Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown

1. The People of Tang in San Francisco

A Migrant from Taishan San Franciscans identified him by his Cantonese name: Wong Chut King,1 also nicknamed Chick Ging.2 His sketchy life story suggests that he fit the traditional stereotype of a thrifty, hardworking Chinese migrant whose California dream of riches remained tragically unfulfilled.3 An ordinary middle-aged laborer or “coolie” living in the city’s Chinatown, Wong’s “rice bowl” (Cantonese expression for job) was a rat-infested lumberyard on Pacific Street, a favorite destination for residents looking for old timber to remodel their crumbling dwellings. His wife had remained in China, probably taking care of his parents .4 A common Cantonese practice was to marry before going abroad to make money. Like the majority of menial workers living in Chinatown, Wong originally came from a small hamlet. His village was Bei Keng (Bak Hang)5 in Ningyi (Xinning) County (after 1914 called Taishan or Toischan), a district located at the southwest corner of China’s Guangdong province. While socioeconomic conditions in this region were among the best in China during the second half of the nineteenth century, Xinning was a country of hills, mountains, and chapter one The People of Tang in San Francisco The Cantonese are the commercial, migrating people of China, the people who take risks, exploit fields and venture into high business. We have come to the Western countries to live, stir up commerce on behalf of China and to get Western people interested in our country and us. —ning yung benevolent association (1900) 20 Before Plague small valleys with small plots of farmland that by the 1850s could no longer sustain the heavily populated north and central portions. With its poor, sandy soils, and a difficult terrain for building roads and canals, the region lacked easy access to nearby Guangzhou (Canton) and the fertile Pearl River Delta, an area engaged in profitable international commerce and familiar with Western traders. When Wong was born around 1859, his homeland was embroiled in a bloody clash between clans from the Punti (original land), the established population of farmers, and the Hakka (guest families), relative newcomers who had been settling in Xinning since the seventeenth century. The conflict not only killed thousands of people but also contributed to the hardships caused by poor harvests , famines, and epidemics. Typhoons, flooding, and earthquakes took their toll. Looking for work, Taishanese residents started migrating to Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta. There, they made up an unskilled, but necessary, labor force.6 Populous, endowed with its own culture and dialect, Xinning County later became the most common homeland for overseas Chinese as more than a million young Taishanese sought their fortunes abroad. Based on surviving reports, Wong’s decision to migrate in the mid-1880s was not only based on local demographic pressures and economic improvement. In Cantonese, California was known as Gum Shan, the Gold Mountain. Stories of its purported riches had already lured many of Wong’s clansmen. But Wong was married, in his twenties, and his family’s breadwinner. Such a decision to leave family and motherland violated Confucian precepts. In a society with strong collectivist values, individual identity was rooted in family, clan, or village . However, working abroad could be understood as a personal obligation to preserve family and community.7 Hoping to be rewarded with social mobility and the mythical riches of California, the adventurous risked the long voyage across the Pacific.8 Those who knew Wong later insisted that he had lived in Chinatown for about fifteen years. If that was true, he may have arrived after passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, making him, along with many others, an illegal immigrant .9 Wong could have been directly recruited from his village and sent to Guangzhou or Hong Kong. Labor brokers usually sold tickets for trips across the Pacific on credit. In 1884, possibly the year of his departure from China, nearly 20 percent of the migrants traveling from Hong Kong to British Columbia via Japan were from Xinning or Taishan. After arrival, Wong may have crossed the border from Canada, joining other illegal immigrants who were assisted by secret organizations specializing in human trafficking.10 Those lacking proper The People of Tang in San Francisco 21 documentation under the terms of the 1892 Geary Act were in constant danger of being apprehended and forced to return to China.11...