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

by Judy Yung

  A number of fortuitous circumstances helped her along the way. She found work as a live-in housekeeper to support her college education. After completing junior college with honors (she won an award as the most outstanding student in California and was chosen to give the commencement speech), she was introduced by the family that employed her to the president of Mills College. With the president's encouragement, Jade Snow went on to attend Mills, living with the college dean and supporting herself with scholarships and domestic work. She graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in economics and sociology. When opportunities opened up for Chinese Americans during World War II, she landed a job as a secretary in a shipyard and wrote an award-winning essay on absenteeism that earned her the honor of launching a ship. This time she made the front pages of the Chinatown newspapers. Despite the skepticism and disapproval of the Chinese community, she also decided to start a hand-thrown pottery business in Chinatown, which proved so successful that by the third month she was driving the first postwar automobile in Chinatown.

  By the end of her autobiography, Jade Snow had come to terms with her cultural conflicts by selectively integrating elements of both cultures into her life and work as a ceramicist. Not only did she come to appreciate Western thought and culture through her education and social life at Mills College, but she also returned to her community to rediscover the rich cultural heritage to be found in Chinese foods, medicine, opera, and the established artisans she came to know. Her pottery, which combined classic Chinese and Western utilitarian motifs, reflected this newfound bicultural identity. She was indeed at home in both cultures, having achieved personal autonomy and self-definition as a second-generation Chinese American woman. More important, Jade Snow had proven her worth as a daughter to her parents through her many accomplishments, which had brought honor to them and earned her their respect. Her father paid her the highest compliment when he acknowledged that her example had helped to wash away the former "shameful and degraded position into which the Chinese culture has pushed its women." Jade Snow ended her autobiography with the comforting thought that she had at last claimed her niche in life: "She had found herself and struck her speed. And when she came home now, it was to see Mama and Daddy look up from their work, and smile at her, and say, `It is good to have you home again."'23

  While most of Jade Snow's peers took the same middle road of accommodation through bicultural fusion, there were others who either acquiesced or rebelled against traditional gender roles. Jade Snow's own older half-sister Esther Wong (Jade Swallow) initially chose the acquiescing route. According to a Survey of Race Relations interview conducted in 1924, Esther was born in China and immigrated to America with her mother and younger sister, Ruth Wong (Jade Lotus), when she was five years old.24 As with Jade Snow, Esther's childhood was one of strict discipline and hard work. Her day started with Chinese lessons with her father at 6 A.M., followed by public school and then work at her father's overall factory from 3 to 9 P.M. every weekday, all day on Saturday. When only twelve years old, she was put in charge of supervising twenty-five male workers. She also had to help with the housework, and later, when her mother fell ill for a year, she had to nurse her at home. Esther did not resent the heavy responsibilities or her lack of leisure time, but what she found unfair was her father's lack of understanding and the preferential treatment accorded her brother.

  When I was 13 my brother was born and then he [her father] lost interest in us girls, did not care to bother teaching girls, and seemed to forget what we were like. When we were small he used to work at a machine next to ours, and when we were all busy he would tell us stories as we worked; but later he became very stern and cold and did not try to understand us at all. My brother has a great deal of spending money and a bank account of his own and can do just about as he likes. We girls were expected to do everything and to pay for our room and board, which we thought was hard, as that is not the Chinese way, usually that is given to children.25

  Considering herself an "old-fashioned girl," Esther was always careful about conducting herself properly in public.26

  I was brought up in the very strictest Chinese way. I have never been to a dance, never had a caller that I received, although some have come, never had what is called "fun" in my life. Father did not believe in it. He was one of the prominent leaders of the Chinese National League of America, and acted as Treasurer, handling large sums of money. I used to be all alone in the office, receiving large sums, but was perfectly safe, no one ever spoke to me except when necessary, because I had the right Chinese manner, very cold and proper, which the Chinese look for in women, and so I was not ever spoken to, except in a business way. These League Teams always end in a feast, but though I was on many different teams at different times I never went to a feast, and so I could not be criticized. Perhaps you could not find a family that would better illustrate the conflict between the old and the new. We were brought up more strictly than most girls, even according to Chinese ideas, and my sister and I have kept these habits, never going to dances, or having company, always working.27

  What led Esther to challenge her parents' traditional expectations of her were their efforts to arrange a marriage for her to suitors she found unacceptable. The havoc that the controversy created in Esther's life led her finally to stand up for herself "I was 17 years old, and I hated them both [the suitors], and I stood out against them all. I finally said that I would pack my suitcase and go, if they did not stop this torture."28 Esther did indeed move out, found a job that supported her through Mills College, and then went to China to teach, where she remained until war broke out between China and Japan in 1937.

  At the other extreme of responses to cultural conflicts was the rebel who totally rejected traditional gender roles. Like the "flappers" of the 19zos jazz age, she was someone who defied social control and conventions, who was modern, sophisticated, and frank in speech, dress, morals, and lifestyle.Z" The best-known Chinese flapper was Anna May Wong, who broke convention by becoming a Hollywood actress. She made more than one hundred films in her thirty-seven-year career, most of which typecast her in the limited role of "Oriental villainess." The image she projected in the movie magazines, however, was that of a beautiful and fashionable modern woman, who lived in her own apartment, dressed in the most up-to-date fashion, and spoke the latest slang.30 As for her counterpart in San Francisco Chinatown, according to Rev. Ng Poon Chew, the Chinese flapper in her "bobbed-haired, ear-muffed, lipsticked, powder-puffed loveliness" was but an "Oriental echo of the American manifestation of youth.... Today she not only wants to select her own husband, but she wants the freedom of the chop-suey restaurants, the jazz cabarets, the moving pictures and long evenings with her beau, minus the chaperone, a i,ooo year old concomitant of Chinese civilization."31

  Flora Belle fan can be considered such a Chinese flapper. The third child in a family of eight children, she was born in 19o6 in Fresno, California. She later moved to San Francisco to attend college in 19zS. Like Jade Snow and Esther Wong's parents, Flora Belle's parents were immigrants from Guangdong Province; but unlike the Wongs, they were not influenced by Christianity or Chinese nationalism in deciding how to raise their children. Although relatively well off-they owned and operated the Yet Far Low Restaurant in Fresno Chinatown-they did not encourage any of their sons or daughters to pursue higher education. They were quite strict with Flora Belle, wanting to maintain control over her comings and goings, to mold her into a "proper" Chinese woman, though they evidently failed.

  Influenced more by her teachers, peers, and mainstream culture than by her tradition-bound parents, Flora Belle became a rebel at an early age. As she described herself in a Survey of Race Relations interview conducted in 192-4, she was not one to hold back her true feelings:

  When I was a little girl, I grew to dislike the conventionality and rules of Chinese life. The superstitions and customs seemed ridiculous to me. My parents have wanted me to grow up a good Chinese girl, but I am an American and I can't a
ccept all the old Chinese ways and ideas. A few years ago when my Mother took me to worship at the shrine of my ancestor and offer a plate of food, I decided it was time to stop this foolish custom. So I got up and slammed down the rice in front of the idol and said, "So long Old Top, I don't believe in you anyway." My mother didn't like it a little bit.32

  To expose the hypocrisy that she saw in both Chinese and mainstream American society, Flora Belle wrote scathing articles, poems, stories, and skits, some of which were published in the Fresno Bee, San Francisco Examiner, and Chinese Students' Monthly. One article, "Chinatown Sheiks Are Modest Lot; Eschew Slang, Love-Moaning Blues," used the latest slang to poke fun at her male contemporaries, while another sketch, "Old Mother Grundy and Her Brood of Unbaptized Nuns," ridiculed the American flapper.33

  Letters that Flora Belle wrote to her best friend, Ludmelia Holstein, from 1918 to 1949 reveal a young woman struggling with generational and cultural conflicts at home.34 Her parents obviously did not approve of Flora Belle's writings, her plans to go away to college, or her active social life. When they scolded her for leaving home for two weeks without permission, Flora Belle responded in anger by writing Ludmelia: "I hate my parents, both, now, and I want to show them that I can do some thing in spite of their dog-gone skepticism, old-fashionism, and unpardonable unparentliness."3'

  Like many other American girls, Flora Belle was interested in the latest fashions, romance, and having a good time-values promoted by the mass media during a period of postwar prosperity and consumerism. She wrote Ludmelia about accepting automobile rides with boys, of lying to her parents in order "to keep pace with Dame Fashion," of how she would "rather be a vamp and have a Theda Bar-ist time in S.F." than spend $zo to attend a religious convention at Asilomar.36 She also had aspirations to be a famous writer. Both Flora Belle and Ludmelia evidently wrote poems, stories, and songs, which they submitted to newspapers and magazines for publication. She took her ambition to write seriously, for when admonished by Ludmelia for taking too much interest in boys, she wrote back:

  Oh, dear me! Please, dear chum, don't say such an awful, awful thing. You are going to discourage me, utterly dishearten me, and take away all my ambition. Don't say that I will be married before you finish college. It will be impossible to adapt myself to a settled-down condition. Oh, how can I bear it, to be a mother and take care of children and live an uneventful life, and die, "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," by the world of Fame; only by friends and relatives! No, Luddy dear, I can not, simply will not do it. You must encourage me, and tell me constantly that I must achieve fame and fortune before I consider my task is done. 37

  Although her parents did not instill Chinese nationalism in her, she was exposed to it during her visits to the San Francisco Bay Area. In another letter to Ludmelia, she wrote about wanting to work in China: "When I went to `B' [Berkeley] I got loaded with patriotism, and now my ambition is to graduate from U. of C. [University of California] and go back and teach. Lucy told me that (she's been back there) teachers were in terrible demand in China now."3s After graduating from Fresno Junior College in r9z5, Flora Belle did attend the University of California, Berkeley, but only for six months. To support her college education, she worked first in an ice cream parlor and later as a check girl at the Mandarin Cafe while writing feature stories for the San Francisco Examiner-jobs that were not considered respectable by Chinatown standards. According to her last letter from San Francisco, too much partying, riding in automobiles, and "scandalous" columns in the San Francisco Examiner had earned her a bad reputation in the close-knit, conservative Chinese community of San Francisco. With the help of Robert E. Park, who had met her in the process of conducting his Sur vey of Race Relations on the Pacific Coast, Flora Belle left San Francisco to study journalism at the University of Chicago. There she met and fell in love with a graduate student from China. Upon graduation in 1926 she married him and, a year later, they had their first child. In 1932. she accompanied him to China, where they made their home for the next sixteen years.

  The life stories of Jade Snow Wong, Esther Wong, and Flora Belle Jan demonstrate the extent of sexism and cultural conflicts faced at home by second-generation women of middle-class background. Their stories also show the different responses that women brought to bear on intergenerational conflicts over gender roles. While some, like Esther, acquiesced and accepted the traditional role for Chinese women, a few, like Flora Belle, openly rebelled and tried to become liberated women. Most, however, took the accommodation route, as Jade Snow Wong did. Caught in the webs of two cultures and the double binds of sexism and racism, they sought to define their own ethnic and gender identity, to find their own cultural niche by selectively adopting a bicultural lifestyle that allowed them to enjoy what they felt was the best of two worlds.

  Racial Discrimination at School

  The second generation could become Americanized regardless of their parents' wishes, but they could not break down racial barriers and become accepted as equals in mainstream society. No matter how acculturated, their physical features set them apart, subjecting them to racial discrimination. Before World War II, Chinese Americans were denied equal education, employment, housing, and excluded from mainstream society. Sexism both within and outside of Chinatown compounded difficulties for Chinese American women. As a result, Chinese Americans were forced to lead a de facto segregated existence in all aspects of their lives. Nevertheless, Chinese American women took advantage of whatever opportunities were opened to them in an effort to shape new gender roles for themselves. Education was one such accessible avenue of opportunity

  The high esteem that Chinese accorded education proved a boon in America. Because Chinese parents firmly believed that education led to upward mobility, many willingly sacrificed for their children's education, putting them through public school, Chinese school, and college if at all possible. An American education would, they believed, prepare their sons and daughters for gainful employment in America or in China, while a Chinese education would develop their character, instill in them a sense of nationalist and cultural pride, and also prepare them for employment in China should appropriate opportunities in America prove impossible.

  With the new emphasis in China on educating women and the free, public education available to girls in America, many Chinese parents were encouraged to educate their daughters as well as their sons. However, few working-class parents could afford to support their daughters beyond elementary school, especially when economic circumstances required them to work or help out at home, as in the case of Alice Sue Fun. Not until after World War I, when compulsory education became instituted, did Chinese girls graduate from high school in equal numbers to boys.

  Up to that time, Chinese American children were categorically denied an equal education. Until 1884, provisions for the schooling of Chinese were not even included in the California school codes. Of the approximately 1,700 Chinese school-age children in San Francisco in the 1870s, only zo percent received an education, and that was only thanks to missionary and private efforts. Petitions by clergymen and Chinese merchants to the San Francisco Board of Education went unanswered until the school district was sued by Mary and Joseph Tape in the case of Tape v. Hurley (1884). As a result of that suit, the segregated Chinese Primary School [a.k.a. Oriental Public School] was established as an alternative to admitting Chinese students to white schools.39 In its first year of operation, there were only three girls among the thirty-eight enrolled students. By 1904 this number had increased to twenty, and after the 1911 Revolution, to fifty- eight .40

  Some parents chose to send their daughters to classes or schools established for their benefit by Protestant missionaries concerned about the high illiteracy rate among Chinese women and aware of the strict Chinese practice of sex segregation. Indeed, Christian institutions were the first to address the issue of education for Chinese girls and women. As early as 1903, the Baptist mission started a girls' school in Chinatown to teach them Chinese, Englis
h, and the fine arts. Chung Sai Tat Po announced that tuition would be free and transportation to and from home provided.4' Also according to CSYP, another girls' school was established in 1913 by Chinese Christians on Clay Street for the purpose of educating them so that they could "achieve gender equality and become better mothers of China's future citizens."42 By 192.0, 2.50, or 65 per cent of the population of Chinese girls in San Francisco, were enrolled in the Oriental Public School (grades K-8), and illiteracy among nativeborn Chinese women had dropped from a high 77 percent in 1900 to a low 13 percent in 19zo (see appendix table 5 ).43

  According to a 19z.1 study by Mary Bo-Tze Lee, the quality of education at the Oriental Public School was not equal to that of other city schools. Graduates of the Oriental Public School experienced difficulties in both academic standards and social interactions when they moved on to an integrated high school. Lee recommended that the Oriental Public School be given an increased budget, more conscientious teachers, and special courses to help the foreign-born learn English.44 Some parents, aware of the inferior educational standards, tried to send their sons and daughters to other schools in the city. They succeeded only so long as there were openings and white parents did not object. When objections were raised, Chinese parents took the case to court but inevitably lost. In contrast, when Japanese students were ordered to attend the Oriental Public School in 1905, the Japanese government interceded on their behalf and President Theodore Roosevelt himself pleaded with the school district to allow Japanese students to attend the white public schools. Having just defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan, unlike China at the time, was an international power to be respected and feared. In exchange for allowing Japanese students to continue attending white schools, the Japanese government signed the Gentlemen's Agreement in 1907, restricting the further immigration of Japanese laborers. Finally, in 1926, as increased numbers of Chinese students graduated from the Oriental Public School and the school became overcrowded, Chinese students were allowed to attend Francisco Junior High School, but only after another major battle was waged by Chinese community leaders against Italian parents who wanted to keep the Chinese out.45 The victory paved the way for Chinese Americans to attend public schools outside of Chinatown. In 1928, 11 Chinese girls graduated from Francisco Junior High School along with 15 boys. Ten years later, Chinese Americans made up more than half of the graduating class: there were 37 Chinese girls and 61 Chinese boys, among a total of 172 grad- uates.46