Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

by Judy Yung

  For the next year, Ah So worked as a prostitute for Sing Yow in various small towns. She was also forced to borrow $ i,ooo to pay off Huey Yow, who was harassing her and threatening her life. Then, seeking higher profits, Sing Yow betrayed her promise and sold Ah So to another madam in Fresno for $z,500. "When I came to America," Ah So's story continues, "I did not know that I was going to live a life of slavery, but understood from women with whom I talked in Hongkong that I was to serve at Chinese banquets and serve as an entertainer for the guests. I was very miserable and unhappy. My owners knew this and kept very close watch over me, fearing that I might try to escape."52

  Meanwhile, her family in China continued to write her asking for money. Even as her debts piled up and she became ill, she fulfilled her filial obligation by sending $30o home to her mother, enclosed with a letter that read in part:

  Every day I have to be treated by the doctor. My private parts pain me so that I cannot have intercourse with men. It is very hard.... Next year I certainly will be able to pay off all the debts. Your daughter is even more anxious than her mother to do this. As long as your daughter's life lasts she will pay up all the debts. Your daughter will do her part so that the world will not look down upon us.53

  In another letter to her mother, aside from reconfirming her commitment to fulfill the responsibilities of a filial daughter, Ah So also expressed the desire to "expiate my sin" by becoming a Buddhist nun-the correct move by traditional moral standards.54 She had indeed internalized the social expectations of virtuous Chinese women, putting these val ues to good use in helping herself cope with her present, desperate situation.

  But before Ah So could realize her wish, help arrived. One evening at a tong banquet where she was working, she was recognized by a friend of her father's, who sought help from the Presbyterian Mission Home on her behalf. Ten days later, Ah So was rescued and placed in the care of Donaldina Cameron. As she wrote, "I don't know just how it happened because it was all very sudden. I just know that it happened. I am learning English and to weave, and I am going to send money to my mother when I can. I can't help but cry, but it is going to be better. I will do what Miss Cameron says. "5' A year later, after learning how to read Chinese and speak English and after becoming a Christian, Ah So agreed to marry Louie Kwong, a merchant in Boise, Idaho.

  Her connections to Cameron and the Presbyterian Mission Home did not end there, though. A few years later, Ali So wrote to complain about her husband and to ask Cameron for advice. Louie Kwong had joined the Hop Sing Tong, refused to educate his own daughters (by a previous marriage), had struck her and refused to pay her old boarding fees in the Mission Home, and, worst of all, threatened to send for a concubine from China because she had not borne him a son.56 This complaint to Cameron about her husband shows that she had evidently changed her attitude regarding traditional gender roles. In support, Cameron promptly sent a Chinese missionary worker to investigate the matter. It must have helped because five years later, in another letter to Cameron dated December z8, 1933, Ali So wrote about being happily married and "busy, very busy" raising her husband's three daughters, their own two sons and a daughter, plus an adopted daughter and a brother-in-law's ten-year-old son. Ali So had made it back to China only to find that her mother had died and entrusted her with the lives of her two younger brothers and two younger sisters. "I am very grateful and thankful to God that my husband is willing to care for these smaller brothers and [unmarried] sister and help them," she wrote. With the closing assurance that "the girls and I are getting along fine," she enclosed a photograph of herself with her husband and enlarged family.57

  Wong Ah So's story harks back to the plight of the many Chinese women who were brought to the United States as prostitutes to fill a specific need in the Chinese bachelor society. By the z g zos, however, the traffic had gone underground and was on the decline. In 18 70, the peak year of prostitution, r,4 z 6 or 7 r percent of Chinese women in San Francisco were listed as prostitutes. By Ig00 the number had dropped to 339 or 16 percent; and by 119110, 92 or 7 percent. No prostitutes could be found in the 11920 census,ss although English- and Chinese-language newspaper accounts and the records of the Presbyterian Mission Home indicate that the organized prostitution of Chinese women in San Francisco continued through the 1192os. The last trial of a prostitution ring occurred in 11935,59 in which damaging testimony by two courageous Chinese prostitutes-Leung Kwai Ying and Wong So-led to the conviction of Wong See Duck, a hardware merchant and longtime dealer in prostitution, and his three accomplices. The Exclusion Acts and other antiprostitution legislation passed in the late nineteenth century had succeeded in stemming the traffic, but not eradicating it. Even the earthquake and fire of 11906, which destroyed Chinatown, did not wipe out prostitution, for brothels were reopened in the new buildings. As law enforcers stepped in to curb the trade, prices escalated and ingenious methods were devised to circumvent the law. After the earthquake, pros titutes sold for $3,000, and the services of lawyers hired to keep them in the possession of their owners averaged $700 a case. By the 19zos, the price of a young Chinese woman in her teens had risen to as much as $6,ooo to $io,ooo in gold.60

  Wong Ah So, husband Louie Kwong, and family in 11933. (Missionary Review of the World; Judy Yung collection)

  To bypass immigration restrictions, women were coached to enter the country disguised as U.S. citizens or wives of U.S. citizens. One newspaper account reported that they came with "red certificates," a document issued to American-born Chinese females who had departed for China between 188o and 1884. Although immigration inspectors suspected that these certificates-which were never marked "Canceled"were being reused by women assuming bogus identities, they could not prove it, especially when an abundance of Chinese witnesses was on hand to vouch for the women's identities.61 Still another newspaper account stated that American-born Chinese men were being paid to bring in "wives" when they returned from visits to China.62 Other women reportedly came in disguised as theatrical performers, gained entry by bribing immigration officials, or were smuggled in as stowaways or across the Canadian or Mexican border. As the importation of women became more difficult, local sources were tapped, and the kidnapping of young women and the sales of mui tsai into prostitution increased.

  Public opposition to prostitution and other social vices, spurred by female moral reformers and Chinese nationalist leaders, was on the rise in the early 19006 and contributed greatly to the demise of the trade. In r9oo, Donaldina Cameron took over as superintendent of the Presbyterian Mission Home. The youngest daughter of Scottish sheep ranchers, Cameron was born in 18 67, two years before her parents moved from New Zealand to California. At the age of twenty-five, after breaking off an engagement, she found her calling at the Presbyterian Mission Home, assisting matron Margaret Culbertson in her rescue work. Deeply religious, maternal, and committed to Victorian moral values, Cameron seemed the perfect choice for the job. Called lo mo (mother) by her young charges and fan gwai (foreign devil) by her critics in the Chinese community, she became well known for her rescue work. Numerous accounts describe in vivid detail the dangerous raids led by Cameron, who was credited with rescuing hundreds of Chinese slavegirls during her forty years of service at the Mission Home. Following the tradition established by Culbertson, Cameron provided a home for the rescued women, educated them, trained them in job skills, and inculcated them with Victorian moral values. The goal was to regroom them to enter society as Christian women. While some women chose to return to China under Christian escort, others opted to enter companionate marriages, pursue higher education, or become missionary work- ers.63 Indeed, the Mission Home's goal was best expressed in a drama devised and presented by Cameron and her staff at a national jubilee held at the home in 19zo:

  "The Pictured Years" showed the Chinese work under that militant Saint, Miss Culbertson, and also under Miss Cameron and Miss Higgins. Realistic scenes of rescue work in the cellars and on the roofs of the Chinese quarter were thrillingly presented;
... the days of the exodus, after the earthquake and during the great fire of r 906; a prune-picking scene, prettily staged, showing the latest experience of our Chinese girls; and the climax-a tableau of a Christian Chinese family (the wife and mother a former ward of the Board), with the daughter in University cap and gown.64

  Such was the ideal transformation that Cameron as the benevolent white mother wanted for her Chinese "harvest of waifs gathered from among an alien and heathen people," as she herself described them.65 Yet she was also known for defending Chinese women against stereotyping, sensationalization, and ideas of racial determinism. Although some historians have criticized Cameron for her patronizing attitude and the regimented way in which she ran the Mission Home, those who knew and worked with her have only a high regard for her work among the Chi- nese.66

  While Cameron and the Presbyterian Mission took the leadership role and credit for rescuing Chinese prostitutes, they did not work alone. They sought and received the cooperation of immigration and juvenile authorities, law enforcement agents, lawyers, the judicial system, and both the English- and Chinese-language presses, as well as civic-minded groups and individuals. Dramatic newspaper accounts of rescue raids helped to keep the antiprostitution campaign alive while at the same time promoting the Protestant women's crusade for moral reform. The celebrated case of Kum Quey was one such well-publicized story that shows not only Cameron's uncanny skills at rescue work, but also the extent of public support that was needed to free one Chinese girl from slavery.

  According to popular accounts, Kum Quey was first rescued by Cameron from a brothel in Baker Alley and was living in the Mission Home when her owner and a constable from San Jose came to arrest her on trumped-up charges of grand larceny. Suspecting foul play, Cameron accompanied Kum Quey to Palo Alto and insisted on staying with her in jail while she awaited trial. Early that morning, three men broke into the jail cell, overpowered Cameron, and abducted Kum Quey. The men got a judge to hold an impromptu trial on a country road in their favor, and then forced Kum Quey into marrying one of them. Meanwhile, with the help of a Palo Alto druggist, a network of informants, and the cooperation of a policeman, Cameron caught up with the party in San Francisco and had one of the abductors arrested. Her retelling of the abduction, well covered in the local newspapers, incensed private citizens as well as Stanford University students. They condemned the affair and the complicity of local officials at a town hall meeting, raised funds for Kum Quey's cause, and stormed the local jail in protest.

  Through her Chinese contacts, Cameron found out that Kum Quey had come to the United States two years before as one of seventy "Oriental maidens" for the Omaha Exposition but instead was put to work in a Chinatown brothel. With this new information in hand, Cameron solicited the help of immigration authorities. During the trial Kum Quey defied her owner's instructions, admitting instead that she had entered the United States illegally and been forced into prostitution. Not giving up, the abetting constable slipped out of the courtroom and attempted to run off with Kum Quey, but was successfully pursued and apprehended by an immigration officer and a private citizen. The court gave Kum Quey into Cameron's guardianship, and a San Jose grand jury later indicted the judge, constable, and abductors involved in the crime. And so happily ended the story of Kum Quey.67

  The developments in the Kum Quey case were followed closely in CSYP. Edited by the Presbyterian minister Ng Poon Chew, the newspaper was influential in molding public opinion against Chinese prostitution in the context of its overall advocacy of the modernization of China and social reform in Chinatown. Numerous editorials in CSYP argued that mui tsai and prostitutes were signs of Chinese decadence in the eyes of Westerners and should be eradicated. Those involved in the prostitution trade were told to search their consciences and mend their ways. With the establishment of shelters for prostitutes rescued by missionaries and through the efforts of both the American and Chinese governments to suppress prostitution, "your profits will suffer and your reputation [will be] ruined," admonished one editorial.68 Attempts were also made by middle-class institutions such as the Chinese consulate, Chinese Six Companies, Chinese Society of English Education, Chinese Students Alliance, Chinese American Citizens Alliance, and Chinese Cadet Corps to discourage if not stop the prostitution trade in Chinatown. All opponents had to put their lives at risk in the face of the overwhelming power of tongs in Chinatown, specifically the secret societies that had the most to lose from the demise of prostitution. 69

  By the early 19oos, however, the nation's purity crusade had reached the West Coast.70 After the 19o6 earthquake, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish moral reformers joined efforts to mount an all-out attack against prostitution and commercialized vice in San Francisco. The American Purity Federation even threatened to seek a national boycott of the upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition if the city failed to clean up its image. In the atmosphere of progressivism that had gripped the entire nation, there rose a public outcry against venereal diseases and the international trafficking of white slavery-"the procuring, selling, or buying of women with the intention of holding or forcing them into a life of prostitution. "71 Melodramatic stories of innocent white women who had been tricked and forced into a brutal life of prostitution-not unlike the situation of Chinese prostitutes-drew the passionate ire of humanitarians and purity reformers committed to correcting sexual mores in the nation.72 Their efforts culminated in the 1910 passage of the White Slave Traffic Act (also known as the Mann Act after its author, Congressman James R. Mann), which in effect outlawed the interstate and international trafficking in women.

  As there were few convictions, and as the act did not address voluntary prostitution, individual states next stepped in with the enactment of "red-light" abatement laws, which sought to prosecute the brothel owners. Prostitution was finally curtailed in San Francisco after the California legislature passed the Red-Light Abatement Act in 1913. The first raid and test case under this act was a Chinese brothel at Dupont and Bartlett Alley owned by Woo Sam. The prosecution was upheld by both the U.S. District Court and the California Supreme Court in 1917, and after that, local police closed almost all brothels in the city, including those in Chinatown.73 With the advent of World War I, further legislation was passed to wipe out the remaining traces of prostitution that had gone underground, this time in the interest of protecting the health of American soldiers. Public Law No. i z, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917, authorized the secretary of war to arrest any prostitutes operating within five miles of a military camp. So many women were arrested as a result that prison and health facilities in San Francisco became seriously overcrowded. The antiprostitution measure continued to be enforced after the war, effectively shutting down the red-light district in San Francisco, including Chinatown, for good.74 Any other traces of Chinese prostitution were left in the hands of Donald ina Cameron and Jack Manion, the police sergeant assigned to head the Chinatown detail in 192.1, to finish off.7s

  By 19zo, the ratio of Chinese males to females in San Francisco had dropped from 6.8 to i in 1910 to 3.5 to 1, and there were visible signs of family life. The Methodist Mission records showed fewer rescues and more attention being paid to abused wives, daughters, and orphans. By 1930, the sex ratio had declined further, to z.8 to 1, and the Presbyterian Mission redirected its program to the growing numbers of neglected children. Wong Ah So-a direct beneficiary of the community's reform climate and the efforts of Protestant missionary women-was among the last to be rescued, Christianized, and married to a Chinese Christian. As the presence of wives and families increased and commercialized vices associated with a bachelor society declined, Chinese immigrant men shed their sojourner identities, and Chinatown assumed a new image as an upstanding community and major tourist attraction.

  IMMIGRANT WIVES AS INDISPENSABLE PARTNERS

  Immigrant wives like Law Shee Low also found life in America better than in China. They did not find streets paved with gold, but, practically speakin
g, they at least had food on the table and hope that through their hard work conditions might improve for themselves and their families. Although women were still confined to the domestic sphere within the borders of Chinatown, their contributions as homemakers, wage earners, and culture bearers made them indispensable partners to their husbands in their struggle for economic survival. Their indispensability, combined with changing social attitudes toward women in Chinatown, gave some women leverage to shape gender arrangements within their homes and in the community.

  By the time Law arrived in 19 z2, women's roles and family life in San Francisco Chinatown had changed considerably relative to the nineteenth century. U.S. census sources provide an important quantitative view of that change. After steadily decreasing in numbers since 189o, the Chinese female population in San Francisco increased zz percent between 1910 and 19zo, primarily because of the immigration of wives and the birth of daughters. At the same time, the Chinese sex ratio in San Francisco dropped from 553.3 males per ioo females in 1900 to 349.z in 1920 (see appendix table 3). Whereas most Chinese women in nineteenth-century San Francisco had been single, illiterate, and prostitutes, the 19zo manuscript census for the city indicates that 63 percent of Chi nese women were married, only z 8 percent were illiterate, and there were no prostitutes (see appendix tables 4 and 5). These figures attest to a new pattern of life in Chinatown. More men were becoming settlers and establishing families; and the community was heeding the call among social reformers to educate the women and eradicate prostitution. 76

  The manuscript censuses also indicate that fewer Chinese women were employed in 19 zo (11 percent) as compared to 19 10 (17 percent) and 1900 (31 percent) and that most of the employed women were seamstresses who worked at home (see appendix table 6). As was true in the previous two decades, in 19 zo the majority of Chinese husbands worked as merchants, grocers, or business managers-occupations lucrative enough that these men could afford wives in America (see appendix table 7). Overall, however, more women probably worked for pay than were registered in the censuses. Indeed, except for wives of merchants and business managers, most women had to work for pay in order to supplement their husbands' low incomes.77 Like European immigrant women, some ran boarding houses. Others helped in family businesses or did handwork at home for pay. Because such work was not considered "gainful labor" by census takers, though, they were not accounted for in the censuses. Moreover, language and cultural barriers most likely contributed to the inaccurate recording of census information on the Chinese population.