Teaching Philosophy and Materials
Frank Chin, "Railroad Standard Time"
We spoke only briefly about this story of Chin's, but I think there are some ideas that we can take away from it that resonate with our class as a whole. Chin's story is a multi-generational one, but we might call this "story" more a mediation or a collision of ideas than a formal "story." We see that it does not really proceed linearly, which is somewhat ironic given the title of the tale and the presence of the "big railroad watch, Elgin," "Railroad standard all the way" (83). It "ticked on the table" in his mother's kitchen, where she would tell him secrets and family stories in Chinese. Clock-time or movement suggests the straight-line travel of time and of family histories, but we see that, stylistically, this story does not flow so smoothly. Its function is not like clockwork, in that it is perhaps not reliable, it is not chronological, it is reminiscent. It is also emotional, which a watch or clock should not and in fact cannot be. Time's movement or progress is not influenced by one's family dynamics or one's feelings. This clock, however, is a railroad clock, and we discussed the role of Chinese immigrants in building America's railroads. We also discussed immigration acts that severely limited immigration of people of Asian origin to the Unites States before 1924. The specter of his Chinese ancestors influences the narrator's attitude about what it means to be Chinese, what it means to be an assimilated Chinese-American person today, and what it means to have a lineage (a straight-line lineage?) to one's culture, back to the old country, to the old language. The story also wonders aloud about Chinatowns, such as that in San Francisco, and these geographical zones of preservation from which the narrator describes having wanted to escape, which he does via movies.
The story considers the collision of traditional cultures (Chinese culture) and American popular culture (Mighty Mouse, Charlie Chaplin, Westerns) and the way the interaction of these within a person creates an amalgamated American (but maybe not an entirely settled one). If you read the pages of this story again, you will see ample examples of Chinese authenticity (via participation in Chinese ceremonies) as well as indices of American culture as a product one can learn or acquire (such as by reading Poe). Culture is also carried by food, which in itself is a ceremony ("black magic," he says). But in the spaces between these cultural practices, the narrator thinks about how he came to be where he is, from whom he descended. So, he thinks of his grandfather, a railroad worker, as a kind of hero (whereas he seems to portray his mother as a traditional culture bearer). His grandfather, even as he was occupied in "kiss-ass steward service," was "tough," the narrator imagines, and "ran off with his pockets full of engraved watches," as a man who got something, seized something, even as he was consigned to a low position on the social ladder as a Chinese immigrant. The narrator thinks, then, of his grandfather as a defiant man, even if he is a man who the narrators feels very distant from in regard to culture. He does know that his family history is a history of the railroads and that even the Chinatown he drives past is "parallel all the time . . . with the tracks of the Western Pacific and Southern pacific railroad" (90). And even if he feels that he is more of an American man than he is one who feels comfortable ensconced within a Chinese(-American) family story, he knows, too, that his life is "parallel all the time" (as watch-time proceeds indifferent to however we might feel about it) to the life of his grandfather, an immigrant from China and a railroad worker.
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