for dirt roads, leaving behind a city of millions for former plantation land. Although Chicago had its racial strife—she would recount how the Chinese and Italians would exchange insults from opposite street corners—the situation in Mississippi represented a deeper, more painful divide. Yet, she found a community there.
Chinese families had established roots in the Delta since Reconstruction, stepping in as grocery store owners after plantation commissaries fell. My grandfather was among them, arriving in the U.S. alone at 14, joining relatives in Marks, eventually opening Wing’s Grocery Store.
I had visited Marks since childhood, and while the squat houses, dry lawns, and the sagging Main Street with its sparse shops felt familiar, they were always jarring. There was no getting used to the shanties with paper-covered windows and no electricity; they were a stark reality. Marks felt like a backdrop from a Southern film, complete with character actors.
During one visit, my brother and I entered a dimly lit drugstore. The pharmacist scrutinized us, paused, then slowly remarked, “You must be some of the Wings. Are you Virginia Faye’s kids?” At that time, my mother, Virginia Faye, had lived away for over 30 years. On one hand, it was easy to identify us as “some of the Wings.” We looked at least partly Chinese, and the Wings were one of the few Chinese families in Marks. Yet, the fact that he recognized us as Wings, not Pangs or any others, and even knew which ones, speaks volumes about the town’s close-knit nature. He assessed our ages and genders, calculated, and deduced we were Virginia Faye’s children. That’s small-town logic, a stark contrast to life back in California.
When my mother was young, Marks was a place of segregation with separate water fountains and schools. She recalls how older Black men would step off the curb and tip their hats as she walked by. The only way in or out of town was on flat highways flanked by cotton fields, with stray tufts stuck on the edges of the asphalt.
In Marks, whether superficial or not—something that’s difficult to measure—the Chinese were accepted. Por Por and Gung Gung raised six children while running their grocery store on the corner of Main Street where “colored town” began. Eventually, they transitioned from an apartment behind their store to the house on Elm Street, situated on the white side of town.
Being Chinese afforded them a minimal advantage over being Black in the segregated South. Perhaps because they always had someone lower on the social ladder, or due to the town’s relative tolerance, my grandparents garnered respect and success. Over the years, their relatives became mayors, landowners, business people, and homeowners. In nearby towns, Chinese children faced expulsion from white schools and had to create their own or move away. Yet in Marks, the acceptance of the Chinese community, whether genuine or not, was palpable.
The night before Por Por’s funeral, our extended family—my mother, her four surviving siblings, and all eight of us grandkids along with our spouses and children—took over a Comfort Inn in Clarksdale, the larger town just 18 miles west, commandeering the function room. The Clarksdale cousins prepared trays of homemade soy sauce chicken, barbecued pulled pork, strawberry trifle, and chocolate cakes.
We folded funeral programs at the buffet. Por Por had once expressed a desire for us to sing “How Great Thou Art” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, during her service. We set up tables for breakfast and formed assembly lines to pack nickels and coffee-flavored candies into small envelopes for distribution at the cemetery—a Chinese tradition meant to sweeten the sorrow and bring good fortune.
We shared photographs from our bags, piled them together, and passed them around before creating collages to display at the funeral home. We laughed and reminisced, flipping through images of Por Por as a young girl modeling for a noodle factory in Chinatown, alongside Gung Gung with their growing family in their yard, and each of us with her at our births, school plays, and graduations. I remembered her proudly walking me down the aisle at my wedding just seven months before her passing, with my mother on one side and her on the other, both exuding a sense of authority.
In these moments, I felt the urgency to share my grandmother’s story with others, to allow her to be known as she deserved. If you’re interested in exploring the journey of home insemination, check out this resource on artificial insemination kits. For more insights on family-building experiences, see Sarah and Jake’s journey to parenthood, a valuable account on the subject. Additionally, for comprehensive guidance on pregnancy and home insemination, visit this excellent resource.
Summary
This piece reflects on the life of my grandmother, Por Por, who moved from Chicago’s Chinatown to the Mississippi Delta. It highlights her resilience, the challenges faced by the Chinese community in a segregated South, and the deep connections within our family. Through stories of love, loss, and cultural tradition, I aim to honor her legacy and the lessons she imparted.