Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (14 page)

Like thousands of immigrants before them, Law Shee
Low, Wong Ah So, and Jane Kwong Lee had to pass immigration inspection upon their arrival in America. In contrast to the frightening but
relatively brief stay of European immigrants at Ellis Island in New York
Harbor, most Chinese immigrant women experienced humiliation and
despair during their extended detainment at the Port of San Francisco
owing to the strict implementation of the Chinese Exclusion laws. Prior
to the building of the Angel Island Immigration Station in 1910, Chinese immigrants were housed in a dilapidated wooden shed at the Pacific Mail Steamship Company wharf. The testimony of Mai Zhouyi, a
missionary from Canton and wife of a Chinese merchant, describes the
ordeal of detainment suffered by Chinese immigrant women. Locked
in the shed for over forty days pending investigation of her right to land,
she spoke out against the inhumane treatment she received there at a
public gathering in Chinatown following her release:

All day long I faced the walls and did nothing except eat and sleep like a
caged animal. Others-Europeans, Japanese, Koreans-were allowed to
disembark almost immediately. Even blacks were greeted by relatives and
allowed to go ashore. Only we Chinese were not allowed to see or talk
to our loved ones and were escorted by armed guards to the wooden
house. Frustrated, we could only sigh and groan. Even the cargo was
picked up from the docks and delivered to its destination after custom
duties were paid. Only we Chinese were denied that right. How can it be that they look upon us as animals? As less than cargo? Do they think
we Chinese are not made of flesh and blood? That we don't have souls?
Human beings are supposed to be the superior among all creatures.
Should we allow ourselves to be treated like cargo and dumb animalsj35

Her sentiments echo those of European immigrants who experienced
Ellis Island as the "Island of Tears," of bars, cages, and callous brutality on the part of immigration officials. As Fannie Kligerman, who had
fled the pogroms in Russia, recalled:

It was like a prison. They threw us around. You know that children don't
know anything. They would say, "Stay here. Stay there." And you live
through it, you just don't fight back. And when it came to food we never
had fresh bread, the bread was always stale. Where they got it, we don't
know.... Everybody was sad there. There was not a smile on anybody's
face. Here they thought maybe they wouldn't go through. There they
thought maybe my child won't go through. There was such a sadness,
no smile any place. . . . Just so much sadness there that you have to cry.36

Whereas most European immigrants remember the confusion of being
quickly processed through the cursory physical, mental, and legal examinations, and the brief moment of fear at possibly being refused entry for reasons of health, morals, or finances, Chinese immigrants who
passed through Angel Island have more haunting memories of being
locked up in the "wooden building" for weeks and months, the fearful
interrogation sessions where they were asked hundreds of questions regarding their past, and the frustration and humiliation of being treated
as criminals for nothing more than the simple desire to enter the
promised land. Ellis Island was an island not just of tears but also of hope
for most European immigrants; for Chinese immigrants, however, Angel Island (nicknamed the "Ellis Island of the West" by immigration authorities) was a prison to men and women alike.37

Jane Kwong Lee's status as a student spared her the agony of Angel
Island. Along with other first-class passengers who were members of the
exempt classes, she had her papers inspected aboard ship and was allowed
to land immediately.38 In contrast, after their ship docked in San Francisco Bay, Law Shee Low and Wong Ah So were separated from their
husbands and taken to Angel Island for physical examination and interrogation.

Like hundreds of other Chinese before her, Law had an unfavorable
first impression of America via Angel Island.39 Unaccustomed to disrobing before male doctors and presenting stool samples in a test for parasitic diseases, Chinese women suffered personal humiliation during
the physical examination. "Those with hookworms had to go to the hospital," said Law. "Liver fluke was incurable, but hookworm was. There
was a new bride who had liver fluke and was deported." After the physical examination, Law remembers being locked up indefinitely in the
women's barracks with a dozen other Chinese women to await interrogation.

It was like being in prison. They let us out for meals and then locked us
up again when we came back. They brought us knitting things but we
didn't know how. They were willing to teach us but we weren't in the
mood. We just sat there all day and looked out the windows.... We didn't
even care to go out to eat, the food was so bad.... The bean sprouts
was cooked so badly you wanted to throw up when you saw it. There
was rice but it was cold. I just took a few spoonfuls and left. Same food
all the time. We began craving for salted fish and chicken. We wanted
preserved bean paste. Their food was steamed to death; smelled bad and
tasted bad. The vegetables were old and the beef was of poor quality and
fatty. They must have thought we were pigs.

Fortunately for Law, her husband sent her some dim sum (Chinese savory pastries), fresh fruit, and Chinese sausages, which she gladly shared
with other women in the barracks. "The Western woman we called Ma
[Deaconess Katharine Maurer, appointed by the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to tend to the needs
of Chinese women at Angel Island] delivered it. Called our names.
Searched it first for fear of coaching notes [to help her during her interrogation]," Law explained.

Finally, after ten days of waiting, Law was called to appear before the
Board of Special Inquiry. Following the advice of the other women, she
drank a few mouthfuls of cold water to control the fear within her.

One woman who was in her fifties was questioned all day and then later
deported, which scared all of us. She said they asked her about [life in
China:] the chickens and the neighbors, and the direction the house faced.
How would I know all that? I was scared. Fortunately, they didn't ask
me all that. Just when I got married. When the interpreter asked me
whether I visited my husband's ancestral home during the wedding, I
said no because I was afraid he was going to ask me which direction the
house faced like the woman told me and I wouldn't know. Evidently, their
father [her husband] had said yes. So when they asked me again and I
said no, their father, who was being interrogated at the same time the
second time around, said, "Choy! You went back; why don't you say so?"
The Westerner [immigration officer] hit the table with his hand [in ob jection] and scared me to death. So when he slapped the table, I quickly
said, "Oh, I forgot. I did pass by [in the wedding sedan chair] but I didn't
go in." So they let me land. But when they led me back to the barracks,
I thought I would be deported so I cried. Later at 4 r.m., they called me
to get on the boat to go to San Francisco and the others happily helped
me gather my things together to leave.

Compared to others, Law's interrogation was unusual in that her husband was allowed to sit in and the process was concluded in one day. "It
could have been because this church lady helped us," she suggested. It
was generally known that a supporting letter from Donaldina Cameron
of the Presbyterian Mission Home often helped get cases landed.

For many other Chinese immigrants, the ordeal at Angel Island was
much more agonizing and prolonged. Because affidavits and records had
to be reviewed and the testimonies given by immigrants and their witnesses corroborated, even the most expeditious case generally took at
least a week. According to one study of procedures at Angel Island,
"Each applicant is asked from two or three hundred questions to over a
thousand. The records of the hearing generally runs in length from
twenty to eighty typewritten pages, depending on the nature of the
case."40 In contrast, European immigrants at Ellis Island were asked a
total of twenty-nine questions. In all the Chinese cases, the burden of
proof rested on the detainee to show that he or she was not an inadmissible alien. For those who failed the interrogation-usually because
of discrepancies in their answers to detailed questions relating to their
family history or village life in China-appeals to the Commissioner of
Immigration in Washington, D.C., led to additional expenses and extended stays at Angel Island of another six months to a year. According to the testimony of an immigration inspector who was assigned to
the Angel Island Immigration Station from 1929 to 1940, "More than
75 percent passed the interrogation at Angel Island. Of those that were
denied here, there was always an appeal to Washington and probably only
5 percent of those denied were ever really deported."41 These statistics
were similar in the experience of European immigrants at Ellis Island,
where in general only 2 percent of them were deemed "undesirable
aliens" and deported. But statistics do not reveal the different process
that only Chinese immigrants were subjected to, a process different not
only in degree but also in kind.

The disparate responses of Chinese men and women confronted by
this harsh treatment reveal their respective gender roles as defined by
their home culture and then adapted to their new environment at An gel Island. While the men passed the time actively-reading Chinese
newspapers, playing sports outdoors in a fenced-in area, listening to Chinese phonograph records, and gambling or debating among themselves-the women sat around and waited quietly, some occupying their
time with needlework. A few took advantage of the weekly walks outside under the watchful eyes of a guard. Whereas the men organized a
Self-Governing Association for mutual assistance and to protest conditions at Angel Island, the women did not organize and seemed unable
to voice objections to their harsh treatment. Their one defender and
friend was Methodist Deaconess Katharine Maurer, known as the "Angel of Angel Island." Assigned to work among the Chinese detainees
beginning in 1912, she shopped for the women, provided them with
needlework materials, taught them the Bible and English, wrote letters,
organized holiday programs for them, and administered to their various
needs.42 Men were able to vent their anger and frustrations by carving
poems into the barrack walls, many of which are still visible today.
Women, deprived of education, were less literate, and although some
remember seeing lines of poetry on the barrack walls, most could not
express themselves in writing.43 One Chinese woman who was illiterate
resorted to memorizing the coaching information on her family background by putting it into song.44

As women waited for the ordeal to pass, many shared the sentiments
of a Mrs. Jew, who was detained on Angel Island the same year as Law
Shee Low and Wong Ah So:

There wasn't anything special about it. Day in, day out, the same thing.
Every person had to be patient and tell herself, "I'm just being delayed,
it doesn't matter." I never even bathed. I kept thinking each day that I
would be ready to leave and as each day went by, I just waited. I didn't
eat much, nor move around much, so I never perspired. I had no clothes
to wash.... I kept thinking, "Had I known it was like this, I never would
have wanted to come! "45

Confined in the barracks together for indefinite sentences, women
maintained a pragmatic attitude and bonded in an effort to cope with
the situation. They chatted with one another, shared whatever food they
had, dressed one another's hair, consoled those who had failed the interrogation, and accompanied one another to the bathroom after hearing stories of women who had hung themselves there. When asked who
comforted the women when they became depressed, Law replied:

Who was depressed? There were two women who had been there for three
months. They didn't cry; didn't seem to care. They even sang sometimes
and joked with the man who came in to do the cleaning. Whenever this
foreign woman offered to take us out for walks, usually on Fridays, just
the two would go. They were two friends and very happy and carefree.
They had little going for them, but they managed to struggle on.46

Although sobbing was often heard in the women's barracks and there
were known cases of suicide, this cultural attribute of "making do"
helped many Chinese women through detainment at Angel Island. When
finally granted permission to land, immigrant women like Law Shee Low
and Wong Ah So tried to put Angel Island behind them as they began
their new lives in America.

"New Women" in the
Modern Era of Chinatown

The San Francisco Chinatown that Law Shee Low, Wong
Ah So, and Jane Kwong Lee came to call home was different from the
slum of "filth and depravity" of bygone days. After the 19o6 earthquake
and fire destroyed Chinatown, Chinese community leaders seized the
opportunity to create a new "Oriental City" on the original site. The
new Chinatown, in stark contrast to the old, was by appearance cleaner,
healthier, and more modern with its wider paved streets, brick buildings, glass-plated storefronts, and pseudo-Chinese architecture. Dupont
Street (now Grant Avenue), lined with bazaars, clothing stores, restaurants, newspaper establishments, grocery stores, drugstores, bookstores,
and meat and fish markets, became the main business thoroughfare for
local residents and a major tourist attraction by the time of the PanamaPacific International Exposition in 19 15.11 But behind the facade of the
"Oriental City," hastily built with tourism and business in mind, was a
ghetto plagued by overcrowding, substandard housing, and poor sanitation. Dwelling units for bachelors were constructed above, below, and
behind shops in crowded quarters and often with poor lighting and ven-
tilation.48 There were so few Chinese families then that little thought
was given to their housing needs.