Thousand Pieces of Gold

Charlie Bemis is Polly’s husband and closest confidant. He is one of the first people she remembers seeing when she arrived in Warrens: “Charlie’s eyes, blue as camas, flashed. […] He was the demon who had been called to come out and gawk at her when she arrived, the one whose eyes had flashed when Hong King shouted at her” (84). Charlie owns a saloon in Warrens and was originally a close confidant of Jim’s. Jim enlists him to protect Polly from the men in Hong King’s saloon when Jim is away on business. Charlie is extremely brave and loyal, and he ultimately wins Polly’s freedom from Hong King by winning a card game.

Charlie is deeply in love with Polly, but he also respects her fierce independence. When Polly is unable to purchase property, Charlie buys it for her and allows her to pay him for the property. Following his survival from an almost fatal gunshot, he convinces Polly to marry him and move to Polly’s Place in Salmon Canyon. His health never fully recovered after he was shot. He experienced significant smoke inhalation because he was determined to retrieve their marriage certificate and the mining claims for their land before exiting the house. His ultimate final wish is for Polly to sleep in the bed with him as he dies, and he dies in her arms.

Charlie is buried on their ranch, and Polly even participates in her husband’s burial before having to stop digging from exhaustion.

Nathoy is Polly’s father and a farmer in Northern China. Following a successful harvest, he decides to attempt to increase his earnings by participating in the winter harvest, which is notoriously a risky endeavor. He fails, losing all of his previous earnings and plunging his family into extreme hardship. Nathoy reacts immaturely to his failure: “There was another smell, one of hot gaoliang wine. The kind her father offered to his dead parents and grandparents on feast days. The kind disappointed gamblers used to forget what they had lost” (14). Because of his failures, his family becomes the laughingstock in the village, and very few villagers take Nathoy’s advice seriously. Additionally, Polly must work in the fields with Nathoy, which goes against traditional societal norms for women in the village, leading to more shame for the family.

Nathoy is a subtle antagonist throughout the novel, primarily because he is the person who agrees to sell Polly to Chen and originates the theme of The Burden and Pain of Family Betrayal. However, Polly very rarely sees him as a negative or evil figure, and only remembers his kind words to her, especially the fact that he refers to her as “my qianjin, my thousand pieces of gold” (11). Nathoy appears to favor Polly and refuses to sell her for many years. While Polly views her father as a wonderful father-figure, he has faults and ultimately sells Polly for two bags of soybeans. This juxtaposes how he says he sees her with the family’s reality: He values her at 1,000 pieces of gold but can only receive two bags of soybeans in exchange. Despite this, Polly tells Jim that Nathoy had no choice but to sell her, which Jim vehemently disagrees with. It is unclear what happens to Nathoy, but it is possible he is dead as he never responds to any of the letters Polly sends him once she arrives in the United States.

Chen serves as the primary antagonist in the novel while Polly is still in China. Once Nathoy’s farm laborer, he becomes the head of a group of brutal bandits following his termination by Nathoy. Polly describes him as having “[b]lack eyes and [a] long nose […] embedded in greasy, pockmarked skin. Stiff black hairs formed a scraggly, off-kilter mustache and beard that hid twisted, misshapen lips” (31). He is considered to be especially cruel and violent and frequently tells Polly that he sold his children into enslavement and allowed his wife to be taken into sexual enslavement by the bandits, an act that ultimately killed her. Chen appears to blame Nathoy for the dissolution of his family, and his decision to buy Polly for only two bags of soybeans is the ultimate revenge against the man who destroyed his family.

Chen is highly motivated by money and decides to sell Polly when he realizes that several bandit groups have disbanded or left the area. He sells Polly to a brothel in Shanghai before disappearing. Chen’s extreme cruelty prepares Polly for Hong King’s limitless cruelty when she arrives in the United States.

Jim is Polly’s first love and confidant in the United States. He works as a packer and is hired by Hong King to fetch a Chinese enslaved person to bring back to Warrens. Before working as a packer, Jim was enslaved, and he worked tirelessly to buy back his freedom. On their journey to Warrens, Jim educates Polly on what to expect of Warrens and the saloon. While Jim is fiercely protective of Polly, he is keenly aware of the limitations of his race in Warrens and relies heavily on Charlie for help protecting Polly from white men. However, he is a source of a familiarity for Polly in the unfamiliar United States, and the two often speak in a shared Northern Chinese dialect. He also never calls Polly by her American name, always referring to her as Lalu. Following a devastating and brutal fight with Polly, Jim dies by falling off a trail:

[H]is mule had stumbled on French Creek hill near Secesh Creek. She pictured the worn trail they had traveled together. The steep ascent. The broken ridges, dark ravines, and densely wooded gulches. The bleached out bones of horses in purple canyons, the remains of those who fell (89).

Following Jim’s death, Polly mourns “[f]or Jim. And for Lalu. Both dead forever in a strange land” (90) and stops using her Chinese name, fully embracing her American identity and marking a new chapter in her life.

In many ways, Jim serves as Polly’s foil. While Polly is endlessly optimistic about gaining her freedom, Jim is much more realistic and pessimistic. During their final fight, Jim harshly chastises Polly for her optimism surrounding her father and his love of her: “If you still believe that, you’re as much a slave to your own falsehoods as you are to Hong King” (88). However, Charlie later reveals that Jim tried to buy Polly from Hong King multiple times and was turned down for the last time the day of their fight. He asked Charlie not to tell Polly of his failure because she needed hope to hold onto.