“The entry of the Asiatic as labourer, trader, and
capitalist into competition in industry and
enterprise not only with, but in, the Western world
is a new fact of first importance?”
- Winston Churchill, 1908
The setting is the ramshackle capital of a mythical
East African country; the unlikely hero a gentle
Chinese Catholic grocer named Sam Fong, who
immigrated to his new home long before Chinese
Communism and Chairman Mao were thought worth much
notice. Innocent of politics, oblivious to the
confusion and chaos besetting this recently
independent nation, Fong has been reduced to
scraping a miserable living from a meagerly stocked
store which offers to his African customers such
items as skin lightener, Uncle Pompey’s Gripe Water
and cans of Spam. A meek man to his business
associates, Fong is an Oriental tyrant in the home,
given to beating his compliant, gently astute wife,
Soo, who in spite of it all, does what she can to
help her beleaguered husband.
In a world where communication is at a minimum and
where “survival of the fittest” is the rule, Fong
bears the consequences of having been shoved to the
bottom of the social totem pole. The Indians, from
India, who are hated by the local African
population, outfox Fong in business dealings and
show a shrewd understanding of the black market. One
of these, the wily Fakhru, fleeces Fong so adroitly
that the bewildered Chinese believes himself in his
deceiver’s debt and lives content with the
improbable dream of one day being made rich by the
wreck of the milk train from Nairobi.
In the meantime, he is set upon by two agents from
the American government, intent on bringing “the
good simple American Way of Life” to Africa. Bert G.
Newt, Jr., and Mel Francey (“Jeepers creepers, try
to forget that we’re American”), who make up the
American team, compensate for their lack of
diplomatic acumen with patriotic fervor, and wage a
splendidly miscalculated campaign to put an end to
Fong’s nonexistent Communist sympathies. “You’re jes
yaller,” say the Americans and, at the other end of
the political spectrum a real Chinese Communist, Mr.
Chen, berates the guiltless grocer for failing to
advance the Maoist cause: “You, Fong, are a running
dog.”
Virtue is rewarded in the end, but not before the
author has created a lovable non-hero and
underscored brilliantly the foibles of a topsy-turvy
world in which only the innocent loser can possibly
win. |
