Introduction

    This is a website about two shades of the same color.  The two shades of the same color are two Chinese immigrants that we interviewed during our visit to Chinatown.  Their names are Huang Wong and Mei Lang.  It is rather shocking that the two (randomly chosen) Chinese immigrants we interviewed are so similar, yet completely unrelated to each other. 

Our group interviewed two Chinese immigrants: Mei Lang (far left), and Huang Wong (center).  The interview was conducted with a Chinese (Cantonese)- English translator.

    Huang Wong and Mei Lang are both shades of the same color.  Their stories are very similar, in the sense that they immigrated to the United States because family called upon them.  They both had rough childhoods in China due to Japan's invasion and widespread poverty.  Their colors are therefore change.  Changing from living in China to living in the United States.  Incorporated with the change in their lives lie the journies they encountered adapting to a new society/ culture, and allowing old (Chinese) ways to fade off away and forgotton. 
    Their forgetting and leaving of China is similiar to the journies encountered in Peony, by Pearl Buck.  David is torn between choosing between a life of duty and a life of happiness.  The life of duty is his life committed to the Jewish faith, and marrying only within the Jewish faith.  Yet his life of happiness is doing as so many other Jews did at the time, which was breaking free of Judaism and instead embracing Chinese society and culture.  Huang Wong and Mei Lang left Chinese life for a new Western life, whereas David leaves a Judaic life for a Chinese one.  However the concept of leaving a life with roots still lies in tact.  Both the story of the two Chinese immigrants and David also have forces that try to restrain and support their changing.  In Peony, David's restraining force is his mother, Madame Ezra.  She is fully committed to the Jewish faith, and tries to force upon him a Jewish woman to marry.  David's supporting forces include his bondmaid, Peony, who tries to advocate David into leaving his Judaic roots.  In Huang Wong and Mei Lang's journies, their restraining forces were the repressive government, including Mao Zedong.  Yet they, too, had supporting forces which were their families that encouraged them to leave China.
    To leave a world of familiarity takes much courage and determination.  Huang Wong and Mei Lang were able to leave China, and David was able to enter and embrace a new life in Chinese culture by marrying a Chinese woman.  Both the Chinese immigrants and David had great willpower to fight against the restraining forces that tried to prevent them from either leaving China (immigrants) or from leaving Judaism (David).