by Judy Yung
By the time she graduated from middle school, Jane had decided she wanted to become a medical doctor, believing "it would give me not only financial independence, but also social prestige."34 Her only other choices at the time were factory work or marriage. But further education seemed out of the question because her father's remittances from Australia could no longer support the education of both Jane and her younger brother. Arguing that graduates trained in American colleges and universities were drawing higher salaries in China than local graduates, Jane convinced her mother to sell some of their land in order to pay her passage to the United States. Her mother also had hopes that she would find work teaching at Chinese schools in America and be able to send some of her income home. In 19zz, Jane obtained a student visa and sailed for the United States, planning to earn a doctorate and return home to a prestigious academic post. Her class background, education, and early exposure to Western ideas would lead her to a different life experience in America than Law Shee Low and Wong Ah So, who came as obedient wives from sheltered and impoverished families.
Detainment at Angel Island
Like thousands of immigrants before them, Law Shee Low, Wong Ah So, and Jane Kwong Lee had to pass immigration inspection upon their arrival in America. In contrast to the frightening but relatively brief stay of European immigrants at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, most Chinese immigrant women experienced humiliation and despair during their extended detainment at the Port of San Francisco owing to the strict implementation of the Chinese Exclusion laws. Prior to the building of the Angel Island Immigration Station in 1910, Chinese immigrants were housed in a dilapidated wooden shed at the Pacific Mail Steamship Company wharf. The testimony of Mai Zhouyi, a missionary from Canton and wife of a Chinese merchant, describes the ordeal of detainment suffered by Chinese immigrant women. Locked in the shed for over forty days pending investigation of her right to land, she spoke out against the inhumane treatment she received there at a public gathering in Chinatown following her release:
All day long I faced the walls and did nothing except eat and sleep like a caged animal. Others-Europeans, Japanese, Koreans-were allowed to disembark almost immediately. Even blacks were greeted by relatives and allowed to go ashore. Only we Chinese were not allowed to see or talk to our loved ones and were escorted by armed guards to the wooden house. Frustrated, we could only sigh and groan. Even the cargo was picked up from the docks and delivered to its destination after custom duties were paid. Only we Chinese were denied that right. How can it be that they look upon us as animals? As less than cargo? Do they think we Chinese are not made of flesh and blood? That we don't have souls? Human beings are supposed to be the superior among all creatures. Should we allow ourselves to be treated like cargo and dumb animalsj35
Her sentiments echo those of European immigrants who experienced Ellis Island as the "Island of Tears," of bars, cages, and callous brutality on the part of immigration officials. As Fannie Kligerman, who had fled the pogroms in Russia, recalled:
It was like a prison. They threw us around. You know that children don't know anything. They would say, "Stay here. Stay there." And you live through it, you just don't fight back. And when it came to food we never had fresh bread, the bread was always stale. Where they got it, we don't know.... Everybody was sad there. There was not a smile on anybody's face. Here they thought maybe they wouldn't go through. There they thought maybe my child won't go through. There was such a sadness, no smile any place. . . . Just so much sadness there that you have to cry.36
Whereas most European immigrants remember the confusion of being quickly processed through the cursory physical, mental, and legal examinations, and the brief moment of fear at possibly being refused entry for reasons of health, morals, or finances, Chinese immigrants who passed through Angel Island have more haunting memories of being locked up in the "wooden building" for weeks and months, the fearful interrogation sessions where they were asked hundreds of questions regarding their past, and the frustration and humiliation of being treated as criminals for nothing more than the simple desire to enter the promised land. Ellis Island was an island not just of tears but also of hope for most European immigrants; for Chinese immigrants, however, Angel Island (nicknamed the "Ellis Island of the West" by immigration authorities) was a prison to men and women alike.37
Jane Kwong Lee's status as a student spared her the agony of Angel Island. Along with other first-class passengers who were members of the exempt classes, she had her papers inspected aboard ship and was allowed to land immediately.38 In contrast, after their ship docked in San Francisco Bay, Law Shee Low and Wong Ah So were separated from their husbands and taken to Angel Island for physical examination and interrogation.
Like hundreds of other Chinese before her, Law had an unfavorable first impression of America via Angel Island.39 Unaccustomed to disrobing before male doctors and presenting stool samples in a test for parasitic diseases, Chinese women suffered personal humiliation during the physical examination. "Those with hookworms had to go to the hospital," said Law. "Liver fluke was incurable, but hookworm was. There was a new bride who had liver fluke and was deported." After the physical examination, Law remembers being locked up indefinitely in the women's barracks with a dozen other Chinese women to await interrogation.
It was like being in prison. They let us out for meals and then locked us up again when we came back. They brought us knitting things but we didn't know how. They were willing to teach us but we weren't in the mood. We just sat there all day and looked out the windows.... We didn't even care to go out to eat, the food was so bad.... The bean sprouts was cooked so badly you wanted to throw up when you saw it. There was rice but it was cold. I just took a few spoonfuls and left. Same food all the time. We began craving for salted fish and chicken. We wanted preserved bean paste. Their food was steamed to death; smelled bad and tasted bad. The vegetables were old and the beef was of poor quality and fatty. They must have thought we were pigs.
Fortunately for Law, her husband sent her some dim sum (Chinese savory pastries), fresh fruit, and Chinese sausages, which she gladly shared with other women in the barracks. "The Western woman we called Ma [Deaconess Katharine Maurer, appointed by the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to tend to the needs of Chinese women at Angel Island] delivered it. Called our names. Searched it first for fear of coaching notes [to help her during her interrogation]," Law explained.
Finally, after ten days of waiting, Law was called to appear before the Board of Special Inquiry. Following the advice of the other women, she drank a few mouthfuls of cold water to control the fear within her.
One woman who was in her fifties was questioned all day and then later deported, which scared all of us. She said they asked her about [life in China:] the chickens and the neighbors, and the direction the house faced. How would I know all that? I was scared. Fortunately, they didn't ask me all that. Just when I got married. When the interpreter asked me whether I visited my husband's ancestral home during the wedding, I said no because I was afraid he was going to ask me which direction the house faced like the woman told me and I wouldn't know. Evidently, their father [her husband] had said yes. So when they asked me again and I said no, their father, who was being interrogated at the same time the second time around, said, "Choy! You went back; why don't you say so?" The Westerner [immigration officer] hit the table with his hand [in ob jection] and scared me to death. So when he slapped the table, I quickly said, "Oh, I forgot. I did pass by [in the wedding sedan chair] but I didn't go in." So they let me land. But when they led me back to the barracks, I thought I would be deported so I cried. Later at 4 r.m., they called me to get on the boat to go to San Francisco and the others happily helped me gather my things together to leave.
Compared to others, Law's interrogation was unusual in that her husband was allowed to sit in and the process was concluded in one day. "It could have been because this church lady helped us," she suggested. It was generally
known that a supporting letter from Donaldina Cameron of the Presbyterian Mission Home often helped get cases landed.
For many other Chinese immigrants, the ordeal at Angel Island was much more agonizing and prolonged. Because affidavits and records had to be reviewed and the testimonies given by immigrants and their witnesses corroborated, even the most expeditious case generally took at least a week. According to one study of procedures at Angel Island, "Each applicant is asked from two or three hundred questions to over a thousand. The records of the hearing generally runs in length from twenty to eighty typewritten pages, depending on the nature of the case."40 In contrast, European immigrants at Ellis Island were asked a total of twenty-nine questions. In all the Chinese cases, the burden of proof rested on the detainee to show that he or she was not an inadmissible alien. For those who failed the interrogation-usually because of discrepancies in their answers to detailed questions relating to their family history or village life in China-appeals to the Commissioner of Immigration in Washington, D.C., led to additional expenses and extended stays at Angel Island of another six months to a year. According to the testimony of an immigration inspector who was assigned to the Angel Island Immigration Station from 1929 to 1940, "More than 75 percent passed the interrogation at Angel Island. Of those that were denied here, there was always an appeal to Washington and probably only 5 percent of those denied were ever really deported."41 These statistics were similar in the experience of European immigrants at Ellis Island, where in general only 2 percent of them were deemed "undesirable aliens" and deported. But statistics do not reveal the different process that only Chinese immigrants were subjected to, a process different not only in degree but also in kind.
The disparate responses of Chinese men and women confronted by this harsh treatment reveal their respective gender roles as defined by their home culture and then adapted to their new environment at An gel Island. While the men passed the time actively-reading Chinese newspapers, playing sports outdoors in a fenced-in area, listening to Chinese phonograph records, and gambling or debating among themselves-the women sat around and waited quietly, some occupying their time with needlework. A few took advantage of the weekly walks outside under the watchful eyes of a guard. Whereas the men organized a Self-Governing Association for mutual assistance and to protest conditions at Angel Island, the women did not organize and seemed unable to voice objections to their harsh treatment. Their one defender and friend was Methodist Deaconess Katharine Maurer, known as the "Angel of Angel Island." Assigned to work among the Chinese detainees beginning in 1912, she shopped for the women, provided them with needlework materials, taught them the Bible and English, wrote letters, organized holiday programs for them, and administered to their various needs.42 Men were able to vent their anger and frustrations by carving poems into the barrack walls, many of which are still visible today. Women, deprived of education, were less literate, and although some remember seeing lines of poetry on the barrack walls, most could not express themselves in writing.43 One Chinese woman who was illiterate resorted to memorizing the coaching information on her family background by putting it into song.44
As women waited for the ordeal to pass, many shared the sentiments of a Mrs. Jew, who was detained on Angel Island the same year as Law Shee Low and Wong Ah So:
There wasn't anything special about it. Day in, day out, the same thing. Every person had to be patient and tell herself, "I'm just being delayed, it doesn't matter." I never even bathed. I kept thinking each day that I would be ready to leave and as each day went by, I just waited. I didn't eat much, nor move around much, so I never perspired. I had no clothes to wash.... I kept thinking, "Had I known it was like this, I never would have wanted to come! "45
Confined in the barracks together for indefinite sentences, women maintained a pragmatic attitude and bonded in an effort to cope with the situation. They chatted with one another, shared whatever food they had, dressed one another's hair, consoled those who had failed the interrogation, and accompanied one another to the bathroom after hearing stories of women who had hung themselves there. When asked who comforted the women when they became depressed, Law replied:
Who was depressed? There were two women who had been there for three months. They didn't cry; didn't seem to care. They even sang sometimes and joked with the man who came in to do the cleaning. Whenever this foreign woman offered to take us out for walks, usually on Fridays, just the two would go. They were two friends and very happy and carefree. They had little going for them, but they managed to struggle on.46
Although sobbing was often heard in the women's barracks and there were known cases of suicide, this cultural attribute of "making do" helped many Chinese women through detainment at Angel Island. When finally granted permission to land, immigrant women like Law Shee Low and Wong Ah So tried to put Angel Island behind them as they began their new lives in America.
"New Women" in the Modern Era of Chinatown
The San Francisco Chinatown that Law Shee Low, Wong Ah So, and Jane Kwong Lee came to call home was different from the slum of "filth and depravity" of bygone days. After the 19o6 earthquake and fire destroyed Chinatown, Chinese community leaders seized the opportunity to create a new "Oriental City" on the original site. The new Chinatown, in stark contrast to the old, was by appearance cleaner, healthier, and more modern with its wider paved streets, brick buildings, glass-plated storefronts, and pseudo-Chinese architecture. Dupont Street (now Grant Avenue), lined with bazaars, clothing stores, restaurants, newspaper establishments, grocery stores, drugstores, bookstores, and meat and fish markets, became the main business thoroughfare for local residents and a major tourist attraction by the time of the PanamaPacific International Exposition in 19 15.11 But behind the facade of the "Oriental City," hastily built with tourism and business in mind, was a ghetto plagued by overcrowding, substandard housing, and poor sanitation. Dwelling units for bachelors were constructed above, below, and behind shops in crowded quarters and often with poor lighting and ven- tilation.48 There were so few Chinese families then that little thought was given to their housing needs.
Aside from the change in physical appearance, Chinatown was also socially transformed by life under Exclusion. Internal economic and political strife mounted as the Chinese community-kept out of the pro fessions and trades, and isolated within a fifteen-block area of the citydeveloped its own economic infrastructure, political parties, and social institutions. Merchant associations, trade guilds, and tongs fought over control of the distribution and commercial use of Chinatown's limited space and economic resources, often engaging in bloody warfare in the period from the 188os to the 19 20S. At the same time, strife developed among political factions that disagreed on the best strategy to save China. The Zhigongtang (the American counterpart of the Triad Society in China) favored restoring the Ming emperor; the Baohuanghui advocated a constitutional monarchy; and the Tongmenghui (forerunner of the Guomindang) saw a democratic republic as the answer to China's future. In an effort to establish order in the community, nurture business, and protect the growing numbers of families, the merchant elite and middle-class bourgeoisie established new institutions: Chinese schools, churches, a hospital, newspapers, and a flurry of organizations such as the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chinese American Citizens Alliance, Chinatown YMCA and YWCA, Christian Union, and Peace So- ciety.49 Many of these new social groups also formed alliances with outside law enforcement agents and moral reformers to eliminate gambling, prostitution, and drugs in an effort to clean up Chinatown's image. Their work was met with strong resistance from the tongs that profited by these vice industries, but the progressive forces eventually won out. As reported in the community's leading newspaper, Chung Sai Yat Po (CSYP),50 soon after the 19 11 Revolution in China, queues and footbinding were eliminated, tong wars and prostitution reduced, and more of Chinatown's residents were dressing in Western clothing and adopting democratic ideas. Arriving in San Francisco Chinatown at this juncture in time gave immigrant
women such as Wong Ah So, Law Shee Low, and Jane Kwong Lee unprecedented opportunities to become "new women" in the modern era of Chinatown.
DECLINE IN PROSTITUTION
Fortunately for Wong Ah So, prostitution was already on the decline by the time she arrived in San Francisco, thanks to the efforts of Chinese nationalists, Protestant missionaries, and those who supported the social purity movement. As her case demonstrates, Chinese women brought to the United States as prostitutes at this time continued to suffer undue hardships but benefited from the socio-historical forces intent on eliminating prostitution in the city. Moreover, it reveals the inner workings of the Chinese prostitution trade, the complicit role of Chinese madams in the illegal business, and the coping mechanisms Chinese prostitutes devised to deal with their enslavement.
Upon landing, Ah So's dreams of wealth and happiness vanished when she found out that her husband, Huey Yow, had in fact been paid $500 by Sing Yow, a madam, to procure her as a slave.
When we first landed in San Francisco we lived in a hotel in Chinatown, a nice place, but one day, after I had been there for about two weeks, a woman came to see me. She was young, very pretty, and all dressed in silk. She told me that I was not really Huey Yow's wife, but that she had asked him to buy her a slave, that I belonged to her, and must go with her, but she would treat me well, and I could buy back my freedom, if I was willing to please, and be agreeable, and she would let me off in two years, instead of four if I did not make a fuss.5'