Telling Untold Stories: How Author George Chiang is Preserving History
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[Originally published on Friesen Press. View original article here]
FriesenPress is honoured to have assisted many writers of colour with sharing their stories over the years. In celebration of Asian Heritage Month, we’re amplifying the voices of some incredible Asian FriesenPress authors.
Asian Heritage Month is a time to reflect on and celebrate the many contributions that Canadians of Asian origin have made to our society. These individuals and communities have made an enormously positive impact on what it means to be Canadian.
Asian Heritage Month is needed because, all too often, the achievements of racialized peoples have been overlooked and overshadowed throughout history — sometimes remaining unknown even to people who are part of those communities themselves.
That’s one of the reasons George Chiang was compelled to write The Railroad Adventures of Chen Sing — a children’s book named after and based on the life of a young Chinese immigrant who spent his teenage years building the Canadian railroad.
After graduating from university with a degree in history, George realized that he knew little about the Asian immigrants who helped build this country. He took it upon himself to learn. And now, decades later, he’s published a book to ensure that future generations are able to understand and celebrate their shared history from an early age.
An actor and playwright as well as a published author, George has spent his career telling stories about Asian culture through books, songs, and plays. We caught up with George during a break from the many creative projects he’s been working on to learn how he came to discover Chen Sing’s life, his advice for other aspiring writers, and so much more.
What led you to write The Railroad Adventures of Chen Sing?
I was born [in Canada] and you don't really learn anything in school about the Asians or Chinese who helped build this country. And after I graduated with a degree in history, I remember realizing, “I actually know no history about the history of Asians and Chinese in Canada or North America.” I didn't even know the history of Asians in Asia — I didn't know anything! So I set upon myself to start learning about it. I’d go to the library and read some books because I was completely ignorant.
My parents came [to Canada] in ’69, from Taiwan. That kind of oral history [of what happened in the 1800s in Canada] wasn’t passed on to me, but I wanted to learn because I grew up here, and I wanted to understand how people of my similar ancestry helped build it. I got especially interested in learning about how they built the railway because it occurred to me — and this was back in the ’90s — there were some people who may know that history who might still be alive.
And luckily, I did find some of those people. I stumbled upon a man named Ike Sing, who was in his eighties at the time, and his father Chen Sing had built the railway. He came over as a teenage boy in the 1880s, and by the time he finished the railway he was a young man. Ike was born in the early nineteen hundreds, and Chen Sing would tell his kids stories about his life.
Tell us more about Ike and Chen Sing. What was the process of gathering the stories that informed the book?
I went over to Ike’s house in Cawston, B.C. back in 1996, and I spent almost two weeks there, recording dozens of hours of audio tapes. I knew just from the stories he told me that I had something. Every day, we had the schedule: we’d have breakfast together, and then we’d sit down in his living room. I’d started asking questions regarding what he knew about his father’s life, and he’d tell me about the stories of his father in China, how they were impoverished, and how he ended up in Canada building the railway. He also told me about his father’s life after the railway, and how he eventually found himself in Merritt, B.C., where he eventually married and raised a family. That's where Ike and his siblings grew up. I actually had the good fortune of meeting all of Ike’s living siblings and recorded some of their stories as well.
When I came back [to Ontario], I transcribed all the interviews and realized that I’ve got this great book about Chen Sing and his adventures on the railway.
Are you on a mission with this book?
I was just talking to my son about this. I grew up here, and I know what it’s like to grow up as an Asian in this country. I was subjected, on a daily or weekly basis, to racial discrimination all my life. And I remember going to university and feeling like, “Wow — I'm not getting called names every day. I'm not being insulted or being teased based on my ethnicity on a daily basis anymore.” I remember I felt free when I went to Guelph, and it was weird for me.
I realized I didn't want future generations or my children growing up the way I did. I wanted to show that Asians belong — we helped build this country and we should have some kind of documented history on how we participated in the building of this country. And if I can contribute these stories to the body of literature on the subject, then I wanted to participate in that [process]. I wanted to find untold stories that would help add to what was already out there about (in this case) the Chinese helping build the country. I felt if I did that, maybe people would feel that we belong here more and that we will be more accepted.
You mentioned that you’d started writing The Railroad Adventures of Chen Sing during the ’90s, but it wasn’t published with FriesenPress until 2017. How did the finished product come together? What brought you back to it?
When I first wrote it in the late ’90s, I had an early draft which actually is maybe 70 percent of what's in the book now. I submitted it to two publishers who were interested but, for different reasons, they fell through. So, I put it on the shelf and focused on the musical… for the next decade. [laughs]
I had every intention of publishing it at some point, but it was just prioritizing what you can do with your time. I was raising young kids and trying to support them on top of it. By the time my kids were teenagers, I found myself having more time. I spent a couple years getting the book together and then we got it out.
Did writing a children's story challenge you in any ways you hadn't expected? Were your kids involved in the process?
When you’re writing a children’s book, you always have to be wary of the number of words you’re using and the level of sophistication you're writing at. You have to understand the age level you’re writing for, because some kids in Grade 3 might not know a word you’re using — but maybe they could learn that word from your book, as well. So there are many things to consider; the wording matters a great deal.
Funny story: When my kids were still quite young, maybe 6 or 7, I remember reading the book to them. At the time, it used to have a sadder ending. By the time I finished the book, the kids were bawling their eyes out and begging me not to end the book that way. So, I changed it, because of [that reaction]. Ironically, now that my kids are young adults, they’re saying “you should bring that old ending back.” [laughs] They’re now closer to my age when I first wrote it — but when they were the target age for the book, they were absolutely devastated. I’m really happy with the ending I have now, and I’m really glad I tested it on my kids!
Have you received feedback from readers (or parents of readers) about the book? What do they think?
Some school teachers have reached out to me and told me they’ve used it in their classrooms and it's always very rewarding. That's what I hope happens more often. Because when you teach something in the classroom it kind of legitimizes it as part of our culture … it’s deemed by society as “something our kids should know.” The response I get from the teachers is always positive. And it [recently] prompted me to begin a social media page, which I did about a month ago, on Facebook and Instagram. The first thing I posted was a picture of Chen Sing, his wife, and a couple of his young children. One of the teachers who taught the book in his classroom messaged me and said, “I showed my class this picture and they loved it!” They got to see the real Chen Sing, and [the teacher] thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
What advice would you give other aspiring authors?
The number one thing is: finish. Just keep writing. The hardest part is finishing that first draft. From personal experience, you can write [part] of the way through and you can just give up. No — just finish it, even if you know it’s not good. Keep writing until you come to some sort of ending and then you come back to it. Put it away for a while and come back to it. All these different ideas will come, and your second, third, and fourth drafts are going to be increasingly better. But the hardest part is getting that first draft finished.
Did you find that coming back to The Railroad Adventures of Chen Sing all those years later gave you a new perspective on the story?
Definitely! A lot of little details were added, things I didn’t see before. There were things I’d never thought of way back when I started the book that had never even occurred to me when I first wrote it. A huge part of the [writing] process is that you’ve got to put it away for a while after you’ve done a substantial amount of work on the project. When you come back to it later, wow – the creative process just gets restarted again! It’s actually quite exhilarating seeing it again, but you need time away from [the project] to get to that point.
Do you have any other creative projects in the works?
I’m currently writing the sequel to the first Chen Sing book called The Pioneer Adventures of Chen Sing, which documents his life after the railway up until the time he started raising a family up in Merritt, B.C. I also have plans to expand the Chen Sing series into a trilogy. The third book will be about Chen Sing and his family — his kids — and their life growing up in Merritt. My wife is also encouraging me to write a Chen Sing musical — we had actually started exploring that with a theatre director in Vancouver when the pandemic hit. Like so many other things, it’s on hold.
Beyond the books, I’m working on the movie version of the Golden Lotus musical, as well as a deluxe album version of music from the musical which will be released later this year. With the movie, we professionally recorded four performances of our show during its run [in Hong Kong], but I didn't think about releasing it as a movie until now. My editor is in the final stages of putting the movie version together so we’ll have that out at film festivals and we can see where that goes.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, George!
