Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (59 page)

loo. As Margery Wolf points out in "Chinese Women: Old Skills in a New
Context," in Women, Culture, and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and
Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 157-72, only
when a Chinese woman attained the status of mother-in-law was she able to wield
any power. Veneration for her age and motherhood gave the mother-in-law respect and authority to rule the household-and particularly the daughter-in-lawwith an iron fist. Many tyrannized the daughter-in-law as compensation for their
own former suffering and in an effort to maintain control over the son, the one
person who could serve as their "political front" in domestic and public affairs.

ioi. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, p. 437.

ioz. See Overland Monthly3z (July 11898): i6 and (September 1898): 3z4.

103. "Report of House-to-House Visitations Among Heathen Families,"
Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church, Annual Report, 1880, p. 43.
On the history of Protestant missionary work in San Francisco, see Wesley Woo,
"Protestant Work Among the Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1850-
19zo" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1983).

104. Emma R. Cable, "House to House Visitation," Foreign Mission Board
of the Presbyterian Church, Annual Report, 1887, p. 56.

1o 5. "House to House Visitation," Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian
Church, Annual Report, 1892, p. 25.

io6. San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 1893.

107. Quoted in Carl T. Smith, "The Gillespie Brothers: Early Links Between
Hong Kong and California," Chung Chi Bulletin 47 (December 1969): 28. See
also Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), PP. 42-44.

108. Dobie, San Francisco's Chinatown, pp. z5-z7.

109. San Francisco Morning Call, November z3, 1891, p. 1z. See also Mc-
Cunn, Chinese American Portraits, pp. 40-45•

rto. Quoted in Victor Low, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco: East/West, 198 z),
p. 66; see pp. 59-73 for a discussion of Tape v. Hurley.

111. Alta, April 16, 1885, p. I.

i i z. See discussion above, and note 13.

iii. Him Mark Lai, "History of the Bing Lai Family," Him Mark Lai private collection; and McCunn, Chinese American Portraits, pp. io6-17.

z. Unbound Feet

i. San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 1902, P. 7.

z. See Jean Chesneaux, Marianne Bastid, and Marie-Claire Bergere, China
from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution, trans. Anne Destenay (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1976); and Charlotte L. Beahan, "The Women's Movement
and Nationalism in Late Ch'ing China" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1976).
The Chinese concept of the "new woman" is similar to the American concept
prevalent during this same period. Often referred to in the Chinese press as ziyounii (a liberated woman), she was-in marked contrast to traditional gender
roles-an educated, self-supporting woman who worked in some urban occupation, assumed a modern lifestyle, and was involved in social and political affairs.

3. Chung Sai YatPo (hereafter cited as CSYP), November 3, 1902; San Francisco Examiner, November 3, 1902, p. 7.

4. See Roxane Witke, "Transformation of Attitudes Towards Women During the May Fourth Era of Modern China" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970); Beahan, "Women's Movement"; Kazuko Ono, Chinese
Women in a Century of Revolution, 185o-195-o (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1989); and Leslie Eugene Collins, "The New Women: A Psychological
Study of the Chinese Feminist Movement from 1900 to the Present" (Ph.D.
diss., Yale University, 1976). For a critique of the Orientalist assumption that
Chinese women were not on the road to "liberation" until Westerners arrived
to start them on their way, see Li Yu-ning, "Historical Roots of Changes"; Ko,
Teachers of the Inner Chambers; and Mann, "Learned Women."

5. CSYP, August 31, 19o1; San Francisco Examiner, October 23, 1902, p.
z; and San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 1903, p. 2.

6. See Beahan, "Women's Movement." This difference in lines of argument
is also discussed by Bernadette Li in "Chinese Feminist Thought at the Turn of
the Century," St. John's Papers, no. z5 (Jamaica, N.Y.: St. John's University,
1978), p. 5: "Thus, from the beginning, the basic argument for the liberation
of Chinese women was different from that used in the West. The feminist movement in the West had its origin in the basic belief in the equality of all human
beings, without regard for differences in sex, as we see for example in the writ ings of Mary Wollstonecraft. In contrast, the emancipation of Chinese women
was inseparable from the national cause. Women were still expected to play secondary roles. Better health and better education would enable them to perform
their traditional roles of wives and mothers in a better way." For a further discussion of how feminist movements in Third World countries are inevitably colored by nationalism, see Kumai Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the
Third World (London: Zed Books, 1986).

7. San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 19oz, p. 7.

8. San Francisco Examiner, November z, 1901, p. 41.

9. CSYP, October 1z, 1903.

1o. According to Louise Leung Larson's autobiography, Sweet Bamboo: Saga
of a Chinese American Family (Los Angeles: Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, 1989), PP. 51-5z, Sieh King King left San Francisco and went
to Los Angeles, where she stayed with the family of Tom Leung, an active Baohuanghui member. She was allegedly in the United States to plot the assassination of the Empress Dowager, but the empress died in 1908 before the plan
could be realized. Sieh King King later graduated from the University of
Chicago, married a fellow student, and returned to China, where her husband
started a chain of banks.

i i. In a similar way, gender roles for American women changed each time
the United States became engaged in war. See Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty.
A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press, 1989).

1 z. See Judy Yung, "The Social Awakening of Chinese American Women
as Reported in Chung Sai Tat Po, 19oo-1911," in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History, ed. Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L.
Ruiz (New York: Routledge, 1990), PP. 195-107.

13. See Chesneaux, Bastid, and Bergere, China From the Opium Wars to the
1911 Revolution; and Jean Chesneaux, Francoise Le Barbier, and Marie-Claire
Bergere, China From the 19.11 Revolution to Liberation, trans. Paul Auster and
Lydia Davis (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).

14. Quoted in Ono, Chinese Women, p. 141.

15. Kung, Chinese in American Life, pp. 3 3, 93.

16. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 34-37.

IT Ching Chao Wu, in "Chinatowns," p. 236, noted that while 24,782 Chinese men were listed as married in the 19zo U.S. census, only 3,046 Chinese
women were so listed. In other words, most Chinese wives had been left behind
in China. In another study published in the Chinese Times, May 16, 1929, 55
percent of the Chinese men surveyed in San Francisco were unmarried, 3 5 percent had wives in China, and to percent had wives with them in America. The
study also indicated that a large percentage of the men who had wives in China
returned home for visits once every ten to fifteen years.

18. Many more Chinese women were immigrating to British Malaya than
to the United States. According to Lai Ah Eng in Peasants, Proletarians and
Prostitutes, p. 15, there was a great influx of Chinese immigrant women from
Guangdong Province to Malaya in the 19zos and 1930s. Many were widows
and single women escaping economic depression, famine, and the impending war with Japan. Similar to the situation in Hawaii in the nineteenth century,
Malaya wanted Chinese immigrant women to help stabilize the Chinese male
work force as well as to provide cheap labor. Consequently, women were exempt
from Malaya's Aliens Ordinance of 1933, which restricted overall immigration.
According to statistics presented by Ching Chao Wu in "Chinese Immigration
in the Pacific Area," pp. 23-26, Malaya had the largest Chinese immigrant population and the highest percentage of Chinese immigrant women in the world
in the 192os. There were 1,173,354 Chinese in Malaya in 19zi, as compared
to 61,639 in the United States in 192o. In those same years, 38.4 percent of
the Chinese population in Malaya were women, as compared to 12.5 percent in
the United States.

i9. See U.S. House, Admission of Wives of American Citizens of Oriental
Ancestry: Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on
H.R. 6544, 69th Cong., 1st sess., i9z6; and U.S. Senate, Admission as Nonquota Immigrants of Certain Alien Wives and Children of United States Citizens: Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Immigration on S. 2271,
loth Cong., 1st secs., 1928.

2o. As Sucheng Chan notes in "Exclusion of Chinese Women," pp. 129-3 2,
there was a noticeable increase in the numbers of Chinese women who immigrated as daughters of U.S. citizens after passage of the 1924 Act prevented
wives from coming. They were considered derivative or statutory U.S. citizens
according to section 1993 of the U.S. Revised Statutes.

zi. Ibid., p. iz5. According to Weili Ye, "Crossing the Cultures: The Experiences of Chinese Students in the United States of America, 1900-19Z5"
(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1989), the first four Chinese female students in the
United States came with the support of missionaries to study medicine in the
late nineteenth century. Then, in 1907, Chinese women began coming on government scholarships, and in 1911, on private funds. In 1925 there were approximately 300 women among 1,400 Chinese students in the United States.

2z. See Vincente Tang, "Chinese Women Immigrants and the Two-edged
Sword of Habeas Corpus," in The Chinese American Experience, ed. Genny Lim
(San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1983), PP. 48-56; and
Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991).

z3. "Social Document of Pany Lowe," Survey of Race Relations Collection,
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University. Similar sentiments were expressed in an interview with Chin Yen, also an Americanborn Chinese ("Life History as a Social Document of Mr. Chin Yen," Survey
of Race Relations Collection, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace,
Stanford University): "My wife is still in China. I have not seen her for ten years.
You wonder why I don't bring my wife here? Well, that is the question. Because
my wife come over and you Americans cause her lots of trouble."

z4. Wong Ah So, "Story of Wong Ah So-Experiences as a Prostitute," in
Orientals and Their Cultural Adjustment, Social Science Source Documents,
no. 4 (Nashville: Social Science Institute, Fisk University, 1946), p. 31.

Z5. Ibid.

z6. Quoted in Donaldina Cameron, "The Story of Wong So," Women and
Mission z, no. 5 (August, 1925): 170.

z7. "Story of Wong Ah So," p. 311.

z8. Quoted in Cameron, "Story of Wong So," p. 170.

z9. The following account is from Law Shee Low, interview with author,
October zo, 11988.

30. Jane Kwong Lee, "A Chinese American" (unpublished autobiography),
pt. I, p. 3.

311. Ibid., p. 95•

32. Ibid., p. 151-

33. Ibid., p. 1169.

34. Ibid., p. Z03-

35. CSYP, June 10, 1903. Mai's speech is significant not only as an indictment of discriminatory treatment, but also as an early example of the sentiments
of an outspoken immigrant woman. She concluded her speech by calling on her
compatriots to work together to make China strong, and to women in the audience she said, "My dear sisters, we must take heart. We are human beings, not
to be compared to animals and goods. We must work together so that we can
stand in equality and liberty."

36. David M. Brownstone, Irene M. Franck, and Douglass L. Brownstone,
Island of Hope, Island of Tears (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), pp. 168-70.

37. To compare the ordeal suffered by Chinese immigrants at Angel Island
and that of European immigrants at Ellis Island, see Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island;
and Brownstone, Franck, and Brownstone, Island of Hope.

3 8. During the early years of the Exclusion period, immigration authorities
discriminated against Chinese students, merchants, and other exempt classes. A
1905 boycott of American goods in China was spurred in part by discriminatory treatment of the exempt classes. See Shih-shan Henry Tsai, China and the
Overseas Chinese in the United States, 1868-1911 (Fayetteville: University of
Arkansas Press, 1983), chap. 6.

39• The following account is from my interview with Law Shee Low.

40. Wen-Hsien Chen, "Chinese Under Both Exclusion and Immigration
Laws" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1940), p. 107.

411. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, p. 111111.

42. Ibid., p. 16; Woo, "Protestant Work Among the Chinese," pp. 65-66;
and San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 1951, p. 1oS.

43. Unfortunately, because the administration building that housed Chinese
women was destroyed in the 1940 fire, no poems by Chinese women survive at
Angel Island.

44. Ruth Chan Jang, interview with author, July 8, 1994.

45. Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island, p. 74.

46. Law Shee Low, interview with author.

47. See Florence Worley Chinn, "Religious Education in the Chinese Community of San Francisco" (Master's thesis, University of Chicago, 119zo), pp.
z8-311; Whitfield, "Public Opinion," chap. 3; Ivan Light, "From Vice District
to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940,"
Pacific Historical Review 43, no. 3 (August 1974): 367-94; and Philip P. Choy, "San Francisco's Chinatown Architecture," Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1990, pp. 3 7-66.