I had just finished a documentary project (What we inherit) also trying to answer these questions. This time I wanted to make a different project in a lighter, well, light.

In Reclamation, the photos show a revelation and reverence for the Chinese culture I spent so long rejecting, glowing in anticipation, hope, and joy.

“Orange cheat sheet” (above) is a depiction of the Paper Son phenomena following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the San Francisco Fire of 1906. The loss of records in the fire opened up an opportunity for Chinese men who were already in America due to the Gold Rush to bring family members they had left in China, and if they didn’t want to come, brought over friends instead as their “son on paper,” or paper son. During this time, Chinese immigrants were detained and subjected to impossibly long interviews in which their answers needed to match their sponsors’ answers, such as “how many windows are on the east side of your house?” and “how many paces to your village market?” This was to test the honesty of the familial connections, of course, but this also made it difficult for true relatives to prove their connection. Test questions were written and hidden into orange peels and delivered by Chinese waiters to patrons in restaurants, or sent back in fruit baskets at the dock back home to relatives.