Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
Page 39
90. Sui Seen Far, "The Chinese Woman in America," Land of Sunshine 6, no. z (January 1897): 6z. Sui Seen Far was the pen name of Edith Maud Eaton, a Eurasian who identified strongly with her Chinese heritage and who wrote about Chinese life in America. Her stories were published in various popular magazines and later collected in Mrs. Spring Fragrance (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1912). For more information on her and her writings, see Amy Ling, Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), PP. 21-55.
91. The following account is taken from the San Francisco Chronicle, October 1, 1893, P. z.
9z. Stephens, "Quantitative History of Chinatown," p. 79; and Hirata, "Free, Indentured, Enslaved," p. z3.
93. Quoted in Connie Young Yu, "From Tents to Federal Projects: Chinatown's Housing History," in The Chinese American Experience, ed. Genny Lim (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1983), P. 132.
94. Quoted in ibid., p. 133.
95• Chinatown Declared a Nuisance! P. 2.
96. Quoted in Charles Loring Brace, The New West; or, California in 18671868 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1869 ), p. z 11.
97. Facts upon the Other Side of the Chinese Question, pp. 30-31.
98. Richard Dillon, The Hatchet Men: San Francisco's Chinatown in the Days of the Tong Wars, 188o-i9o6 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), PP. 152-53
99. Hirata, "Chinese Immigrant Women," p. 237; Stephens, "Quantitative History of Chinatown," p. 73. According to Evelyn Nakano Glenn in "Split Household, Small Producer, and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of ChineseAmerican Family Strategies," Journal of Marriage and Family 45, no. i (February 1983): 3 5-48, until the 192os Chinatown remained a bachelor society of "split-household families," a situation where production (wage earning) was separated from other family functions and carried out by the husband overseas, while reproduction, socialization, and family consumption (supported by the husband's remittances) were carried out by the wife or other relatives in the home village. The nuclear family structure, though, was prevalent among Chinatown families where wives were present.
loo. As Margery Wolf points out in "Chinese Women: Old Skills in a New Context," in Women, Culture, and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 157-72, only when a Chinese woman attained the status of mother-in-law was she able to wield any power. Veneration for her age and motherhood gave the mother-in-law respect and authority to rule the household-and particularly the daughter-in-lawwith an iron fist. Many tyrannized the daughter-in-law as compensation for their own former suffering and in an effort to maintain control over the son, the one person who could serve as their "political front" in domestic and public affairs.
ioi. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, p. 437.
ioz. See Overland Monthly3z (July 11898): i6 and (September 1898): 3z4.
103. "Report of House-to-House Visitations Among Heathen Families," Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church, Annual Report, 1880, p. 43. On the history of Protestant missionary work in San Francisco, see Wesley Woo, "Protestant Work Among the Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1850- 19zo" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1983).
104. Emma R. Cable, "House to House Visitation," Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church, Annual Report, 1887, p. 56.
1o 5. "House to House Visitation," Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church, Annual Report, 1892, p. 25.
io6. San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 1893.
107. Quoted in Carl T. Smith, "The Gillespie Brothers: Early Links Between Hong Kong and California," Chung Chi Bulletin 47 (December 1969): 28. See also Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), PP. 42-44.
108. Dobie, San Francisco's Chinatown, pp. z5-z7.
109. San Francisco Morning Call, November z3, 1891, p. 1z. See also Mc- Cunn, Chinese American Portraits, pp. 40-45•
rto. Quoted in Victor Low, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco: East/West, 198 z), p. 66; see pp. 59-73 for a discussion of Tape v. Hurley.
111. Alta, April 16, 1885, p. I.
i i z. See discussion above, and note 13.
iii. Him Mark Lai, "History of the Bing Lai Family," Him Mark Lai private collection; and McCunn, Chinese American Portraits, pp. io6-17.
z. Unbound Feet
i. San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 1902, P. 7.
z. See Jean Chesneaux, Marianne Bastid, and Marie-Claire Bergere, China from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution, trans. Anne Destenay (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976); and Charlotte L. Beahan, "The Women's Movement and Nationalism in Late Ch'ing China" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1976). The Chinese concept of the "new woman" is similar to the American concept prevalent during this same period. Often referred to in the Chinese press as ziyounii (a liberated woman), she was-in marked contrast to traditional gender roles-an educated, self-supporting woman who worked in some urban occupation, assumed a modern lifestyle, and was involved in social and political affairs.
3. Chung Sai YatPo (hereafter cited as CSYP), November 3, 1902; San Francisco Examiner, November 3, 1902, p. 7.
4. See Roxane Witke, "Transformation of Attitudes Towards Women During the May Fourth Era of Modern China" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970); Beahan, "Women's Movement"; Kazuko Ono, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 185o-195-o (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); and Leslie Eugene Collins, "The New Women: A Psychological Study of the Chinese Feminist Movement from 1900 to the Present" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976). For a critique of the Orientalist assumption that Chinese women were not on the road to "liberation" until Westerners arrived to start them on their way, see Li Yu-ning, "Historical Roots of Changes"; Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers; and Mann, "Learned Women."
5. CSYP, August 31, 19o1; San Francisco Examiner, October 23, 1902, p. z; and San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 1903, p. 2.
6. See Beahan, "Women's Movement." This difference in lines of argument is also discussed by Bernadette Li in "Chinese Feminist Thought at the Turn of the Century," St. John's Papers, no. z5 (Jamaica, N.Y.: St. John's University, 1978), p. 5: "Thus, from the beginning, the basic argument for the liberation of Chinese women was different from that used in the West. The feminist movement in the West had its origin in the basic belief in the equality of all human beings, without regard for differences in sex, as we see for example in the writ ings of Mary Wollstonecraft. In contrast, the emancipation of Chinese women was inseparable from the national cause. Women were still expected to play secondary roles. Better health and better education would enable them to perform their traditional roles of wives and mothers in a better way." For a further discussion of how feminist movements in Third World countries are inevitably colored by nationalism, see Kumai Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed Books, 1986).
7. San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 19oz, p. 7.
8. San Francisco Examiner, November z, 1901, p. 41.
9. CSYP, October 1z, 1903.
1o. According to Louise Leung Larson's autobiography, Sweet Bamboo: Saga of a Chinese American Family (Los Angeles: Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, 1989), PP. 51-5z, Sieh King King left San Francisco and went to Los Angeles, where she stayed with the family of Tom Leung, an active Baohuanghui member. She was allegedly in the United States to plot the assassination of the Empress Dowager, but the empress died in 1908 before the plan could be realized. Sieh King King later graduated from the University of Chicago, married a fellow student, and returned to China, where her husband started a chain of banks.
i i. In a similar way, gender roles for American women changed each time the United States became engaged in war. See Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty. A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press, 1989).
1 z. See Judy Yung, "The Social Awakening of C
hinese American Women as Reported in Chung Sai Tat Po, 19oo-1911," in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History, ed. Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz (New York: Routledge, 1990), PP. 195-107.
13. See Chesneaux, Bastid, and Bergere, China From the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution; and Jean Chesneaux, Francoise Le Barbier, and Marie-Claire Bergere, China From the 19.11 Revolution to Liberation, trans. Paul Auster and Lydia Davis (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).
14. Quoted in Ono, Chinese Women, p. 141.
15. Kung, Chinese in American Life, pp. 3 3, 93.
16. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 34-37.
IT Ching Chao Wu, in "Chinatowns," p. 236, noted that while 24,782 Chinese men were listed as married in the 19zo U.S. census, only 3,046 Chinese women were so listed. In other words, most Chinese wives had been left behind in China. In another study published in the Chinese Times, May 16, 1929, 55 percent of the Chinese men surveyed in San Francisco were unmarried, 3 5 percent had wives in China, and to percent had wives with them in America. The study also indicated that a large percentage of the men who had wives in China returned home for visits once every ten to fifteen years.
18. Many more Chinese women were immigrating to British Malaya than to the United States. According to Lai Ah Eng in Peasants, Proletarians and Prostitutes, p. 15, there was a great influx of Chinese immigrant women from Guangdong Province to Malaya in the 19zos and 1930s. Many were widows and single women escaping economic depression, famine, and the impending war with Japan. Similar to the situation in Hawaii in the nineteenth century, Malaya wanted Chinese immigrant women to help stabilize the Chinese male work force as well as to provide cheap labor. Consequently, women were exempt from Malaya's Aliens Ordinance of 1933, which restricted overall immigration. According to statistics presented by Ching Chao Wu in "Chinese Immigration in the Pacific Area," pp. 23-26, Malaya had the largest Chinese immigrant population and the highest percentage of Chinese immigrant women in the world in the 192os. There were 1,173,354 Chinese in Malaya in 19zi, as compared to 61,639 in the United States in 192o. In those same years, 38.4 percent of the Chinese population in Malaya were women, as compared to 12.5 percent in the United States.
i9. See U.S. House, Admission of Wives of American Citizens of Oriental Ancestry: Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on H.R. 6544, 69th Cong., 1st sess., i9z6; and U.S. Senate, Admission as Nonquota Immigrants of Certain Alien Wives and Children of United States Citizens: Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Immigration on S. 2271, loth Cong., 1st secs., 1928.
2o. As Sucheng Chan notes in "Exclusion of Chinese Women," pp. 129-3 2, there was a noticeable increase in the numbers of Chinese women who immigrated as daughters of U.S. citizens after passage of the 1924 Act prevented wives from coming. They were considered derivative or statutory U.S. citizens according to section 1993 of the U.S. Revised Statutes.
zi. Ibid., p. iz5. According to Weili Ye, "Crossing the Cultures: The Experiences of Chinese Students in the United States of America, 1900-19Z5" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1989), the first four Chinese female students in the United States came with the support of missionaries to study medicine in the late nineteenth century. Then, in 1907, Chinese women began coming on government scholarships, and in 1911, on private funds. In 1925 there were approximately 300 women among 1,400 Chinese students in the United States.
2z. See Vincente Tang, "Chinese Women Immigrants and the Two-edged Sword of Habeas Corpus," in The Chinese American Experience, ed. Genny Lim (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1983), PP. 48-56; and Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991).
z3. "Social Document of Pany Lowe," Survey of Race Relations Collection, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University. Similar sentiments were expressed in an interview with Chin Yen, also an Americanborn Chinese ("Life History as a Social Document of Mr. Chin Yen," Survey of Race Relations Collection, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University): "My wife is still in China. I have not seen her for ten years. You wonder why I don't bring my wife here? Well, that is the question. Because my wife come over and you Americans cause her lots of trouble."
z4. Wong Ah So, "Story of Wong Ah So-Experiences as a Prostitute," in Orientals and Their Cultural Adjustment, Social Science Source Documents, no. 4 (Nashville: Social Science Institute, Fisk University, 1946), p. 31.
Z5. Ibid.
z6. Quoted in Donaldina Cameron, "The Story of Wong So," Women and Mission z, no. 5 (August, 1925): 170.
z7. "Story of Wong Ah So," p. 311.
z8. Quoted in Cameron, "Story of Wong So," p. 170.
z9. The following account is from Law Shee Low, interview with author, October zo, 11988.
30. Jane Kwong Lee, "A Chinese American" (unpublished autobiography), pt. I, p. 3.
311. Ibid., p. 95•
32. Ibid., p. 151-
33. Ibid., p. 1169.
34. Ibid., p. Z03-
35. CSYP, June 10, 1903. Mai's speech is significant not only as an indictment of discriminatory treatment, but also as an early example of the sentiments of an outspoken immigrant woman. She concluded her speech by calling on her compatriots to work together to make China strong, and to women in the audience she said, "My dear sisters, we must take heart. We are human beings, not to be compared to animals and goods. We must work together so that we can stand in equality and liberty."
36. David M. Brownstone, Irene M. Franck, and Douglass L. Brownstone, Island of Hope, Island of Tears (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), pp. 168-70.
37. To compare the ordeal suffered by Chinese immigrants at Angel Island and that of European immigrants at Ellis Island, see Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island; and Brownstone, Franck, and Brownstone, Island of Hope.
3 8. During the early years of the Exclusion period, immigration authorities discriminated against Chinese students, merchants, and other exempt classes. A 1905 boycott of American goods in China was spurred in part by discriminatory treatment of the exempt classes. See Shih-shan Henry Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 1868-1911 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1983), chap. 6.
39• The following account is from my interview with Law Shee Low.
40. Wen-Hsien Chen, "Chinese Under Both Exclusion and Immigration Laws" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1940), p. 107.
411. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, p. 111111.
42. Ibid., p. 16; Woo, "Protestant Work Among the Chinese," pp. 65-66; and San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 1951, p. 1oS.
43. Unfortunately, because the administration building that housed Chinese women was destroyed in the 1940 fire, no poems by Chinese women survive at Angel Island.
44. Ruth Chan Jang, interview with author, July 8, 1994.
45. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, p. 74.
46. Law Shee Low, interview with author.
47. See Florence Worley Chinn, "Religious Education in the Chinese Community of San Francisco" (Master's thesis, University of Chicago, 119zo), pp. z8-311; Whitfield, "Public Opinion," chap. 3; Ivan Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940," Pacific Historical Review 43, no. 3 (August 1974): 367-94; and Philip P. Choy, "San Francisco's Chinatown Architecture," Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1990, pp. 3 7-66.
48. Whitfield, "Public Opinion," pp. 65-71. A "Survey of Social Work Needs of the Chinese Population of San Francisco" published by the Community Chest of San Francisco in 1930 (hereafter cited as Community Chest 1930 Survey) concluded that "health conditions among the Chinese of San Francisco are bad ... [because of] poor housing, poor sanitation, lack of sun, light and air, poor recreation facilities and inadequate social opportunities," accounting for a death rate among the Chinese that was almost three times as gr
eat as among the general population of the City. The leading causes of death for the Chinese were diseases of the heart and circulatory system and tuberculosis (p. 3).
49• See L. Ling-chi Wang, "An Overview of Chinese American Communities During the Exclusion Era, 1883-1943" (unpublished paper); and Helen Virginia Cather, "The History of San Francisco's Chinatown" (Master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1932), chap. 4.
50. Started by the Presbyterian minister Ng Poon Chew in 1goo, CSYPfa- vored reform in China and advocated equal rights for all Chinese Americans, including women. The daily newspaper enjoyed a wide circulation among Chinese Americans until its decline in the 1930s. See Him Mark Lai, "The Chinese American Press," in The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook, ed. Sally M. Miller (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 27-43; Corinne K. Hoexter, From Canton to California: The Epic of Chinese Immigration (New York: Four Winds Press, 1976); and Yung, "Social Awakening."
51. "Story of Wong Ah So," p. 31.
52. Cameron, "Story of Wong So," p. 171.
5 3. Wong Ah So, letter to her mother, file z6o, Cameron House, San Francisco.
54• Cameron, "Story of Wong So," p. 171.
5 5. "Story of Wong Ah So," pp. 3 2-33,
56. Wong Ah So, letter to Donaldina Cameron, October z4, 1928, file 258, Cameron House, San Francisco; Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, pp. 163-65.
57. Donaldina Cameron, "New Lives for Old in Chinatown," Missionary Review of the World 57 (July-August 1934): 3z9.
58. Hirata, "Free, Indentured, Enslaved," p. 24. The figures for 1900, 1910, and 1920 are based on my computations from the U.S. National Archives, Record Group 29, "Census of U.S. Population" (manuscript), San Francisco, California (hereafter cited as 1900, 1910, or 1920 manuscript census). There were 28o prostitutes listed in 1900, and another 59 women were probably also prostitutes, judging from their living arrangements-three or more single young women living in all-female households. No prostitutes were listed as such in the 191 o census, but I suspect 92 were prostitutes again based on their living arrangements (see appendix table 6). 1 am indebted to Sucheng Chan for sharing her data on Chinese women in San Francisco from the 1900 and 1910 manuscript schedules. Any computational errors are mine.