Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown

by Dillon, Richard

  While all this was going on others were placing, just to the left of the shrine, a large model house of tinsel-covered bamboo. This symbolized the deceased’s worldly possessions. It was set on fire and bushels of joss paper and punk were thrown on it. Toward the end of the priestly incantations in the background the mourners stripped off their colorful ribbons and threw them into the pyre.

  When the priest was finished the coffin was borne to the open grave and lowered unceremoniously into it. Each mourner then walked past the grave and tossed a handful of popcorn and a handful of sand on the coffin. The grave was quickly filled in and the people began to disperse. That is, all dispersed but certain Caucasian tramps who hung back to feast upon the offerings left at the shrine—but not before they got their “lucky money.” At the gate an attendant, hefting a bag of five-cent pieces, gave a shiny nickel to each person as he or she filed out.

  Who was this man, that the whole of Chinatown would feel obligated to turn out for his funeral ceremonies? (Or was it that they feared the consequences of failure to put in an appearance?)

  Low Yet was the founder and first president of the Chee Kong tong. He was therefore the founder of all tongs in America, and rightly or wrongly, on his shoulders must be placed much of the blame for the bloody tong wars of Chinatown. He was a leader in the Tai Ping Rebellion, which lasted from 1850 to 1864. But Low Yet was forced to flee China long before the soldiers of fortune, Frederick Townsend Ward and Chinese Gordon, with their ever-victorious army, finally crushed the rebels. When Low Yet arrived in San Francisco he broadcast the seeds of the Triad Society and soon harvested a hybrid society—the Chee Kong tong. It was not a secret revolutionary movement, though it was secret, but it was sufficiently warlike even for an erstwhile “long-haired rebel” of Hung Siu Tsuen’s, like Low Yet.

  Soon the Chee Kong tong prospered enough to slough off dissatisfied portions of its large membership. These dissidents created their own rival tongs and the San Francisco press was faced with the problem of sorting out a multitude of more-or-less secret organizations whose names proved thoroughly bewildering. A reporter had to keep track of Suey Sings, Suey Ons, Hop Sings, Hip Sings and Hip Yings, Bo Ons, Bo Leongs and Bing Kongs, while not forgetting Bo Sin Seers, Gee Sin Seers, Sai Sin Seers, plus a dozen more tongs and a host of variant spellings, mispronunciations and bad translations.

  As surprising as the number of tong progeny spawned by the Chee Kong tong was the manner of Low Yet’s passing. The founder of all of San Francisco’s fighting tongs died, aged eighty-seven years, of natural causes. Most would have laid bets that he would die “in action,” for through him such scenes as that described by Senator Aaron Sargent came to pass: “I have seen a hundred or two Chinese lining each side of a narrow street, violently gesticulating at each other and apparently casting insults as if each party sought to provoke the other to the first blow. Then, like a flash, the clashing of swords and knives and half-a-dozen men were in the dust with mortal stabs.”

  The true intentions of the tong members were well-kept secrets, guarded from both police and press for years. But, piece by piece, the force and the reporters began to put the story of the tongs together. The San Francisco Call on December 5, 1887, ran a long article on the highbinders. The most startling fact, perhaps, was the wide variety of members. The membership was not confined to professional toughs by any means. Sam Ah Chung, killed by a rival highbinder a week before the article appeared, was revealed to be a tong man though he was employed as a servant in a private home where he was considered to be extremely meek.

  The sweet-sounding names affected by the tongs fooled neither police nor press. One of the most notorious was the Progressive Pure Hearted Brotherhood. Signs outside other tong headquarters proclaimed, in translation, their associations to be: the Society of Pure Upright Spirits, the Perfect Harmony of Heaven Society, the Society as Peaceful as the Placid Sea, the Peace and Benevolence Society, and the Society of Secured and Beautiful Light. But the inner workings of the organizations remained well-kept secrets until they were broken by the San Francisco police in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

  Each tong had two or three English-speaking members who scanned the newspapers to keep their societies posted, and dealt with American lawyers and other English-speaking people when necessary. But they passed on no secrets to the “foreign devils.” Many Six Companies’ men were beginning to feel the pressure and joined one or another of the tongs, which varied from 50 to 1,500 members in 1887. The Chee Kong tong was the largest. Merchants often joined it or another tong out of pure fear of the consequences of nonaffiliation. But the surface of Chinatown remained serene.

  Frederick A. Bee, Chinese Consul in San Francisco for a time, noted that the tongs preserved at least vestigial traces of rebel underground units. One tong in particular, which he did not identify but which was probably the Chee Kong tong, deliberately refused to observe Chinese holidays or to recognize Imperial authority in any fashion. This tong even flew a black flag over its headquarters rather than the white and yellow of the Chinese Empire. And when the flag did fly from the staff it indicated one of two things: it was a tong holiday or a crime or tong war was due.

  It is not known how extensive was anti-(Chinese) governmental activity by the highbinders, nor how adept at anti-Manchu espionage they became. But it is unlikely that they had much time for such diversions. The day of the typical salaried soldier was a full one of loafing, wenching, gambling, blackmailing, and now and again murder. However, there was no denying that in June, 1885, the Chee Kongs welcomed an unknown eighteen-year-old Chinese to their Spofford Alley headquarters and befriended and protected him during his initial three months’ stay on the Coast, as well as later. The lad was Sun Tai Cheon, later Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese Republic. His dream, the overthrow of the Manchus, seemed as remote as the moon in 1885. But Sun was in the United States long enough to become impressed with American democracy and republicanism, and he determined to introduce these systems into China. Therefore he would only accept the first part of the slogan of the Triad Society and its San Francisco kin, the Chee Kong tong—Overthrow the Manchus, restore the Mings! He saw no reason to rid China of one emperor only to replace him with another. The Chee Kongs were dubious about Sun’s democratic ideas but they supported him. For 211 years they had fought the Manchus, and before Sun’s successful revolution of 1911 they would have participated in five unsuccessful revolts against China’s Tartar overlords.

  The tongs did not fool Sinophile Masters for one moment. He hated them and labeled them publicly “bands of conspirators, assassins and blackmailers.” He was irked by what he saw as public gullibility in accepting the brief of the tongs that they were Chinese Masonic societies. Masters quoted J. S. Hopper on this score: “There is no more resemblance between Freemasons in this country and the Yee Hing [Triad] Society than there is between the Grand Army of the Republic and the Chicago Anarchists.” Masters added: “These hatchet societies believe themselves invincible and have defied every effort of the authorities to reach them by constitutional means.”

  A letter from a highbinder (Lew Yuet) in the interior to officials of San Francisco’s Chee Kong tong was intercepted and translated by Jonathan Endicott Gardner, a Customs interpreter, in January, 1889. It suggested a type of conspiracy in which the tongs indulged:

  On the 5th instant Lee Shan came by stage to our store and said that the Chee Kong Tong had deputed him to come here and collect from Chan Tsung, Lieu Ming Chew, and Chew Keuk Min. He passed the night in our store. The next day he started out. He then stopped with Szlo Kam until the night of the 10th. Soon after it had turned 1 o’clock, Chew Keuk Min died. On the 12th there were certain townsmen of ours who reported that Chew Keuk Min was killed by Lee Shan. Now they are going to arrest Lee Shan. Today Szlo Kam was taken into custody. The trial, however, is not yet commenced. Today the different brethren held a conisulation and decided they wou
ld require Lee Shan to make up the sum of $200 for funeral expenses; that they would not be satisfied unless he did make up that amount. How this affair is going to end I do not know. It evidently is going to be quite serious. We hope in some way you brethren will contrive to eave him, somehow. This is the most important thing to do just now. Furthermore, we have no able person here to attend to the matter. The authorities [took him] into custody and yet no trial has taken place. The young woman, when pressed by the authorities, positively identified Lee Shan as the guilty man. We hope you will soon send us word.

  But it was a police raid on Chee Kong tong headquarters in 1891 which smashed the secrecy around the tongs. A book of ritual was captured. This was passed on to Masters for translation and he found his long-held suspicions to have been correct. The book detailed the oaths of initiation, the secret signs, the passwords, and the military-like rules of the tong. Masters discovered that the neophyte had been escorted to Chee Kong tong headquarters by an Introducer. At the first portal the recruit was challenged by a guard and threatened with death. But having been given the password by his escort, the candidate would be allowed to enter. Inside he was told to get out of his Manchu costume and unplait his queue. These, of course, were signs of his renunciation of allegiance to the Manchu Emperor. He was then dressed in clothing of the Ming Dynasty, a five-colored gown with a white girdle around the waist, and a red turban such as those which figured in the Tai Ping Rebellion. Entering another portal, the Chee Kong convert was forced to drop on his hands and knees and to crawl under an archway of sword blades held by Lectors and the Chief Swordsman. He then had to bow to the Grand Master of the secret society, called the Ah Mah, or Mother. He too was dressed in Ming-style robes, with long but unbound hair.

  The hatchet man-to-be, after declaring his acceptance of the tong’s twenty-one regulations, was given a potion of wine and blood (including some of his own) to symbolize the blood relationship with his tong brothers. He was next ordered to swear an oath:

  By this red drop of blood on finger tip, I swear

  The secrets of this tong I never will declare,

  Seven gaping wounds shall drain my blood away,

  Should I to alien ears my sacred trust betray.

  The candidate then crawled under the bench or chair on which the Ah Mah was seated, symbolizing his “rebirth” as a tong member. After renouncing all allegiance to Emperor, family and clan, the young man was led to a third portal which opened into an area where he was introduced to the secret signs of worship of Heaven and Earth and the spirits of the monks slaughtered so long before by the Tartar soldiery. Incense and gilded paper were lighted, and wine and tea poured to propitiate the gods.

  Newcomers who were guilty of past transgressions against the tong were forced to run a gantlet in which they were given a severe beating. However, this thrashing absolved them of any sins they had committed.

  The final act of the initiation ceremony saw the newcomer joining the members in rhythmically chanting thirty-six oaths before the high altar as a rooster’s head was chopped off: a pointed reminder of the fate of any tong man who might break his oath. The chant was:

  From rooster’s head, from rooster’s head,

  See how the fresh blood flows,

  If loyal and brave my course shall be,

  My heir immortal renown shall see,

  But when base traitor and coward turn I,

  Slain in the road my body shall lie.

  Many if not most of the other tongs had less impressive ceremonies than the tradition-conscious Chee Kongs. Candidates for membership in these other societies knelt in the tong’s joss room before a war god like Kwan Kong—also known as Kwan Ti or Kwan Yii—the military hero of the Three Kingdoms and originator of the Chinese blood-brother oath. Then, on the floor, before crossed swords and with another blade held over his head, the new highbinder swore fidelity and obedience to his tong.

  The Chee Kongs had borrowed heavily from the ritual of the Triad Society in China. They kept a multiplicity of secret symbols and signs, even to the arrangement of a teapot and cups on a table top. The familiar Willow pattern of Chinese plates was actually a secret symbol for the Triad Society. Objects were also laid out to form the character “Hung,” for the secret name of the old Triad Society—the Hung League. A tripod was on hand, too, as a symbol of the Triad. Another secret sign was the peculiar way in which members wore their queues, winding them from left to right around the head rather than vice versa, and letting the ends hang down over the right shoulder instead of the left.

  Masters found that the Chee Kongs even had a secret code of ludicrous but deadly euphemisms. To kill a person was rendered “to wash his body” (i.e., with his own blood). A rifle was called a “big dog,” a pistol was a “puppy.” Powder and bullets were actually called “dog feed” and the command to kill was “Let the dogs bark!”

  Another crack in the tong’s armor of secrecy had developed about 1889, when the police seized a Chee Kong hatchet man in Victoria, British Columbia. On his person they found not only the usual weapons and coat of mail but also a document dated July 2, 1887. It was decorated with the seal of the Victoria branch of San Francisco’s own Chee Kong tong and was addressed to the bearer. It read:

  To Lum Hip, Salaried Soldier. It is well-known that plans and schemes of government are the work of the learned holders of the seal, while to oppose foes, to fight battles and to plant firm government is the work of the military. This agreement is made with the above-named salaried soldier on account of sedition from within and derision and contempt from without. You, Lum Hip, together with all other salaried soldiers shall act only when orders are given; and without orders you shall not act. But in case of emergency when our members, for instance, are suddenly attacked, you shall act according to the expediency of the case and enter the arena, if necessary. When orders are given, you shall advance valiantly to your assigned duty, striving to be the first and only fearing to be found laggard. Never shrink or turn your back upon the battlefield.

  You shall go under orders from our directors to all the vessels arriving in port with prostitutes on board and shall be on hand to receive them. Always be punctual; work for the good of the society and serve us with all your ability. If, in the discharge of your duties, you are slain, this tong undertakes to pay $500 sympathy money to your friends. If you are wounded, a surgeon will be engaged to heal your wounds, and if you are laid up for any length of time, you shall receive $10 per month. If you are maimed for life and incapacitated for service, you shall receive the additional sum of $250 and a subscription shall be opened to defray the expenses of your passage home.

  This document is given as proof, as an oral promise may not be credited. It is further stipulated that you, in common with your comrades, shall exert yourself to kill, or wound, anyone at the direction of this tong. If, in so doing, you are arrested and have to endure the miseries of imprisonment, this society undertakes to send $100 every year to your family during the term of your incarceration.

  Masters blamed the terrifyingly quick growth of tongs and highbinderism upon what he thought was shameful laxity and corruption in the courts. Law-abiding Chinese were also “locked out” of American courts, of course, by the prevailing climate of prejudice and misunderstanding. A California Chinese bitterly explained this feeling of isolation from law and order to Interpreter James Hanley: “In China, money can suborn witnesses sometimes when there is no positive proof and acquit a man of the crime of murder. But in this country money can acquit a man no matter how positive the proof. Several hundred persons witnessed two of my brethren cut to pieces like hogs, and because the murderers had plenty of money they were turned at large. If you call that law,” he snorted, “what ideas can you have of justice?”

  Masters was convinced that most Chinese tong members in California would abandon the tongs for the side of the law and order if they
had any confidence at all in the administration of justice in San Francisco. “Rightly or wrongly,” he mused, “they believe that criminals never get their just deserts.” He once described a shooting fray of October, 1890, which was witnessed by a large number of Chinese. When they were questioned, all the police could get from them was silence or a “no sabe,” and looks of stolid indifference. Masters explained the situation. “This taciturnity of the Chinese witnesses to highbinder crimes is very provoking, but the terror of the tongs is upon them. They dare not tell.”

  As early as 1854, there were three tongs flourishing in San Francisco: the original Chee Kong, the Hip Yee and the Kwong Duck. To the dismay of the helpless district associations and family clans, these antisocial fraternities preferred to arbitrate their differences, real or imaginary, with an ax. Some say the Kwong Duck tong was organized by decent folk to fight the warlike Hip Yees. For a time the Kwong Ducks worked with Customs, identifying incognito slave girls as they disembarked from Pacific Mail steamers. The Hip Yee tong, too, was said to have started out honestly by protecting unwilling slave girls. But both ended up deep in criminal activities.