CHINESE

In 1885, three years after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the American Missionary's October issue included a letter from Saum Song Bo in response to a flyer requesting donations to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. Emma Lazarus (1849–1887), with whom Ralph Waldo Emerson corresponded, wrote her famous poem, "The New Colossus" (1883) to help raise money for the pedestal's construction. While the poem's final five lines have become indelibly linked with the statue—"Give me your tired, your poor, / your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" (p. 27)—they also highlight America's duplicity made visible by Saum. He writes:

I consider it as an insult to us Chinese to call on us to contribute toward building in this land a pedestal for a statue of liberty. That statue represents liberty holding a torch which lights the passage of those of all nations who come into this country. But are the Chinese allowed to come? As for the Chinese who are here, are they allowed to enjoy liberty as men of all other nationalities enjoy it?

Saum's letter alludes to Chinese exclusion whose restrictions and their aftermath have figured largely in Chinese American literature.

IMMIGRATION AND POPULATION STATISTICS

Poor peasants from China's Pearl River Delta initially migrated to the United States in search of better opportunities for themselves and their families. In 1846, when America raised its flag in California's San Francisco's Portsmouth Square, Chinese entrepreneurs opened businesses and laid the groundwork for what would become Chinatown. After the Civil War, southern states recruited Chinese laborers to replace slave labor. It was the 1848 discovery of gold in California, however, that brought Chinese immigrants to the United States in greater numbers. Between 1850 and 1880 their population jumped from 7,520 to 105,465, with 77 percent living in California (see table). Their increasing numbers intensified Americans' anti-Chinese bias as evidenced in a series of race-based laws that specifically targeted the Chinese. Initially welcomed as a cheap labor source, the United States moved closer to exclusion as the nation fell into an economic depression in the late 1800s. Although Chinese immigrants played a significant role in the economic development of the American West, they also roused strongly nativistic feelings among many white Americans.

U.S. census statistics reveal how exclusion laws affected the Chinese population count in the United States.

FROM THE GOLD RUSH TO THE GOLDEN SPIKE

News of the California gold rush fueled Chinese immigration to Gam Saan, or Gold Mountain as the Chinese called America. Yuanzhu Chen's A Collection of Taishan Folk Rhymes (1929) and Zhaozhong Hu's A Collection of Popular Cantonese Folk Rhymes in America (1970) provide a glimpse of the impoverished conditions in China that encouraged immigration. Additionally, the collections' rhymes also reflect the pain of leaving home and the repeated dreams of and hopes for success in America. These stories evolved out of the Chinese oral tradition whose tales have also influenced contemporary writers. They are evidence that Chinese immigrants came for gold but found Americans' antipathy toward foreigners instead.

Mark Twain's (1835–1910) work presented more sympathetic portrayals of the Chinese than what typically appeared in the media. His "John Chinaman in New York" (1870), written for the Galaxy, expresses compassion toward a Chinese man berated by passersby. Twain followed up this piece with a series of letters under the general title "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again" (1871). A San Francisco Chinese immigrant shocked by Americans' mistreatment of the Chinese purportedly wrote the letters. The invented Chinese writer came to America, believing the nation practiced its ideals of equality. Once he arrived, he became the victim of a violent attack, was thrown in jail, and was convicted of a crime without witnesses. He was not allowed to testify against the Irish Americans who physically assailed him. Employing his typical sarcastic wit in "Letter 7," Twain critiques the California Supreme Court's decision that banned Chinese individuals from testifying against whites in court cases. He wrote, "In this country white men can testify against Chinamen all they want to, but Chinamen ain't allowed to testify against white men!" (p. 73). Twain's letters display the indignation he felt at the injustices against the Chinese.

Not all of his writing about the Chinese was vitriolic. Roughing It (1872) provides a witty account of Twain's travels through Nevada and northern California. Several chapters lavish praise on Chinese immigrants and express a measure of indignation at anti-Chinese discrimination. He describes Chinese immigrants in Virginia City and Chinese laborers who helped build the transcontinental railroad; in the chapter titled "The Gentle, Inoffensive Chinese," Twain describes the Chinese as harmless, in contrast with the descriptions of harm brought against them by Americans.

Chinese immigrants who came for gold recognized the danger to their lives inherent in this quest, so they gradually moved into agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. They also worked as cooks, gardeners, and launderers. In 1870 three-fourths of California's agricultural workers were Chinese, and they played a significant role in the development of California's agricultural industry. Chinese fishermen also transformed Monterey into one of California's most successful fishing ports by being the first to fish commercially for shrimp, abalone, cod, halibut, flounder, and shark. They worked in the sardine factories and played a major role in the development of Monterey and the Cannery Row area that John Steinbeck featured in his novel Cannery Row.

ECONOMIC DEPRESSION AND CHINESE RESTRICTIONS

No matter where they settled, the Chinese established social and civic organizations similar to those in China. In 1849 San Francisco's groups merged into one organization, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, or the Chinese Six Companies. They served the community by assisting immigrants and meeting community needs. As the most powerful organization in Chinatown, the Six Companies transformed their wealth into political power and challenged laws discriminatory to the Chinese.

With the demise of the railroad and mining industries, the economy fell into a slump, and competition for jobs intensified anti-Chinese sentiment. Americans initially welcomed Chinese workers to the United States as a cheap labor source but later blamed them for lower wages, lost jobs, and poor working conditions. Organized labor and individuals began demanding that the United States place restrictions on the Chinese. Labor activists organized anti-Chinese clubs. Labor union leader Denis Kearney, head of the Workingmen's Party of California, urged lawmakers to stop the flow of Asians into the United States. Newspapers also fueled nativist tendencies.

In response, politicians passed over six hundred ordinances and laws restricting Chinese people's activities. Their fishing declined between 1875 and 1900, when white fishermen pressured the California legislature to pass laws that restricted the Chinese from fishing, processing, or selling their catch. Additionally, after a suspicious fire destroyed the Chinese quarter, the state quickly established regulations that prohibited the Chinese from rebuilding the China Point fishing community. Violence erupted, and in one incident, a white mob lynched fifteen Chinese people in Los Angeles's Chinatown in 1871. In response, the Six Companies wrote President Ulysses S. Grant a protest letter demanding greater civil rights and protections for the Chinese but to no avail. Local and state governments in western states attracted national attention with anti-Chinese legislation, which influenced Congress to pass similar federal laws.

The writer Bret Harte (1836–1902) included Chinese characters in over twenty of his works, including a play entitled Two Men of Sandy Bar (1876), which featured Hop Sing, a Chinese laundryman. Harte spoke out against the injustices the Chinese suffered; yet anti-immigrationists adopted his seemingly negative portrayals of the Chinese to support their cause. For example, Harte had intended his poem "Plain Language from Truthful James" (1870) to ridicule those who harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but it produced the opposite effect. Rather than deride Truthful James and Bill Nye, who had intended to cheat the Chinese character Ah Sin during a card game, Harte's readers disparaged Ah Sin for turning the tables and beating the Irish at their own game. Readers misinterpreted "The Heathen Chinee," as the poem came to be called, when they read Ah Sin as dishonest, deceptive, and sly, an image that fueled white fear and paranoia about Chinese labor undermining white labor. Harte eventually criticized his poem when he saw its unintended effects.

In spite of the response his poem received, Harte continued to portray the Chinese as "dark," "pagan," "superstitious," and "threatening" in two short stories—"Wan Lee, the Pagan" (1874) and "See Yup" (1898). Harte's Chinese characters fulfilled white expectations. In "See Yup," for instance, a group of Chinese miners become rich by selling a worthless mine to some white miners. In 1876 Harte and Twain collaborated on a play based on and named after Harte's character, Ah Sin. Although the play also addressed "the Yellow Peril," a term used to describe Asian countries' perceived threat to Western civilization, Ah Sin's character was written to be a wily, gibberish-speaking, unredeemable Chinese laundryman. The play was a disaster and was short-lived, yet their characterization of Ah Sin became the model that new writers adopted to fashion their own Chinese characters.

Although Harte and Twain had set out to vindicate the Chinese, other playwrights created productions that betrayed Americans' fear of the Chinese presence in the United States. Henry Grimm's The Chinese Must Go (1870) and Joseph Jarrow's The Queen of Chinatown (1899) expressed white anxieties over the presumed threat that Chinese men posed to white male dominance in the labor market and to white women. Both portrayed the Chinese as opium peddlers and enslavers of white women. Such presentations justified and rationalized federal laws restricting the Chinese that had been passed earlier.

CREATING BACHELOR SOCIETIES AND CHINESE-FREE COMMUNITIES

Anti-Chinese laws shaped the development of Chinese communities, because many prevented the formation of families. In 1834 the first Chinese woman arrived in New York City. Three decades later, there were only 1,784, and many were prostitutes. To prohibit the importation of prostitutes, the federal government passed the Page Law (1875), which also discouraged other Chinese women from immigrating. Antimiscegenation laws prevented intermarriage between white women and Chinese men. Consequently, legislation created a lack of marriageable women, transforming Chinese communities into bachelor societies.

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was the first law to prohibit immigration based on race. Initially aimed at Chinese laborers, Congress broadened the law in 1888 to include "all persons of the Chinese race." The act also prohibited Chinese immigrants currently in the United States from claiming citizenship with exemptions for diplomats, merchants, and students. Exclusion was to last ten years, but the Geary Act (1892) extended them another ten. The law did allow one to return to China, but a return required a certificate of residence as proof of one's right to be in the country. Those caught without the necessary papers were imprisoned or deported. Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893) challenged the Geary Act, but the Supreme Court upheld it. Passage of the Immigration Act (1904) made Chinese exclusion permanent. The push to rid the United States of the Chinese is played out on a global scale in Jack London's (1876–1916) short story "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1913), a tale that pushes the practice of westward expansion and United States imperialism beyond the Pacific Ocean. This science fiction piece describes the United States annihilation of the Chinese in their homeland, a move that, in the story, opens China up for European settlement.

THE EFFECTS OF EXCLUSION

Exclusion and anti-Chinese bias resulted in racial self-hatred among many Chinese immigrants who had made the United States their home. The biracial writer Winnifred Eaton (1875–1954) denied her Chinese heritage and assumed a Japanese identity, naming herself Onoto Watanna. Americans popularized the sentimental novels she set in Japan, depicting romantic relationships between Japanese women and American men. Her novel Me, a Book of Remembrance (1915) is a thinly disguised autobiography that partially depicts her attempt to hide her true heritage. Unlike Watanna, her sister, Edith Maude Eaton (1865–1914), embraced her Chinese heritage as reflected in her pen name, Sui Sin Far. Sin Far was the first short story writer of Chinese ancestry to defy stereotypes, humanize her subjects, and champion the Chinese. Her stories in Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) grapple with complex issues, such as forced assimilation, racism, biculturalism, and interracial marriage. One such story, "In the Land of the Free," critiques unjust immigration restrictions by recounting a family's anguish after the state seizes their infant son, whom it holds for ten months until the family is able to provide the necessary documents proving he is their child. The numerous articles and stories she wrote sorted out issues of acculturation and cultural conflict at a time when most Americans only knew the Chinese through popular stereotypes, depicting them as perpetually foreign.

The following excerpt is from a poem by a Chinese immigrant detained on Angel Island on San Francisco's coast.

A thousand sorrows and a hatred ten-thousand-fold

burns between my brows.

Hoping to step ashore the American continent is the

most difficult of difficulties.

The barbarians imprison me in this place.

Even a martyr or a hero would change countenance.

Lai, Lim, and Yung, eds., Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940, p. 162.

Many Chinese immigrants found ways to circumvent the kind of immigration restrictions depicted in Sui Sin Far's short story. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of citizenship to those born in the United States also applied to Chinese immigrants' children. In addition to the opportunities that Wong Kim Ark created was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which destroyed all birth and immigration records. Despite the prohibitions against Chinese immigration, there were loopholes in laws that allowed Chinese Americans in the United States prior to 1882 to return home, marry, and return with their sons, whom United States law declared as citizens. In order to reenter, however, the federal government required certain documents proving their children's identities. This requirement created the phenomena known as "paper sons." Those without the necessary family ties fabricated paper documents or bought the documents required by the United States, which helped them to assume new identities. "Paper sons" made up the largest population of Chinese immigrants from 1910 to 1940 and enabled the Chinese community to develop a second generation and survive the exclusion years.

The government's discovery of this ploy led to harsher interrogations and the creation of an immigration station on Angel Island on San Francisco's coast in 1910. More of a detention center, Angel Island held Chinese immigrants sometimes for weeks or months, until their immigration papers and medical examinations returned with favorable results. Isolated and alone, detainees revealed their experiences and emotions through poems carved in walls. These writings have been compiled in two collections, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940 (1991) and Songs of Gold Mountain (1992). Both collections are significant because they form the foundation of a mostly silenced Chinese American experience from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The writing reveals the authors' felt despair and anguish after coming to America only to have their dreams crushed by a presumably open and democratic nation. Their detention contradicted the reality they faced when the United States denied them the promises of liberty and freedom guaranteed to all. Detainees' writing also expressed resentment when other immigrants realized the promises offered in Lazarus's poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal.

See alsoAssimilation; Civil Rights; Mrs. Spring Fragrance; "Plain Language from Truthful James"; San Francisco

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works

Eaton, Edith Maude. Mrs. Spring Fragrance and OtherWritings. 1912. Edited by Amy Ling and Annette White-Parks. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Eaton, Winnifred. Me, a Book of Remembrance. 1915. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.

Grimm, Henry. The Chinese Must Go. 1870. In The ChineseOther, 1850–1925: An Anthology of Plays, edited by Dave Williams. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997.

Harte, Bret. "Plain Language from Truthful James." 1870. In Yale Book of American Verse, edited by Thomas R. Lounsbury. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1912. Available at www.bartleby.com/102/.

Harte, Bret. "See Yup." 1898. In Stories in Light andShadow. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?pageno=40&fk_files=2316.

Harte, Bret. Two Men of Sandy Bar. 1876. In CaliforniaGold-rush Plays, edited by Glenn Loney. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983.

Harte, Bret. "Wan Lee, the Pagan." 1874. In The Luck ofRoaring Camp and Other Writings. New York: Penguin Books, 2001.

Harte, Bret, and Mark Twain. Ah Sin. 1876. In The ChineseOther, 1850–1925: An Anthology of Plays, edited by Dave Williams. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997.

Jarrow, Joseph. The Queen of Chinatown. 1899. In TheChinese Other, 1850–1925: An Anthology of Plays, edited by Dave Williams. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997.

Lai, Him Mark, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, eds. Island:Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

Lazarus, Emma. "The New Colossus." 1883. In The HeathAnthology of American Literature, vol. 2, edited by Paul Lauter et al., 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

London, Jack. "The Unparalleled Invasion." 1913. In TheStrength of the Strong. Available at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/StrengthStrong/.

Saum Song Bo. "A Protest against the Statue of Liberty." 1885. University of Houston Digital History. Available at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/asian_voices/voices_display.cfm?id=29.

Twain, Mark. "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again, Letter 7." 1871. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, vol. 2, edited by Paul Lauter et al., 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Twain, Mark. "John Chinaman in New York." 1870. In Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays: Mark Twain. New York: Library of America, 1992.

Twain, Mark. Mark Twain: "The Innocents Abroad,""Roughing It." 1872. New York: Library of America, 1984.

Secondary Works

Andrew, Gyory. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and theChinese Exclusion Act. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Chan, Sucheng, ed. Entry Denied: Exclusion and the ChineseCommunity in America, 1882–. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

Hom, Marlon K. Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.

Hyung-Chan, Kim, ed. Asian-Americans and the SupremeCourt: A Documentary History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1992.

Lee, Josephine. Performing Asian America: Race andEthnicity on the Contemporary Stage. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997.

Lee, Josephine, Imogene L. Lim, and Yuko Matsukawa, eds. Re/collecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.

Moy, James. Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese inAmerica. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993.

Salyer, Lucy E. Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Sandmeyer, Elmer Clarence. The Anti-Chinese Movement inCalifornia. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

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

Wong, K. Scott, and Sucheng Chan, eds. Claiming America:Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of ChineseWomen in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Elizabeth Archuleta