工字不出头?“金山歌”里的骡仔心声

Working Dead-end? Voices of Chinese American Labor in“Gold Mountain Songs”

北美华人社区以前流传有一句话:"来金山,做骡仔"。中国也有一句谚语:"工字不出头"。两句短语,分别描绘了当年粤籍珠三角华人出洋的劳工身份与辛酸岁月,却也明显地存有某种程度的阶级观念普世偏见,就是说:劳工身份是代表文化知识水平低的社会底层人物,文艺创作是属于有一定程度文化知识或教育水平的社会中产阶层人士所拥有的文化意识。然而早在1910年代,粤籍华人虽被视为欠文化知识的底层人物,美国华埠社区里却已经出现了一些创作歌谣选集和其他粤语作品,一共有近两千首民谣创作,俗称之为"金山歌"。本文从美国族裔研究的角度,以这些通俗歌谣创作为研究焦点,探讨分析当年粤籍华人们在美国"做骡仔"的劳工移民生活体验感受与艺术处理,进而探讨这些歌谣如何奠定了四邑地方文化在海外的地位与影响。

There is an old saying popular among the older Chinese American generations: '来金山做骡仔 Coming to Gold Mountain to be a mule. 'It basically defines the true nature of early Chinese American immigration as a labor movement to America from the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong,China. In the early 1910 s,three collections of Cantonese vernacular rhymes totaling nearly 2,000 pieces,were published in San Francisco Chinatown. These rhymes,commonly known as'金山歌 Gold Mountain Songs'are the earliest literary evidence available today on the life of the early Chinese Americans and their responses to the struggle and settlement as the labor immigrants under severe institutional exclusion against them in the United States. This paper consists of the following three main parts: 1) The origin of'Gold Mountain Songs'; 2) The voices of the working class Chinese Americans during the period of exclusion as seen in these Chinatown vernacular rhymes; 3) The rhymes as the heritage linkage between the Chinese Americans and their ancestral homeland in the Pearl River emigration region.