Caught Between Cultures: The Asian American Beauty Dilemma is a documentary film directed, edited, and produced by Karis Lai, a HAAA intern studying History and minoring in Asian Studies. The film explores the tensions that East Asian American women face as they navigate conflicting beauty standards, featuring peer interviews, expert insights, and autobiographical stop motion.
The peer interviews shed light on the lived experience of grappling with unachievable ideals, addressing perceptions of the "Asian American ideal," personal attractiveness, and encounters with plastic surgery. Expert interviews provide a more systematic and specialized analysis of these themes. Karis uses an oral history method for both peer and expert interviews in crafting questionnaires and conducting interviews. In doing so, Karis' documentary not only gathers oral history but also becomes one, using layered storytelling to substantiate the themes in her film. Finally, autobiographical stop motion interweaves philosophical reflections, open-ended questions, and Karis’ personal experiences in order to tie together the film into a cohesive narrative.
Four Seasons of Aging: The Lived Experiences of Chinese American Women is a multimedia piece blending oral history, creative nonfiction writing, and photography. This piece features the stories of four HAAA interviewees: Francine Di, Faye Chin, Rogene Gee Calvert, and Lily Chan Foster and uses the seasons as an interpretive framework to understand the complexities of aging in a fresh light. "Four Seasons of Aging" juxtaposes the universal and philosophical aspects of aging with four real stories which highlight the parts of aging that are often missed: the subtle pains, the small inconveniences, and the surprising joys.
Isn’t it interesting that aging begins the day you are born?
That first piercing cry as an infant, that gasping breath of air, seals the beginning and end of your life. One day you may just find yourself back in the fluorescent lights of that hospital room, gasping for air as you embark on your exit from the earth.
We live as ticking time bombs. And yet, to grapple constantly with that reality is too much for us to handle. So we think one day at a time, we push down the fear of expiration. We live today as if we will live forever.
Aging and death share the same inevitability, and their partnership is undeniable. They go hand in hand, like a pair of elementary school girls who skip with their braids swinging in unison as they hum along to a song they made up. To think about aging is to think about death, and to think about death is to think about aging, or the lack thereof. Aging’s portrait depends solely on the painter, but regardless of the artist it often resembles death. They are both clouded by the fear of the unknown.
I’ve always been called beautiful, even if I didn’t believe it. My Chinese features are allegedly resistant to the tug of time—smooth soft skin, large brown eyes, black silky hair—they say I’ve looked the same since middle school, and I’ll continue to look that way for years. But I’m not so sure. Since moving to Houston, my skin has become dappled with freckles. While it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, it certainly leaves its spots.
Forever Young croons Alphaville, and so does American society. As someone currently in the alleged prime of her life, it certainly doesn’t feel like it: existential doubt, pressure to turn a prestigious education into a prestigious job and trying to stay humble, be kind, forever pretty, and LinkedIn perfect, just to name a few. Yet even with this oppressive and sometimes paradoxical list, I fear growing old.
However, my fear of the unknown is crippled when confronted by something powerfully known. Such is the power of stories that come directly from a person’s understanding of their present. The four seasons are the stories of four women, each embodying a reality different from the rest, yet all united in the ever-moving passage of time we call aging.
We are all products of history, which is nothing more, but also nothing less, than a collection of stories. As humans, we often think of our lives as occurring in stages–that existence which memory will not allow us to be privy to, the hazy years of childhood, our first experience with love, with success, with failure. Yet such “stages” meld much more fluidly than we realize. Like spilled ink on a shirt we soak up the past and bear it in our present. The stories we tell ourselves become the stories we believe, and often the stories by which others will remember us. As we age, that process of story-formation solidifies.
Before I experienced the four seasons, aging represented decay and loss; a fading of self, a succumbing to suffering.
Aging was that monster in the closet, always there, but never seen. It could only be felt as an oppressive cloud.
After I was exposed to the four seasons, I emerged enlightened: a little more sober-minded but also a little more hopeful than I was before. I saw the category of aging expanding and complicating, and, as it twisted and turned, I saw fractals of my own experience reflected in their experiences, as well as the ways in which our experiences would never overlap.
I invite you as the reader, no matter what season you find yourself in, to allow yourself to be immersed in these four seasons: Feel the sun on your skin, the little frosty flakes on your tongue, and wonder at the changing leaves that twirl to the ground. Watch as flowers bloom, die, and bloom again. Observe the familiarity of the footprints on the path behind you and the familiar outlines of the shoes that have scoped out the trail to come.
Spring
There is no time like Spring,
When life’s alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track, —
God guides their wing,
He spreads their table that they nothing lack,
Before the daisy grows a common flower,
Before the sun has power
To scorch the world up in his noontide hour.
There is no time like Spring,
Like Spring that passes by;
There is no life like Spring-life born to die,
Piercing the sod,
Clothing the uncouth clod,
Hatched in the nest,
Fledged on the windy bough,
Strong on the wing:
There is no time like Spring that passes by,
Now newly born, and now
Hastening to die.
–Christina Rossetti, “Spring”
Ah, the promise of new beginnings, and the tranquility of the garden, with its fresh blooms and a cool breeze. Butterflies darting in and out of your line of sight. A bubbling brook. Life from death and beauty from ashes. An ever thumping heartbeat and imprint of your shoe in the dirt–one foot in front of the other. The path may be winding, but it’s beautiful.
I chose Francine to represent spring because in many ways her life represents that garden in bloom. Weeds of the past have been deliberately plucked, and she is grounded in an awareness and acceptance of change to come. They say April showers bring May flowers, and Francine’s attitude towards aging embodies this hopeful anticipation. Through musical expression, her soul sings of spring: from Gardens in the Rain– the coexistence of beauty in the midst of the storm– to Reflections in the Water– peaceful contemplation.
1998, Houston TX
She strutted out onto the stage, the exhilaration causing her to forget to feel self-conscious about the cheap black cocktail dress she’d bought with her mother, who’d carefully lined the collar with a silver banding to make it look a little better. Most of the money they had to spare had gone towards her qipao, delicately sewn by her mother’s loving hand. The night flew by: her piano performance of Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain) by Debussy went flawlessly–no one would have guessed just hours before she was crying over the fear of having helmet-y looking hair. She had tactfully maneuvered a tough question: “Given all this attention on President Clinton and what he did, do you feel like the president needs to follow all the laws of the land?” She answered confidently, “Of course he needs to follow all the laws. He’s our role model.”
Before she knew it, the winners were announced.
First, Miss Congeniality goes to…
“FRANCINE DI.”
While her spirits lifted at the sound of her name, they also simultaneously dropped as she realized that this win probably came at the expense of another. She knew her mom was also disappointed, but they figured it was because they didn’t have enough money to have more people in attendance. In fact, Francine only had a few friends there, and the organizers had benevolently tried to put her supporters next to another table to make it look like there were more people there for her.
Miss Chinese New Year was announced, as were the runner-ups. Finally, the big reveal of Miss Chinatown…
“FRANCINE DI.”
She did a double take, as did her little entourage. Disbelief, shock, and excitement coursed through her veins. As the applause roared, at first, she was flustered. Didn’t she already get a prize? But those little wings of hope that had dropped to a standstill began to rapidly flutter against her chest. Was it really her name that was called? What was she to do with the trophy she was already holding? Hope began to roar within her, ushering in pure elation.
She was Miss Chinatown 1998.
“I remember that my wave was awful,” Francine giggles a bit as she recounts the memory to me. “I look back on the video, and it looked like I had a worm on my arm, like it was just writhing…my crown was sideways… all lopsided.”
Francine has the type of warm and inviting personality that makes you feel as if you’ve known her for years. At the same time, she carries a quiet elegance and curiosity that makes it unsurprising that she was picked as Miss Chinatown at 17. She’s now 44. A lot has changed since then: she’s built an extensive technical writing career, gotten married, and lost some of those voluminous teen lashes (which makes her ask herself: “Am I still pretty?”). On a deeper level, she’s been able to let go of worrying about what other people think of her and to go with the flow. Yet despite these seasonal changes, some things have stayed the same, like her passion for music. For a workshop in graduate school, she played Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the water) by Debussy, reflecting continuity from her time as Miss Chinatown. A variation on the same theme, Reflections seems to offer a grounding interpretation on a slowly rippling pool, whereas Gardens in the Rain is a fast-paced piece, action-packed and punchy, a torrential downpour of sound. In many ways, the shift from the excitement and chaos of Gardens in the Rain to the peaceful thoughtfulness of Reflections in the Water embodies Francine’s internal transformation through the process of aging.
Thinking about aging makes her feel “anticipatory wistfulness.” The wistfulness comes from the absence of youth, and knowledge of that season’s finality. Once left behind, youth is never to be grasped again. At the same time, she feels anticipation. While she won a beauty pageant in her teens, she feels much “more comfortable in her skin today” than before. She’s excited for that self-acceptance to blossom even more with age. Coming to terms with the skin that wrapped her rings true in both a literal and a metaphorical sense.
Around puberty, Francine developed extreme cystic acne that refused to go away, and despite being bombarded with antibiotics and topical creams—one of the worst ones smelled like sulfur—it wouldn’t go away, making her feel ugly. The acne destroyed her confidence, and left her grieving. She would weep over this loss. By the time she participated in Miss Chinatown, she used concealer and had cut bangs to hide breakouts on her forehead. She has finally found a dermatologist who put her on Accutane, and she hasn’t had a breakout in about three years. She shows me her acne scars–bodily embodiments of the pain of her childhood.
With physical healing has also come emotional healing. Francine tells me that she’s mastered the art of not caring what people think anymore, releasing toxic relationships and learning to embrace herself and what she wants for her life. In this way, she’s thankful for aging. She told me that the image she thinks of when she envisions aging is an indigenous woman with long white hair flowing in the wind, simply at peace. It’s that sense of peace that she craves. Reflections in the water, a calm continuity between the inner and outer self.
Peace also means other things to her, like “being at one with yourself in the community” and “preserving health.” However, while health is something she sees as key to thriving, she also tells me about friends who’ve had strokes in their 30s or received a cancer diagnosis at a young age. She finds inspiration in their attitude toward their own suffering: rather than collapsing inward in self-pity, they “embrace it and face it with grace and power.” They remain role models for her to emulate in times where peace may not be possible.
On the other side of the spectrum, when she thinks about those who have been granted health for a long time, her role model is her mom. While she jokes that her mom is a notoriously difficult Shanghainese woman, in many ways she has wholeheartedly embraced active aging: she participates in Chinese orchestra and a weekly feng shui group, and has learned how to use weChat to keep in touch with her siblings back in China. Although she just turned 80, she refuses to stop dying her hair. While Francine’s grandmother had dementia, her mother has been able to cling to the memories that have shaped her history. This gives Francine optimism as she looks toward her own future. Either way, one must fight to stay optimistic, she tells me; she “feel[s] like there’s so much beauty in the world among people that to waste your time on what’s negative is just kind of a shame.” Whether that looks like filling her algorithm with bunny videos or working on a violin-piano duet with her husband, she tries to fill her mind with that which is beautiful.
This lens of seeking beauty, past and present, bleeds into the way she views death. Although Francine hopes for a future of growing old with her husband, she tells me that gratitude for the reality of the relationship now overshadows her need for the promise of a certain type of future: “it’s definitely been a wonderful experience to meet him, to get to know him, to get to build something together…and I feel like in the end, even having that opportunity is better than growing old with him, if that’s not what ends up happening. Of course, I hope for that, because that would be wonderful. But you know, if it doesn’t happen, I’m still really glad that we met each other and we’re able to build this partnership together.” While inevitable and final, death does not erase the reality of what was. Courageous aging looks like the choice to fully pour into the present, no matter the outcome of the future.
Summer
When summer’s end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.
The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.
–A.E. Housman, “When Summer’s End is Nighing”
In the heat, we are formed. Like glass, we are rolled and pounded and cut. What is thrust into the fire is what emerges hardened, baked in, shaped. Unless we are shattered, these things do not change. The marks of time may scratch and dent and even crack the surface, but what was forged by the flame remains.
When I see Faye, I see summer. I see the impenetrable inner core of a woman who is unapologetically herself. The strength of this volcanic core burns hotter than the heat of life. Yet the heat of summer is not always so intense. Sometimes it carries with it a muted warmth, the kind that warms you from the inside like steaming latte. Faye carries both within her: the fierce heat of fire and the comfort of a gracefully flickering flame. The light within cannot help but be drawn to the surface, and it can be seen by the mortal eye, encapsulated in sunny rays of optimism and the power of lifelong persistence.
Summer of 1939, Houston, TX
It’s hot. The sun’s rays beat down with such intensity that the inhabitants of Houston feel their skin being scorched like the cracked and wrinkled skin of a baked potato. This summer, temperatures reached as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit, seven degrees hotter than the year before. It’s the type of summer where everyone tries to hibernate from the heat. Well, everyone except one.
In a duplex downtown on Bell and Louisiana, a car takes off, and in its trail, a little girl. She’s three years old, with short cropped hair and a look of staunch determination. Unfazed by the towering skyscrapers and speeding cars, she pursues her target on foot. For all her resolve, her chubby legs can’t keep up with her iron will, and she lets out a sigh of frustration when she loses sight of the car. However, she doesn’t turn around. Panting in the heat, she strides confidently along the streets of downtown Houston alone, a little shadow amidst concrete giants, covering a total of eight blocks. Finding herself at the parking garage of the Rice Hotel, she asks the valet for a drink of water. She does not show any signs of fear, but he smiles knowingly and leads her inside to the phone. He knows who she is, and calls up her father’s restaurant: “I’ve got a little girlfriend. I’m pretty sure she’s lost.
* * *
“I was fearless.” Faye’s eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles.
“That wasn’t the first time I did something stupid like that.”
Now, 86 years later, she recounts this story to me with incredible detail and precision. Although she tells me she’s worried that her memory is not as good as it used to be, her friends affectionately refer to her brain as a “lockbox” because of the astonishing mental clarity she carries into her 89th year of life.
Faye subverts many stereotypes associated with older people. When I arrive at her apartment lobby, she comes down to meet me. I hear her before I see her, chatting away while brightly waving to the bellman with one hand and holding a paper plate of brownies in the other, which she promptly plops in front of me. I’m touched.
For Faye, aging hasn’t been all that bad. She’s a social butterfly, happy to live on her own and drive around the city she knows so well. She’s had a couple health scares, like the time after flying to a wedding in Los Angeles that she fell and broke her wrist. Thankfully, she recovered pretty quickly. Aging hasn’t been all that bad… until the past year.
“All the doctors say I’m doing well for my age, but I really feel like I’m my age now,” she admits to me. Feeling her age comes with a whole lot of accessories: two walkers, a cane, and recently, a wheelchair and oxygen tank that accompanied her exit from the doctor’s office. Just like her three year old self, Faye finds herself out of breath on her way to her destinations, her body unable to catch up with the mental resolve of her mind. Determination alone keeps her limbs moving.
Although she doesn’t like to dwell on death, there are some days when she struggles to get her body to cooperate and simply stays in bed all day. On those days, she thinks that dying “can’t be [any] worse.” On other days, it’s the opposite. She’s up and about, hosting events, doing tai chi, or working on her cookbook. When she’s feeling well enough to go out, she puts on her “presentable clothes,” and while she never considered herself pretty growing up–that was her sister with the twenty one inch waist–she tells me, she’s amazed by the comments she receives: “Oh my goodness, I’ve been staring at you for the past 10 minutes!” or, “You are just so put together!”
Faye jokes that it would’ve been helpful to have such effusive compliments when she was a teenager to build up her self-confidence, but what can you do? It’s clear that at 89 her beauty is infectious, and it’s much more than skin-deep.
It’s not just her beauty that’s only been brought to her attention at 89, but also her intelligence. Growing up, school wasn’t a particular strong suit for her. Not that she couldn’t have done well if she had tried, but as she explained to me: “my problem when I was a teenager was I was more interested in having a good time. Studying was not high on my priorities.” Still, even without studying, she had a B average. Convinced academics were not her strong suit, Faye went into the hospitality industry without looking back. However, now that everyone praises her incredible memory and intellect, she tells me that if she had realized that about herself, maybe she would’ve tried to be a doctor or a pharmacist. She shrugs off the passing thought: “You don’t know stuff, [so] you don’t do stuff.” She’s not one to stew in regret, but considers the counterfactuals. All in all, she thinks of herself as blessed. She tells me about a couple of dangerous situations she got herself into and narrowly out of–like the time she was followed home from a dance class but drove right to the police station and got the guys caught. The year she was found wandering around downtown Houston at age three was the first year she started going to church. Ever since then, she’s sensed a cloud of protection around her, despite experiencing tragedies like the early death of her first husband, and the subsequent death of her second husband. As she thinks about the way she feels supernaturally shielded, her musings can even get philosophical. She finds herself asking things like, “why didn’t 9/11 happen in Texas instead of New York?”
She does not attempt to offer an answer to such an unanswerable question. Perhaps that is one of the biggest markers of her wisdom: her acceptance of what has been given to her and her determination to make the most of that lot. When Faye thinks about aging, she thinks of her dad, a great storyteller and comedian. When the dinner table had been cleared, he’d lean back and share things that her Mother would protest as “more than [his daughter] needs to know,” but Faye is thankful for his willingness to break the oppressive fog of secretiveness surrounding aging. Now, she leans back on the grey couch and smiles warmly and I get the sense that she’s passing on this invaluable gift to me. As she chuckles softly, I catch a glimpse of that little three-year-old draped in the depth of a life well-lived.
Faye’s 30th Birthday, 1968.
Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
…
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
–John Keats, “To Autumn”
The squirrel races against the clock. Its tail whips back and forth like a windshield wiper in a downpour. It’s a frantic time of preparation. While the winter looms ominously on the horizon, the colors of fall are beautifully evident. While soon they will be covered in a white sheet, now they swirl in the sky, reflect in the water, and line the ground in a beautiful blanket.
Rogene beautifully embodies autumn both in the ways she engages with others and reflects on her own life. Not only does she coach others through the difficult work of preparing for death, but actively prepares for her own. Just like the animals who adapt quickly to the changing conditions, so she has learned how to acclimatize herself to many different environments. The connections she’s made from many different seasons form a tight, unbreakable braid, one that offers to hold her through the impending winter. The rich colors of this season mirror the depth she’s found in the beautiful dependency and vulnerability of love.
Austin, TX, 1966
After finishing her college degree at UT Austin, she hopped in a van and roadtripped to San Francisco in order to gain fame, fortune, and hopefully, a husband. The pool of Asian men wasn’t too great at UT, so she was hoping for better luck in the great state of California. Her friend Ken kindly agreed to drive her there. They were friends from school, and Rogene made sure that everyone, including her family, knew they were just friends. By the time they got to San Francisco, it was summer. By October, she hadn’t obtained fame or fortune, but she got a husband. Turns out, Ken wasn’t thinking along the lines of being just friends. After he was assigned to North Dakota for Air Force Training, he proposed to Rogene, telling her “I’m not going there myself.” Her mom told her to wait six months, but Ken said no. He’d be in North Dakota in six months, and he wasn’t planning to go alone. By December 27th, they were married. By January 12th, they were driving up to North Dakota. North Dakota was tough for Rogene, who, in the blink of an eye, went from seeking her fame and fortune to working at a drugstore, the best job she could find. She found hobbies to keep her busy: crochet, latch hook, candle-making. That first year of marriage was rough. Sitting in the cold and looking at the dark, dreary sky as she grappled with the death of many of her dreams, she wondered what her future would hold.
* * *
Now, Rogene helps older Asian Americans plan for their own death. As a consultant for AARP, she is dedicated to protecting and preserving the wellbeing of those 55 and older. At 77 years old, she is part of the demographic of those she helps. “Active aging” is what she strives toward: taking care of one’s physical and mental self, and avoiding isolation at all costs. Despite all the work she does on an administrative level surrounding aging, it’s a totally different situation when she thinks about the reality of her own death. Aging in the abstract or in a professional setting versus the lived experience of aging –watching your hands wrinkle, your breath shorten, your hair grey–this strikes a different chord. Rogene admits to me, “It is hard to start talking about because it is admitting that you’re there or you’re going to be there. And it’s important intellectually…I know we need to talk about this, but to do it… sit around a table… the last thing you want to talk about is your death and what you want to do.”
Rogene tells me that her kids are motivating her to address this topic although she would rather avoid it. Additionally, having to consider a case in which her husband’s death precedes hers weighs on her mind. She is reminded by her widowed friends that it would be helpful to take note of certain things that her husband normally does for her. While death brings the numbing weight of existential loss, there are small things, little practicalities, which act as sharp tiny jabs of pain. The hardest thing for her to think about is how she would have to do things on her own after being so used to the “divide and conquer” tactic that she and Ken take: “something like the electricity goes out or the internet goes out and this beeping starts…he’s always been there. Or if the cat brings this dead animal in, he’s usually there…I do my part. I clean up the other stuff that he doesn’t like. But certain things I don’t want to touch.”
In the years between North Dakota and now, there’s been a lot of growth between the two of them. Ever the extrovert, Rogene would often go out and do her own thing while Ken would stay at home. However, being “locked up” together because of the COVID-19 pandemic kickstarted a sweet closeness in which they re-learned how to do things together.
Thinking about a future without Ken by her side is scary, but the most frightening part comes in grappling with the unknowable. What really unsettles her is the uncertainty: “I think that’s the main thing, is uncertainty of how my life will continue on and how it will end eventually. I mean, you know, we can’t decide on how we will die. Unfortunately, sometimes I wish we could control that more, but…you just hope for the best… and…let people know what your wishes are. So part of that is the direct, advance directive and letting people know if you want to be resuscitated. Those are the kinds of things that you need to think about now. And it’s hard. I mean, you know, it’s hard because I’m not quite sure what I want.”
Knowing what you want in the face of the unknowable is a tall task. Anticipating weakness is not easy, especially when you feel strong at the present moment. As Americans, death clashes against many of our societal values: independence, individuality, invincibility. Aging forces the individual to grapple with weakness, limitations, and expiration. But what if dependence emphasizes our humanity as vitally as the independence we so prize? Without dependence, we lose the feeling of being known that comes with radical vulnerability, the ability to hold joy and sorrow simultaneously, and the beauty of sitting with another’s suffering.
Winter
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
–Robert Frost, “An Old Man’s Winter’s Night”
With the winter comes a gripping stillness, and the impenetrable silence of drawn-out suffering. In the winter many things are lost, dead, and buried. And yet, dormant buds wait to sprout. The wandering in the barren wilderness creates a path uncharted.
Is anything ever truly wasted?
Lily’s strength in the midst of suffering is like a brightly burning log against a backdrop of cold, barren land. The bleakness only emphasizes the multifaceted beauty of the light, and when light hits a blanket of snow, it begins to sparkle. A survivor, Lily represents winter: a testament to glorious color despite the cold, drivenness despite the dark, and finding life in the midst of death.
1966, 4:00 AM, Shanghai, China
Lily stood barefoot on the banks of the muddy water, shivering with fright. It was so early that not even the light was awake; darkness rested heavily on the horizon. The boys were up to their thighs in water, throwing the raw, unhulled seeds into the dark ripples. As they worked, they’d often stop to hit furiously at their legs, little slimy leeches latching on, hungry for blood. Sometimes a boy would have up to 30 leeches on him at once. Just the thought of being the leeches’ dinner had Lily in distress. This wasn’t how she wanted to die. She had bought a jar of medicinal cream and rubbed it all over her legs, coating them with the pungent smell. This was daily life on farm 54. While she primarily worked at the paper bag factory, she was still required to serve this cruel sentence in the morning.
Before the cultural revolution, she was a high-performing student. From the second grade onward, she was sent to the countryside and forced to do manual labor, producing up to 800 bags a day, while managing 100 kids under her direction.
* * *
“Kids, you know, you dream lots of things,” she shares with me. “The Cultural Revolution really broke a lot of your dreams. You have no hope.”
However, hope was not far off the horizon for Lily. One day, on a bus ride home, she was discovered by a director of the Shanghai Children’s Theater, who asked if she was interested in acting and gave her his business card. Although she was untrained, her audition was a hit, and she was shuttled back and forth between the farm and the theater. After being discovered by a film producer from the famous Shanghai Film Studio, her headshot was approved, and her side acting gigs turned into stardom. As a leading actress, Lily quickly became a household name in the ’80s. She became so well known that her first movie was Mao Zedong’s last. At the end of his life, upon watching the first film Lily acted in that featured a swelling army scene, he broke down and wept.
Success and fame, while a ticket out of the oblivion of the camps, could be isolating, and sometimes even dehumanizing. During her time on set, she was told that she was just like a blank piece of paper on which the production team could “draw on anything we want.” As an actress, Lily explored the lives of many characters, donning costumes and personas that were not her own. With so much time spent pretending to be someone else, she didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on who she was. Nevertheless, there were a couple things she tried to cling onto. As a kid, Lily dreamed of being either an engineer like her father or a surgeon. She was good at math, and a good student. A voracious learner, she describes herself, “just like a sponge…I just want to know everything.” However, as the cultural revolution dragged on and schools remained closed, she saw that dream slowly die. While she became the face of many major motion pictures, fame could not fulfill her voracious curiosity. Instead of being satiated, she was starving. So when the opportunity presented itself, she left China and came to Texas to do what she had always wanted: be a student. After getting her master’s degree at the University of Houston, she met her husband, Charles Foster, who served as an immigration policy advisor under Bush and Obama, and they got married and had two sons.
Her time at the re-education, or forced labor camp has marked her in both big and small ways. For example, there’s the way in which she deals with food. During her time at the camp, her family would receive a ticket for 12 eggs to split throughout each month. Such deprivation permanently altered her tastes. She still dislikes too much sugar. Candy was a “treasure” as a kid, and it still is. However, Lily is a bit disturbed by the overconsumption in China and America today. The softness of the generation after is foreign to her. She told me the first time she went to a Texas steakhouse she was astonished. While back in China a family would split a steak amongst themselves, in America “one person eat[s] a big steak.”
While some deprivations have indelibly marked her habits and tastes, there are others that have changed with her surroundings. “During the Cultural Revolution, everything is grey.” Everyone wearing army uniforms, with uniform haircuts, “no makeup, no jewelry, nothing…you don’t wear nothing.” The lack of color haunted her, sucked the life out of her. However, in one of her last movies, she got to play the role of a fashion model, and got to wear color. What a difference it made to her and all those who watched the film! While just a flicker of light in a dark room, that darkness made it shine all the brighter. The hope that color represents for her has never left. Although her friends in China claim that they are “too old” for brighter colors, Lily, cheerfully donning a neon pink shirt, tells me that this mentality should be flipped. “I agree with the European ladies,” she explains; “when they’re getting older, they’re more colorful… You know, life should be more colorful.”
No matter how grey her circumstances are, Lily finds vibrant color in her perseverance. The suffering that shaped her at such a young age has turned her into a seasoned survivor: “If you put [me] anywhere in the world, any places, any condition, I can survive, you know…[life] just make[s] you more strong.” When faced with difficulties, Lily has a simple mindset. She tells herself, “It’s not end of the world. You can go through that…[it’s] not as bad as death, you know, it’s still life.” Despite the injustice and suffering she faced, she is unwaveringly convinced that life, in of itself, is a gift. Belief in life’s intrinsic goodness and the experiences of past hardships allows the gusts of external circumstances to feel merely like a breeze. Aging, whether blustery or gentle, is just another one of those tempests…and when the internal flame of life reacts to the wind, it only burns all the brighter.
When we are born into this world, we are named: our destiny is laid upon our brow. Faye’s father picked her Chinese name first, and then looked up the English meaning. Faye means angel or fairy. She treads lightly upon the earth and sometimes, she spreads her wings and flies. Rogene’s name was found in a magazine. It means famous spear. Through her advocacy work, she fights for the rights of those who struggle to fight for themselves. Lily’s chinese name 陈烨, means, “the firelight looks very bright,” and indeed, her story shines all the brighter against the backdrop of the bleak winter sky. Francine almost ended up as “Michelle,” the name chosen by her grandmother. However, at the hospital, her great Aunt Sheila intervened and called the final shot with the name Francine. Francine means “free one.” Through the growth afforded to her through aging, she’s stepping into this reality. For all these women, it is throughout the course of their lives that they have grown into these meanings.
We often sum up the measure of a person’s life by the accomplishments earned during their younger days, and expect that to carry them throughout their final ones. But medals fade almost as fast as a fleeting childhood crush. When physical or mental limitations bear down on the living body, how does one elevate the meaning found within their present reality? As a society, we squirm in the presence of suffering, and by pushing away that which we fear, we rob ourselves of preparatory power. What would it look like to embrace the end of life just as much as we emphasize the early days?
Faye, her bright soul fighting in tension with her aging body as a living historical landmark.
Rogene, rediscovering friendship with her husband, and processing a painful future to come.
Lily, communicating the isolation that comes with age, especially as an immigrant. Watching a generation grow up and act in total opposition to the culture she called home.
Francine, anticipating future peace as a partner to the ongoing process of attaining freedom.
These four women, so diverse in their experiences, paint a beautiful picture about the parts of aging that are often missed: the subtle pains, the small inconveniences, and the surprising joys.
I wonder what would happen if we embraced aging as an ongoing reality rather than an undesirable endpoint. Maybe the awareness of time, the past, and the preciousness of the present is an inestimable gift hidden under the surface of suffering. The four seasons have shown me the paradox of aging: the coexistence of fragility and resilience, of self discovery and dependence, and finality against a backdrop of finiteness. Despite the differences between winter and spring, they need the other to flourish. Considering each season in its turn allows one to appreciate the others. So it is the same with aging, if we allow immersion in the stories of others to shape our own.