Enduring Legacies: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of Colorado

4: Representations of Nineteenth-Century Chinese Prostitutes and Chinese Sexuality in the American West

69 The most symbolic figure of commodified human relations, relations based on flattery, illusion, immorality, and cash, is the prostitute. —Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit1 Chinese sex slaves flee cruel bondage to marry their childhood sweethearts and live happily ever after in Fairplay, Colorado.* That is the gist of “A Chinese Romance,” a news report in The Daily Denver Tribune, June 1, 1874, about the escape of a pair of sisters who had been forced into prostitution in Denver’s Chinatown.2 In many ways, the account is typical of the yellow journalism periodically published about the Chinese in America during the second half of the nineteenth century—sensationalistic, replete with violence between two Chinese clans and the intervention of local law enforcement agents. What makes this particular newspaper article different is that it is one of the few with Chinese women, albeit as exotic sex objects, at the center of the narrative . The women in question are two Chinese prostitutes, vulnerable and voiceless victims dependent on the Chinese men who exploit them sexually. Representations of Nineteenth-Century Chinese Prostitutes and Chinese Sexuality in the American West 4 William Wei * The author thanks Daryl Maeda for his editorial comments and suggestions. 70 Nineteenth-Century Chinese Prostitutes and Chinese Sexuality Arguably, the newspaper also exploits these women, since the story’s purpose seems less to inform the public about their plight than to entertain the public at their expense. While offering little information about, and even less insight into, the lives of the two Chinese prostitutes in Colorado, “A Chinese Romance” does reveal much about how the nineteenth-century public represented the sexuality of Chinese people in general and of Chinese women in particular. Indeed, as this chapter will discuss, this representation of Chinese women in Colorado was evident elsewhere in the American West. Euro-Americans perceived Chinese through the ideological prism of Orientalism, “a set of relations of power, a form of knowledge that inscribed upon people all kinds of meanings about ignorance, inferiority, sexuality, and most importantly, the desire for one set of people to dominate and control another.”3 Edward Said, the well-known critic of Orientalism, mistakenly said that Americans had neither a “deeply invested tradition” of, nor an “imaginative investment” in, Orientalism before World War II because their frontier was the American West rather than the Orient.4 On the contrary, it was precisely because their frontier was the American West that Euro-Americans were invested in Orientalism, which they used to justify their conquest of the region. As an unknown territory, the Wild West gave Euro-Americans license to fantasize about the Chinese they encountered there. Euro-Americans regarded them as inferior racial Others: irrational, aberrant, backward, crude, despotic, inferior, inauthentic, passive, feminine, and sexually perverse. These characteristics then “justified” Euro-American dominance. In the Euro-American mind, the Chinese and other Asians in the American West became especially identified with licentious sex. Enterprising madams installed “Mikado parlors” in their bordellos to stimulate sexual fantasies.5 These lavishly decorated rooms were meant to convey a sense of the luxurious but decadent Orient, where every whim of the imagination could be satisfied. The primary vehicle for promoting this Orientalist perspective was the popular press, which published lurid stories ascribing to the Chinese an array of attributes demeaning their intelligence and character. Chinese immigrant women were stereotyped as prostitutes. Although Chinese women in America actually included wives and daughters, students, workers, and others , the popular press made it nearly impossible for anyone but the wives of Chinese merchants to escape the stigma of prostitution. With its deleterious depictions, the popular press helped pave the way for the exclusion of almost all Chinese women and, later, almost all Chinese men from entering the country. William Wei 71 As this chapter will discuss, the portrayal of Chinese prostitutes in Colo­ rado is emblematic of their treatment elsewhere in the country. This representation of Chinese prostitutes reveals much about common attitudes toward Chinese sexuality and the threat it seemed to pose to the dominant society. These distorted views would contribute to the passage of discriminatory miscegenation and immigration laws, along with other anti-Chinese rulings. Ironically, although these laws were eventually eliminated, the perceptions have persisted in modern cinema, shaping contemporary attitudes toward the Chinese and other Asians. Love, Chinese Style The highly stylized story about Denver’s Chinese American community, “A Chinese Romance,” conveys little compassion for...