Happy Doing Right Thing

Dynamic activist Gerry Low-Sabado, who lives in Fremont, travelled 90 miles to Monterey to show me her ancestors' village. (Post one.) She first led us to Point Lobos, a point not only of nature but history, she said. Her great grandmother's photo is in the Whaler's Village. (Post two.) Her great-great grandfather floated over from Canton, escaping the chaos and poverty that accompanied war. (Post three.) Gerry researched her ancestors, and so had lots of information to share when CSU-Monterey Bay expressed interest. A documentary came from that research, and bolstered Gerry to spread the word.(Post four.) People didn't always want to hear her words. (Post five.) Still, making history correct became Gerry's mission. (Post six.) While at the Chinese cabin, we encountered a European who said that accepting others is a problem everywhere. (Post seven.)

Another issue that Gerry wanted to work on was an event that has been going on since the village burned to the ground in 1906: The Feast of Lanterns. Young people re-enact a performance of the Butterfly Lovers, a Chinese drama that tells the story of a young woman who falls in love with a man her father disapproves of.  At one point during the performance, the father says to his daughter’s lover, “Pig, son of swine. I’ll cut you up and feed you to the crows.” The audience has always jumped on this line and booed him.  

Gerry suggested that this line be changed.

“People in the community were telling me, ‘Oh, you’re just being silly. It’s just a play.’

“No, it’s disrespectful. When you say, ‘Pig, son of swine, I’m gonna cut you up and feed you to the crows’ what are you teaching your children?  What I say is don’t boo anybody. Because this is the town where the Chinese were burned out, they should see it as booing the people they burned out.

“The mayor of Pacific Grove—because she saw that I was trying to bring about change with the play and probably knowing that wasn’t going to happen—suggested I create an event. I think they thought that if I did that I wouldn’t press them for change of the other. But while I’m happy I had my own event—The Walk of Remembrance—it still bothered me that they were booing the Chinese a few months later.”

Thus began the Walk of Remembrance in in 2009, where I first met Gerry.

Last year, two weeks before the event, the vice president of the Feast of Lanterns called Gerry. “They told me they were going to take out the sentence.  I was crying. They were crying. The fact that they were crying told me they knew the importance of this. So we were all happy crying together."

(To be continued.  Next: Walk of Remembrance.)