Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (8 page)

According to Lucie Cheng Hirata's calculations, brothel owners
made an annual net profit of $z,5oo on each prostitute, a figure that
dwarfed the $50o average annual income of other occupations open to
the Chinese. Owners also profited from the sewing and other subcontracting work that prostitutes were forced to do whenever they had free
time. And owners were not the only ones who profited from the
women: procurers in China, importers who accompanied the women to
San Francisco, immigration officials, highbinders and policemen paid to
protect the business, landlords who charged brothel owners exorbitant
rents, tongs that collected a weekly tax on each woman, and opium dealers and gambling houses all reaped the economic benefits of prostitution. The Hip Yee Tong, which reportedly started the traffic in 18 5 z,
imported six thousand women and netted $zoo,ooo profit from the trade
between 1852. and 1873 .53 So competitive and lucrative was the trade
that violent tong wars often erupted over possession of a single woman.
In 187 5, for example, two tongs battled it out with knives, daggers, clubs,
and hatchets after a Suey Sing Tong member was assassinated by a Kwong
Dock Tong member over possession of Kum Ho, a prostitute. According to one sensationalistic account, "The highbinders fought hand to
hand. Skulls split and abdomens ripped." Nine of the fifty fighters suffered serious injuries before the police dared to intervene.54 As late as
1897, when the Chinese Society of English Education joined efforts with
the Chinese Six Companies55 to stop Chinese prostitution, they were
sent the following death warrant:

Lately, having learned that the Chinese Society of English Education has
retained an attorney to prevent girls imported for immoral purposes from
landing and made efforts to deport them to China, in consequence of
which there is a great loss of our blood-money. As you are all Christianized
people, you should do good deeds, but if you keep on going to the
Custom-house trying to deport girls brought here for immoral purposes from China, and trying to prevent them from landing, your lives of your
several people are not able to live longer than this month.

Your dying day is surely on hand.

Your dying day is surely on hand.

The dying men's names are as follows: Dear Wo, Lee Hem, Ong Lin
Foon, Chin Fong, Chin Ming Sek, Hoo Yee Hin.56

Because of their value as property, Chinese prostitutes were closely
guarded and harshly punished for any infractions. They also had no political rights and limited access to legal recourse within or outside the
Chinese community; resistance was thus difficult. Their one consolation
was the knowledge that they were fulfilling their filial duty: their sacrifice was helping to save their family from starvation. In this sense, their
circumstances were no better or worse than those of prostitutes in China,
where girls sold into prostitution for the same reasons were relegated to
the lowest, or "mean," class and treated as slaves for life.57 In America,
though, Chinese prostitutes lacked the support of family ties and suffered the added burden of racism. White hoodlums, when they were in
the mood, "stole the earnings of the slave girls, and stormed the houses
wherein the latter were on display and compelled them to submit to
frightful abuses."58 Chinese prostitutes were also discriminated against
monetarily, earning less for their services than their white counterparts.
The infamous Atoy, who commanded the highest price among Chinese
prostitutes, charged one ounce of gold; her white peers were able to
charge as much as twenty ounces. In the cribs, a Chinese woman could
be had for fifty cents, while sex with a white woman in an equivalent situation cost twice as much.59 And whereas a white prostitute could leave
the profession at will, relocate to escape stringent law enforcement in
certain parts of the city, marry, or try to find other employment, Chinese women, because of their race and indentured status, enjoyed none
of these options.

Discrimination against Chinese prostitutes, as well as prostitutes from
Latin American countries, was most apparent at the institutional level.
Both groups of women were ghettoized and, in accordance with the
racial prejudice of the day, consistently singled out for moral condemnation and legal suppression, even though white prostitution was also
prevalent. Latino American women who had been brought as indentured
labor from Mexico, Panama, and Chile to work in the cantinas and fandango parlors at the foot of Telegraph Hill were forced to accept all comers at cheap prices. Vilified as shameless, lewd greaseritas, they were
by day robbed and subjected to criminal attacks by the same men who bought their services at night. Confined to Little Chile-which after 1865
became a major nucleus of the notorious Barbary Coast-they had little
opportunity to learn English or the social graces needed to secure work
in the more respectable parlor houses outside their ghetto.60

The treatment of Chinese women paralleled that of the Latino
women. Sensational stories of the cruelties of the Chinese prostitution
trade and of the rescue operations of missionaries appeared in books,
magazines, and newspapers.61 It was said that Chinese women were
"reared to a life of shame from infancy" and that "not one virtuous Chinawoman has been brought to this country."62 They were also accused
of disseminating vile diseases capable of destroying "the very morals, the
manhood and the health of our people ... ultimately destroying whole
nations."63 Overall, local ordinances against prostitution were more
strictly enforced in the Chinese quarter. In response, the California Police Gazette commented:

It is a pity officers could not find some better employment than prosecuting these poor Chinese slaves. Do they not know that these poor serfs
are obliged to do as they do? The officers do not pitch into WHITE females who pursue the same course. Oh no, they could not do that. Their
pleasures and interests would be interfered with.64

In 1865, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an "Order to
Remove Chinese Women of Ill-Fame from Certain Limits in the City"
(emphasis added). A year later, the California state legislature approved
"An Act for the Suppression of Chinese Houses of Ill-Fame" (emphasis added). Although the acts succeeded in confining Chinese prostitution to certain geographical areas and closing down some of the Chinese brothels, they did not end the prostitution trade. The state then
proceeded in 1870 to pass "An Act to Prevent the Kidnapping and Importation of Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese Females for Criminal or
Demoralizing Purposes," thus making it illegal for ships to bring in
women of questionable character.65

As economic conditions worsened after the 1873 depression, public
sentiment continued to mount against the Chinese. In 1875 Congress
stepped in and passed the Page Law, forbidding the entry of "Oriental"
contract laborers, prostitutes, and criminals. The enforcement process,
which involved the stringent screening of women in Hong Kong by the
American consul, succeeded in reducing not only the number of prostitutes but also the overall number of Chinese immigrant women.66 Between 1876 and 1882, the number of Chinese women entering the United States declined relative to the previous seven-year period by 69
percent. The numbers were further reduced by the Chinese Exclusion
Act: from an annual average of z98 between i86o and 1882 to an annual average of 61 between i 8 8 z and 1904, the year the Exclusion Act
was extended indefinitely.67 By making it more difficult for Chinese
women to immigrate and by successfully reducing their numbers, the
laws inadvertently increased the demand and raised the value of prostitutes, but still did not stop the lucrative trade.

As hopeless and pathetic as this picture of enslavement appeared, Chinese prostitutes found a number of escape avenues. As in China, they
were sometimes redeemed and married, mostly to Chinese laborers who
had saved enough money to afford a wife. A few successfully ran away
with lovers despite the heavy bounty often placed on the man's head by
the owner. Others escaped their sordid reality through insanity or suicide by swallowing raw opium or drowning themselves in the bay-an
honorable act of protest and vengeance by Chinese cultural standards.
But being in America accorded them additional avenues of resistance.
A few went to the police for protection. Some women, like Mah Ali Wah
and Yoke Qui, two women detained by the authorities upon arrival, were
able to escape prostitution by refusing to accept bail, claiming that they
had been imported for immoral purposes against their will. Both were
remanded to China.68

A small number of prostitutes were also able to rise to the rank of
madam. Ali Toy, the best-known Chinese woman in nineteenth-century
popular literature, was among the first to do so. According to one account, Ah Toy immigrated alone from Hong Kong in 1849 at the age
of twenty "to better her condition."69 Early writings describe her as being tall, well built, English-speaking, and having bound feet. As the
Frenchman Albert Benard de Russailh put it in 1851, "The Chinese are
usually ugly, the women as well as the men; but there are a few girls who
are attractive if not actually pretty, for example, the strangely alluring
Achoy, with her slender body and laughing eyes."70 She soon became
infamous as the most successful Chinese courtesan in the city. White miners were known to line up around the block and pay an ounce of gold
($16) just "to gaze on the countenance of the charming Ali Toy."71
Within a year or two of her arrival she became a madam-owner of a
number of Chinese prostitutes on Pike Street (now Walter U. Lum
Place)-and a well-known personality in the courtroom, where she appeared a number of times to sue those clients who had paid her with
brass filings instead of gold and to protest the control of Chinese pros titutes through taxation by certain Chinatown leaders. Important personages attended her tea parties, and it was said that as early as 1850 she
influenced Chinese residents to participate in the celebration of California's admission into the union. During the Vigilance Committee's
investigation of Chinese prostitution, Ah Toy was spared, reportedly because one of her lovers was the Vigilante brothel inspector, John A.
Clarke. In 1857 she sold her house, packed her belongings, and retired
to China, announcing to journalists that she had no intention of returning. In March 1859, however, it was reported that she had been arrested in San Francisco for keeping a "disorderly house." She was not
heard of again until 192-8, when her death was announced in the local
newspapers. She reportedly had been living in Santa Clara County since
1868, first with her husband and then, when he died in 1909, with her
brother-in-law. Last seen selling clams to visitors in Alviso, she died just
three months short of her hundredth birthday.72

Based on available published accounts of Chinese prostitution, free
agents and madams such as Ah Toy were likely few and far between. One
other known exception is Suey Hin, who at a certain point owned fifty
girls of various ages. According to a newspaper account, Suey Hin was
born in Shandong Province and sold by her father when five years old
for a piece of gold. She was later resold in San Francisco for three "handfuls" of gold when she was twelve. For ten years she worked as a prostitute until she and a "poor washerman" who loved her saved $3,000-
enough to buy back her freedom so they could get married. Three years
later, her husband became sick and died. As she said, "I didn't have anything but just myself, and I had to live, and I could not live on nothing." So she returned to China, bought her first eight girls, and smuggled them into the country under the guise of being native-born
daughters. In 1898 she converted to Christianity and freed the last of
her seven slaves, returning one who had originally been kidnapped back
to her family in China and promising to find Christian husbands for the
others.73 Suey Hin and Atoy's stories point to the complex class and gender relationships within Chinatown. Men were not the only ones who
exploited Chinese prostitutes for profit. When given the opportunity,
Chinese women promoted themselves from the rank of oppressed to oppressor, preying on younger women in a vicious circle of traffic and pro-
curement.74

The most viable option open to Chinese prostitutes was two Protestant mission homes that singled them out for rescue and rehabilitation
beginning in the 18 70s; for in their view, "Of all the darkened and en slaved ones, the Chinese woman's fate seems the most pitiful."75 Inspired
by the Social Gospel Movement, missionary women were intent on establishing female moral authority in the American West and rescuing female victims of male abuse. They saw Chinese women as the ultimate
symbol of female powerlessness, as exemplified in their domestic confinement, sexual exploitation, and treatment as chattel. Unable to work
effectively among Chinatown bachelors and spurned by white prostitutes,
they found their calling among Chinese prostitutes and mui tsai. In turn,
some Chinese prostitutes, calculating their chances in an oppressive environment with few options for improvement, saw the mission homes
as a way out of their problems.76

Soon after Rev. Otis Gibson organized the Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church on the Pacific Coast in 1871
expressly "to elevate and save the souls of heathen women," Jin Ho became the first Chinese woman to seek refuge there. She had escaped from
a brothel and attempted to drown herself rather than endure a life of
slavery. Rescued by a passing black boatman, Jin Ho asked to see a "Jesus man" and was taken to Rev. Gibson. After a year in the Methodist
home, she was baptized and married to a Chinese Christian. Other runaway prostitutes also sought refuge in the home, and at any one time an
average of twenty women were provided housing and clothing, taught
reading and writing, and given sewing to do to meet incidental expenses.
Of the first seventy-five Chinese inmates, ten requested to return to
China, fifteen were baptized, and seventeen married (seven to Chinese
Christians). The others either supported themselves independently by
sewing or continued to live at the Methodist home.77