by Judy Yung
THE PIVOTAL STATUS OF MUI TSAI
Not far from the reaches of prostitution were mui tsaigirls who were brought from China to work as domestic servants in affluent Chinese homes or brothels, or young daughters of prostitutes who worked in this capacity in brothels. Although John W. Stephens, in his study of the manuscript censuses, estimates that only 2. percent of Chinese women were listed as "young servants" in the 1870 census, their presence and role were more significant than that.81 The mui tsai system, a cultural carryover from China, was generally regarded by the Chinese as a form of charity for impoverished girls. The term itself comes from the Cantonese dialect and means "little sister." Under this age-old system, poor parents would sell a young daughter into domestic service, usually stipulating in a deed of sale that she be freed through marriage when she turned eighteen. Meanwhile, the girl received no wages for her labor, was not at liberty to leave of her own free will, and had no legal recourse for complaint should she be mistreated, raped, or forced into an unhappy marriage. In China, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, where the system continued until the 1940s, girls sold to rich and benevolent owners supposedly benefited from the system. Well fed, clothed, and sheltered, they were known to establish long-lasting affectionate relationships with their mistresses. Many mui tsai, however, did not fare as well. Treated as "work horses," they had to take care of children not much younger than themselves, perform heavy household chores, and often suffer the sexual advances of their masters or the physical abuses of their mistresses.82 Their hard lives paralleled that of European female inden tured servants, who made up one-third of the indentured population in antebellum America. Like mui tsai, these women were on call twentyfour hours a day and responsible for a wide range of domestic chores and child care.83 But whereas they were protected by law from flagrant abuse and breach of contract, mui tsai enjoyed no such protection. There was no guarantee that their contracts would be honored-that they would obtain freedom through marriage when they came of age. Indeed, depending on the family's economic situation, a mui tsai could be resold into prostitution for a handsome sum.
Some mui tsai who immigrated with merchant families later fulfilled their role as bond servants in America and were then freed for marriage. I believe that is what happened in the case of my great-grandmother's mui tsai, Ali Kum. However, in the absence of other details about Ah Kum's life in America, the life story of Quan Laan Fan, who immigrated as a mui tsai in the 18 8os, serves as a better example. In an oral history interview in 1974, Laan Fan explained that when she was seven, her family's litter of pigs died and the family went into debt .84 Her parents then sold her to Quan Seung's family, with whom she lived a comfortable life. Seung was the second wife of Wong, a Gold Mountain man, and because she did not have bound feet like the first wife, she was chosen to join him in America. "Seung wanted me to come over to be their errand girl. That's how I came to America," said Laan Fan.
Immigration to America put an end to Laan Fan's comfortable life. Wong owned a grocery store on Washington Street near Ross Alley in San Francisco, and it became Laan Fan's job to fetch meals from there daily for her mistress. "Everyday I would go and bring our meals back from the store," she recalled. "Just the two of us would eat together [Seung and herself]. We didn't have to cook. I'd go out by myself at nine o'clock in the morning to get our daytime meal and at four o'clock for the evening meal." This was no easy task for a girl. "The pot had three layers to it," Laan Fan said. "Two layers were for soong [main dishes] and the third layer was for rice. Sometimes, I'd have another pot for soup which I carried home or else it was included in the big pot. I was so short, I dragged the pot home everyday until I wore a hole in it!" She also rolled cigarettes at home for income, sending most of the money she earned to her mother in China, keeping some for clothes and shoes. She was allowed to study Chinese and English with teachers from the Baptist Church. Then, at eighteen or nineteen, she was married to Sam. Although he was much older than she, and poor, the marriage endured. They first tried growing flowers in nearby Belmont, but then moved back to San Francisco, where she worked as a telephone operator in Chinatown to help support their family of eight children.
The outcome of Quan Laan Fan's life fulfilled the original intent of the mui tsai system. Both she and her family gained by the sale; she was well treated by Seung's family and was properly married off, albeit to an old man, when she came of age. Yet newspaper accounts and missionary records typically painted a different picture of the fates of mui tsai. According to these sources, brothel owners often purchased young girls from China with the intention of using them first as domestic servants and then as prostitutes when they became older, thus maximizing their investment. Wu Tien Fu, rescued by Protestant missionaries in 1894, was such a mui tsai:85
I was six when I came to this country in 18 9 3. My worthless father gambled every cent away, and so, left us poor. I think my mother's family was well-to-do, because our grandmother used to dress in silk and satin and always brought us lots of things. And the day my father took me, he fibbed and said he was taking me to see my grandmother, that I was very fond of, you know, and I got on the ferry boat with him, and Mother was crying, and I couldn't understand why she should cry if I go to see Grandma. She gave me a new toothbrush and a new washrag in a blue bag when I left her. When I saw her cry I said, "Don't cry, Mother, I'm just going to see Grandma and be right back." And that worthless father, my own father, imagine, had every inclination to sell me, and he sold me on the ferry boat. Locked me in the cabin while he was negotiating my sale. And I kicked and screamed and screamed and they wouldn't open the door till after some time, you see, I suppose he had made his bargain and had left the steamer. Then they opened the door and let me out and I went up and down, up and down, here and there, couldn't find him.
She was later taken to San Francisco and resold to a brothel, where she worked as a mui tsai:
[My owner] used to make me carry a big fat baby on my back and make me to wash his diapers. And you know, to wash you have to stoop over, and then he pulls you back, and cry and cry. Oh, I got desperate, I didn't care what happened to me, I just pinched his cheek, his seat, you know, just gave it to him. Then of course I got it back. She, his mother, went and burned a red hot iron tong and burnt me on the arm.
Fortunately for Tien Fu, someone reported her situation to Donaldina Cameron at the Presbyterian Mission Home, who subsequently rescued her and brought her to live at the home. She told about the rescue:
They described me much bigger than I was so when they came they didn't recognize me. And then the woman who had reported to the mission said, "Why didn't you take her? She's the girl." They said, "She looked too small," and then they came back again. But even then, they weren't sure that I was the one, so they undressed me and examined my body and found where the woman had beaten me black and blue all over. And then they took me to the home. Oh, it was in the pouring rain! I was scared to death. You know, change from change, and all strangers, and I didn't know where I was going. Away from my own people and in the pouring rain. And they took me, a fat policeman carried me all the way from Jackson Street, where I was staying, to Sacramento Street to the mission, Cameron House. So I got my freedom there.
With the help of a benefactor, H. C. Coleman of Morristown, New Jersey, Tien Fu was able to attend the Stevens' School in Germantown, Pennsylvania, for four years, and the Toronto Bible School for another two years. She saved enough money to return to China, but, unable to find her family, she returned and devoted the rest of her life to the goals of the Mission Home, assisting Donaldina Cameron in rescues, interpreting for her in court, and taking charge of the nursery department. She never married but remained Cameron's constant companion even after she retired from mission work in 119511. When Tien Fu passed away in 11975, she was buried beside Cameron, who had predeceased her in 11968.
As in China, mui tsai were pivotal in defining women's social status in Chinatown. At best, a mui tsai could hope to be married to a man who would pr
ovide for her; at worst, she could be resold into prostitution. Until she became of marrying age, she was at the mercy of her owners, who could abuse her at will. In this sense, merchant wives, who held control over the fate of their mui tsai, were in a position similar to that of Chinese madams vis-a-vis their slave girls. As it was for prostitutes, life for mui tsai in America proved to be a double-edged sword. Far away from China, they lacked the protection and support of family and kin, but there were more avenues of escape available to them. Along with the Mission Homes, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children looked after their interests and offered them help.86 The lack of accurate statistics makes it difficult to gauge the number of mui tsai in San Francisco or their outcomes. Given the small number of merchant families that could afford mui tsai, and the large number of prostitutes, the nineteenth century probably saw more Wu Tien Fus than Quan Laan Fans. After all, it was more profitable for owners of mui tsai to satisfy the demand for prostitutes than for wives.87 Nevertheless, like organized prostitution, the mui tsai system had all but vanished by the 192os thanks to the efforts of missionary women and Chinese social reformers intent on modernizing Chinatown-this in a country, it should be noted, where slavery had been abolished in 1865 and contract labor in 1885.
THE SHELTERED LIVES OF IMMIGRANT WIVES
Between 187o and 188o, the percentage of Chinese women in San Francisco who were prostitutes had declined from 71 to 5o percent, while the percentage of women who were married had increased from approximately 8 to 49 percent, most likely owing to the enforcement of antiprostitution measures, the arrival of wives from China, and the marriage of ex-prostitutes to Chinese laborers. The number of wives continued to rise after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, when merchant wives became the prime category of female immigrants from China. By the turn of the century, married women made up 6z percent of the Chinese female population in San Francisco. 88
Within the patriarchal structure of San Francisco Chinatown, immigrant wives occupied a higher status than mui tsai and prostitutes, but they too were considered the property of men and constrained to lead bound lives. Members of the merchant class, capitalizing on miners' and labor crews' need for provisions and services, were among the first Chinese to come to California. They were also the only Chinese who were allowed to and who could afford to bring their wives and families, or to establish second families in America.89 In the absence of the scholargentry class, which chose not to emigrate, the merchant class became the ruling elite in Chinatown, and their families formed the basis for the growth of the Chinese American population and the formation of the middle class.
Referred to as "small-foot" or "lily-feet" women in nineteenthcentury writings because of their bound feet, most merchant wives led the cloistered life of genteel women. They generally had servants and did not need to work for wages or be burdened by the daily household chores of cooking, laundering, and cleaning. Rather, they spent their leisure hours prettying up or creating needlework designs, to be used as presents to distant relatives or as ornamentation for their own apparel and that of family members. Sui Seen Far, a noted California writer in the late nineteenth century, described their lives this way:
The Chinese woman in America lives generally in the upstairs apartments of her husband's dwelling. He looks well after her comfort and provides all her little mind can wish.... She seldom goes out, and does not receive visitors until she has been a wife for at least two years. Even then, if she has no child, she is supposed to hide herself. After a child has been born to her, her wall of reserve is lowered a little, and it is proper for cousins and friends of her husband to drop in occasionally and have a chat with "the family."
Now and then the women visit one another.... They laugh at the most commonplace remark and scream at the smallest trifle; they examine one another's dresses and hair, talk about their husbands, their babies, their food; squabble over little matters and make up again; they dine on bowls of rice, minced chicken, bamboo shoots and a dessert of candied fruits.90
At least one merchant wife in San Francisco Chinatown did not view her life so positively, though. "Poor me!" she told a white reporter. "In China I was shut up in the house since I was io years old, and only left my father's house to be shut up in my husband's house in this great country. For seventeen years I have been in this house without leaving it save on two evenings."" To pass her time, she worshiped at the family altar, embroidered, looked after her son, played cards with her servant, or chatted with her Chinese neighbors. Periodically, her hairdresser would come to do her hair, or a female storyteller would come to entertain her. Her husband had also provided her with a European music box and a pet canary. Only through her husband, servant, hairdresser, and female neighbors was she able to maintain contact with the outside world.
Despite her wealth, she envied other women "who are richer than I, for they have big feet and can go everywhere, and every day have something new to fill their minds." This woman, however, as she was well aware, was still only a piece of property to her husband, always fearful of being sold "like cows" if her husband tired of her, or of having her son taken from her and sent back to China to the first wife. Also, as she herself pointed out, she had few avenues of escape. Chinatown was governed by the laws of China, and the Mission Home could provide her with only a temporary refuge. "I am too old for any man to desire in marriage, too helpless in the ways of making money to support myself, too used to the grand living my husband provides to be deprived of it."
In fact, however, such women of leisure were but a small proportion of immigrant wives in the late nineteenth century. Most wives were married to Chinese laborers who, having decided to settle in America, had saved enough money to send for a wife or to marry a local Chinese woman-most likely a former prostitute or American-born. As it was for other working-class immigrant women, life for this group of wives was marked by constant toil, with little time for leisure. Undoubtedly, they were the seamstresses, shirtmakers, washerwomen, gardeners, fisherwomen, storekeepers, and laborers listed in the manuscript census. Even those listed as "keeping house" most likely also worked for wages at home or took in boarders to supplement their husbands' low wages.92 In addition to their paid work, they were burdened with child care and domestic chores, which they had to perform in crowded housing arrangements. According to the San Francisco Health Officer's Report for 1869-70, "Their mode of living is the most abject in which it is possible for human beings to exist. The great majority of them live crowded together in rickety, filthy and dilapidated tenement houses like so many cattle."93 Five years later, the writer B. E. Lloyd noted in Lights and Shades of San Francisco, "A family of five or six persons will occupy a single room, eight by ten feet in dimension, wherein all will live, cook, eat, sleep, and perhaps carry on a small manufacturing business."94 In 188o the city's Board of Health condemned Chinatown as "a cancer-spot, which endangers the healthy and prosperous condition of the city of San Francisco. "95
Women doing laundry, San Francisco, i89os. (Charles Weidner photo, Judy Yung collection)
Like peasant women in China, working-class wives in San Francisco could freely go out to work, worship at the temple, or shop in the Chinatown stores that provided for all their needs. But they did not travel far from home or mingle with men. Even when they spent an occasional evening at the Chinese opera, they would sit in a separate section from the men. Nor did they linger long in the streets, so threatened were they by the possibility of racial and sexual assaults. As reported in the Daily Alta California:
Shopping in San Francisco Chinatown, i89os. (Courtesy of Philip P. Choy)
Last evening, at the fire on Dupont street, a crowd of Waverly Place loafers, and thieves, and roughs, who were being kept back from the fire by the police, amused themselves by throwing a Chinawoman down in the muddy street and dragging her back and forth by the hair for some minutes. The poor female heathen was rescued from their clutches at last by officer Saulsbury, and taken to the calaboose
for protection. He also arrested one of her assailants, who was pointed out by the woman, but as she could not testify against him [Chinese could not legally testify against whites] he was dismissed on his arrival at the calaboose.96
The safety of Chinese women could not be assured even in the company of white missionaries. According to the testimony of Rev. W. C. Pond:
Under the protection of American ladies they [Chinese girls from the Methodist mission] went out, one afternoon to walk. When at some distance from home, they were set upon by a gang of men and boys, pelted, and then, as I understand, struck, their clothes rent, their ear-rings torn from their ears, and when an Irish woman (God bless her!) gave them refuge, her house was stoned.97
As it became more difficult to import Chinese prostitutes, Chinese women found themselves the targets of kidnappers, sometimes in broad daylight, to be sold into prostitution. During one week in February 189 8, eight such kidnappings occurred.98
Unlike in China, where three generations often lived under the same roof, the typical family structure in San Francisco Chinatown was nuclear, including a married couple, the husband about nine years older than the wife, and one or two children.99 The family, however, remained a patriarchal, economic unit. Within this structure, the husband worked outside the home for wages, while the wife stayed home to perform unpaid housework and child care as well as paid piecework for subcontractors. Since the husband was the chief wage earner and the representative of the family on the outside, the wife was dependent on him for subsistence and protection and thus remained in a subordinate role. In this sense, their respective roles and gender relations were no different from those in preindustrial China. But the absence of the mother in-law, the scarcity of women, and the couple's common goal to survive in a new and often hostile land were different circumstances that did begin to affect gender roles and relationships.