Feeling through her pain

Deepa Bharath

Like a powerful antiseptic that heals a wound by burning through the

flesh, writing her memoirs and flipping through crinkled, yellow pages

from the past has been a painful catharsis for Alma Wu.

Her recently released book, “Tiger in a Cage,” co-wrote by Betty

Orbach and Carol Hazelwood, tells a fascinating tale of her

tradition-bound family’s rise and fall during the turbulent Communist

regime in China.

The story of this 79-year-old Newport Beach resident is dramatically

punctuated by stormy events -- love affairs, arranged marriages,

politics, jealousy and imprudent decisions -- that tore apart and ravaged

the family.

They are events that still shake Wu’s thoughts and beliefs by their

very roots. That is why she has mixed feelings about her own work.

“I’m happy I’m leaving something, a legacy, behind for my children,”

she said. “But I also feel like I’ve betrayed my family.”

She recalls a Chinese saying that translates: “Family scandals should

not be exposed.”

“But I did it,” she said. “I feel like I’m a traitor.”

But then she could not help it because she was a “Tiger in a Cage” --

“thong lee lau hu” as her late father, Wu Pei Ching, called her.

“He said that because I was all fierce and like a tiger at home,” she

said with a smile. “But when I went out, I was very shy and wouldn’t even

talk that much.”

The book begins at a point when her father, Pei Ching, moved to

northern China to make a living penniless. It ends with Wu moving to the

United States from Hong Kong. She fled China in 1952 when the government

was in the process of weeding out anti-communists. Wu, a staunch

capitalist, was one of them.

While her story, set in an era of intrigue, is by itself awesome and

enthralling, the story of how the book came to be is even more

fascinating.

Wu was a student of the Newport Beach Public Library’s Literacy

Program where she learned to read and write English under the tutelage of

Betty Orbach, a former English teacher at Newport Harbor High School.

Orbach tried to stimulate Wu’s creative process by encouraging her to

write about her life.

“Alma’s memory is amazing,” she said. “She remembers every single

detail -- what people looked like, what they wore, what the furniture

looked like.”

Soon, Orbach said, she recognized the value of Wu’s story.

“I knew we had something that, with editing and polishing, could be

published,” she said.

So Orbach approached Irvine author Carol Hazelwood. Orbach and

Hazelwood collaborated to write parts of the book and edit all of it.

There were several challenges, said Hazelwood. Writing about a culture

that was alien to both her and Orbach was difficult, she said.

“I would use a word like ‘plates’ and Alma would go ‘No, no, no. Too

American. Too American,”’ Hazelwood said with a laugh. “She’d say ‘We

don’t use plates in China, we use bowls.”’

But now when Wu goes back to China, she says she doesn’t feel at home

anymore. It’s not the China she grew up in, Wu said.

“I feel that people are not that sincere and real anymore,” she said.

“Relationships and everything . . . it’s all so superficial.”

Writing the book was also an emotional roller coaster ride for Wu to

recant every little detail from stressful past experiences.

“Like the time I confronted my father’s mistress, Sio Ying,” she said,

referring to a violent encounter she had with Ying at her father’s home.

Wu had expected her father to come to her rescue and take her side.

“He didn’t and he took her side,” she said. “And even today when I

think about it, I feel the pain I felt then. I’ve cried several times

uncontrollably when I read that part of the book.”

But what matters now to Wu is that she is a survivor. She has burned

bridges and lost people close to her, but she went through everything and

survived. And it is that feeling of exultation that her book celebrates.

“When I look back, I can’t believe I went through all of that,” she

said. “So many things happened. I just dealt with it.”