SOURCE: Yin, Xiao-huang. “Plea and Protest: The Voices of Early Chinese Immigrants.” In Chinese American Literature Since the 1850s, pp. 11-52. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois, 2000.

[In the following excerpt, Yin describes the powerful literary responses of Chinese immigrants to the deplorable social conditions they endured in mid-nineteenth-century America.]

This is to certify that we, the undersigned, are good Chinamen and have lived in California and other parts of the United States, and that we have at all times been willing to abide by all the laws of the United States, and the States and Territories in which we have lived. And are now willing to deport ourselves as good law abiding citizens of Montana Territory, and ask but that protection that the liberal and good government of this country permits us to enjoy. We pay all our taxes and assessments, and only ask that the good people of Montana may let us earn an honest living by the sweat of our brow.

—Ye Sing, Hob Hee, Ye Hob, and others, Montana Radiator (1866)

The writing of early Chinese immigrants is a record of plea and protest—a plea for tolerance and a protest against mistreatment and discrimination.¹ Responding to an unfriendly environment, the literature is a testament to a conscious effort on the part of Chinese immigrants to fight for survival and acceptance. While its value as literary production is immense, its significance as a sociohistorical document of the Chinese American experience is even greater. In order to understand and appreciate early Chinese American writing fully, it is necessary to consider the historical background of immigration from China to the United States during the mid-nineteenth century.

EARLY CHINESE IMMIGRATION AND ITS BACKGROUND

The scarcity of reliable sources makes it difficult to determine exactly when and where the Chinese first came to North America. Although some individuals arrived in the New World as early as the eighteenth century, it was not until the Gold Rush years that Chinese immigration became large enough to have significant impact on American society. The discovery of gold at John Sutter's sawmill on January 24, 1848, precipitated a massive migration to California from all over the world, including a considerable number of adventurous souls from China. In fact, the Chinese were among the first groups who rushed to the mines in the Sierra Nevada. Chinese and American sources both report that on February 2, 1848, less than ten days after James Marshall discovered gold on the lower reaches of the American River, three Chinese—two men and a woman—arrived at San Francisco on the American brig Eagle. The men immediately went to the mines and were said to have discovered a piece of gold ore of some 240 pounds near the Moore's Flat.² Accounts of their fortune and glowing tales of the fabulous wealth to be had in California quickly traveled back to Guangzhou [Canton], the provincial capital of Guangdong [Kwangtung] province on the South China coast. As word spread in the Pearl River Delta around Canton, gold-seekers hurried to make plans to embark upon the voyage across the Pacific. There were 325 Chinese forty-niners [Jinshan Ke, or Gam San Hak (Gold Mountain travelers) in Cantonese] in 1849. A year later the number reached 789, and it grew to 2,716 in 1851.³

At the beginning of 1852, Peter Parker, a missionary ophthalmologist and the chief American diplomatic representative in Canton since 1846, wrote to the State Department that “the favorable reports of those who have returned to China, having been fortunate at the gold mountain, seem to have imparted a new impetus to the tide of emigration.”⁴ Parker's words soon became reality. In 1852 the number of Chinese who entered California took a quantum leap; 20,026 arrived in San Frandcisco, which the Cantonese called the “Big Port.”⁵ A popular folk song that circulated in the Pearl River Delta demonstrates the momentum of Chinese immigration to California at the time:

In the second reign year of Haamfung [Xianfeng, 1852], a trip to Gold Mountain was made.
With a pillow on my shoulder, I began my perilous journey:
Sailing a boat with bamboo poles across the seas,
Leaving behind wife and sisters in search of money,
No longer lingering with the woman in the bedroom,
No longer paying respect to parents at home.(6)

Why Chinese immigration to California took such a sudden, dramatic increase in the early 1850s is an issue that needs further study. Remunerative wages and the prospects of the discovery of gold were, of course, the major factors, although several others also impelled the Chinese to break family ties and join the rush for the Gold Mountain. News of the great wealth in America reached the Celestial Empire at a time of disaster—what Arnold Toynbee called “a time of troubles.” The situation was particularly catastrophic in Guangdong province, where the economy had never fully recovered from the ravages of the Opium War (1839-42). The ruling Manchu court, badly defeated in the war, was forced to sign a humiliating treaty, the Treaty of Nanjing [Nanking], on Britain's terms. In order to pay huge indemnities levied by the Western powers, the Qing [Ch'ing] regime increased taxes to eighteen times the customary rate in Guangdong province. Unable to pay the heavy taxation, farmers and peasants were forced by the government to sell their land and possessions. In addition, as China ceded Hong Kong to England and opened the port of Canton to Western merchants, foreign goods poured in and caused a rapid breakdown in the local commerce and economy. The competition with technologically more advanced Western merchandise resulted in massive bankruptcy for domestic industries such as textiles. People were reduced into destitution and strove desperately to find a way out. Many able-bodied men went abroad to try their luck.⁷

Another cause for mass emigration was the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), the largest peasant uprising in modern Chinese history. By 1852 the rebellion, which started upriver in the neighboring province of Guangxi [Kwanghsi], had swept down along the Pearl River to Guangdong and left heavy destruction in its wake. Fierce battles between the rebels and government forces devastated land, uprooted the peasantry, and dislocated the economy and polity. To discourage peasants from joining the rebellion, the Qing regime adopted a policy of extreme terrorism, often executing indiscriminately all adult males in villages that supported the rebels. Chinese historians estimate that nearly twenty million people died throughout the country during the decade-long civil war. The bloody strife created political chaos, economic disaster, loss of life, and widespread suffering, especially in South China.⁸ People in Guangdong province were forced to flee, and many refugees, driven from their homes by famine, economic hardships, and incessant warfare, chose to go abroad. For them, the process of relocation had already become a characteristic of their struggle to survive. The skills acquired during that struggle could easily be applied to emigration to a foreign land such as North America.⁹

The civil and foreign wars left another impact on Chinese emigration: They compelled the Qing regime to abandon its highly restrictive emigration law. Since its conquest of China in the mid-seventeenth century, the Manchu throne had forbade emigration under penalty of death. Section 225 of the Da Qing luli [Imperial laws of Great Quing], enacted in 1712, stipulates: “All officers of government, soldiers, and private citizens, who clandestinely proceed to sea to trade, or who remove to foreign islands for the purpose of inhabiting and cultivating the same, shall be punished according to the law against communicating with rebels and enemies, and consequently suffer death by being beheaded.”¹⁰

The imperial decree was nullified, however, once the Taiping rebellion demolished the Qing regime's control of South China and Western countries obtained exterritorial privileges in treaty ports along the coast. Since the end of the Opium War, many Western companies had openly set up offices in Canton to recruit laborers to work abroad. The Manchu court was powerless to stop the emigration, and it was finally forced to repeal the law when Britain and France defeated China again during the second Opium War (1856-60).¹¹

Chinese immigration to California became more regular and better organized after 1852. Vessel masters, many of whom worked for American companies, advertised exaggerated accounts of the unmined gold in California on placards and pamphlets.¹² Labor brokers also printed greatly overblown stories about the wealth in America and distributed them widely, as shown in the following circular:

Americans are very rich people. They want the Chinaman to come and make him very welcome. There you will have great pay, large houses and food and clothing of the finest description. You can write to your friends or send them money at any time and we will be responsible for the safe delivery. It is a nice country, without Mandarins or soldiers. All alike; big man no larger than little man. There are a great many Chinamen there now, and it will not be a strange country. … Come to Hong Kong, or to the sign of this house in Canton, and we will instruct you.¹³

It has often been said that the majority of the early Chinese immigrants to California were contract laborers who did not have much personal freedom. That is not true. Chinese immigration to North America, from the very beginning, was voluntary. Although only a few Chinese immigrants to California were able to pay ships' fares themselves, usually by mortgaging farms, houses, or small possessions, the pool system and credit-ticket arrangements enabled potential emigrants to fund their journey. Families and relatives would collect money to send one son to America first. Then it would be his responsibility to help his brothers or relatives emigrate. Neighbors or newly returned immigrants would sometimes lend money to a potential emigrant, expecting that he would soon make a fortune and repay the debt.

Statistics show that historically about a third of the Chinese going to North America and Australia bought passage through the pool system.¹⁴ Most, however, came under the credit-ticket system. Under that arrangement, an emigrant's passage was paid in advance by labor brokers and then deducted from his pay in the ensuing months after his arrival. The system was organized by Chinese middlemen in cooperation with American shipping companies. The fact that the arrangement required references who could guarantee that the emigrant would return his fare partly explains why most who used it came from a relatively small area in Guangdong. Until after World War II, more than 80 percent of the Chinese immigrants to America were from a region consisting of eight counties in the Pearl River Delta around Canton.¹⁵

Internal turmoil and economic hardships, favorable reports of wealth in America, effective trans-Pacific traffic, and the availability of cheap ships' fares all combined to create a dramatic increase in Chinese immigration to California in 1852. Thereafter, arrivals became more regular. By 1882, when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese population in the United States had reached about 150,000. Including those who returned home, some 322,000 Chinese took the Gold Mountain trip from 1849 to 1882 before the exclusion law prohibited their entries.¹⁶

As many scholars have pointed out, early Chinese immigrants in the United States confronted grueling labor and racial prejudice. But despite the bitterness that characterizes much of the Chinese experience in the late nineteenth century, their initial arrival did not cause much negative response from mainstream Americans.¹⁷ Most evidence points to a certain degree of welcome for Chinese immigrants when they first came to North America.

Before the Gold Rush years, when Chinese immigration was limited to a trickle of sailors, merchants, and domestics, average Americans considered them as curiosities. With a limited understanding of China and little contact with the “Celestials,” Americans' opinions of the Middle Kingdom was naive. Of course, the belief that the Chinese, as the first Asian group to emigrate to the United States, were admired is misleading.¹⁸ Yet the conclusion that from the first boatload they were seen as either exotic curiosities or deceitful, cunning barbarians is also questionable. Although prejudice lived side by side with opportunity in frontier towns and mining camps in general, free competition and tolerance prevailed in the first few years of the Gold Rush.¹⁹

Because the Chinese provided a much-needed labor force and brought with them “exotic rituals” of celebration, their initial arrival prompted great interest and was welcomed. In Fourth of July parades and other public ceremonies, for example, their displays were often the most elaborate and were applauded vigorously. On August 29, 1850, when the news of President Zachary Taylor's death reached San Francisco, the Chinese were invited to participate in that city's funeral ceremony. The thank-you note written by leaders of the Chinese community on the following day to “Hon. John W. Geary, Mayor of the City of San Francisco” indicates the then-friendly relationship between the Chinese and the local authorities:

Sir: The “China boys” wish to thank you for the kind mark of attention bestowed upon them in extending to them an invitation to join with the citizens of San Francisco in doing honor to the memory of the late President of the United States, General Zachary Taylor. The “China boys” feel proud of the distinction you have shown them, and will always endeavor to merit your good opinion and the good opinion of the citizens of their adopted country. … Strangers as they are among you, they kindly appreciate the many kindnesses received at your hands, and beg leave, with grateful hearts, to thank you.

Ah-Sing

A-He

in behalf of the China boys.²⁰

The favorable reception toward the early Chinese immigrants can also be seen in a comment made by California governor John McDougal. Speaking to a public gathering in January 1852, the outgoing governor called the Chinese “one of the most worthy classes of our newly adopted citizens—to whom the climate and character of these lands are peculiarly suited.”²¹ McDougal's enthusiastic speech was a marked contrast to the Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Congress three decades later.

A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE: A MESSAGE FROM CHINESE COMMUNITY LEADERS

Deteriorating political and economic conditions at home continued to push the Chinese to California throughout the 1850s. Unfortunately, few could have expected the fair treatment they received before 1852. On the contrary, as Chinese emigration increased dramatically, Californians' initial acceptance for the newcomers gave way to animosity. As one Chinese American sociologist points out, “Whereas the Chinese had been praised for their industry, their honesty, their thrift, and their peaceful ways, they were now charged with being debased and servile coolies, clannish, dangerous, deceitful, and vicious.”²²

The dramatic change in the attitude of San Francisco's leading newspaper, the Daily Alta California, is a good example of the change in public perception. In the spring of 1851 the newspaper was still warmly pro-Chinese. Celebrating that “a young Chinese community will grow up in our mountains … there will be the building of a bridge connecting the Sierra Nevada with the Chinese wall,” the Alta informed readers that “they [Chinese immigrants] are amongst the most industrious, quiet, patient people among us. … They seem to live under our laws as if born and bred under them.”²³ But only two years later, its tone had changed. In an editorial on May 21, 1853, it was the same newspaper that declared, “The Chinese are morally a far worse class to have among us than the Negro … they are not of that kind that Americans can ever associate or sympathize with. They are not our people and never will be.”²⁴ After the early 1850s, as an increasingly negative image of Chinese immigrants came into being, racial prejudice against Chinese gradually permeated all levels of California society, and a crescendo of persecutive legislation began to build.

Surrounded by such a hostile atmosphere, Chinese immigrants had to speak out to defend themselves. Viewing the discriminatory laws and regulations as unfair and unjust, they addressed numerous complaints to the federal government, mainstream politicians, and local authorities.²⁵ Although most Chinese immigrants at this point were unable to write in English, Chinese merchants who had been educated in schools set up by American or Western missionaries in Hong Kong and Canton after the 1820s had a very good command of the language. Beginning in the 1810s, Chinese youths were also being sent to the United States for schooling by American missionaries.²⁶ As a result, the late nineteenth century saw continuous proclamations from Chinese immigrants against institutionalized racism and the hostile treatment they encountered in American society. Among the more significant are the “Letter of the Chinamen to His Excellency, Governor Bigler” (1852), “To His Excellency, Governor Bigler from Norman Asing” (1852), “Remarks of the Chinese Merchants of San Francisco, upon Governor Bigler's Message and Some Common Objections” (1855), “The Chinese Question from a Chinese Standpoint” (1874), “To His Excellency U.S. Grant, President of the United States: A Memorial from Representative Chinamen in America” (1876), “A Memorial from the Six Chinese Companies: An Address to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States” (1877), “Why Should the Chinese Go?” (1878), “A Letter to San Francisco Board of Education” (1885), “The Chinese Must Stay” (1889), “The Chinese Six Companies” (1894), “Chinese Exclusion, a Benefit or a Harm?” (1901), and “My Reception in America” (1907).²⁷

Most such statements were written by Chinese merchants, especially leaders of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA). Popularly called the Six Companies, the association consisted of self-help and protection groups analogous to similar organizations in other immigrant communities. Its leaders were almost exclusively well-established individuals and merchants, successful businessmen, and editors of Chinese-language newspapers. Providing various defense functions when the rights of individual Chinese immigrants were denied, the Six Companies constituted a de facto government that oversaw the Chinese American community throughout the era. Because of its leading position and connection with both the Chinese and American governments, it acted as the spokesman for Chinese immigrants.²⁸ What its leaders wrote represented the views of established members of the Chinese community as well as their strategy for dealing with racism.

In general, the writings are characterized by a conciliatory posture and desire to accommodate. The earliest and perhaps most influential is “Letter of the Chinamen to His Excellency, Governor Bigler.” Because in many ways the letter represents the ideas and style that were to appear repeatedly in numerous similar works, it deserves careful examination of both its background and context.

The letter—a five-page essay—was written first as a direct response to the anti-Chinese campaign launched by then-governor, John Bigler. On April 23, 1852, Bigler, a former lawyer from Pennsylvania and “a man who had neither the capacity, the education or manners to grace the position,” presented a special message regarding Chinese immigration to the California legislature.²⁹ It was the first official public announcement in American history on assumed “Chinese evils.” In customary lawyer-politician style, Bigler strongly denounced “the present wholesale importation to this country of immigrants from the Asiatic quarter of the Globe” and attacked the Chinese as unlawful “coolies.” In order to “check the tide of Asiatic immigration,” he submitted two propositions: to use the state's taxing power to stop the entry of Chinese laborers and to petition Congress for take action prohibiting “coolies” from working in the mines.³⁰

It is unclear whether Bigler's motive was to use the politically expedient speech to capture the newly emerged popular anti-Chinese mood for his reelection or, as he declared, “to enhance the prosperity and ensure the tranquillity of the State.” His message, however, further agitated feelings against the Chinese and marked the beginning of the anti-Chinese movement in California and on the West Coast. His accusation that the Chinese were “coolies, unassimilated, and dishonest” echoed in anti-Chinese propaganda until the World War II era.

At first stunned by open hostility from one of the most powerful politicians in California, the Chinese community quickly gathered its wits and reacted to counter Bigler's allegations. Leaders of San Francisco's Four Great Houses—the predecessor of the Chinese Six Companies—immediately consulted with American advisers about how to deal with the crisis, and only six days later the United States saw its first significant publication by Chinese immigrants. On April 29, 1852, the articulate “Letter of the Chinamen to His Excellency, Governor Bigler” was published simultaneously in San Francisco's two mainstream newspapers, the Daily Alta California and San Francisco Herald. Its message was marked by subtle barbs and an understated refutation of Bigler's accusations as well as a dignified, restrained pleading for tolerance.³¹ Well composed in concise and graceful English, it was favorably received and widely reprinted.³² As a historical document and one of the most influential published works by early Chinese immigrants, the essay today still impresses readers with its sharpness of logic and subtlety of style.

Unlike traditional petitions by civilians to government officials in imperial China, the letter's opening was unusually straightforward:

Sir: The Chinamen have learned with sorrow that you have published a message against them. Although we are Asiatics, some of us have been educated in American schools and have learned your language, which has enabled us to read your message in the newspapers for ourselves, and to explain it to the rest of our countrymen. We have all thought a great deal about it, and after consultation with one another, we have determined to write you as decent and respectful a letter as we could, pointing out to your Excellency some of the errors you have fallen into about us.³³

Its direct, firm approach makes the letter drastically different from the roundabout way and humble style of a traditional Chinese petition. The smooth and elegant English as well as the unemotional, sober method of argument indicate that it was a work that only people who had dexterous writing skills, a keen sensitivity to the Chinese experience in California, and a profound knowledge of Western culture could produce. Therefore, a question arises, What was the background of the two men—Hab Wa and Tong K. Achick—who wrote the first published work by Chinese in America? Both were merchants representing leading Chinese trading companies in San Francisco and were, as they claimed in the letter, “educated in American schools.” Although not much information exists about Hab Wa, surviving documents do shed some light on the background of Tong K. Achick, who was an influential figure in San Francisco's Chinese community during the 1850s.

A native of Xiangshan [Zhongshan] County near Canton, Tong Achick was head of Ton Wo and Company, one of the largest Chinese-owned businesses in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1850s. As a child, he attended the then well-known Morrison School founded by American missionaries in Macao [Aomen]. Among his classmates were Yung Wing, who graduated from Yale College in 1854, and Lee Kan, an eminent English translator and editor of The Oriental, one of the earliest Chinese-language newspapers, published in San Francisco during the 1850s. Educated in an American school since his childhood, Tong, like his classmates Yung and Lee, was thoroughly at ease in English, which undoubtedly helped him become a leader of the local Chinese community during the Bigler episode. He not only coauthored the letter but was also elected by Chinese merchants to head a delegation to Sacramento to meet the governor. In the ensuing years he served as spokesperson for the Chinese community and frequently acted as interpreter and translator in court for the Chinese Six Companies. Two of his translations, both testimony of the leaders of the Six Companies, were published in 1853 and in 1854, which shows that Tong continued to be an important figure in the Chinese community.³⁴

The writing of the letter might also have involved the efforts of the American consultants of Chinese immigrants. Despite the powerful anti-Chinese atmosphere that dominated the West Coast throughout the nineteenth century, individual acts of defiance by mainstream Americans on behalf of Chinese were not unusual. There were people—members of the clergy, philanthropists, businessmen, and public officials—who either sympathized with the Chinese or were interested in seeing them be acculturated. One, the Rev. William Speer (1822-1904), was an “active and eloquent spokesman for the Chinese.” A former Presbyterian missionary who worked in China for several years, Speer was sent by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Mission in New York to open a mission in San Francisco's Chinese community in 1852. A talented writer and an eloquent lecturer, he published extensively on China and Chinese, frequently spoke out to defend Chinese immigrants, set up the first Sunday school for the Chinese in San Francisco in 1854, and helped found The Oriental in 1855.³⁵ In fact, missionaries remained friendly and supportive of Chinese immigrants throughout the years and were often the sole public defenders of the Chinese in California, although their motives were subject to controversy. In addition to compassion and humanitarian beliefs, what undoubtedly interested them in Chinese immigrants was the possibility of Christianizing the “pagan strangers” and converting “heathens” in the Celestial Empire. As an early missionary writer observed, “These intelligent, apt, industrious, but heathen people, awakened her warm sympathy, and she earnestly desires that others should think and feel and work for them. Unless we bless them with our Christianity, they will curse us with the vices and wickedness of heathenism.”³⁶ Despite such evangelical enthusiasm, the missionaries' help and friendship was a great assistance to Chinese immigrants in the struggle against racial prejudice, and they remembered that support throughout the era.³⁷

Following its polite but firm opening, the letter wastes no time in countering Bigler's accusations. With convincing facts, it exposes one by one the misconceptions of his message. A large proportion was directed to the issue of the “coolies,” a term not previously applied to Chinese immigrants until Bigler did so. Since then, the word has become a stereotype for Chinese immigrants who were believed to engage in slave labor and undercut American workers' wages. Because the image greatly distorted the size and fearsomeness of the reality of Chinese immigration, it was natural that it be the first important issue addressed in the letter:

You speak of the Chinamen as “Coolies,” and, in one sense, the word is applicable … but not in that in which you seem to use it. “Cooly” is not a Chinese word: it has been imported into China from foreign parts, as it has been into this country. What its original signification was, we do not know; but with us it means a common laborer, and nothing more. We have never known it used among us as a designation of a class, such as you have in view—persons bound to labor under contracts which they can be forcibly compelled to comply with. … If you mean by “Coolies,” laborers, many of our countrymen in the mines are “Coolies,” and many again are not. There are among them tradesmen, mechanics, gentry, and school masters. … None are “Coolies,” if by that you mean bound men or contract slaves.³⁸

The real issue, however, concerned whether Chinese immigrants had done anything for the economic development of the state. Bigler had accused them of making no financial contribution to the land to which they had immigrated. Worse—and presumably at the root of the prejudice—they were mere sojourners who had arrived solely to bleed the local economy, seize jobs from white workers, and reduce American families to starvation. The Chinese bought no real estate and benefited no banks. Their money hardly circulated because the bulk of it was sent right back to China. Their true interest, according to Bigler, was to “dig the precious metal and carry it back to China.” Regarding the allegation, the letter replies tactfully:

The Chinamen are indeed remarkable for their love of their country. … They honor their parents and age generally with a respect like religion, and have the deepest anxiety to provide for their descendants. … With such feelings as these, many return home with their money. … But not all; others—full as many as of other nations—invest their gains in merchandise and bring it into the country and sell it at your markets. It is possible, sir, that you may not be aware how great this trade is, and how rapidly it is increasing, and how many are now returning to California as merchants who came over originally as miners.

Of course, the authors were somewhat evasive on this point and did not clarify the issue of whether the Chinese were sojourners. It is common knowledge that the majority of Chinese immigrants at this point did intend to return home rather than settle in the United States. Most dreamed of striking it rich in the Gold Mountain and returning to China as wealthy and respected men for the rest of their lives. But the Chinese were not alone in such a dream. People who emigrated from other parts of the world shared the same goal. Indeed, many European immigrants also viewed themselves only as “temporary toilers” in America.³⁹ During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, for example, the proportion of Italian immigrants returning home from the United States fluctuated between 11 and 73 percent; the majority left within a few years of their arrival. Immigration records also indicate that more than half of the immigrants from Hungary, Croatia, and Slovia returned to Europe between 1908 and 1914.⁴⁰ In comparison, the figure is smaller for Chinese. Even during the era of free immigration (1849-82), only about half of Chinese immigrants who entered the United States returned to China.⁴¹

Thus, differences between Chinese and European immigrants in the issue of the “sojourner mentality” were of degree rather than of kind. Moreover, even if the majority of Chinese immigrants were dominated by a sojourner mentality and wanted to “carry the precious metal back to China,” few could truly realize that dream. Instead of returning home quickly with a fortune, many failed to make any money and lost their lives in the United States; they were delivered home only as cremated remains or bones. When the French ship Asia sailed to China from San Francisco in 1858, for example, its cargo included 321 sets of bones of those who had died in the Gold Mountain.⁴² The death rate was even higher when Chinese immigrants were recruited to construct transcontinental railroads during the 1860s. According to some Chinese-language sources, between 1863 and 1869, more than 10 percent of the fourteen thousand Chinese workers hired by the Central Pacific Railway lost their lives to accidents or disease.⁴³ Joaquin Miller [Cincinnatus Hiner Miller], a popular frontier writer, in his novel First Fam'lies of the Sierras (1876) provided a sentimental picture of a special caravan—“the caravan of the dead”—whose work was to collect the remains of Chinese across the frontier and return them to their old home:

Every five years there is a curious sort of mule caravan seen meandering up and down the mining streams of California, where Chinamen are to be found. It is a quiet train. … In this train or caravan the drivers do not shout or scream. The mules, it always seemed to me, do not even bray. This caravan travels almost always by night, and it is driven and managed almost altogether by Chinamen. … These mules, both in coming in and going out of a camp, are loaded with little beech-wood boxes of about three feet in length and one foot square. … This is the caravan of the dead.⁴⁴

In order to solicit broad support for their cause, the authors of the letter appealed directly to the monetary interests of people in San Francisco, from local merchants who did business with the Chinese to government officials concerned with public revenues. Apparently with the hope of impressing readers, they elaborated on the financial contribution the Chinese had made to California's economy. Although that amount is impossible to calculate, “the sum must be very large.”⁴⁵ As their contemporary testified, Chinese merchants in California during the 1850s and 1860s enjoyed a high reputation for business ability and contributing to the local economy.⁴⁶

According to the letter, San Francisco's business profited considerably from Chinese customers. The high sale of boots is an obvious example: “[Every] Chinaman [bought] one or more pairs immediately on landing.” In fact, miners' leather boots became the first and most common article of American dress that Chinese immigrants adopted, because they found that their homemade cloth shoes were “no footwear to be worn in the rugged, stony, and muddy placer mines.” “The first outfit Tai Ming purchased was a pair of heavy leather boots,” writes a Chinese American author of an immigrant who arrived in San Francisco in the fall of 1850.⁴⁷ A reporter likewise remarked, “Even the lowliest [Chinese] miner adopted American boots for his work.”⁴⁸

The letter then claimed that the local economy must also have benefited greatly from Chinese imports, because “we employed your ships in preference to any others, even when we could get them cheaper.” For those interested more in land speculation than the “noble idea” of the white man's California, the letter pointed out the Chinese investment in San Francisco real estate: “In this city alone there are twenty stores kept by Chinamen, who own lots and erected the buildings themselves.”

The question of veracity is another issue Bigler raised in his message. The Chinese could not be believed, he warned, because “they are indifferent to the solemn obligation to speak the truth which an oath imposes.” On this matter the letter offered a subtle barb aimed at the hypocritical demagogue. “We do not deny that many Chinamen tell lies, and so do many Americans, even in Courts of Justice.” In explaining differences between Chinese and American customs in swearing to the truth, the letter argued, “We do not swear upon so many little occasions as you do … we are good men; we honor our parents … we pay our debts and are honest; and of course [we] tell the truth.” Indeed, even politicians who supported Bigler's anti-Chinese campaign at that time admitted that “the Chinese merchants are men of integrity and uprightness in their dealings, and the mass of laborers are industrious and frugal.”⁴⁹

As for Bigler's allegations that the Chinese seemed neither interested in nor capable of becoming American citizens, the letter provided factual details concerning Chinese immigrants' moral standards, living situations, business attitudes, and willingness to assimilate into society at large. According to the letter, by 1852 there were already Chinese individuals in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and New Orleans who had become naturalized American citizens and married “free white American women.”⁵⁰ “If the privileges of your laws are open to us,” the letter continued, “some of us will doubtless acquire your habits, your language, your ideas, your feelings, your morals, your forms, and become citizens of your country; many have already adopted your religion in their own;—and we will be good citizens.”

Having made the pledge, the letter finally ended with a plea: “In concluding this letter, we will only beg your Excellency not to be too hasty with us, to find us out and know us well, and then we are certain you will not command your Legislature to make laws driving us out of your country. Let us stay here—the Americans are doing good to us, and we will do good to them.”

Such is the context and style of the first important piece of writing by Chinese immigrants in the United States. In addition to composing the letter, leaders of the Chinese community made other efforts to appease the governor's anti-Chinese attitude. One of the most dramatic episodes concerned a meeting with Bigler. Shortly after publication of the letter, Tong K. Achick headed a good-will delegation of leading Chinese merchants to Sacramento to visit the governor. Acting within typical Chinese tradition, they brought gifts—“shawls of rarest pattern, rolls of silk of the costliest texture, and some … seventy handkerchiefs of the choicest description”—to the man who they thought controlled their fate. Although their attempt to persuade the governor to give up his anti-Chinese campaign was a total failure, the trip at least taught the Chinese merchants one thing—the style of American politicians. Bigler accepted the gifts but continued his anti-Chinese campaign.⁵¹

The Chinese community headed by merchants also employed other strategies to quiet growing anti-Chinese cries. They tried to gain standing with local society in various ways, most noticeably with money. When missionaries had difficulty raising funds to build a church near San Francisco's Chinatown in 1853, leading Chinese businessmen contributed more than ＄2,000, an impressive sum in those days.⁵² They also donated money to schools, fire companies, police, and public charities in San Francisco and elsewhere in California. Of course, the idea of using money to buy tolerance is neither new nor an original invention by Chinese in California. It is a standard practice of ethnic merchants throughout the world. Jews in Europe, Armenians in Turkey, East Indians in Africa, and the Chinese themselves in Southeast Asia have repeatedly resorted to this means throughout history.⁵³ That the Chinese had to adopt the same strategy to win acceptance in California, where most of the population was immigrants, was ironic, however.

Chinese leaders also suggested a more significant solution to the problem of intolerance. One of the propositions Bigler had advanced was to levy an extra tax on Chinese to “check the present system of indiscriminate and unlimited Asiatic immigration.” In order to show their willingness to accommodate, Chinese community leaders endorsed that proposition. In the spring of 1853, testifying before the Committee on Mines and Mining of the California legislature, they promised to help collect the tax and even proposed that it be increased. Since then, the Foreign Miners' License Tax was chiefly aimed at the Chinese (the state legislature specifically translated the tax law into Chinese) and became a significant resource for the state. Although European and Mexican miners greatly out-numbered them, by 1870, when amendments to the federal constitution nullified the law, Chinese immigrants were estimated to have paid 98 percent of the ＄491 million collected through the tax. It accounted for half of all the taxes collected in California and represented more than 10 percent of the state's total revenues during the two decades. When railroad construction drew away Chinese miners in the 1860s, many mining districts in California lamented the loss of that labor supply because revenues had been greatly reduced.⁵⁴

At the very outset, the writing of the Chinese in the United States was a plea for tolerance. Although few publications from leaders of the Chinese community were as well written, the pleading tone and strategy of accommodation contained in “Letter of the Chinamen to His Excellency, Governor Bigler” were played out in most of the early work by Chinese immigrants. Unfortunately, the letter-writing effort as well as subsequent actions bore little fruit. Despite repeated pleas, the negative attitude of the larger society toward Chinese immigrants remained unchanged throughout the era. The ensuing decades saw anti-Chinese propaganda grow quickly, and legal discrimination followed proportionately.

In terms of the Chinese American experience, however, the letter was of special significance. It marked the first attempt by Chinese immigrants to employ a language not their own to express themselves and use their constitutional right to defend their interests. Within that context, the letter is a vivid fragment of Chinese American cultural history and represents a landmark in the struggle of Chinese immigrants against racial prejudice.

ANGRY VOICES: PROTESTS AND COMPLAINTS OF THE “UNDISTINGUISHED” CHINESE IMMIGRANTS

The relatively small Chinese population in the United States in its early days consisted largely of immigrant laborers inclined to return to their homeland. Living in an adverse environment and preoccupied with daily work, they had little time or desire to raise their sights beyond limited economic success; therefore, their point of view on the immigrant experience was rarely presented in writings published in America. That does not mean, however, that they remained completely silent about the struggle for survival in the Gold Mountain. Despite cultural obstacles and language barriers, they managed to express their feelings in various written forms. There are letters, journals, newspapers, and other writings that have survived. Although these texts have not gained much notice, they are a vivid record of the diverse lives of Chinese immigrants in goldfields, railroad construction camps, and segregated urban ghettos. The writings are often highly informal but construct a social history of early Chinese immigrants. Moreover, as attempts to convey indomitable courage and strength in the face of privation and loneliness they add personal dimension to a collective history of struggle and triumph.

Compared to the pleading tone and restrained attitude that characterized the writing of leaders of the Chinese American community, the work of average Chinese was often more outspoken and emotional. Perhaps because of contacts with working-class Americans, they seemed influenced by the concept of equality. As a result, ordinary Chinese immigrants—miners, railroad workers, farmhands, laundrymen, artisans, and small merchants—exercised a greater degree of defiance and showed a stronger group consciousness in demanding fair treatment than their more established leaders.

Such a phenomenon is not unique to the Chinese American community. As Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist, has pointed out, it is the general tendency for minority leaders, particularly those of underprivileged ethnic groups, to be marginal to their own people. The economic success or professional attainments of these minority leaders make them relatively acceptable outside the group, hence they are not always reliable as strategists and spokespeople for their own groups. They tend to be accommodating because they depend on mainstream society for recognition. Too, their policy of accommodation and posture of negotiation have frequently collided with attitudes of defiance and resistance from the rank and file of their own ethnic groups.⁵⁵

“A Letter to San Francisco Board of Education,” written by an individual Chinese in 1885 to protest educational segregation, is a case in point. Widely reported by the local press, the letter created a statewide sensation. Because it pinpointed an aspect of social life that had been greatly biased against the Chinese, it became one of the most important works by Chinese immigrants against racial discrimination during the late nineteenth century.

The author of the letter, Mary Tape, was a Chinese orphan from Shanghai who came to the United States with missionaries at the age of eleven and was brought up by the San Francisco's Ladies' Relief Society.⁵⁶ Her husband, Joseph Tape, also emigrated to California at an early age. Having learned English at a church-sponsored Sunday school, he served, in addition to working as an expressman and drayman, as an interpreter for Chinese labor contractors. To some extent, the couple was not a true part of the Chinese immigrant community. They were thoroughly Americanized in language, dress, and life-style and had converted to Christianity. The fact that they lived outside Chinatown and their children played with white children demonstrates their intention and eagerness to assimilate into the larger society. Despite their Americanization, however, they were treated by the society with which they sought to associate in the same way as were most other Chinese immigrants. When they tried to enroll their daughter Mamie in the neighborhood public school in 1884, she was denied entry, just like other Chinese children. Although there was abundant evidence to show that Mamie was native-born and spoke English more fluently than Chinese, the San Francisco Board of Education continued to reject her application to enter the school. Backed by the state superintendent of education, the board even resolved that any principal or teacher who admitted “a Mongolian child” would be subject to immediate dismissal.⁵⁷

What the Tapes' daughter encountered was not a new experience for Chinese children. Throughout the era, access to American public education remained a contested issue in California. Although the Chinese were regular tax-payers, their children, native-born or not, were denied entry to public schools because of their status as “aliens.” For decades, the only education available for them, apart from Chinese-language schools set up by the Six Companies, was through Sunday schools in or near Chinatown that churches sponsored because missionaries realized that learning English was a prerequisite to understanding the Gospel. When their battle against discriminatory education was lost in the 1870s, the Chinese in San Francisco, led by the Six Companies, accepted Sunday schools as a solution to the education problem.⁵⁸ The Tapes were not satisfied with that, however. Sunday schools were inconvenient for their children because the family did not live in Chinatown. Moreover, they did not want to be treated as second-class citizens. The couple refused to bow their heads and accept rejection. They took their case to court.

The case caused a sensation throughout the city because by then the number of Chinese children in San Francisco had increased to such a degree that local authorities could no longer afford to ignore the situation. Many residents were shocked to learn that nearly a thousand Chinese children were shut out of the schools.⁵⁹ Both the San Francisco superior court and the California Supreme Court ruled in the Tapes' favor on the basis that “[to] deny a child, born of Chinese parents in this State, entrance to the public schools would be a violation of the law of the State and the Constitution of the United States.”⁶⁰

Despite the favorable verdict, however, Mary Tape's efforts to enroll her daughter in a public school failed. The board of education circumvented the ruling by establishing a separate school for Chinese children in a rented room above a grocery store in Chinatown. In response, Mary Tape wrote the board a scathing protest. Dated April 8, 1885, her letter was read before the board and reprinted in full in the local press. It reads in part:

Dear Sirs: I see that you are going to make all sorts of excuses to keep my child out off the Public Schools. Dear sirs, Will you please tell me! Is it a disgrace to be born a Chinese? Didn't God make us all!!! What right! have you to bar my children out of the school because she is a Chinese Descend. They is no other worldly reason that you could keep her out, except that I suppose, you all goes to churches on Sundays! Do you call that a Christian act to compel my little children to go so far to a school that is made in purpose for them. … You have expended a lot of the Public money foolishly, all because of a one poor little Child. … It seems no matter how a Chinese may live and dress so long as you know they Chinese. Then they are hated as one. There is not any right or justice for them.⁶¹

In conclusion, Mary Tape declared defiantly, “May you Mr. Moulder [the San Francisco school superintendent], never be persecuted like the way you have persecuted little Mamie Tape. Mamie Tape will never attend any of the Chinese schools of your making! Never!!! I will let the world see sir What justice there is When it is govern by the Race prejudice men!” the letter, with grammatical errors and a plain style, was no match for the smooth and elegant messages of Chinese merchants. But Mary Tape's courage and her indignation in demanding justice marked a sharp contrast to the feeble protest and pleading tone of established leaders of the Chinese community.⁶²

Another, perhaps more interesting, example of an angry voice is found in the autobiographical sketch of Lee Chew, a Chinese laundryman in New York. The “lifelet”—as its editor called it—appeared in a collection entitled The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves (1906), edited by Hamilton Holt, a progressive and publisher of The Independent, “a secular, liberal journal of general interests” in New York.⁶³ Lee's story is perhaps one of the most significant and representative works by an ordinary Chinese immigrant in the exclusion era. Its factual content and mode of thought are typical of that of many working-class Chinese immigrants in America during this period.⁶⁴ For that reason, the lifelet has become an important document for the study of early Chinese American history and is frequently quoted in work about the Chinese American experience.⁶⁵

There is no official record available about Lee's personal background owing to his humble origin. From his own account, we know he came from the Si Kiang area [the Xijiang River], part of the Pearl River Delta near Canton from which the bulk of the nineteenth-century Chinese laborers to America emigrated. Like many others, he began his career in America as a house servant and learned English in Sunday school in San Francisco. By working hard and saving virtually every penny, he managed to open a small laundry and finally settled in New York: “I was getting ＄5 a week and board, and putting away about ＄4.25 a week … I worked for two years as a servant, getting at the last ＄35 a month. I sent money home to comfort my parents … saved ＄50 in the first six months, ＄90 in the second, ＄120 in the third and ＄150 in the fourth. So I had ＄410 at the end of two years.”⁶⁶ Lee's precise discussion on his finances, particularly the emphasis on budgeting skills, reveals how Chinese immigrant laborers managed their lives. It also permits comparisons of financial matters among immigrants from other parts of the world.

Despite his “humble” background, however, there is clearly a defiant tone in Lee's narrative. He forcefully expressed opinions that were generally held by his “undistinguished” countrymen, especially concerning the American public's misconceptions of his profession. To some extent, Chinese laundries had become landmarks in American cities by the late nineteenth century. An English visitor who traveled in the United States in the 1880s reported that most towns looked the same because they all had “the same wide streets, crossing at right angles … the same shops, arranged on the same plan, the same Chinese laundries with Li Kow visible through the window.”⁶⁷

Until the World War II era, laundering was a popular occupation for Chinese in the United States, and most Americans thought it was a typical Chinese business. Lee Chew argued forcefully, however, that Chinese laundries were an “American product.” No laundries were in China at the time: “All the Chinese laundrymen here were taught in the first place by American women just as I was taught.” According to Lee, the laundry business became a popular occupation for Chinese immigrants because it required little capital and was one of the few opportunities available: “Men of other nationalities who are jealous of the Chinese, … have raised such a great outcry about Chinese cheap labor that they have shut him out of working on farms or in factories or building railroads or making streets or digging sewers. He cannot practice any trade, and his opportunities to do business are limited to his own countrymen. So he opens a laundry when he quits domestic service.”⁶⁸

Life as a laundryman was full of hardship and humiliation, particularly in the West. Lee recalled that he and his friends suffered numerous harassments and were often driven by mobs from one mining camp to another: “We had to put up with many insults and some frauds, as men would come in and claim parcels that did not belong to them, saying they had lost their tickets, and would fight if they did not get what they asked for … many of the miners were wild men who carried revolvers and after drinking would come into our place to shoot and steal shirts, for which we had to pay. One of these men hit his head hard against a flat iron and all the miners came and broke up our laundry, chasing us out of town.” Even in a cosmopolitan place such as New York, things were not necessarily better. Chinese laundrymen had to put wire screens over their businesses' windows because street boys often broke the windows “while the police seemed to think it a joke.”

One of the frequent accusations leveled against Chinese immigrants was that they brought prostitution along with them. Most who wrote about Chinese immigrants in America, whether hostile or sympathetic, have echoed that charge. Sing-song girls and brothels became symbolic of Chinatowns in popular American culture.⁶⁹ Lee found that sinister misconception outrageous and argued fierily that prostitution was largely a result of institutionalized discrimination against the Chinese. He was, of course, not alone in his frustration and cynicism over alleged “Chinese vices.” Responding to accusations made against “Chinese prostitution problems,” a leader of San Francisco's Chinatown had commented sarcastically, “Yes, yes, Chinese prostitution is bad. What do you think of German prostitutes, French prostitutes, Spanish prostitutes, and American prostitutes? Do you think them very good?”⁷⁰ Moreover, contrary to the popular sensational stories about sing-song girls, the majority of prostitutes then active in Chinatowns, according to Lee, were “American ladies” who had both Chinese and white patrons. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Lee pointed out, “In all New York there are less than forty Chinese women, and it is impossible to get a Chinese woman out here unless one goes to China and marries her there, and then he must collect affidavits to prove that she really is his wife. That is in case of a merchant. A laundryman can't bring his wife here under any circumstances.” Consequently, the Chinese American community around the turn of the century remained predominantly a “bachelor society” that had an extremely unbalanced sex ratio. In 1900 the sex ratio between Chinese men and women was 12:1 in California; in Boston the ratio was 36:1; in New York, 50:1; and 19:1 in continental America.⁷¹

Because of language barriers and racial segregation, Chinese immigrants, especially laborers, were rarely understood and accepted by the larger society. Hence there was little chance for them to marry women of other ethnic groups. Although there were no laws against intermarriage between Chinese and Caucasians in most eastern states, Americans in general appeared to oppose such marriages until the 1960s.⁷² Even Jacob A. Riis, whose enthusiastic desire for urban reform was shown in the classic How the Other Half Lives (1890), was dismayed at contacts between white women and Chinese men. Talking about Chinese immigrants, he sounded like a bigoted nativist: “I am convinced that he [a Chinese] adopts Christianity, when he adopts it at all, as he puts on American clothes, with what the politicians would call an ulterior motive, some sort of gain in the near prospect—washing, a Christian wife, perhaps, anything he happens to rate for the moment above his cherished pigtail.”⁷³ To be sure, the comment did not represent Riis's well-intentioned reform urge, yet if he, a progressive and an immigrant himself, was biased against interracial marriages it is not hard to imagine how average Americans would treat the issue. “If Chinese marry American women,” Lee observed, “there is a great outcry.” Under such circumstances, he asked bitterly, “Is it any wonder, therefore, or any proof of the demoralization of our people if some of the white women in Chinatown are not of good character? What other set of men so isolated and so surrounded by alien and prejudiced people are more moral?”

It is interesting that the insider's perspective, while it serves to make Lee's story a strong protest against injustice in American society and demonstrates his “Chineseness,” also reflects traces of his “Americanness.” Lee's outspokenness and willingness to talk about his immigrant experience show that he had already undergone some Americanization. The value systems indicated by his defiant tone are compatible with the progressive tradition of American culture. It would be difficult to believe that he could make the same frank and critical statements without being familiar with the behavior and attitudes of American workers of the era, the “rough miners” and “tough railroad workers” who were his primary customers. Lee's problematic generalizations about other immigrants also reveal the influence of racial bias on ethnic American society. The comment that “Irish fill the almshouses and prisons orphan asylums, and Italians are among the most dangerous of men” is typical of immigrants' general tendency to consider their own respective groups better than others. Lee's opinions also coincide with prejudices displayed by other immigrants in the same volume, for example, Irish anti-Semitism and French hatred of Germans.⁷⁴

Even compared with the “undistinguished Americans” from other countries, Lee's story stands out in one respect: He was virtually the only one who intended to return to his old home. The reason was simple: Unlike immigrants from Europe, Chinese were permanent aliens in America because they were denied the right to be American citizens. This proves that while faith in the American dream and its possibilities was widespread, it was not universal. To those of the “right race,” America appeared to be the Promised Land and a utopian paradise, but immigrants of the “wrong race” must have felt disillusionment and despair as their notions of America, the land of freedom, clashed with reality. Lee's critical conclusion (also the ending of the first edition of Holt's book) illustrates the point: “More than half the Chinese in this country would become citizens if allowed to do so, and would be patriotic Americans. But how can they make this country their home as matters are now? … Under the circumstances, how can I call this my home, and how can any one blame me if I take my money and go back to my village in China?”⁷⁵

Compared with the fulfilled expectations of progress (or at least some advancement) that many immigrants experienced in America, Lee's bitter statement was a strong contrast to optimistic “melting-pot” advocates. It seems to forecast the conclusion made by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan half a century later: The point about the melting pot is that it never happened.⁷⁶

The unusually tormenting experiences and oppressive conditions that early Chinese immigrants encountered also caused their publications to reflect characteristics rarely seen in the writing of other immigrant groups. A sense of uncertainty pervaded their work, even in the most functional writing. An English-Chinese Phrase Book (1875) reflects that sense of insecurity.⁷⁷ Compiled by Wong Sam, a Chinese businessman affiliated with the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, the 299-page phrase book was based on the practical experience of earlier Chinese immigrants in their dealings with mainstream Americans. Widely circulated, it taught English words and phrases of practical value in matters of work, self-defense, and everyday survival. Its carefully selected vocabulary made clear what sort of lives Chinese immigrants could expect. The section on “Names, Places, Etc.,” for example, began with English words that were thought necessary for a Chinese immigrant to memorize: “pirate, robber or thief, rascal, swindler, kidnapper, gambler, enemy, murderer, criminal, missionary, preacher, physicians.”⁷⁸ Even the sample letter contained in the book can be seen as warning newly arrived Chinese that economic prospects in the land of opportunity were not always as bright as they had envisioned:

I left San Jose full of expectation of getting work here, but after the lapse of two weeks without success, I have determined to set out for my old home [Canton]. I write this note to let you know of my intentions, and to thank you for the very kind manner in which you treated me; and be assured that wherever I may be I shall always think of you with kindness. I sail on the first of next month. Give my regards to all. Bidding you good-bye, I remain

Yours, truly,

Ah Ching⁷⁹

Although the book includes sentences such as “I understand how to work. Have you any work for me to take home to do?” and “I will come for them tomorrow,” most of its pages are full of lines considered critical for a Chinese immigrant's survival:

I cannot trust you.
I have made an apology, but still he wants to strike me.
He took it from me by violence.
He assaulted me without provocation.
He tried to obtain my baggage by false pretenses.
He claimed my mine.
He squatted on my lot.
He tries to extort money from me.
They are going to extort a confession from him by false pretensions.
The confessions were extorted from them by threats.
He cheated me out of my wages.
He defrauded me out of my salary.
He falsely accused me of stealing his watch.
They were lying in ambush.
He was murdered by a thief.
He was choked to death with a lasso, by a robber.
He committed suicide.
He was strangled to death by a man.
He was starved to death in prison.
He was frozen to death in the snow.
He tried to kill me by assassination.
He was shot to death by his enemy.
He wrongfully deprived me of my wages.
It was ill treatment.
Have you no way to take revenge?
He refused to pay the money which he owes me.
He won't dare to go home without a guard.
The immigration will soon be stopped.(80)

The wide range of vocabulary and phrases concerning harsh working conditions, violence, persecution, and death reveals why “a Chinaman's chance”—meaning “no chance at all”—became a familiar saying throughout the West and what kind of justice the Chinese could expect.⁸¹ It proves indirectly that even before anti-Chinese sentiment gained momentum in the late 1870s, mistreatment of Chinese had already become common on the West Coast. Bret Harte, a local colorist and the foremost writer of frontier fiction, was aware of the situation and in “An Episode of Fiddletown” (1873) described how Ah Fe, a Chinese miner, was bullied on a trip to San Francisco:

On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of the stage-coach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian. … At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger, purely an act of Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe reprimand—possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at last reached in comparative safety the Chinese quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm of the law.⁸²

Even the California State Legislature found in 1862 that “there [had] been a wholesale system of wrong and outrage practiced upon the Chinese population of this state, which would disgrace the most barbarous nation upon earth.”⁸³

The phrase book also contains some Christian teachings. Rather than listing them in a separate section, however, they were mixed with the phrases of Confucius and ideas about practical matters, as if to hint that Chinese readers could use them to defend themselves or help strike a bargain with white Americans when in trouble. Hence, as Chinese American scholars point out, one way to appreciate the literary sensibility of the phrase book is to recognize what its structure implies. It functioned as “an internal manual of strategy” to teach Chinese to use Christian views in responding to white Americans.⁸⁴ The sequence of the following sentences is fascinating and meaningful:

Please give me now that portion of my wages which you have withheld from me.
Christ is our mediator.
I am taller than he.

And:

I was very lucky, because the stone almost struck me.
Christians bear great trials.
The man is very subtle.

And:

No one can go to Heaven without
being a Christian.
I am thirsty.
Some men have much riches.(85)

The use of Christian teachings as a vehicle for Chinese immigrants to communicate with mainstream Americans is significant. The author's unconscious (or perhaps conscious) revelation of how Christian values might work for Chinese immigrants is ironic and a matter of deep human interest. That Christian teachings were used by Chinese not as prayers but as ways to achieve higher esteem and improve their condition in an unfriendly environment presents a fascinating picture of the social experience of the Chinese in America. It also helps explain why there were so few conversions in the nineteenth century despite the time and energy missionaries devoted to converting Chinese immigrants. Although the Chinese were enthusiastic about attending Sunday school, their interest in Christianity rarely went beyond using it as the only available means to study English.

Faced with a disappointing number of Chinese converts, many missionaries finally gave up their attempts to recruit Chinese.⁸⁶ Although the reason is complicated, it must be strongly related to the mistreatment Chinese immigrants received in what was purportedly a “Christian nation,” which made them suspect the value of Christianity itself. As Riis observed in How the Other Half Lives: “How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?”⁸⁷

SONG OF HEARTS OF SORROW: THE ANGEL ISLAND POETRY

This place is called an island of immortals,
When, in fact, this mountain wilderness is a prison.
Once you see the open net, why throw yourself in?
It is only because of empty pockets I can do nothing else.(88)

This is one of the poems written by Chinese held at the immigration station on Angel Island. Composed in a bitter tone and full of frustration and deep sorrow, the poems are testimony to the indignity the immigrants suffered at the detention center on Angel Island and provide a glimpse of a special chapter of Chinese American history.

Like Ellis Island in New York Harbor, where immigrants from Europe first saw America, Angel Island, situated in the middle of San Francisco Bay, was both a gateway and a barrier for Chinese entering the United States in the early twentieth century.⁸⁹ The Exclusion Act of 1882 did not completely halt Chinese immigration. In addition to the exempt classes, the act also allowed the entry of children of those Chinese who had acquired the right of residence in the United States before 1882. Moreover, when the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed the city's immigration records in 1906, a significant number of Chinese immigrants took the opportunity to claim American birth fraudulently. Under immigration laws, children, even if born abroad, of Chinese who were American citizens could claim citizenship and come to the United States. The right of derivative citizenship explains why more Chinese were admitted as American citizens between 1920 and 1940 than as aliens (52 percent as American citizens against 48 percent as aliens).⁹⁰

Modeled after Ellis Island, Angel Island was used as a “filtering center” to hold Asian immigrants, primarily Chinese but also Japanese and Koreans, until their admissibility could be verified. At any given time between two and three hundred Chinese were detained there. During its three-decade-long existence, the immigration station processed around 175,000 Chinese entries and deported about 10 percent of that number.⁹¹ The procedure usually took from several days to a few weeks, depending upon the backlog of cases and length of time involved in processing documents considered questionable. For those whose applications had been denied and were awaiting decisions on their appeals, the process could last several months or even two or three years.

Compared to the experience of others who immigrated to the United States, detention at Angel Island was humiliating for the Chinese—much worse than Ellis Island was for Europeans. The fact that Chinese immigrants called Angel Island a “Devil's Pass” indicates what sort of treatment they received there. The memory of being confined as common criminals upon arrival left residual scars on their psyches and shaped the impression that America was dominated by racism:

I am distressed that we Chinese are detained in this wooden building.
It is actually racial barriers which cause difficulties on Yingtai Island.
Even while they are tyrannical, they still claim to be humanitarian.
I should regret my taking the risk of coming in the first place.(92)

The poems demonstrate that if the majority of early Chinese immigrants were dominated by a sojourner mentality, it was caused by the fact that they had found, from the time they landed in America, that they were unwelcome. As a Chinese American sociologist points out, “Although historically many early Chinese immigrants did not intend to settle in America, how long their sojourner attitude lasted is still debatable. In addition, it is more probable that an interrelationship existed between white hostility and Chinese sojourning psychology, rather than a one-way casual relationship which has been assumed.”⁹³

Most of the detained swallowed their bitterness and awaited their fate in solitude, but many vented emotion by writing Chinese-language poems on the walls. Their worries and feelings of disappointment, indignation, frustration, self-pity, homesickness, and loneliness were captured in verse:⁹⁴

Alas, yellow souls suffer under the brute force of the white race!
Like a pig chased into a basket, we are sternly locked in.
Our souls languish in a snowy vault;
we are really not even the equal of cattle and horses.
Our tears shower the icy day; we are not even equal to bird or fowl.(95)

More than 135 poems have survived.⁹⁶ Although most did not come to light until the 1970s, a few were published at the time they were written and appeared in various Chinese newspapers, journals, and books in the United States and China. Perhaps the earliest was printed by the World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco, on March 16, 1910, only three months after the immigration center opened officially.⁹⁷

For many detainees at Angel Island, their interrogation by immigration officials was harrowing. Chinese immigrants, regardless of the validity of their claims, were considered guilty of carrying false entry papers unless proven innocent. In order to screen applicants, authorities set up a board of special inquiry and established a system of interrogation for every newly arrived immigrant. The hearings usually lasted five or six hours over a period of three or four days, and immigrants were not notified of the results for several days.

The primary purpose of the inquiry system was to screen “paper sons.”⁹⁸ Many who had valid claims were also denied entry, however, because the questions, devised to outwit and trap the immigrants, were often so absurd that even legitimate immigrants could be easily stumped.⁹⁹ As an immigrant recounts:

My deepest impression of Angel Island now was the rudeness of the white interrogators. They kept saying, “Come on, answer, answer.” They kept rushing me to answer until I couldn't remember the answers anymore. … One strange question they asked me was: “What is your living room floor made of?” I replied, “Brick.” They said, “Okay. What is the floor under your bed made of?” So I thought if the living room floor was brick, then the bedroom must also be brick. So I said, “brick!” They typed the answer down and didn't say anything. The next day, they asked me the same question and I replied, “Brick” again. They said my father had said it was dirt. What happened was that the floor was dirt at first, but later, after my father left for America, I changed the floor myself to brick.¹⁰⁰

There are undocumented reports of suicides among the Chinese detained at Angel Island. The Rev. Edward Lee, who worked as an interpreter for the immigration service in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1920s and 1930s, recalled a newly arrived woman who heard that her entry was denied and she might be deported back to China. Feeling that would be a shame, she sharpened a pair of chopsticks, thrust them in her ear through to her brain, and died.¹⁰¹

It was understandable, then, that many immigrant poets expressed deep hatred toward immigration authorities and fiercely denounced the institutionalized racist policies. Angry and poignant in their directness and simplicity of language, the poems often contained a courage and indomitability rarely identified with Chinese immigrants:

The low building with three beams merely shelters the body.
It is unbearable to relate the stories accumulated on the Island slopes.
Wait till the day I become successful and fulfill my wish,
I will not speak of love when I level the immigration station!(102)

Chinese immigrants resented not only the discriminatory inquiry system of Angel Island but also the deplorable living conditions there. The quality of the food was poor. The average cost per meal, 12 cents in 1911, had fallen to 8 cents in 1916 rather than rising with inflation.¹⁰³ Locked in overcrowded barracks filled with bunk beds, immigrants were allowed little freedom of movement and denied the right to meet visitors because immigration authorities feared collusion about the interrogation. Sanitary facilities were few. As a result, an immigrant who had been detained there recalled, “I soon became dirty and full of lice. After three months, I was called for interrogation. The inspector only asked me my father's name; then I was landed. The interpreter told me I was lucky, because the sight of lice crawling all over me caused the inspector to cut short questioning.”¹⁰⁴

In addition to poor food and miserable living conditions, there was also general indignation among the immigrants. In 1925 alone, troops had to be called in to stop two protest riots that had broken out in the detention center. The frequency of the outbreaks demonstrated frustrations and anguish caused by harsh treatment. The emotions were clearly reflected in the poems:

I, a seven-foot man, am ashamed I cannot extend myself.
Curled up in an enclosure, my movements are dictated by others.
Enduring a hundred humiliations, I can only cry in vain.
This person's tears fall, but what can the blue heavens do?

And:

I thoroughly hate the barbarians because they do not respect justice.
They continually promulgate harsh laws to show off their prowess.
They oppress the overseas Chinese and also violate treaties.
They examine for hookworms and practice hundreds of despotic acts.(105)

Chinese detained at Angel Island were aware that immigrants from other countries were processed and released within a much shorter time. They attributed the unequal treatment to the fact that China was a weak country unable to intervene on their behalf like other “fighting nations.” As one remarked, “The Japanese detention quarters were next to ours. … They did not need to have hearings and were free to go ashore within twenty-four hours. That could be because the diplomacy of a strong nation forced lenient implementation of the immigration laws.¹⁰⁶ Lamenting the fate of China (e.g., “We Chinese of a weak nation / Can only sigh at the lack of freedom”) thus became a major theme:

I bought an oar and arrived in the land of the Gold Mountain.
Who was to know they would banish me to Island?
If my country had contrived to make herself strong,
this never would have happened.
Then when the ship had docked, we could have gone directly ashore.(107)

Such feelings compounded an increasingly strong national consciousness that had arisen among the Chinese since the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Therefore, some poems contained the defiant wish that China become a powerful nation and wreak vengeance on the United States:

I beat my breast when I think of China and cry bitterly like Ruan Ji.
Our country's wealth is being drained by foreigners,
causing us to suffer national humiliations.
My fellow countrymen, have foresight, plan to be resolute,
And vow to conquer the U.S. to avenge the previous wrongs!(108)

Not all poems, however, possessed such a strong political tone. Many simply bemoaned the poet's personal situation and are infused with deep sorrow and self-pity:

Imprisoned in this wooden building, I am always sad and bored.
I remember since I left my native village, it has been several full moons.
The family at home is leaning on the door,
urgently looking for letters.
Whom can I count on to tell them I am well?(109)

Because early Chinese immigrants were dominated by a sojourner mentality, illusions of retiring one day to their home villages with small fortunes helped them endure hardships and mistreatment. Even while trapped in the detention center and waiting anxiously for court decisions, many still dreamed of making and saving money quickly to pay off debts and rejoin families in China:

There are tens of thousands of poems composed on these walls.
They are all cries of complaint and sadness.
The day I am rid of this prison and attain success,
I must remember that this chapter once existed.
In my daily needs, I must be frugal.
Needless extravagance leads youth to ruin.
All my compatriots should please be mindful.
Once you have some small gains, return home early.(110)

Unfortunately, few were able to make gains and return home early. No reliable return migration figures are available for the first half of the twentieth century, but dreams of China remained only dreams for most sojourners. A decade-long civil war following the overthrow of the Manchu court in 1911, Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s, and the communist victory in 1949 all combined to shatter dreams of returning to China as wealthy “Gold Mountain travelers.” Instead, many remained stranded in America's Chinatowns and lived out their miserable lives as poor and lonely bachelors. In one Chinese-language account, an old man in San Francisco's Chinatown has lost hope of returning home as a wealthy “Gold Mountain traveler” and expresses disillusionment:

“Let's go to America!
Let's go to America!
Let's go to America!”

The cries were sung out loudly and exaltingly. Thereupon America became the utopia of my grandfather's generation. Now here I am in this paradise. But where is it?¹¹¹

In addition to such sentiments, there are also poems by those who sought to tell their stories to fellow immigrants. So as to encourage detainees to likewise endure hardships, these poems contain frequent references to the traditional Chinese philosophy of self-control or allusions to famous heroic figures in Chinese history who faced adversity:

The male eagle is also easy to tame.
One must be able to bend before one can stretch.
Confucious was surrounded in Chen for seven days.
Great men exhibit quality,
Scholars take pride in being themselves.
Gains and losses are entangled in my bosom.
My restlessness is a sign of self-illumination.(112)

And:

I leave word for my compatriots not to worry too much.
They mistreat us but we need not grieve.
Han Xin was straddled by a bully's trousers yet became a general.
Goujian endured humiliation and ultimately avenged his wrong.
King Wen was imprisoned at Youli and yet destroyed King Zhou.
Even though fate was perverse to Jiang Taigong,
still he was appointed marquis.
Since days of old, such has been the fate of heroes.
With extreme misfortune comes the composure to
await an opportunity for revenge.(113)

One poet even compared the confinement of Chinese immigrants at Angel Island to that of Napoleon on Saint Helena Island:

This is a message to those who live here not to worry excessively.
Instead, you must cast your idle worries to the flowing stream.
Experiencing a little ordeal is not hardship.
Napoleon was once a prisoner on an island.(114)

In addition to displaying a wide range of knowledge, the poems are significant in another respect. Their images and diction indicate that their authors must have been well-versed in classical Chinese poetry.¹¹⁵ Together with their rich allusions, the poems' literary craftsmanship shatters the stereotype that detainees at Angel Island were illiterate peasants who claimed citizenship by birth or by derivation. As one Eurasian writer discovered through frequent contacts with Chinese immigrant laborers at the time, “Many of the Chinese laundrymen I know are not laundrymen only, but artists and poets, often the sons of good families.”¹¹⁶

The establishment of a zizhihui [self-governing association] by detainees at the immigration center in 1922 also suggests that a significant number of Chinese immigrants coming to America during the exclusion era were highly educated. As several Chinese American scholars have pointed out, although the idea of organizing a self-governing body for collective redress and maintaining self-order was nothing new, forming such a group under extraordinarily adverse circumstances was clear evidence that many detainees were politically progressive and knew how to provide mutual aid in a hostile environment.¹¹⁷

What makes the Angel Island poems appealing to an audience today is not only artistic excellence but also the fact that they portray the emotional responses of Chinese immigrants to racial prejudice, which makes them valuable in the study of the Chinese American experience. As a mirror that captures an image of the past, the poetry stands on its own and occupies a singular place in the writing of early Chinese immigrants. Symbolizing what their predecessors experienced, it is an important legacy to all Chinese Americans and proves that “in the vast iconography of the American experience a place must be found for Angel Island.”¹¹⁸

Notes

1. The epigraph is from John R. Wunder, “Law and Chinese in Frontier Montana,” Montana 30 (Summer 1980): 20.

2. Li Chunhui et al., Meizhou huaqiao huaren shi [A History of Chinese Immigration to North and South America], (Beijing: Dongfang, 1990), 115; Yang Guobiao, Liu Hanbiao, and Yang Anyao, Meiguo huaqiao shi [A History of the Chinese in the United States], (Guangzhou: Guangdong Jiaoyu, 1989), 45. Also see Jack Chen, The Chinese of America (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 5, 11; and H. Brett Melendy, The Oriental Americans (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972), 15.

3. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 79.

4. Quoted in Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 14. A missionary doctor from Massachusetts, Peter Parker opened the first foreign hospital in China in 1835. Even Parker used the term Gold Mountain to refer to America in his letter, showing how people in Canton received the news of the gold discovery in California. For a detailed discussion on Parker's activities in Canton, see Jonathan Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620-1960, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 34-56.

5. Him Mark Lai, Joe Huang, and Don Wong, The Chinese of America, 1785-1980 (San Francisco: Chinese Culture Foundation, 1980), 20.

6. Contained in Marlon K. Hom, ed. and trans., Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 39.

7. Him Mark Lai, Cong huaqiao dao huaren [From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans], (Hong Kong: Joint, 1992), 3-6; Li et al., A History of Chinese Immigration to North and South America, 22-37.

8. For discussions on the impact of the Taiping Rebellion on the Canton area, see Frederic E. Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).

9. It is necessary to point out that the Chinese immigration to California represented only a very small part of the extensive exodus from China to other countries, particularly to Southeast Asia. It is estimated that three million Chinese emigrated during the second half of the nineteenth century, and another five million went abroad in the first four decades of the twentieth century. In addition, some early Chinese immigrants to California were the Taiping rebels who fled from the Manchu regime's crackdown. Being politically more sophisticated than other immigrants, they provided the Chinese American community with leadership in the early days. See Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 1-57; S. W. Kung, Chinese in American Life: Some Aspects of Their History, Status, Problems, and Contributions (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), 3-29; and Feng Ziping, Haiwai chunqiu [The Chinese Diaspora], (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1993), 22-23.

10. Cited in Laura L. Wong, “Chinese Immigration and Its Relationship to European Development of Colonies and Frontiers,” in The Chinese American Experience: Papers from the Second National Conference on Chinese American Studies (1980), ed. Genny Lim (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1984), 40; and Li et al., A History of Chinese Immigration to North and South America, 63.

11. Huang Lianzhi, Dongnanya huazu shehui fazhanlun [The Development of Ethnic Chinese Communities in Southeast Asia], (Shanghai: Shehui Kexue, 1992), 4.

12. From the very beginning, American merchants gained a virtual monopoly of the transportation of Chinese to California and made great profits from passage money. Documents of the China Trade such as the “Comstock File” (MS N-49.5, Massachusetts Historical Society) contain detailed records of the transportation of Chinese immigrants by American shipping companies. For additional information on this issue, see Kwang-Ching Liu, Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 1-111; Robert J. Schwendinger, “Investigating Chinese Immigrant Ships and Sailors,” in The Chinese American Experience, ed. Lim, 16-25; and Melendy, The Oriental Americans, 20-23.

13. Cited in Diane Mei Lin Mark and Ginger Chih, A Place Called Chinese America, rev. ed. (Dubuque: Kendall-Hunt, 1985), 5; and Li et al., A History of Chinese Immigration to North and South America, 82.

14. Lai, From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans, 5-6; Li et al., A History of Chinese Immigration to North and South America, 114. Also see C. F. Yong, The New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia, 1901-1921 (Richmond, Australia: Raphael Arts, 1977), 1-3; and Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 35. The method was also very popular among the Chinese who went to Australia, which they called the “new gold mountain.”

15. Lai, Huang, and Wong, The Chinese of America, 1785-1980, 11-21; Chen, The Chinese of America, 16-20; Hom, ed. and trans., Songs of Gold Mountain, 5-8.

16. Him Mark Lai, “The Chinese,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 218. Other scholars believe that the actual numbers might be larger; see, for example, Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 11-13.

17. For information on violence and racial discrimination against Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century, see Chink! A Documentary History of Anti-Chinese Prejudice in America, ed. Wu Cheng-Tsu (New York: World Publishing, 1972).

18. James Thomson, Jr., Peter Stanley, and John Perry, Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 4-7. For information on the attitude of average Americans toward Chinese immigrants in the early years, see Stuart C. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 3-15.

19. Ronald Riddle, Flying Dragons, Flowing Streams: Music in the Life of San Francisco's Chinese (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983), 6-7. Also see Hom, ed. and trans., Songs of Gold Mountain, 8; and Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Views on China and India, rev. ed. (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1980), 111-12.

20. Contained in Pearl Ng, “Writings on the Chinese in California,” M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1939, 6. The thesis was published in 1972 by R and E Research Associates in San Francisco.

21. Cited in Melendy, The Oriental Americans, 28.

22. Betty Lee Sung, The Story of the Chinese in America, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 42.

23. [San Francisco] Daily Alta California, May 12, 1851, 2 [hereafter cited as Alta]; also see Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength: A Study of the Chinese in the United States, 1850-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 158-159. Barth's work contains valuable information about Chinese immigrants in California during the 1850s, but he seems to overemphasize Chinese resistance toward assimilation without adequately analyzing the reason for such actions.

24. According to Mary Roberts Coolidge, a change in editorship of the Alta at the end of 1852 was a factor that led the newspaper to switch from its previous “pro-Chinese” stance to an anti-Chinese tone. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), 58.

25. Despite their tendency to avoid confrontation with authorities, early Chinese immigrants never hesitated to use the American judicial system when necessary. For discussions on Chinese lawsuits against racial discrimination in the early era, see Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 1-6.

26. The earliest of these students on record are five Chinese boys who studied at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, from 1818 to 1825. Doris Chu, Chinese in Massachusetts: Their Experiences and Contributions (Boston: Chinese Culture Institute, 1987), 36-37; Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America, 86-87; Lai, From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans, 59-60.

27. Hab Wa and Tong K. Achick, “Letter of the Chinamen to His Excellency, Governor Bigler,” Alta, April 30, 1852, 2; Norman Asing, “To His Excellency Governor Bigler,” Alta, May 5, 1852, 2; Lai Chun Chuen, “Remarks of the Chinese Merchants of San Francisco, upon Governor Bigler's Message and Some Common Objections,” The Oriental, San Francisco, Feb. 1, 1855, 1. Also see Benjamin Brooks, The Chinese in California (San Francisco, n.p., 1877), 136-41; Lai Yong et al., “The Chinese Question from a Chinese Standpoint,” in Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1877), 285-92; Lee Ming How et al., “To His Excellency U. S. Grant, President of the United States: A Memorial from Representative Chinamen in America,” in Facts upon the Other Side of the Chinese Question, ed. Augustus Layres (San Francisco, n.p., 1876), 20-24; “A Memorial from the Six Chinese Companies: An Address to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States,” in Julius Su Tow, The Real Chinese in America (Orange: Academy Press, 1923), 118-19; Kwang Chang Ling, “Why Should the Chinese Go?” [San Francisco] The Argonault, Aug. 7, 1878, 1; Mary Tape, “A Letter to San Francisco Board of Education,” Alta, April 16, 1885, 1, in Victor Low, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco: East-West Publishing, 1982), 199; Lee Yan Phou, “The Chinese Must Stay,” North American Review 148 (April 1889): 476-83; Fong Kun Ngon, “The Chinese Six Companies,” Overland Monthly 23 (1894): 519-21; Ho Yow, “Chinese Exclusion: A Benefit or a Harm?” North American Review 173 (Sept. 1901): 314-30; and Fu Chi Hao, “My Reception in America,” Outlook 86 (Aug. 1907): 770-73.

28. For information about the Six Companies, see Victor G. Nee and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ': A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 228-40, 272-77; and Lai, From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans, 25-45. For a brief yet explicit summary of the organization and function of the Six Companies, see Daniels, Asian America, 24-26. For discussions of the critical role played by the elite, especially big merchants, in the early Chinese American community, see Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991), 29-30; 63-67; and L. Eve Armentrout Ma, “Chinatown Organizations and the Anti-Chinese Movement, 1882-1914,” in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882-1943, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 147-69.

29. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, 55-56. For more recent characterizations of Bigler, see Barth, Bitter Strength, 145-47; and McClain, In Search of Equality, 10-12, 17-22.

30. John Bigler, “Governor's Special Message,” Alta, May 1, 1852, 1. Only a few months earlier Bigler had expressed friendship for Chinese immigrants. As an anti-Chinese mood began to emerge among miners, however, he quickly changed his tone and tried to use the question of Chinese immigration to gain miners' vote. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, 56; Barth, Bitter Strength, 145-46.

31. The essay was soon reprinted in a pamphlet by the San Francisco Herald, together with Bigler's message and two other documents, “Memorial to the Legislature on the Chinese Question” (May 1, 1852) and “To His Excellency, Gov. Bigler, from the Chinamen” (May 16, 1852), under the title An Analysis of the Chinese Question (San Francisco: Office of the San Francisco Herald, 1852). It is perhaps the earliest published work on Chinese immigrants in the United States. I have found only two copies of the original pamphlet to have survived, one in the Huntington Library in Los Angeles and the other in the Essex Institute Library in Salem, Massachusetts.

32. Barth, Bitter Strength, 145, 149. Also see Loren W. Fessler, ed., Chinese in America: Stereotyped Past, Changing Present (New York: Vantage Press, 1983), 52-56.

33. Hab Wa and Tong K. Achick, “Letter of the Chinamen to His Excellency, Governor Bigler,” in An Analysis of the Chinese Question, 5-8 (citations from this essay are quoted in the text).

34. For more information on Tong K. Achick, see An Analysis of the Chinese Question, 8, 10; Instructions to Agents and Employees of Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Express (San Francisco: Wells, Fargo, 1871), 95; Barth, Bitter Strength, 90, 98, 104, 146, 147, 251n21; McClain, In Search of Equality, 291n36; Him Mark Lai, “A Short History of the Jop Sen Tong,” unpublished paper; and Lai, From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans, 16, 21.

35. Speer's sympathy for Chinese immigrants was clearly reflected in his six-hundred-page monograph, one of the best works on Chinese history and culture published in the United States during the nineteenth century. Speer, The Oldest and Newest Empire: China and the United States (Hartford: Scranton, 1870). For more information on Speer, see Michael L. Stahler, “William Speer: Champion of California's Chinese, 1852-57,” Journal of Presbyterian History 48 (1970): 113-28; Barth, Bitter Strength, 159; and McClain, In Search of Equality, 19.

36. “Preface,” in Margaret Kerr Hosmer, You-Sing: The Chinaman in California: A True Story of the Sacramento Flood (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1868); also see William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 (Hamden: Archon Books, 1982), 25-27.

37. For more information on missionary activities in the Chinese American community, see Wesley Woo, “Chinese Protestants in the San Francisco Bay Area,” in Entry Denied, ed. Chan, 213-45; Shih-shan H. Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 42-45; and Young, The New Gold Mountain, 203-8, 214.

38. “Coolie” (or “cooley” as it was more commonly spelled at that time) is from “kuli,” a Tamil word meaning hired, unskilled laborer. It was first used by Chinese merchants residing in Southeast Asia to refer to local aboriginals and imported laborers from India. For more discussions on the issue, see Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, 45. Also see Li Yiyuan and Guo Zhenyu, eds., Dongnanya huaren shehui yanjiu [Chinese Communities in Southeast Asia], (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1985).

39. Roger Daniels, “The Asian-American Experience: The View from the 1990s,” in Multiculturalism and the Canon of American Culture, ed. Hans Bak (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993), 136.

40. Quoted in Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers, Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration, 3d ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 46, 159; and Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 109. Also see Daniels, Asian America, 20.

41. Lai, “The Chinese,” 219. Ronald Takaki estimates that the return rate for Chinese immigrants was about 47 percent during the free immigration period, whereas Stanford Lyman finds that more than 50 percent eventually went back to China. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 116; Stanford Lyman, Chinese Americans (New York: Random House, 1974), 5. Also see Franklin Ng, “The Sojourner, Return Migration, and Immigration History,” in Chinese America: History and Perspective, 1987 (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1987), 53-72.

42. Chen, The Chinese of America, 121.

43. Feng, The Chinese Diaspora, 32. Also see Li et al., A History of Chinese Immigration to North and South America, 122-24; and Lai, From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans, 9, 20n9.

44. Joaquin Miller, First Fam'lies of the Sierras (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, and Cox, 1876), 252-53.

45. Corinne K. Hoexter estimates that a third of the total custom duties at the port of San Francisco at the time were paid by Chinese merchants. Hoexter, From Canton to California: The Epic of Chinese Immigration (New York: Four Winds Press, 1976), 220.

46. Horace Davis, Chinese Immigration: Speech of Hon. Horace Davis of California in the House of Representatives (Washington: n.p., 1878), 5. Also see Yong, The New Gold Mountain, 45.

47. Chen, The Chinese of America, 119; Virginia Chin-lan Lee, The House That Tai Ming Built (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 37.

48. Quoted in Barth, Bitter Strength, 180.

49. Davis, Chinese Immigration, 5.

50. The letter did not specify the background of the “free white American women” who married Chinese or explain how the Chinese could receive American citizenship at this point. These issues are discussed in subsequent chapters.

51. “Curious Features of California Life,” San Francisco Herald, June 6, 1852, quoted in Barth, Bitter Strength, 147. Also see An Analysis of the Chinese Question, 10-11; and Hoexter, From Canton to California, 39.

52. Barth, Bitter Strength, 166, 179.

53. Garth Alexander, The Invisible China: The Overseas Chinese and the Politics of Southeast Asia (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 61-64; Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, 84-152, 225-45.

54. Barth, Bitter Strength, 142, 149-50; Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, 35-37; McClain, In Search of Equality, 12-24, 293n64; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 82; Wu, Chink! 11-25.

55. John Higham, “Introduction,” in Ethnic Leadership in America, ed. Higham (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 1-15.

56. For more information on Mary Tape's background, see Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 48-49; and Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Chinese American Portraits: Personal Histories, 1828-1988 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988), 41.

57. McClain, In Search of Equality, 136-44.

58. Victor Low, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco: East-West Publishing, 1982), 13-111. Also see Liu Pei-chi [Liu Baiji], Meizhou huaqiao yishi [A History of the Chinese in America], (Taipei: Liming, 1976), 417-18.

59. Low, The Unimpressible Race, 48-78; Yung, Unbound Feet, 48-49.

60. Quoted in Low, The Unimpressible Race, 62. For more discussions on the court decision, see McClain, In Search of Equality, 136-144.

61. Alta, April 16, 1885, 1. Also see Low, The Unimpressible Race, 199. Even Mary Tape, whose English was considered exceptionally good among Chinese, could not write correctly. Thus it must have been difficult for most immigrants to express themselves in written form in English at this time.

62. Segregated schooling imposed on Chinese remained until the law was officially rescinded in 1906. But even after that, anti-Chinese elements continued to bar the Chinese children from attending white public schools. With public support, however, the Chinese finally succeeded abolishing the system in the 1920s. Thereafter, Chinese children were able to attend public schools with their white peers. Low, The Unimpressible Race, 112-32; Kai-yu Hsu and Helen Palubinskas, eds., Asian-American Authors (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 14.

63. Chosen from among seventy-five previously published interviews in The Independent, the selections in the book represent a wide range of the “humble classes in the nation.” It stimulated a great deal of interests among readers and continues to be favorably reviewed. Edmund Morris, “Books: Short and Simple Annuals,” The New Yorker, June 11, 1990, 101-2; Werner Sollors, “Foreword: From the Bottom Up,” in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves, ed. Hamilton Holt, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 1990), xi-xxviii.

64. Lee Chew's “lifelet” was first published under the title “Biography of a Chinaman” in The Independent, Feb. 19, 1903, 417-23. Although the lifelet may not have been actually written by Lee, there is no doubt about its validity. As the editor notes, in cases where a person was “too ignorant” or too busy to write, the story was recorded from interviews and then read to the person for approval. Although some life stories in the book may have been filtered, Lee's appears to be original. It has a distinctively Chinese-style narrative and contains accurate information on Chinese experiences in America as well as life back home. For example, Lee's elaboration of the utility of palm leaves in his hometown reveals detailed familiarity with daily life in the Pearl River Delta area that an outsider would not be likely to imagine. Lee's account can also be verified by comparing it with work written by Chinese immigrants in cooperation with American authors during the late nineteenth century, for example, Story of a Chinese Boy in California (1867) and Uncle Sam-ee and His Little Chi-nee (1879).

65. For example, Ronald Takaki cites Lee Chew's life story in seven places in his volume on Asian Americans; see Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 34, 92, 94, 115, 125-27. Lee's story is also mentioned in Elaine H. Kim, Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 23.

66. Lee Chew, “The Life Story of a Chinaman,” in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, ed. Hamilton Holt (New York: Potts, 1906), 281-99. Citations from this essay are quoted in the text.

67. Quoted in Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, 109-10.

68. For more information on the experience of Chinese laundrymen in America, see Paul P. C. Siu, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study in Social Isolation (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 8-136. Also see Chan, Asian Americans, 33-34; and Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 92.

69. Lucie Cheng Hirata [Lucie Cheng], “Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth Century America,” Signs 5, no. 1 (1979): 3-29. Also see Peggy Pascoe, “Gender Systems in Conflict: The Marriages of Mission-Educated Chinese American Women, 1847-1939,” in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History, ed. Ellen Carol Dubois and Vicki L. Ruiz (New York: Routledge, 1990), 123-40.

70. Quoted in Gibson, The Chinese in America, 157. Like William Speer, the Rev. Otis Gibson was an active and enthusiastic supporter for the Chinese community in California during the nineteenth century. His book is one of the most comprehensive studies of Chinese immigrants in the early era.

71. Calculated from U.S. Census: General Population Characteristics, 1900-1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1971). It is noteworthy, however, that because Chinese women in America at this time were often hidden from census takers, their presence might be larger than indicated in census reports. Sue Fawn Chung, “Their Changing World: Chinese Women on the Comstock, 1860-1910,” in Comstock Women: The Making of a Mining Community, ed. Ronald M. James and C. Elizabeth Raymond (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998), 203-28. For discussions on how immigration laws denied the entry of Chinese women, see Sucheng Chan, “The Exclusion of Chinese Women,” in Entry Denied, ed. Chan, 94-146.

72. Paul R. Spickard, Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 3-22; Betty Lee Sung, Chinese American Intermarriage (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1990), 1-19.

73. Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957), 68. Of course, the Chinese were not the only ethnic group Riis considered to be “low.” Influenced by intolerance and racial prejudice of his era, he was also biased against other ethnic groups. In his words, Arabs were “dirty” (21); Germans, “clumsy” (21); Irish, “picturesquely autocratic” (16); and Italians, “born gamblers like the Chinese” (40). As for Jews, he said in many ways, “Money is their God” (79). Still, affected by the strong anti-Chinese sentiment at this time, Riis appeared to be more critical of the Chinese. The only positive thing he said of the Chinese was that they were “clean.” Ironically, Riis's views on blacks were progressive and constituted a sharp contrast to his harsh attitude toward the Chinese and white ethnic groups.

74. See “The Life Story of a French Dressmaker” and “The Life Story of Irish Cook,” in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, ed. Holt, 61-76, 88-92.

75. Lee was considered fortunate by a southern black woman whose “lifelet” also appeared in The Independent. Responding to his conclusion, she said, “Happy Chinaman! Fortunate Lee Chew! You can go back to your village and enjoy your money. This is my village, my home, yet I am an outcast.” See the 1990 edition of Holt, ed., The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, 220.

76. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Behind the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963).

77. For more discussions of the significance of the book, see Jeffery P. Chan et al., eds., The Big Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (New York: Meridian, 1991), 93-110.

78. Wong Sam and Assistants, An English-Chinese Phrase Book Together with the Vocabulary of Trade, Law, etc. (San Francisco: Cubery, 1875), 273. Wells Fargo Bank also published another widely circulated Chinese-English bilingual book: Directory of Chinese Business Houses (1878). Containing names and business addresses of more than eight hundred Chinese stores and companies in northern California and Oregon, the book is valuable for students of Chinese American business history.

79. Wong Sam and Assistants, An English-Chinese Phrase Book, 293.

80. Ibid., 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 50, 51, 52.

81. For more information on violence against Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century, see Roger Daniels, ed., Anti-Chinese Violence in North America (New York: Arno Press, 1978).

82. Bret Harte, “An Episode of Fiddletown,” in The Writings of Bret Harte (Boston: Houghton Miffilin, 1896), 2:139. Harte also coined such phrases as “cheap Chinese labor” and “heathen Chinee.” For discussions of the image of Chinese immigrants in Harte's writing, see Robert McClellan, The Heathen Chinee: A Study of American Attitudes toward China, 1890-1905 (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1971), 47-52; and William Purviance Fenn, Ah Sin and His Brethren in American Literature (Peiping [Beijing]: College of Chinese Studies, 1933).

83. Quoted in Chan, Asian Americans, 48. To some extent, the experience of the Chinese in California in the late nineteenth century was worse than that of African Americans. Thanks to the outcome of the Civil War, blacks were allowed to testify in California in 1863, a decade before the Chinese were given the same right.

84. Jeffery P. Chan et al., “Resources for Chinese American Literary Traditions,” in The Chinese American Experience, ed. Lim, 241-43.

85. Wong Sam and Assistants, An English-Chinese Phrase Book, 37, 114, 204.

86. Studies show that by 1892—forty years after the Rev. William Speer opened a mission in San Francisco's Chinatown—there were still fewer than two thousand Protestant converts among all the Chinese in North America, accounting for less than 2 percent of the Chinese population in North America at the time. The number of Chinese Catholics was even smaller. Lai, From Overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans, 140; Woo, “Chinese Protestants in the San Francisco Bay Area,” 213-45.

87. Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 203.

88. Contained in 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), 60. Hereafter, the numbers in parentheses are to this book. The book contains the Chinese text of the poems and the English translations. For a discussion of the difference between the Chinese text and English translation of the poems, see Shan Te-hsing, “An Island Where Angels Fear to Tread: Reinscribing Angel Island Poetry in Chinese and English,” unpublished paper.

89. The immigration station was officially opened on January 21, 1910. Although facilities on Angel Island were deemed unfit for habitation, the station did not close until November 1940, when a fire destroyed its administration building. Roger Daniels, “No Lamps Were Lit for Them: Angel Island and the Historiography of Asian American Immigration,” Journal of American Ethnic History 17, no. 1 (1997): 3-18.

90. Lai, Huang, and Wong, The Chinese of America, 1785-1980, 52.

91. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 8, 16; Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 99-104.

92. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 100.

93. Lucie Cheng Hirata [Lucie Cheng], “The Chinese American in Sociology,” in Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America, ed. Emma Gee (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, UCLA, 1976), 22.

94. Writing poems on prison walls or walls in public places is a common practice that has a long tradition throughout Chinese history. As an effective means to express one's feelings in captivity, it can be traced back to ancient times, when people used brushes as writing tools. For example, in the sixteenth-century Chinese classic Shuihu zhuan [The Water Margin: Outlaws of the Marsh], many of the captured rebels try to release their emotions by writing poems on the walls of their prison.

95. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 141.

96. Most of the poems were scribbled on the walls of the detention center and were eventually covered by paint. However, some were first written with a writing brush, then carved into the wooden walls, and are still visible today. Some poems might have been written by one person and later revised by others, thus being a truly collective creation that represented common feelings of the immigrants. Ibid., 23-28.

97. See ibid., 138-46, for a translation of “Imprisonment in the Wooden Building.” Throughout history, Chinese-language newspapers in America frequently published poems, stories, and other forms of literary work by immigrants about their American experiences (chapters 5-6).

98. Chinese immigrants who tried to enter the United States on the false claim that they were offspring of American citizens or permanent residents were called “paper sons” (sons of U.S. citizens on paper only). Yung, Unbound Feet, 3, 23, 106; Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 74; Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America, 300-307.

99. Typical questions were: “How many houses are there in your village?” “How many steps are there at the front door of your house?” and, “What was the location of the kitchen rice bin?” The inquiry system is vividly recaptured in Carved in Silence (San Francisco: Felicia Lowe Productions, 1987), a documentary film about the Angel Island immigration station. The film features archival footage and is based on interviews with former Chinese detainees and U.S. immigration officers.

100. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 116.

101. Ibid., 22, 114; Frances D'Emilio, “The Secret Hell of Angel Island,” American West 21 (May-June 1984): 44-51. Of course, the hearings were not always that terrible. Edward Lee also relates a story in which two young men were seeking admission as sons of a merchant: “They [the inspectors] asked the first applicant if there was a dog in the house. He said, ‘Yes.’ Later they asked the second if there was a dog in the house. He said, ‘No, no dog.’ The first applicant was recalled, and that question was put to him. He said, ‘Yes, well, we had a dog, but we knew we were coming to the United States, so we ate the dog.’” Both were admitted because inspectors could find no discrepancies in their answers. Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 101.

102. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 94.

103. Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 100.

104. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 115.

105. Ibid., 60, 101.

106. Ibid., 96-97. Thanks to the Gentlemen's Agreement (1907-8), the Japanese were better treated than other Asian immigrants in the United States. However, there soon emerged increasingly strong anti-Japanese sentiment in American society. Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps: North America, Japanese in the United States and Canada during World War II, rev. ed. (Malabar: Robert E. Krieger, 1989), 1-25.

107. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 86.

108. Ibid., 92. Ruan Ji (210-263 a.d.) was a prominent scholar during the Jin Dynasty.

109. Ibid., 152.

110. Ibid., 66.

111. Quoted in Mark and Chih, A Place Called Chinese America, 11.

112. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 64. Confucius and his disciples once were surrounded by enemy troops on a lecture tour near the Chen Kingdom and were cut off from food supplies for seven days.

113. Ibid., 124. Han Xin (second century b.c.) rose from extreme poverty to become a famous general. King Goujian (fifth century b.c.) slept on firewood and tasted gall in order not to forget the bitterness and humiliation of his defeat. King Wen (twelfth century b.c.) once was held captive at Youli by King Zhou, but he escaped and later defeated Zhou. Lord Jiang (eleventh century b.c.) was a legendary figure whose talents were not recognized until he was seventy.

114. Ibid., 124.

115. Thirteen of the Angel Island poems have been anthologized in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter et al. (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994), 2:1755-62. The fact that they were selected by the Heath Anthology, a literary establishment, is a testament to their artistic value. Stylistically, almost all were written in the classical Chinese style of Qi Yan (a seven-character quatrain) or Wu Yan (a five-character quatrain). Some are imitative of similar work in traditional Chinese literature. For an analysis of the stylistic characteristics of the Angel Island poems, see Shan Te-hsing, “Yi wo ailun ru quanfu” [“An island where angels fear to tread”], in Zaixian zhengzhi yu huayi meiguo wenxue [Reexamining the Relationship Between Politics and Chinese American literature], ed. He Wenjing and Shan Te-hsing (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1996), 1-56.

116. Sui Sin Far [Edith Maude Eaton], “Chinese Workmen in America,” The Independent, July 3, 1913, 57.

117. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, 19, 75, 78.

118. Daniels, “No Lamps Were Lit for Them,” 18.