Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco Read online

  Considering the myriad influential factors at play, my belated discovery of my true generational status and family history should not be surprising. For decades, anti-Chinese immigration laws discouraged the immigration of Chinese women and retarded the development of family life. Because of anti-Chinese sentiment, life under exclusion in America necessitated a pact of silence among Chinese immigrants about their past. And until recently, racial minorities and women were generally excluded from written American history. Only since the civil rights movement, the establishment of ethnic studies programs on college campuses, and the current interest in cultural diversity have studies such as this one been possible.

  As the only in-depth study so far on Chinese American women, Unbound Feet fills the information void and restores Chinese women's rightful place in ethnic, women's, and American history, acknowledging their indomitable spirit and significant contributions. More important, by showing how Chinese American women were able to move from bound lives in the nineteenth century to unbound lives by the end of World War II despite the multiple forms of oppression they faced, this study adds to the growing scholarship on women of color and the ongoing debate about the workings and eradication of race, gender, and class oppression. Although Chinese American women have still not achieved full equality, the important strides they made during a period of great social change warrant careful study. It is my hope that Unbound Feet will contribute to a more accurate and inclusive view of women's history, and to a more complex synthesis of our collective past.

  The absence of talent in a woman is a virtue.

  A Chinese proverb

  Feet are bound not to make them beautiful as a curved bow, but to restrain the women when they go outdoors.

  Nii'er-Ching (Classic for Girls)

  When Great-Grandmother Leong Shee arrived in San Francisco on the vessel China on April i5, 1893, she had with her an eight-year-old girl named Ah Kum. When asked by the immigration inspector who the girl was, she said that Ali Kum was her daughter. The story she told was that she had first immigrated to the United States with her parents, was married to Chong [Chin] Lung of Sing Kee Company in 1885, gave birth to Ali Kum in 1886, and then returned to China with the daughter in 1889. When asked what she remembered of San Francisco, she replied in Chinese, "I do not know the city excepting the names of a few streets, as I have small feet and never went out." Thirty-six years later, when she was interrogated for a departure certificate, she denied ever saying any of this.'

  Great-Grandmother most likely had to make up the story in order to ger her mui tsai, Ah Kum, into the United States. She was probably afraid of being accused of bringing in a potential prostitute. Yet having Ah Kum was as much a status symbol as a real help for Leong Shee. Allowing Ah Kum to accompany his wife was probably one of the concessions Great-Grandfather Chin Lung had made to entice her to join him in America. While Chin Lung continued to farm in the SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta, Great-Grandmother chose to live above the Sing Kee store at 8o8 Sacramento Street, where she gave birth to five children in quick succession. Even with Ah Kum's help, Great-Grandmother found life in America difficult. Unable to go out because of her bound feet, Chinese beliefs that women should not be seen in public, and perhaps fear for her own safety, she led a cloistered but busy life. Being frugal, she took in sewing to make extra money. As she told my mother many years later, "Ying, when you go to America, don't be lazy. Work hard and you will become rich. Your grandfather grew potatoes, and although I was busy at home, I sewed on a foot-treadle machine, made buttons, and weaved loose threads [did finishing work]."2

  Great-Grandmother's secluded and hard-working life in San Francisco Chinatown was typical for Chinese women in the second half of the nineteenth century. Wives of merchants, who were at the top of the social hierarchy in Chinatown, usually had bound feet and led bound lives. But even women of the laboring class-without bound feet-found themselves confined to the domestic sphere within Chinatown. Prostitutes, who were at the bottom of the social order, had the least freedom and opportunity to change their lives. Whereas most European women found immigration to America a liberating experience, Chinese women, except in certain situations, found it inhibiting. Their unique status in America was due to the circumstances of their immigration and the dynamic ways in which race, class, gender, and culture intersected in their lives.

  Passage to Gold Mountain

  Few women were in the first wave of Chinese immigrants to America in the mid-nineteenth century. Driven overseas by conditions of poverty at home, young Chinese men-peasants from the Pearl River delta of Guangdong Province (close to the ports of Canton and Hong Kong)-immigrated to Gold Mountain in search of a better livelihood to support their families. They were but a segment of the Chinese diaspora and a sliver of the international migration of labor caused by the global expansion of European capitalism, in which workers, capital, and technology moved across national borders to enable entrepreneurs to exploit natural resources and a larger market in undeveloped coun- tries.3 According to one estimate, at least z.5 million Chinese migrated overseas during the last six decades of the nineteenth century, after China was defeated in the Opium Wars (1839-4z; 1856-60) and forced open by European imperialist countries to outside trade and political domination.' Except for the 250,000 Chinese who were coerced into slave labor in the "coolie trade" that operated from 1847 to 1874, most willingly answered the call of Western capitalists, immigrating to undeveloped colonies in the Americas, the West Indies, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and Africa to live, work, and settle.

  Kwangtung (Guangdong) Province: Emigrant Districts. SOURCE: Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), p. 1g.

  Peasants in the Pearl River delta in southeast China were particularly hard hit by imperialist incursions. Aside from suffering increased taxes, loss of land, competition from imported manufactured goods, and unemployment, they also had to contend with problems of overpopulation, repeated natural calamities, and the devastation caused by the Taiping Rebellion (185o-64), the Red Turban uprisings (1854-64), and the ongoing Punti-Hakka interethnic feud. Because of their coastal location and their long association with the sea and contact with foreign traders, they were easily drawn to America by news of the gold rush and by labor contractors who actively recruited young, able-bodied men to help build the transcontinental railroad, reclaim swamplands, develop the fisheries and vineyards, and provide needed labor for California's growing agriculture and light industries. Steamship companies and creditors were also eager to provide them with the means to travel to America.5 Like other immigrants coming to California at this time, Guangdong men intended to strike it rich and return home.6 Thus, although more than half of them were married, most did not bring their wives and families. In any case, because of the high costs and harsh living conditions in California, the additional investment required to obtain passage for two or more, and the lack of job opportunities for women, it was cheaper and safer to keep the family in China and support it from across the sea.

  The absence of women set the Chinese immigration pattern apart from that of most other immigrant groups. In 18 50, there were only 7 Chinese women, versus 4,0 18 Chinese men, in San Francisco.? Five years later, women made up less than z percent of the total Chinese population in Americas As merchant Lai Chun-chuen explained in response to the anti-Chinese remarks of California Governor John Bigler:

  It is stated that "too large a number of the men of the Flowery Kingdom have emigrated to this country, and that they have come alone, without their families." We may state among the reasons for this that the wives and families of the better families of China have generally compressed feet; they live in the utmost privacy; they are unusual to winds and waves; and it is exceedingly difficult to bring families upon distant journies over great oceans. Yet a few have come; nor are they all. And further, there have been several injunctions warning the peop
le of the Flowery land not to come here, which have fostered doubts; nor have our hearts found peace in regard to bringing families.9

  Patriarchal cultural values, financial considerations, and anti-Chinese legislation prevented most Chinese women from becoming part of the early stream of immigrants to America. Confucian ideology, which had governed social conduct in China for nearly Z,ooo years, dictated that women remain subordinate to men and confined to the domestic sphere. The "Three Obediences" prescribed that a Chinese woman obey her father at home, her husband after marriage, and her eldest son when widowed. The "Four Virtues" required of her were propriety in behavior, speech, demeanor, and household duties. Separate spheres for men and women were clearly defined. As a popular saying put it, "Men are the masters of external affairs, women the mistresses of domestic affairs"; in other words, men ruled the country, while women stayed home to manage the household and raise the children. Education was thus important for sons but not for daughters. Rather, Chinese proverbs claimed, "The absence of talent in a woman is a virtue," since "A woman too well educated is apt to create trouble."10 And because it was the sonnot the daughter-who stayed within the family, worked for its honor and prosperity, continued the family lineage, and fulfilled the duties of ancestral worship, so it was that daughters-rarely sons-were sold, abandoned, or drowned during desperate times."

  Neither men nor women had a choice in the selection of their spouses, but women were further disadvantaged in that they had no right to divorce or remarry should the arranged marriage prove unhappy or the husband die. Men, but not women, were also permitted to commit adultery, divorce, remarry, practice polygyny, and discipline their spouses as they saw fit. According to a Chinese proverb, "A woman married is like a horse bought; you can ride them or flog them as you like." Widows without sons could not inherit property, and women could not participate in politics or public activities. Their proper place was in the home, where their sexuality could be regulated and controlled. Further, the practice of footbinding ensured that women did not "wander" too far outside the household gate, let alone go abroad. In fact, until 1911 the emigration of women was illegal according to Chinese law.

  In practice, only the scholar-gentry, merchant, and landowner classes could afford to bind their daughters' feet and keep their women cloistered and idle. But even gentry women were known to venture out of their chambers to steal away to the mountains, attend women's gatherings, and accompany their husbands on business trips. It was also common for peasant women in the rice-growing and silk-rearing districts of Guangdong Province to work both inside and outside the home. Within the household women were expected to care for family members, provide moral training for the children, observe customs and holidays, do the household chores of cleaning, washing, and cooking, and bring in extra income by handicraft work such as spinning, weaving, and sewing. They also worked outside the home gathering fuel and herbs, fetching water, doing the wash, picking mulberry leaves, tea leaves, or cotton, guarding the crops, gathering the harvest, hulling rice or threshing wheat, raising geese and other livestock, gardening, and marketing. Some also hired out as domestic servants or manual laborers.12 Although they en joyed more freedom of movement than well-to-do women, even this relatively active work kept them close to home and controlled by men. Women's wages were generally lower than men's, and any monies earned by women went immediately into the family coffers.

  New studies of women's diverse roles in China have led to a reassessment of their presumed status as passive victims. One exceptional group of women were the zishunii of the Shunde, Nanhai, and Panyu districts, who practiced the shuqi custom of "combing up the hair" as a sign of confirmed spinsterhood. Their labor was essential in the sericulture industry-rearing silkworms, tending mulberry trees, spinning silk threads, and weaving-and allowed these women to enjoy economic independence and freedom of movement. They did not practice footbinding and openly resisted marriage by returning to their natal home to live after the wedding, purchasing a secondary wife to take their place, and joining sisterhoods in which they vowed celibacy. It is likely that some were also lesbians." Hakka women in Guangdong Province also did not practice footbinding and were known for being independent-minded, even domineering, having proven themselves capable of hard labor and self-support in the absence of their husbands. They were also known for their courage and military prowess. Many fought side by side with men against the Qing government in the Taiping Rebellion.14 For most other women, however, work seldom resulted in greater independence or leverage. They were still subordinate to men, depending on them to protect and provide for them.

  Thus, when their men went overseas to America, most Chinese women (following the Confucian teaching, "A woman's duty is to care for the household, and she should have no desire to go abroad") remained at home, attended to their children and in-laws, and awaited the return of their husbands. This was not an easy task, considering that the separation could extend anywhere from ten years to a lifetime, depending on when finances would allow the husband a visit home or a final return. In the meantime, family members and fellow villagers tried to ensure that the women remained chaste. The harsh punishment meted out by villagers on No Name Woman in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior for bearing an illegitimate child while her husband was overseas was not unusual." Cantonese folk rhymes tell of the conflicting feelings involved in being a gamsaanpo (wife of a Gold Mountain man) or, more appropriately, a sausaanggwai (grass widow):

  0, just marry all the daughters to men from Gold Mountain: All those trunks from Gold Mountain You can demand as many as you want! 0, don't ever marry your daughter to a man from Gold Mountain: Lonely and sadA cooking pot is her only companion! 16

  If you have a daughter, don't marry her to a Gold Mountain man. Out of ten years, he will not be in bed for one. The spider will spin webs on top of the bedposts, While dust frilly covers one side of the bed.17

  Although other groups of women, such as Italian women, were similarly discouraged from traveling abroad by cultural constraints during this period, Chinese women were further hindered by economic and political barriers.18 Few Chinese women had the resources to travel to America on their own, and many were discouraged from doing so by the inhospitable conditions in that far-off land. Although enterprising capitalists needed Chinese labor to help them exploit the western frontier, they had no use for women. Indeed, the presence of women and families, it was felt, would only stabilize the Chinese work force, causing them to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Nor did the American ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness apply equally to people of color. Treated as a reserve army of low-wage workers, the Chinese were tolerated only as long as their labor was needed. Anti-Chinese prejudice, discriminatory laws, and outright violence ensured that the Chinese remained subordinate to the dominant white society and that they did not bring their women and families to settle in America.19

  Although initially welcomed to California as valuable labor and investors in an expanding economy, Chinese immigrants quickly became the targets of white miners, workers, and politicians when the gold ran out and economic times turned sour. In 1 851 a Foreign Miners' Tax, which accounted for more than half of the tax revenues collected in California until its repeal in 18 7 0, was imposed, affecting primarily Chinese miners. Special taxes were also levied on Chinese fishermen, laundrymen, and brothel owners. Other local ordinances, which did not specifically name the Chinese but which obviously were passed to harass and deprive them of a livelihood, included the cubic-air law, which prohibited residence in rooms with less than 500 cubic feet of air per person; the sidewalk ordinance, which made it a misdemeanor for any person to carry baskets across the shoulders; and the queue ordinance, which required that the hair of every male prisoner in the city jails be cut to within an inch of the scalp. Laws were also passed by the California legislature that denied Chinese basic civil rights, such as the right to immigrate, give testimony in court, be employed in public works, intermarry
with whites, and own land. Negatively stereotyped as coolie labor, immoral and diseased heathens, and unassimilable aliens, the Chinese were driven out of the better-paying jobs in the mines, factories, fishing areas, and farmlands. They were generally not allowed to live outside Chinatown, and their children were barred from attending white schools.20

  But racial prejudice, segregation, and discriminatory laws against the Chinese were evidently not enough to assuage popular discontent over the economic upheavals caused by the growing pains of industrial capitalism. It was not unusual for Chinese to be robbed and murdered with impunity, but during depression years when the unemployment rate was high, entire Chinese communities suffered unprecedented racial hatred and physical violence. On a number of these occasions in the i 87os and 18 8os, Chinese settlements throughout the American West were attacked by bloodthirsty mobs out to loot, lynch, burn, and drive the Chinese out. In the Los Angeles riot of 18 7 1, unarmed Chinese were shot down in cold blood. Others were hauled out of buildings, beaten, and murdered while their homes were looted. In 1885 the massacre of Chinese miners at Rock Springs, Wyoming, claimed twenty-eight Chinese lives and caused $147,000 in property damage. All of the shacks belonging to the Chinese were set on fire, and stragglers were shot as they emerged. Federal troops had to be called in to protect the survivors.21