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• • • • • • CHAPTER 6 “Superseding the Six Companies” The Qing Legation, 1878–1890 The coming of this Embassy is quite a surprise and the question—Why have they come? is in everybody’s mouth. We cannot answer by the card otherwise than as the diplomatic Chin Mook answered a Chronicle interviewer. He said they were going to supersede the Six Companies, establish consulates, and look after the interests of the race generally in Cuba, Peru and this country, with headquarters at Washington. —“Why Have They Come?” On July 26, 1878, San Francisco’s Chinatown was aglow with excitement. Chen Lanbin, the first minister plenipotentiary from China, accompanied by a full diplomatic corps, was about to arrive. The news was received with outbursts of delight among the Chinese in the city and rapidly spread throughout the state. The prominent Chinese merchants immediately hired nearly forty carriages to be driven to the wharf. Chen Lanbin remained secluded in his cabin on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s steamer City of Tokio until Shuck Pun, the delegate of the Chinese merchants, arrived and went in to meet him. Each dropped onto his right knee and bowed in salutation. No words were exchanged. Shuck Pun left the cabin after a servant came up and whispered something to him, and Chen Lanbin, with the five of his entourage next highest in rank, went into another cabin and prepared to meet the formally attired presidents of the Six Companies. They were led in by Shuck Pun. Each huiguan leader went first to Chen Lanbin, and the two men then dropped to the right knee and bowed. After salutations were exchanged, they took the carriages to the Palace Hotel where the national dragon flag of China was flying on the Market Street side and the American flag on the New Montgomery Street front. On arriving at the hotel, the members of the embassy were settled into the twenty rooms on the second and third floors. After a rest of half an hour, Chen Lanbin received visitors. The first to be introduced was Col. Frederick “Superseding the Six Companies” 99 Bee, the representative of the Six Companies. Then prominent Chinese merchants , newspaper reporters, and others were invited in. It was the first day of the Qing legation in the United States.1 After the establishment of consular offices in San Francisco, Sit Ming Cook, one of the Chinese consuls in San Francisco, told a reporter for the Chronicle outright that it would “supersede the authority of the Six Companies” because the Six Companies had in reality been exercising authority of a governmental character in the United States. In a different interview Minister Chen Lanbin assured the reporter that the embassy would to a great extent “supersede” the authority and influence of the Six Companies.2 How, exactly, did the Chinese government do this? The Chinese Merchants: Victims of the Anti-Chinese Movement To understand what happened requires a review of the challenges the Chinese faced in this period. After the depression of 1873, which finally reached California in 1876, and the depression of 1885–1886, California was brought to the verge of bankruptcy. Her industries, prostrated and ruined, made paupers of the working population. The economic dislocation meant there was no more room for the Chinese, and it is quite natural that they encountered stronger discrimination, opposition, violence, and forcible expulsion. By the late 1870s popular sentiment and all the rhetoric expressing it held that the Chinese laborers must go, even if Chinese trade went with them. A story from 1878 illustrates this clearly: the Marin County supervisors advertised for bids to build a road from Bolinas Bay to Fairfax. One Chinese merchant’s proposal was $1,500, lower than that of any other bidders, but the supervisor awarded the contract to the next highest bidder, a white man, “out of deference to the anti-Chinese sentiment.”3 In the 1880s a movement to boycott the employment of Chinese and the purchase of goods they made was spreading. As a result, Hop Kee & Co., then the largest boot and shoe manufacturer on DuPont Street, declared bankruptcy in August 1885.4 At the end of 1885 the San Francisco Alta California reported that many Chinese cigar-making factories had to close down due to lack of orders caused by the boycott of Chinese manufacturers.5 Quang Sing & Co., one of the largest Chinese boot and shoe manufacturing factories, noted that from the withdrawal of one retail store alone since the beginning in January...

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