In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community
  • haiming liu (bio)
Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community. By Huping Ling. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004

Huping Ling's Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community is an important contribution to the rapidly growing field of Chinese American studies. Although a local history, the book is still highly informative about the life and social background of both historical and contemporary Chinese immigrants. For example, Alla Lee, the first Chinese to arrive in St. Louis in 1857, was not a Cantonese but a 24-year-old young man from the city of Ningbo in East China. He opened a small shop selling tea and coffee, married Sarah Graham, an Irish woman, and started a little Chinatown called Hop Alley. Although an ordinary immigrant, Alla Lee's experience footnoted many larger pieces of history. By then, Ningpo, close to Shanghai, was already a treaty port city opened up by the British after the Opium War. As a result, quite a large number of early Chinese immigrants came from Ningpo and Shanghai. "Alla Lee," when verbalized in Ningpo dialect, means "I am Lee." That was probably how he first introduced himself to other people and then was addressed as such. The formation of his American name or his identity illustrates how cultures interacted with each other.

While Lee's store was obviously serving both Chinese and non-Chinese clients, his marriage reflected interracial family life among the Chinese in the early [End Page 122] days. Since Irish woman immigrants outnumbered man immigrants during that period, there were many Irish women who married Chinese men, especially in New York where anti-miscegenation laws did not exist. But racial sentiment against interracial marriage was common. On August 22, 1910, police searched a chop suey house in St. Louis, looking for a Chinese man named Leon Ling. Ling had married Sadie Walden, a 26-year-old divorced white woman, four years earlier. He became a target of the police raid because another Chinese man, also named Leon Ling, was involved in a murder case of white woman in New York—the famous "Chinatown Trunk Mystery." Mary Ting Yi Lui's book The Chinatown Trunk Mystery has carefully documented the negative impact of this case on Chinese community in New York area.1 Huping's book informs us of how the case affected the Chinese in St. Louis.

Chinese life and community in St. Louis also aroused Theodore Dreiser's curiosity. Dreiser, a young journalist at that time, wrote in his description of Chinese restaurants in 1894: "Tea was served in bowls, and was delicious." "The dish was wonderful, awe-inspiring, and yet toothsome." A Chinese restaurant outside of Hop Alley served shark fins, bird's nests, and steamed fish and was frequented by many American clients who learned to use chopsticks rather than forks. Although his description was interesting and objective, the essay was accompanied with a cartoon that portrayed the Chinese eating rat. But the stereotype of Chinese restaurants did not prevent "chop suey" from becoming a popular food in St. Louis for a long time as it was in other parts of the United States. According to Huping's research, twenty-three out of forty-plus Chinese restaurants in St Louis, Missouri in 1976 were still chop suey shops. While the large restaurants used fancy names and luxury furnishings, small chop suey shops needed only a kitchen, a front area with a counter, and a few chairs. They served basic Americanized Chinese food such as chop suey, egg foo young, or chow mein, and provided a popular, inexpensive food option for many St Louisans.

The Chinese community in St. Louis has changed dramatically after the immigration reforms of 1965. About 66.2% of the new immigrants belong to professionals, managers, and technicians. Only 10% are in the service occupations. Hand laundries disappeared one by one. The closing of Sam Wah, the last Chinese laundry store in St. Louis, is a touching story about how the local community tried to save a historical Chinese laundry store. Sam Wah had been operated by two aging Chinese brothers Gee Kee One and Gee...

pdf

Share