The leniency of oral tradition

[Page 150 of Chinamen. In the chapter, "The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains". ] "But this time, there was no railroad to sell [Ah Goong's strength to. He lived in a basement that was rumored to connect with tunnels beneath Chinatown. In an underground arsenal, he held a pistol and said, "I feel the death in it." "The holes for the bullets were like chambers in a beehive or wasp nest," he said. He was inside the earth when the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire began. Thunder rumbled from the ground. Some say he died falling into the cracking earth. It was a miraculous earthquake and fire. The Hall of Records burned completely. Citizenship Papers burned, Certificates of Return, Birth Certificates, Residency Certificates, passenger lists, Marriage Certificates- every paper a China Man wanted for citizenship and legality burned in that fire. An authentic citizen, then, had no more papers than an alien. Any paper a China Man could not produce had been "burned up in the Fire of 1906". Every China Man was reborn out of that fire a citizen. Some say the family went into debt to send for Ah Goong, who was not making money; he was a homeless wanderer, a shiftless, dirty, jobless man with matted hair, ragged clothes and fleas all over his body. He ate out of garbage cans. He was a louse eaten by life. A fleaman It cost two thousand dollars to bring him back to China, his oldest sons signing promissory notes for one thousand... Maybe he hadn't died in San Francisco, it was just his papers that burned; it was just that his existence was outlawed by the Chinese Exclusion Acts. The family called him a fleaman. They did not understand his accomplishments as an American ancestor, a holding, homing ancestor of this place. He'd gotten the legal or illegal papers burned in the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire; he appeared in America in time to be a citizen and to father citizens. He had also been seen carrying a child out of the fire, a child of his own in spite of the laws against marrying. He had built a railroad out of sweat, why not have an American child out of longing?" To gain entry into the United States after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, one had to go through humongous amounts of intentional legal red tape to gain official, legal entry into the United States. Their immigration "papers" served as a way to recognize their official residency status in America. These papers were official and stored in the Hall of Records. The written document inflexibly and unequivocally confirmed or denied the legal status of any Chinese immigrant. However, in the great Earthquake of 1906, the building, like most of San Francisco, burned to the ground. Oral tradition and expression took over as the main way to prove one's legal residency in the United States, even if the immigrant was not legally recognized as such. By claiming to be someone else whose papers have burned down, or claiming that the papers burned down in the "Great Fire", the Chinese pioneers were able to evade the harsh restrictions of entering America and loopholed their way into the country by using the tenuous connections of the oral agreement (which, in many cases, is not legally binding because of the non-concrete and official wording on the document). Note the ambiguousness of the language that the author uses, "some say he died falling into the... earth", while later in the passage it says, "maybe he hadn't died in San Francisco, it was just his papers that burned". Even then, the stories and ambiguities are clearly identified but not explained as seen in the phrase, "he had been seen" which is a way to distance the event from factuality. Instead of using objective, matter-of-fact language to describe these events, there's a certain flexibility and detachment given to this passage. By attributing the sight and story to someone else and not the author, the story gains credibility and objectivity for the readers while also supplementing mystery and interpretation.