Two Suitcases, Twelve Pieces of Jade

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My parents, Andrew (甄震坤) and Corine (劉嫣韩) Gen, were immigrants from Guangdong province who fled China after the communist revolution. When they left, they had no idea if they would ever be able to return to the only country and culture they had ever known.

Their migration across the Pacific Ocean to the California, in 1955, took 18 days aboard a crowded passenger ship that allotted only two suitcases of possessions to them. Just two suitcases for them to fill with whatever they needed to start their new life in a country they had never seen.

They chose to fill some of that limited space with precious elements from their homeland, to share with their future children so they would have some connection to their cultural heritage. Among those elements were twelve pieces of jade, the most revered stone in Chinese culture.

They hoped to have up to six children in America. They hoped that each of them would find a partner in life. And they planned to give each of them and their spouses a piece of jade on their wedding days.

They packed in those two suitcases their hopes for the future, and a way to celebrate the future with connections to their past.

They eventually had four children, not six, all boys. Each of us married, one of us twice! None of the brothers wore much jewelry, so my parents decided to give the jade to our brides. At each of our weddings, between 1979 and 2003, my parents took jade pieces from the treasures they brought from China, set them in gold, and gave them to the bride.

I was the youngest of the four boys, and the last to marry. They gave my bride Laine a jade ring and pendant, to connect her to our family’s culture and history.

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Sheldon Gen • Age 59 • Petaluma resident

Sheldon Gen’s parents were forced to leave their homeland in their twenties, carrying hopes for happy and prosperous lives for their future children. Today, he lives that life with his own family in Petaluma. He is a professor and administrator at San Francisco State University and previously served on the Petaluma City Schools Board of Education.