The Chinese in America
Page 46
68 “In a flash”: Ibid.
68 “various charities are everywhere”: Madeline Y. Hsu, pp. 41—42.
68 beheaded some seventy-five thousand suspected participants: Jack Chen, p. 16.
69 clashes killed two hundred thousand people: Madeline Y. Hsu, p. 27.
70 “red-haired, green-eyed foreign devils”: R. David Arkush and Leo O. Lee, eds., Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), p. 16; Lee Chew, “The Life Story of a Chinaman,” in Hamilton Holt, ed., The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans (New York: J. Pott, 1906), p. 285.
70 “[A]s we walked along the streets”: “Life History and Social Document of Mr. J. S. Look,” Seattle, August 13, 1924 by C. H. Burnett, p. 1. Major Document 182, Box 27, Survey of Race Relations, archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University. (The hair color, clothes, and courtship rituals of white Americans provoked the most interest among Chinese immigrants, judging from their memoirs.)
70 “barbarian women”: R. David Arkush and Leo O. Lee, p. 34.
70-71 “cacophony of dingdang noises”: Ibid., p. 34.
71 “a great bother”: Ibid., pp. 35-36.
71 “ritual of touching lips together”: Ibid., p. 38.
71 “requires making a chirping sound”: Ibid., p. 38.
72 only one in ten California farm laborers was Chinese: Betty Lee Sung, The Story of the Chinese in America (New York: Collier, 1971), pp. 35-36. Carey McWilliams, California, the Great Exception (New York: Current Books, 1949), p. 152.
72 one in two: Ibid.
72 almost nine in ten: By 1886, the Chinese comprised 85.7 percent of the California agricultural force. Susan Auerbach, Encyclopedia of Multiculturalism, Vol. 2 (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1994), p. 372.
72 two-thirds of the vegetables: Jack Chen, The Chinese of America, p. 84; Origins & Destinations, p. 437.
72 reclamation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta: C. D. Abbott, a landowner who employed Chinese laborers, asserted that “white men refused to work up to their knees in the water, slime and filth”; Sandy Lydon, Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region (Capitola, Calif.: Capitola Book Company, 1985), p. 286.
73 left the Chinese behind, to scream out at passing ships: Julian Dana, The Sacramento: River of Gold (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), pp. 160-64, as cited in Sucheng Chan, “The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1900,” in Genny Lim, ed., The Chinese American Experience: Papers from the Second National Conference on Chinese American Studies (1980), p. 71.
73 “tule shoe”: Sylvia Sun Minnick, Samfow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy (Fresno, Calif.: Panorama West Publishing, 1988), p. 69; Jack Chen, p. 87.
73 two or three dollars an acre: Tzu-Kuei Yen, p. 103.
73 seventy-five dollars an acre: Ibid.
73 hundreds of millions: The value of Chinese labor to the construction of the railroad and the reclamation of the tule land was estimated to be $289,700,000 in 1876-1877 dollars. Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, eds., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 56. Also Jeff Gillenkirk and James Motlow, Bitter Melon: Inside America’s Last Rural Chinese Town (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), p. 9.
73 lice and fleas: Robert A. Nash, “The ‘China Gangs’ in the Alaska Packers Association Canneries, 1892-1935,” The Life, Influence and the Role of the Chinese in the United States, 1776-1960, Proceedings/Papers of the National Conference held at the University of San Francisco, July 10, 11, 12, 1975, sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1976), p. 273.
74 more than three thousand Chinese: Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, p. 42. By 1881, 3,100 Chinese cannery workers were employed by Columbia River canneries.
74 “Only Chinese men were employed in the work”: Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1923), pp. 33-34, as cited in Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942, p. 25.
74 “not so much like men”: Chris Friday, p. 30.
74 “as with the whip”: Ibid., p. 40.
74 debone up to two thousand fish: Ibid., p. 30.
74 “the Iron Chink”: Ibid., p. 84.
75 special four-dollar-a-month fishing license: Jack Chen, p. 100; Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 112-14.
75 withhold fishing licenses: Arthur F. McEvoy, pp. 112-13; Sylvia Sun Minnick, p. 74.
75 almost a quarter of all of the Chinese: Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Little, Brown, 1989; reprinted by Penguin Books, 1990), p. 79.
76 Description of San Francisco in the 1870s: Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846-1856: From Hamlet to City (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. xxxvii.
76 “narrow, revoltingly dirty”: Ibid., p. xxxviii.
77 nearly half of the labor force in the city’s four major industries: Benson Tong, Unsubmissive Women, p. 76.
77 80 percent of the workers in woolen mills: Jack Chen, p. 111. According to Jack Chen, 80 percent of the shirtmakers in San Francisco were also Chinese.
77 90 percent of the cigar makers: Stephan Thernstrom, ed., Ann Orlov, managing ed., Oscar Handlin, consulting ed., Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980), p. 219.
77 had five thousand highly successful Chinese businessmen: Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America, p. 59.
77 owned half the city’s cigar factories: Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in California, p. 122.
77 eleven out of twelve slipper factories: Chin-Yu Chen, “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” p. 86; Jack Chen, p. 113; Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, p. 51.
77 gleaming with crystal, porcelain, and ivory: Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, p. 102.
77 “It is no uncommon thing to find”: Otis Gibson, p. 54.
78 “there were so many of us”: “Life History and Social Document of Mr. J. S. Look,” Seattle, August 13, 1924, by C. H. Burnett, p. 1.
78 crates found on the street: Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ’: A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (New York: Pantheon, 1972), p. 70.
78 slept in shifts: Ibid., p. 69.
78 “scarcely a single ray of light”: Otis Gibson, p. 54.
78 Description of Chinatown informal government: Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, pp. 64-66.
78-79 served as unofficial ambassadors: Chin-Yu Chen, p. 35.
79 own guild in San Francisco: Jack Chen, p. 28.
79 Kong Chow Association: Christopher Lee Yip, “San Francisco’s Chinatown: An Architectural and Urban History,” Ph.D. dissertation in architecture, University of California at Berkeley, 1985, p. 37.
79 split into two groups: Ibid., p. 37.
79 offices in prominent neighborhoods: Ibid., p. 94.
79 Description of services of the Six Companies: Chin-Yu Chen, pp. 34, 37.
79 house of worship: B. Lloyd, Lights and Shades in San Francisco (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company, 1876), pp. 272-74; Pauline Minke, “Chinese in the Mother Lode (1850-1870),” thesis, California History and Government Adult Education, 1960, Asian American Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley.
80 Description of funerals and burials: Linda Sun Crowder, “Mortuary Practices in San Francisco Chinatown,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1999, pp. 33-46; Sylvia Sun Minnick, Samfow, p. 292; B. Lloyd, p. 367, and San Francisco Daily Alta California, September 1, 1868, April 4, 1868, and June 1, 1867, as cited in Christopher Lee Yip, pp. 109-13. As late as 1992, 1,300 sets of bones were still wareh
oused in San Francisco for future shipment to China (Chin-Yu Chen, p. 18); Sandy Lydon, Chinese Gold, pp. 131-32.
81 “Tonight we pledge ourselves”: Lynn Pan, p. 20.
81 Description of mui tsai: Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 37-39.
81 “death was all around them”: Elizabeth Cooper, My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1914), pp. 13-14, as cited in Benson Tong, p. 18.
82 “Mother was crying”: Victor and Brett de Bary Nee, p. 84.
82 “grand, free country”: “Story of Wong Ah So.” Major Document 146, Box 26, Survey of Race Relations, Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University. Wong Ah So was later rescued by Donaldina Cameron, converted to Christianity, learned how to read and write English, and married a Chinese merchant in Boise, Idaho. In 1933, she wrote to Cameron to report that one of her daughters would graduate from the University of Washington, where she was studying bacteriology.
82 “devil American prison”: Benson Tong, Unsubmissive Women, p. 57.
82 Quick-witted girls managed to escape their fate: Ibid., pp. 58-59.
83 audiences that included police officers: Ibid., p. 69.
83 a Chinese theater or even a Chinese temple: Ibid., p. 70.
83 Description of parlor houses and cribs: Stephen Longstreet, ed., Nell Kimball: The Life As an American Madam by Herself (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 226-27; Herbert Ashbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underground (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), pp. 174-76; Judy Yung, pp. 27-30.
83 “Two bittee lookee”: Judy Yung, Unbound Feet, p. 29.
84 both feet frozen: Huping Ling, Surviving on the Gold Mountain: A History of Chinese American Women and Their Lives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 57.
84 “Chiney ladies”: Ibid., p. 57.
84 nailed shut inside a crate: Ibid., p. 57
84 leased them out to local garment factories to sew by day: Ibid., p. 59.
84 “beats and pounds them with sticks of fire-wood”: Otis Gibson, p. 156.
84 acid thrown in her face: Benson Tong, p. 142.
84 swallowing raw opium: Judy Yung, p. 33.
85 average brothel employed nine women: Huping Ling, p. 59.
85 annual profit of $2,500: Lucie Cheng Hirata, “Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Autumn 1979. As cited in Judy Yung, p. 30.
85 paid $40 in insurance: Otis Gibson, p. 137.
85 “Yut Kum consents to prostitute her body”: Benson Tong, p. 201. Original citation: Congressional Record, 43rd Cong., 2d sess., March 1875, 3, pt. 3:41.
86 frightening them to tears: Otis Gibson, p. 208.
86 writs of habeas corpus: Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, p. 88.
86 “search the whole house”: Ibid., p. 88.
86 sticks of dynamite: Benson Tong, p. 185.
86 ascending to the rooftops: Lynn Pan, p. 104. For additional sources on Donaldina Cameron, see Mildred Crowl Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel: The Story of Donaldina Cameron (Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1977); Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Carol Green Wilson, Chinatown Quest: One Hundred Years of Donaldina Cameron House 1874-1974 (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1974); Sarah Refo Mason, “Social Christianity, American Feminism, and Chinese Prostitutes: The History of the Presbyterian Mission Home, San Francisco, 1874-1935,” in Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers, eds., Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1944); Laurence Wu McClain, “Donaldina Cameron: A Reappraisal,” Pacific Historian, Fall 1985.
86 sophisticated system of alarm bells: “Statement of Chun Ho, Rescued Chinese Slave Girl, at the Presbyterian Rescue Home, Miss Cameron, Matron, in the Matter of Investigation into Chinese Highbinder Societies,” p. 9. File 55374/876, Box 360, Entry 9, Record Group 85, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
86 fifteen hundred Chinese women were rescued: Judy Yung, p. 35.
86 “to better her condition”: Huping Ling, p. 24.
87 “gaze upon the countenance of the charming Ah Toy”: Curt Gentry, Madams of San Francisco: An Irreverent History of the City by the Golden Gate (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), p. 52.
87 three months short of her hundredth birthday: Judy Yung, Unbound Feet, p. 34.
87 Description of Suey Him’s life: Ibid.
87 those keeping house grew from 753 in 1870 to 1,145 in 1880: Huping Ling, p. 61.
88 Story of Polly Bemis: Huping Ling, p. 79; Benson Tong, p. 22; Vardis Fisher and Opal Laurel Holmes, Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1990), pp. 273-74.
88 Descriptions of abductions of wives by highbinders: Benson Tong, p. 172.
88 “She would either have to marry one of them men or go back to China”: Major Document #154, Box 26, Survey of Race Relations, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University.
89 physicians in San Francisco lobbied to exclude Chinese prostitutes: The Chinese Hospital of San Francisco (Oakland: Carruth and Carruth, 1899), p. 1; San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1871; California Department of Public Health, First Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California for the Years 1870 and 1871 (San Francisco: D. W. Gelwicks, 1871), p. 46. All three cited in Benson Tong, Unsubmissive Women, p. 105.
89 “death-houses”: Benson Tong, p. 106.
89 “stretched on the floor of this damp, foul-smelling den”: Ibid., p. 107.
90 “My father traveled all over the world”: Origins & Destinations: 41 Essays on Chinese America, p. 83.
90 “When I came to America as a bride”: Rose Hum Lee, The Growth and Decline of Chinese Communities in the Rocky Mountain Region (New York: Arno Press, 1978), p. 252.
91 “Now and then the women visit one another”: Sui Seen [Sin] Far, “The Chinese Woman in America,” Land of Sunshine, January 1897, p. 62.
92 a few hundred Chinese families lived in America, and perhaps one thousand Chinese children: Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America, p. 318.
Chapter Seven. Spreading Across America
93 63,199 Chinese: 1870 U.S. Census. For Chinese census statistics in the United States for the nineteenth century, see Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, eds., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 19, table II.
93 99.4 percent: 1870 U.S. Census. Table II in Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy gives the statistic of 62,831 Chinese in the western states in 1870. Very few Chinese lived in the East Coast or Midwest during this era. Officially there was only one Chinese person in the entire state of Illinois in 1870, a number that grew to 209 by 1880. Some of the few Chinese in the Midwest had migrated from East Coast cities, not the West Coast. (Douglas Knox, “The Chinese American Midwest: Migration and the Negotiation of Ethnicity,” unpublished paper. Also Adam McKeown, “Chinese Migrants Among Ghosts: Chicago, Peru and Hawaii in the Early Twentieth Century,” Ph.D. dissertation in history, University of Chicago, 1997, p. 241.)
93 78 percent—in California: 1870 U.S. Census. According to table II in Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, 49,277 Chinese lived in California in 1870.
94 “come to the conclusion that we Chinese are the same as Indians and Negroes”: Lai Chun-chuen, Remarks of the Chinese Merchants of San Francisco on Governor Bigler’s Message, translated by W. Speer, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, as cited in Charles J. McClain, “California’s First Anti-Chinese Laws,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1995 (Brisbane, Calif.: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1995), p. 102.
94 King Weimah: Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength, p. 14
5.
95 “If the Chinese were allowed to vote”: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 447.
95 federal court decision: Cheng-Tsu Wu, ed., “Chink!,” p. 14.
96 “Emancipation has spoiled the Negro”: “The Coming Laborer,” Vicksburg Times, June 30, 1869, as cited in James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1988; originally published by Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. viii, 22.
96 “Give us five million”: Eric Foner, pp. 419-20.
96 Tye Kim Orr: Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 31.
96 Information on Cornelius Koopmanschap: Andrew Gyory, p. 31. Also, Gunther Barth, pp. 191-95.
97 “All Chinese make much money in New Orleans if they work”: Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, pp. 53-54.
97 “nice rooms and very fine food”: Ibid.
97 the arrival of about two thousand Chinese in the South: Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans, p. 82.
97 some 250 Chinese men came as employees of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad: Ibid., p. 82.
97 a thousand Chinese arrived in Alabama: Ibid., p. 82.
97 staged a strike to protest the whipping: Lucy M. Cohen, “George W. Gift, Chinese Labor Agent in the Post-Civil War South,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1995 (Brisbane, Calif.: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1995), p. 174.
97 attempted to lynch a Chinese agent: Jackson Weekly Clarion, November 20, 1873, as cited in James W. Loewen, p. 31.
97 shot and killed Chinese: Ibid.
98 Information about bilingual interpreters: Lucy M. Cohen, Chinese in the Post-Civil War South: A People Without a History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), p. 83.
98 press charges against their employers: Lucy M. Cohen, “George W. Gift, Chinese Labor Agent in the Post-Civil War South,” p. 74.
98 U.S. authorities halted Chinese labor recruitment: Ibid., p. 159.
99 By 1915, scarcely a single plantation: Powell Clayton, The Aftermath of the Civil War in Arkansas (New York: Neale, 1915), p. 214, as cited in James W. Loewen, p. 31.