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

by Dillon, Richard

  The Kwong Duck tong was apparently formed by Mock Tan who patterned it after San Francisco’s vigilance committees and who used terror and violence to force large family clans to quiet down. The Hip Sing tong, the only coast-to-coast tong, was begun with fifty members and a lot of fireworks, by Num Sing. The Hip Sings were then set up, and Yee Low Dai formed the Suey Sing tong. The Bing Kong tong, another secret society whose members liked to pose as “Chinese Masons” was started in Los Angeles. It failed there and was moved to “Big Town” (San Francisco) and “Second Town” (Sacramento) where it flourished in the hothouse climate for crime of those two cities. Eventually a Los Angeles branch was established. The tong’s head was Wong Du King, and although he was a fierce fighter he was liked by the singsong girls, who called him Kai Yee, or Godfather.

  The Suey Sing tong got so big that its right wingers split off to form the Suey On tong while the far left deserted to form the Sen Suey Ying tong. But the great mass of Suey Sings were held together by such leaders as Hong Ah Kay, the poet, scholar, calligrapher and highbinder. Hong went wrong after his father was robbed by his associates and the Six Companies refused to help him. He was also in love with a slave girl named Kum Yong. When Kum Yong, fearful of the wrath of Hong’s rival, committed suicide, Hong was frenzied with rage and grief. He kicked the brothel’s madame down the stairs, wrecked the place, and started on a binge which may have been a record for an Oriental. It was at this time that he became a tong gunman, practicing his marksmanship in the fields outside Fresno. According to Eddie Gong, he was the man who changed the modus operandi of the hatchet man from cleaver, or ax, to revolver. When the Suey Sings took on the powerful Wong clan, Hong Ah Kay personally killed seven Wongs, or so the legend goes. The story is that his last victim was a prisoner in a cell next to Hong’s in the city jail. The clansman taunted and insulted Hong, so he stole a piece of barrel hoop, got a sharp point on it by honing it patiently on the stone floor, and stabbed the man to death. Hong Ah Kay escaped in the confusion and his tong shortly got him on a China-bound steamer. The Wongs were not asleep however. They tipped off the police and the vessel was searched. Hong was found in a tub under a coil of rope. He was convicted of murder and hanged. The Suey Sings and the Wongs finally called a truce. But the tongs were firmly in power now.

  The Hop Sings hired Sing Dock, originally a Hip Ying but by then a member of eight tongs. He was believed to have been entitled to eight notches on the handle of his hatchet before he was killed in 1911, on the Bowery by Yee Toy—nicknamed Hangman’s Noose because whenever he appeared someone died. Sing Dock, called the Scientific Killer, and his seven cronies took on both the Bing Kongs and the Suey Sings. The Hip Sings were cautious, taking no part in the Suey Sing-Hop Sing-Bing Kong war. They did bestir themselves to wipe out the weak Hip Ying tong, however, and managed to take over the Chinatown in San Jose fairly well. But no one tong could be said to have been the sole master of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

  One of the very first Americans to understand the tongs and the whys of their existence in Chinese-American society was the interpreter James Hanley. He warned the city, as early as 1856, of the tong men among the personnel of the Six Companies: “These institutions are without blemish if their members would only act in accordance with the established rules. But, unfortunately, they not only assist each other benevolently, but often in deeds of darkness, as we have witnessed here in California. For the last two hundred years they have been much oppressed by the Tartars and the venality of the magistrates, which has caused them to combine themselves into secret associations sometimes defying all law and order and carrying out their views just as they want them. Vigilance committees are of very old date in China….”

  Not many years later, in September 1862, the Sacramento Union was already reporting such items as the following: “By telegraph from San Francisco we are informed that the war between the See Yup and Hop Wo companies of Chinese has commenced in that city. Two Johns were fatally wounded yesterday and sanguinary work is anticipated.”

  The company men involved were undoubtedly tong members as well, though the Union did not realize this. In another twenty years reports of guerrilla warfare by these malevolent societies called tongs would be much more common and certainly no matter for levity. By that time tongs advertised brazenly on posters for the heads of their enemies. Hatchet men toured the bill-covered walls of Chinatown much as sailors congregated at a hiring hall. Possibly the first “advertised” tong killing in San Francisco was caused by an attack on Low Sing of the Suey Sing tong on a spring evening of 1875. He refused to tell police his attacker’s name but he told his fraternity mates. It was Ming Long, a Kwong Duck boo how doy and a rival for the hand of the slave girl Kum How. A poet named Mon Fung read aloud to the Quarter’s illiterati from the chun hung, or reward poster, on the wall at the corner of Clay and Dupont streets. It was a challenge to the Kwong Ducks to either send their best fighting men to Waverly Place at midnight of the following day or admit their error, compensate the Suey Sings, and apologize. The battle took place and the Suey Sings, crying “Loy gee, hai dai!” (Come on, you cowards!) scattered the Kwong Ducks. The small Chinatown squad had to call for reserves to break up the melee but there was not a single arrest made. All the combatants “evaporated,” save for three dead Kwong Ducks and one Suey Sing. (Six more men of both sides were on the wounded list.) The Kwong Ducks had to take up a collection among the merchants and turn it over to the victors with their apologies before they were invited to drink rice wine together again like brothers. According to highbinder Fish Duck, Low Sing recovered from his hatchet wounds and married the cause of all the trouble, frail Kum Ho. His rival, Ming Long, fled to China.

  Scribner’s Magazine, in October, 1876, published a translation of one of the chun hungs of Chinatown which had been captured and used as evidence in a “chopping” case in which one man was murdered and 6 wounded. The magazine stated that 50 highbinders had invaded the merchandise store of Yee Chuy Lung & Company at 810 Dupont Street, and attacked 12 men eating there. The diners dropped their chopsticks, abandoned their meal, and came up swinging meat axes and hatchets. Police officers A. J. Houghtaling and David A. Peckinpah broke through the crowd and forced the riot to a halt. A few Chinese carrying bloody hatchets were chased onto the roof and captured, but most of them melted away as usual in the crowded alleyways of the Quarter. Left behind as souvenirs of the scuffle were three iron bars, a club, a meat ax, a revolver, and four new hatchets, their blades ground razor sharp. The head-hunting poster featured by Scribners was not connected with this particular tong raid but was typical of the whole school of chun hungs. It read:

  WING YEE TONO PROCLAMATION. THE MEMBERS OF THE WING YEE TONG OFFER A REWARD ON ACCOUNT OF CHEUNG SAM’S SHOE FACTORY VIOLATING OUR RULE. CONSEQUENTLY, OUR SOCIETY DISCONTINUED WORK. UNLESS THEY COMPLY WITH OUR RULES AGAIN, WE WILL NOT WORK. SOME OF OUR WORKERS SECRETLY COMMENCED TO WORK FOR THEM AGAIN. WE WILL OFFER $300 TO ANY ABLE MAN FOR TAKING THE LIFE OF ONE OF THESE MEN WHO SECRETELY COMMENCED THE WORK, AND $500 IN FULL FOR THE KILLING OF SAM LEE [Cheung Sam], WE WRITE THIS NOTICE AND SEAL BY US FOR CERTAINTY. THE REIGN OF QUON CHUE IN THE SECOND YEAR. THE FOURTH OF CHINESE FEBRUARY.

  In November of 1894, yet another crack appeared in the tough shell of secrecy overlying tong activities. Sergeant J. W. Gillin captured secret documents from Mar Tan. The latter was known to Gillin as a capper for attorneys. He would follow Gillin and the Chinatown squad around and notify white lawyers of arrests made, and therefore of customers for bail. On Friday night, November 2, Officer John Lynch arrested a Chinese and marched him to city prison. Mar Tan, alias Ah Chung, followed at a discreet distance. But Lynch spotted him, and as he left the scene the officer tailed him. He shadowed the capper until he saw him engage Attorney N. S. Wirt in conversation, apparently making arrangements for the new prisoner’s release. Lynch arrested the capper on the spot and was surprised when Mar Tan tried violently to esca
pe. Sergeant Gillin had to run up to help Lynch subdue him.

  The reason for Mar Tan’s energetic attempt at flight was soon evident when the officers searched him. Besides the cards of six attorneys, they found two small Chinese documents in his pockets. One was on red paper, one on white.

  They were taken from him over his howls of protest and given to Chinese scholars to translate. The red document turned out to be his San Francisco tong membership card, the white one his Sacramento card. The documents had a great deal of secret code which the experts were unable to translate.

  The Call hoped in print that Mar Tan would be deported, but was crushed when the Chee Kong highbinder was released on only $20 bail. This was shocking to the Call; even a routine vagrancy charge normally required $150 cash or a $300 bond. The paper contrasted this bit of legal leniency with the case of an earlier Chee Kong highbinder, Tom Fun, who had also been a capper for attorneys. Caught with similar documents on his person during a visit to China in 1887, he was beheaded. The Chinese Consul General in San Francisco, perhaps in hopes of securing some of the same attention for Mar Tan, got the two certificates from the police and opened diplomatic correspondence with the authorities in Hong Kong, urging them to turn over to the Chinese Government all Chinese deportees from San Francisco. While all this excitement was going on Mar Tan calmly sought a change of pace. He found a new job as a lookout for a lottery parlor at 633 Pacific Street.

  Near the turn of the century either a San Francisco Call reporter successfully became a hatchet man, or else—well primed with information cribbed from Reverend Masters and others—he pulled off a first-rate hoax. According to his own feature story, B. Church Williams joined the Chee Kong tong in either late 1897 or early 1898. The Calls Sunday section for January 9, 1898, carried an almost full-page drawing of Williams by the eventually famous artist, Maynard Dixon. It depicted the reporter, stripped to the waist, taking the blood-brother oath of the secret society whose watchwords were Death to all Tartar rulers!

  Williams said that his sponsor was an old-time Chinese criminal who deposited his entrance fee, or “rice money,” and told him to wait developments. One day the reporter, who had lived in China as a boy and who spoke Cantonese fluently, was told that a rendezvous was arranged for midnight of the next full moon. Two boo how doy showed up right on schedule. One was to be his father and the other his mother in the secret society’s ritual. Passwords got the trio through an iron door and into a low-ceilinged room whose walls reeked of dampness. An assembly of men squatted on their heels, unsmiling, facing an improvised altar at one end of the room.

  Williams was led to a corner and asked to strip off all his clothes. He did so, and his body was scrutinized carefully for birth marks—but just why he did not learn. Allowed to pull on his trousers, he was ordered forward to meet the Grand Master of Ceremonies. This man looked like a pirate. A saber scar disfigured even more a face already made ugly by smallpox; the cicatrice ran from his forehead to the end of his nose.

  Williams had memorized the traditional responses, and when he was asked “Have you carefully considered the step which you are about to take?” he answered correctly, “Yes, Reverend Scribe.”

  “Are you ready to storm the Great Wall?”

  “Quite ready, Reverend Scribe.”

  “Have you been prepared with weapons?”

  “Not as yet.”

  “How can a child be born without a mother?”

  “My revered mother accompanies me, Reverend Scribe,” said Williams, gesturing toward the tough at ‘his side. “She stands upon my left, and my godfather stands upon my right.”

  “Are you ready to become a blood brother?”

  “All ready, Reverend Scribe.”

  “Then let thy mother proceed to shed the blood of maternity.”

  The reporter was led to the altar. Upon it lay the insigne and symbols of the Chee Kong tong. These included dishes of sugar to remove all bitterness from hearts; ears of corn to symbolize plenty; a dish of oil so all could have light in the future; and a bowl of vinegar into which the blood of the neophytes would be mixed.

  Williams’ “godfather” pricked the reporter’s finger with a needle. As it dripped blood he plunged it into the vessel of vinegar, stirring it. Others in the assemblage did likewise. Then each man placed his finger in his mouth and sucked it dry before exclaiming loudly, “Thou art my blood brother!”

  When it was the journalist’s turn to take part in the ceremony he surrendered to his fastidiousness and surreptitiously dipped his finger into the bowl of oil first, covering his finger with the viscous fluid, and only then performed what he called the “disgusting operation” with the bowl of blood and vinegar. But he shouted as loudly as the rest, “I am thy blood brother!” and he was greeted with a loud “Ho!” (Good!) from his new tong brothers.

  Led before the Grand Master, Williams was ordered to kowtow three times. This he did. Next, his personal courage was tested. He was made to walk between two lines of sword-bearing men. As he walked they dropped the sharp-bladed swords onto his shoulders. But as each blade fell it was skillfully turned at the last moment so that it was the flat of the blade which fell on his naked flesh.

  The Grand Master then outlined the objects of the tong and prescribed on diet and deportment. He finished by saying:

  Should a brother fall by the wayside, either through sickness or violence, it shall be your duty to assist him, both with your purse and your right hand. The sign of distress is clapping your hands three times above your head. Upon this manifestation you will hesitate and bold yourself in readiness to do battle with the coming enemy. Should the brother exclaim “Ah ga la!” [Strike him] do not proceed. Should he exclaim “Um ah!” [Do not strike] you must assist him in every means at your disposal. You must interpret each expression as the reverse of its actual meaning.

  Know you that our Society is most potent and its brothers inhabit every corner of the globe. Where ever your steps may carry you, there you will also find the true heart and the strong arm of the Chee Kong tong. Bear also in mind that while the Chee Kong tong protects it also punishes, and should you prove traitorous to our cause your blood shall pollute the soil of the land. Be you where you may, the Chee Kong tong will find you out.

  After hearing this warning, Williams and the other neophytes took oaths to observe these instructions, and in a grand finale swore, “Should I prove untrue to my promise, may my life be dashed out of my body as I now dash the blood from this bowl.” With that they raised bowls of chicken blood and hurled them to the floor where they shattered in hundreds of pieces. The ceremony was over as his prey collapsed without a sound on the landing Big Queue coolly walked down the stairs past the lazing bodyguards to disappear into the street crowd. This murder was followed by the Sam Yups boycotting all See Yup stores and products. Commerce in Chinatown was virtually paralyzed for a time, but eventually the embargo was lifted and the feud forgotten. It would be revived when Little Pete came to power in Chinatown.

  When the Six Companies campaign in opposition to the Geary Exclusion Act went down in defeat the tongs quickly tried to capitalize on a situation made to order for them. The leader of the opposition to the Chinese Registration Act was none other than their old antagonist Chun Ti Chu. He had lost face in the defeat of the Six Companies’ campaign of passive resistance to the Geary Act. The tongs put a price on his head and “published” (posted) the fact widely. Described as a friend of the police and an enemy of the tongs (true enough), he was worth $300 to them dead. But Chun was not worried, and Detective Christopher C. Cox explained why he was not. “Chun Ti Chu is one of the ablest and smartest Chinese here. He can fight as well as talk. He is a fine shot, and the highbinders fear him as much as they hate him. He is brave enough to stand off three or four highbinders.”

  Chun Ti Chu was one of the men responsible for the new policy of forbidding mem
bership in the Chinese Native Sons or office in the Six Companies and Chinese Chamber of Commerce to any member of a fighting tong. But success would not crown his efforts until the Americanized ki di (short hair) portion of Chinatown’s population grew larger in both numbers and strength. Already the handwriting was literally on the wall, however, as a legend was placed over the door of the fine Kwan Kong Temple on Waverly—HIGHBINDERS, KEEP AWAY!

  Chun Ti Chu escaped tong vengeance, but less brave and powerful opponents were not always so lucky. In 1900, the Consul General of China, shamed by the fact that since December, 1899, a Chinese had been either killed or wounded in Chinatown by hatchet men at a rate of two a week, posted a proclamation outside the gate of the consulate general on Stockton Street. He began it with an appeal and the recruits were now literally hatchet sons.

  Opposition formed against the tongs, but it was sporadic and not unified. Chun Ti Chu, president of the Sam Yup Company, tried to turn back the tongs in the ’90s by forming a sort of vigilance committee of Six Companies men. But Richard H. Drayton proved himself recklessly overoptimistic when he exulted that “since the establishment of that committee the fertile fields of plunder have been fenced in against the highbinders, and hard times [for them] have followed.” It took the earthquake of 1906, plus the formation of the Wo Ping Woey Peace Association in Waverly Place in 1913—not Chun Ti Chu’s Vigilantes—to create a condition of (lingering) tong moribundity.

  Another who fought the tongs was Loke Tung. He was also the head of the Sam Yups for a time. According to Eddie Gong, he changed his stripes however. After tipping off police to gambling dens and brothels he is said to have moved in to start them up again after they were raided and closed. If we can believe Gong, he was a hijacker rather than a reformer. Gong also claimed he harassed his rivals by forming a real-estate syndicate, and was soon boasting he could smash the See Yups like eggs at any time he chose. Loke was able to get a murderous restaurateur off when he shot a young See Yup, by claiming that the man was a robber. The boy’s family association, Chin, demanded justice at the same time that the See Yups were out to get Loke and his partner Mark Kem Wing. The latter fled to China but Loke Tung stood his ground. He simply took the precaution of securing a bulletproof vest and a pair of bodyguards. The Chins are said to have gone to a small mining town in the interior for a hatchet man unknown to the people of Chinatown. A killer named Big Queue was their choice. He methodically stalked Loke while in the guise of a beggar. Big Queue scorned firearms, being a boo how doy of the old school. But he knew that an ordinary thin-bladed dirk might not penetrate the coat of mail which Loke Tung wore under his clothing. So the assassin filed a knife steel to a needle point and finally caught Loke unprotected on a staircase. His two bodyguards were waiting in the street below. The hatchet man grabbed him by his coat, stabbed him in the neck just above the armor, and ended it with a threat. “I implore my people to keep the peace. In a country so far from our native land, a colony such as exists in San Francisco should be in continuous peace. We should be as one brother to another. There should be no more quarreling. It is shameful in the eyes of other nations. Only two tongs are engaged in the present war and this is not their first quarrel. These men must change their ways and not be like wild beasts of the jungle. If this trouble is not settled without further blood I will invoke the aid of the Six Companies and the Merchants’ Association and bring the offenders to American justice.”