The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America - Expanded Paperback Edition 0691155321, 9780691155326

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The Lucky Ones

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The

Lucky Ones One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America Expanded paperback edition with a new preface by the author

Mae Ngai

P R I NCE T O N UN I V E R S I T Y P R ESS P R I NCE T O N A N D O X F O R D

Copyright © 2010 by Mae Ngai Reprinted by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved First published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010 First Princeton University Press paperback printing, with new preface and appendix, 2012 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930819 ISBN: 978-0-691-15532-6 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Maps by Mapping Specialists, Ltd. A portion of this book previously appeared in different form as “History as Law and Life: Tape v. Hurley and the Origins of the Chinese American Middle Class,” in Chinese Americans and the Politics of Race and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan and Madeline Y. Hsu, Temple University Press, 2008. Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1  3  5  7  9  10  8  6  4  2

For my Ahee

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Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition  viii Author’s Note  x Tape Family Tree  xiv Maps  xv Pa r t I

Strivi n g s (1864–1883)

1.  The Lucky One  3 2.  The First Rescue  14 3.  Joseph and Mary  24 Pa r t I I

S c h ool D a y s (1884–1894)

4.  “That Chinese Girl”  43 5.  Chinatown’s Frontier  58

Pa r t I I I

Nativ e So n s a n d D a u g h t e r s (1895–1904)

6.  Suburban Squire  71 7.  Two Marriages  83 8.  The Chinese Village  95 Pa r t I V

T h e I n t e rpr e t e r Cla s s (1905–1917)

9.  Blood and Fire  119 10.  In Pursuit of Smugglers  135 11.  Modern Life  150 12.  The Trial  161 13.  “Sailors Should Go Ashore”  173 Pa r t V

R e i n v e n tio n s (1917–1950)

14.  The New Daughter-in-Law  189 15.  Loss  201 16.  Service  207 Epilogue  223 Glossary of Chinese Names  231 Acknowledgments  233 Notes  235 Appendix: Documents from the Chinese Exclusion Era  277 Index  315

Preface to the Paperback Edition

This new edition of The Lucky Ones includes an appendix, “Documents from the Chinese Exclusion Era.” These historical documents from the late nineteenth century give the reader a direct view into the debate over the “Chinese question” and its legal resolution, which defined the limits of immigration and the rights of Chinese residing in the United States until the middle of the twentieth century. I hope readers, including students in high school and college classrooms, will find these documents a useful supplement to the history of the Chinese immigration that forms the backdrop and context of the Tape family’s story. The first two documents are from the 1870s, when the anti-Chinese movement in California reached a high point. The first is a concise summary by the California State Senate of the racial complaints made against the Chinese; the second, written by Chinese merchant leaders, articulates the Chinese perspective and rejoinder. Next are excerpts from the major treaties, laws, and court rulings that together constituted the structure of Chinese exclusion. This legal structure defined both the life opportunities and the constraints

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Preface to the Paperback Edition

faced by members of the Tape family and other Chinese in America in the late nineteenth century. Notably, decisions in Chinese cases made by the United States Supreme Court defined the rights of all immigrants in America, not just the Chinese. It is from the Chinese question that U.S. constitutional law defined the powers of Congress over immigration (the absolute right to admit and expel foreigners) and the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment in matters of birthright citizenship, equal protection, and due process. It may be said that, insofar as the story of the Tape family and Chinese immigrant brokers is a story about all immigrant-ethnic groups in America, the Chinese immigration and civil rights cases defined the rights of all immigrants. M. N. New York November 2011

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Author’s Note

This book began with a surprise. More than ten years ago, in the reading room of the National Archives, just outside Washington, D.C., I was working on my first book, a history of illegal immigration, reading documents from the U.S. Department of Labor. I came across a lengthy report, written in 1915, about Chinese who worked as interpreters for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration. A name caught my eye: Frank Tape. I recognized “Tape” — which is not a Chinese surname — as the name of the plaintiff in one of the first Chinese American civil rights cases, Tape v. Hurley (1885), which forced San Francisco to admit Chinese children to its public schools. Was there a connection? A little digging in the census manuscripts confirmed my hunch that Frank Tape was the brother of Mamie Tape, the girl who had challenged San Francisco’s policy of exclusion. Curious, I dug further. Not only was Frank Tape an interpreter, but Mamie married a Chinese interpreter, as did her sister, Emily. Their father, Joseph Tape (whose Chinese name was Jeu Dip in Cantonese, or Zhao Xia in Mandarin), was an immigration broker who worked for the steamx

Author’s Note

ship and railroad companies in San Francisco. Their mother, Mary Tape, rescued as a young girl from prostitution by missionaries, was a painter and photographer. Although the Tapes were not formally schooled, they rose very quickly in America. They lived in white neighborhoods and were highly acculturated. Contemporaries called them “Americanized Chinese.” Their middle-class arrival story — including touring cars, hunting dogs, a family compound in Berkeley, California, and society weddings — was a revelation: Asian American history has focused on laboring people, and before becoming a historian, I worked as a union organizer. I realized how little we know about the origins of the Chinese American middle class. There was also a puzzle: if Mamie Tape had been a civil rights pioneer, how could I understand her brother, Frank, who was accused thirty years later of extorting money from Chinese in immigration cases — of profiting from the very exclusion laws his sister had protested — and then, ten years after that, was acclaimed as the first Chinese American to serve on a jury in San Francisco? How to make sense of these twists and turns? More digging, more puzzling. In ten years of researching this book, I found out ever more about this one family and about the birth of Chinese America that fascinated and surprised. Living in the era of Chinese exclusion (1882–1943) — that long-standing legal bar against virtually all Chinese immigration to the United States — the Tapes were in-betweens and go-betweens, individuals who found in their bilingualism and biculturalism opportunities for economic and social advancement. As brokers, they were at once powerful and marginal: Chinese immigrants both esteemed and resented them; their white American employers needed but didn’t trust them. The Tapes were highly unusual, unlike the vast majority of Chinese immigrants in the United States, but they were archetypal members of the first Chinese American middle class. And in many ways, their story echoes the history of other immigrant groups in the United States, regardless of whence they came, for whom brokering was a common entrepreneurial strategy for getting ahead. xi

Author’s Note

Unlike many books about Chinese American families, The Lucky Ones is neither fiction nor memoir, but a work of history. Researching the Tapes posed some special challenges, as they did not leave letters, diaries, or other personal papers, which biographers typically use to reconstruct the lives of their subjects. They did, however, leave to their descendants a number of photograph albums. I am grateful to Jack Kim and Linda Doler for granting me access to these albums, which provided biographical data and a sense of the texture of the Tapes’ lives. Many of the photographs, especially the few but remarkable ones composed by Mary Tape, tell revealing and compelling stories. Because the Tapes were semipublic figures, their activities sometimes warranted comment in newspaper and magazine articles. Members of the family who were employed by the government appear in official records. Genealogical research has become easier with the online availability of federal census manuscripts (to 1930), military registration and enlistment records, and other vital data. These proved enormously helpful, as did court records, the Sanborn fire insurance maps, published and unpublished government reports, materials in local historical societies, and interviews conducted with Mamie Tape Lowe, Emily Lowe Lum, and Ruby Kim Tape in the 1970s. At times, the sources were contradictory or suspect; often they were simply lacking. In writing this book, I made up nothing. But I had to interpret the material and address the problems in that material by corroborating details in multiple sources and by using reasoned conjecture to fill in gaps in the evidence. I have elaborated on the thinking that went into my interpretations in the notes at the end of the book. Chinese proper names appear in Chinese style, with the surname first. Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came mostly from Guangdong Province, and thus the Cantonese pronunciations of most proper names were more com-

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mon than the Mandarin. For that reason, on the first appearance in this book, proper names are given in Cantonese with the Putonghua (Mandarin), if known, in parentheses — for example, Jeu Dip (Zhao Xia). Chinese characters for the names of major people, places, and organizations appear in the glossary.

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Tape Family Tree

JOSEPH TAPE m. 1875 MARY Mc GLADERY Jeu Dip (Zhao Xia) (Chinese name unknown) 1852–1935 1857–1934



Herman Lowe m. 1897 Mamie (Lü Yaoxuan) 1875–1941

(Yuanxiang) 1876–1974





Emily  m.  Kenneth Lum

1901–1984

1901–1949

Frank m. 1912 (1) Lena Sutherland Emily m. 1901 Robert L. Park Gertrude m. 1913 Herbert Chan (Fuleng) ? 1880–1934 (Liang Guibo) 1890–1947 (Chen Buotang) 1878–1950 1876–1951 1892–1970 (div. 1915?) (sep. c. 1920) (div. 1927) m. 1921 (2) Ruby Kim (Zhou Yueqing) (sep. 1933) 1898–1975

Harold  m.  Esther Sun 1898–1981

1898–1996

--------

Maxine Sun  m.  Frank 1911–1992

1902–1955

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Boluo (Pineapple) Village ENPING

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HM83 Map 3 Guangdong Province, China Fourth proof

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Laguna St

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Western Addition

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1. Sterling dairy ranch 2. Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society

km 0 mi 0

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3. Tape home (1876–1891)

Golden Gate

4. Spring Valley School 5. Pacific Mail Steamship dock

1

PACIFI C OCEAN Presidio

6. U.S. Customs House and Immigration Bureau Golden Gate Park

HM83 Map 2 The Tape Family’s San Francisco Fourth proof

Treasure Island

Chinese Quarter

e Pacific Av

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lum

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St

. Dupont St

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Clay Ave

10

Clay St

4 8 . Waverly Pl

Clay St

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Powell St

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(Fish Alley

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Trenton St

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100 100

1. Tape home (1890–1893/4?)

7. Methodist Chinese Mission

2. Chinese Primary School (1885)

8. Chinese Presbyterian Church

3. Tape’s expressing office (1880s–1890s)

9. Mamie and Herman Lowe’s home (1898–1901)

4. Tape’s bonding office (after 1910)

10. Tape home (1893?–1895)

5. Herman Lowe’s birthplace

11. Presbyterian Mission Home for Women

6. Robert Park’s birthplace

12. Tape’s funerary business (1880s?)

HM83 Map 1 Chinese Quarter & Vicinity Fourth proof

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Pa r t I

Strivi n g s (1864–1883)

They met, the Chinese boy and the Chinese girl, in San Francisco in the spring of 1875. They met not in Chinatown, but in the Twelfth Ward, out near Van Ness Avenue, which was then at the fringes of the city’s settlement. This was San Francisco’s newest and most sparsely populated ward; hardly any Chinese lived there. They each realized it was by a stroke of good fortune that they had found each other, for neither had much contact with other Chinese, especially the girl. Each had immigrated to California at a young age and lived among non-Chinese people. Each had already adopted many American customs: he had cut off his queue; she wore modest, Victorian-style dress. They hailed from different regions of China and spoke different dialects, so he courted her in English. In fact, they found in each other not just another Chinese person, but something far more rare and new: another Chinese American.

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1. The Lucky One

The boy, jeu dip (zhao xia), was twelve years old when he left southern China for America. He was from Skipping Stone (fushi) Village in Xinning County, Guangdong Province. The boy’s ancestors were one of thirty-three clans that migrated to Xinning in the thirteenth century, during the southern Song dynasty. Because the founder of the Song dynasty was named Zhao, people in Guangdong with that surname often claimed royal lineage. But in the nineteenth century, there were mostly poor farmers in Xinning, not princes. Xinning is the old name for Taishan, one of the Siyi (four counties) in southwestern Guangdong from which ninety percent of Chinese immigrants in California came in the nineteenth century. A great chain migration of sons and husbands poured from the Siyi, one of the least prosperous regions of Guangdong. Siyi’s hilly terrain and rocky soil, its cycles of drought and flood, and its relative isolation from the market impoverished its farmers. Instability from British economic penetration in the wake of the Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) and political violence caused by secret brotherhood societies made conditions worse. Xinning produced only enough rice to feed its people for half the year. Farmers supplemented rice 3

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production by growing sweet potatoes and peanuts on the hillsides. Many Siyi men made seasonal migrations to more prosperous counties near Guangzhou (Canton) to labor as peddlers, hired hands, or factory workers. Increasingly, they sought work across the ocean that would sustain their families. Perhaps, if they were lucky, California gold would make them rich. At twelve, Jeu Dip was young to be emigrating on his own. Most boys of that age traveled with a father, uncle, or cousin or had one of those waiting in California, but we have no evidence that Jeu Dip emigrated as part of a family strategy. He may have been orphaned or fled a cruel father, or perhaps he simply escaped from a cruel life. We do know that he never looked back. When he left Xinning in 1864, Jeu Dip traveled what was by then already a well-trodden route from rural Guangdong to California — Jinshan, “the gold mountain.” He first made his way to Guangzhou, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Guangzhou is not far from Xinning as the crow flies, about eighty miles, but a mountainous terrain stands between Xinning and the Pearl River delta. In the early twentieth century, an enterprising emigrant named Chen Yixi would return from Seattle and build a railroad from Xinning to Jiangmen, at the edge of the delta. But before that, those with funds traveled by sedan chair, carried by coolies; those without money walked. Jeu Dip probably walked, at least as far as Jiangmen. If he had any money at all, he’d have taken a small boat when he could, a sampan, along the little rivers that thread the delta, as he made his way to Guangzhou. There he found an emigration agent willing to loan him money for a ticket to cross the ocean, the debt to be repaid in California. The credit ticket was the common method of financing passage to California, Australia, and Hawaii (the destinations of choice for voluntary emigrants), but it is unclear how a twelve-year-old obtained such a loan without family collateral. Emigrants of lesser means had to sign indentures to get passage for work on plantations in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The poorest rubes were lured 4

The Lucky One

or simply kidnapped by coolie traders and sent off in old slaving ships to harvest sugar in Cuba and guano in Peru. But Jeu Dip was a wily kid, smart and ambitious. And lucky, too — a blessing for any emigrant, but one especially appreciated by the Chinese, who understood the currency of luck in a fateful world. Jeu Dip traveled by riverboat from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, which under British rule had grown to be the busiest entrepôt in East Asia. Rice, silk, tin, opium, and coolies flowed through Hong Kong to and from China, Southeast Asia, Europe, Australasia, and the Americas. The U.S.-China trade initially ran mostly to New York, by way of the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope. But in the early nineteenth century, Yankee merchants also ran a transpacific route that traded in sandalwood from Hawaii and sea otter pelts from the Pacific Northwest (the latter being the source of John Jacob Astor’s fortune, before he went into Manhattan real estate). The transpacific China trade, after eventually suffering from the depletion of sandalwood and pelts, was rejuvenated when the gold rush opened California to hundreds of thousands of people in 1848. Jeu Dip’s crossing in 1864 was via the route between Hong Kong and San Francisco that had opened that year. Beginning in the early 1850s, Chinese began coming to California in large numbers, traveling in merchant sailing ships carrying the stuff of the China trade: silk, tea, rice, sugar, curios, herbs. Ships did not sail on schedule, but left only when there was enough cargo and passengers to make the transoceanic journey profitable to the shipper. Like other hopeful emigrants, Jeu Dip had to wait around — perhaps he picked up odd jobs for cash while he did—either in Guangzhou or in Hong Kong, until a ship was ready to sail. In San Francisco, the Daily Alta California carried a column, “Shipping Intelligence,” which listed the items of cargo and the number of passengers on each arriving vessel. It gave the names of European and American passengers — merchants, ministers, an occasional family — but never the names of the “Chinamen” on board, so we don’t know which vessel Jeu Dip traveled on. It might have been 5

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the Arracan, a square-rigged trading ship that left Hong Kong in July 1864 under one Captain Kulken. She carried ten Euro-American passengers and ninety-one unidentified Chinese, along with “7 pkgs opium, 8775 bags of rice, 946 cakes of sugar, 250 gunny bags, 550 rolls matting, 100 baskets ginger, 14 cartons of champagne, 5 millstones, and 4109 pkgs of merchandise,” its cargo intended as much for the growing ethnic Chinese market in California as for Euro-American consumers. The journey took four months, with a stop in Nagasaki to water and provision. On board, Jeu was assigned a berth, really a hammock, on the lower deck, a dark area between the top deck and the cargo hold. Each passenger brought his own bedding and chopsticks. The men slept, gossiped, gambled, and smoked opium. Occasionally, they went up on deck for fresh air, but mostly they stayed below. Jeu Dip picked up whatever information he could about Jinshan. His focus remained on the future. When Jeu Dip arrived in San Francisco, the gold rush was finished, but the transcontinental railroad had not yet been built. The city had begun to shed its character as a feverish and rough through station for people heading for the hills. It was more settled and stable. In addition to being the center of western mining and other extractive industries, the city’s robust economy included the port, financial and mercantile services, and local manufacturing. Jeu Dip arrived in the midst of San Francisco’s first industrialization, a long upswing that lasted for more than ten years, one fed by capital that was accumulated locally. Still isolated from the national market, prices and wages were both high. A labor shortage persisted even though former miners drifted into the city after the placer, or surface, mines had been depleted. Chinese were among those moving from the mining districts to the cities, but there they did not have access to the same jobs or wages as white workers. The Chinese were already cast as a subordinate group — not universally disdained but held at a racial distance, 6

The Lucky One

seen by some as exotic and by others as threatening. With the exception of elite merchants, whom white Americans viewed with curiosity (one admired the tea merchant Ho Kee and the silk trader Chy Lung for their “superb heads and faces”), Chinese were considered backward and servile. China’s semicolonial status underlay these views in Europe as well as in North America. Anti-Chinese racism evolved with particular characteristics in the mining districts. The Chinese were not the first or the only foreigners to be targeted by the forty-niners, but anti-Chinese racism was particularly nasty, violent, and long-lasting. In the first heady days of the gold rush, whites from the American Northeast, South, and Midwest raised nativist arguments against “foreign” miners, including French, Australian, Mexican, and Chilean miners. They repeated the claims of manifest destiny, which declared the West the province of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Particularly targeted were Sonorans (from Mexico) and Chileans, who were some of the most experienced miners and therefore seen as the greatest threats. By the time Chinese began to arrive in large numbers, in 1851 and 1852, most other foreign miners had been driven out or had moved on. Antiforeign sentiment, formerly broad and diffuse in its reach, became concentrated against the Chinese. It was exacerbated by the fact that the days when one could make an easy fortune overnight were gone. Placer mining, which had been open to anyone with a shovel and a pan, was beginning to give way to hydraulic and shaft mining, both of which required greater capitalization. Miners who struggled with low-yielding claims or hired themselves out to the mining companies for wages found in the Chinese an easy target for their resentment. In this context, a more sustained anti-Chinese hostility grew. By the mid-1850s, there were some twenty thousand Chinese miners in California, the single largest foreign nationality left in the goldfields, working exhausted placer claims abandoned by EuroAmericans and Europeans. Required to pay the foreign miner’s tax of $4 a month (amounting to more than $150,000 in annual revenue 7

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to the state), Chinese miners barely eked out a living. White miners viewed the willingness of the Chinese to labor patiently in the mining dregs with a combination of respect and disdain. An observer wrote that in such places that yielded a meager dollar or two a day, the Chinese were “allowed to scratch away unmolested.” But if they struck a rich lead, “they’d be driven off their claim right away.” Not all white miners were against the Chinese. Many contemporaries described their encounters with Chinese in the goldfields in a tone that was curious but not hostile. Nearly all noted that Chinese kept their camps and their persons in “wonderfully clean” condition and that they were friendly to others. But a certain story began to circulate—that Chinese were brought under bondage and controlled by their clan organizations, or “companies,” and that all the gold they took out of the earth remained in the hands of the Chinese, spent on provisions sold by Chinese merchants or taken back to China. The allegation that foreigners took from America and gave nothing back to it had been leveled against Europeans and Mexicans. But when used against Chinese, it was made worse by the charge that Chinese laborers were like slaves. John Borthwick’s Three Years in California, published in 1857, is an example of how anti-Chinese ideas were repeated and reproduced. Borthwick’s descriptions of his personal encounters with Chinese miners were basically honest, if not entirely without bias. He wrote about a “bevy of Chinamen” that set up an operation on Weaver Creek, near his cabin. They were “industrious,” he conceded, although in his view they did not work as vigorously as Americans or Europeans and handled their tools like women. He described a “perfect village of small tents,” the Chinese miners’ fondness for wearing western-style boots of enormous size, and a fight in which they brandished picks and shovels and threatened one another but then stopped without having struck a blow (“just how the French Canadians fight”). But when Borthwick wrote that the Chinese were brought by their own countrymen by the shipload and kept under

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The Lucky One

complete control “by some mysterious celestial influence, quite independent of the laws of the country,” picturesque detail ceded to hearsay. The circulation of this false view of Chinese labor built public support for official anti-Chinese measures. The forty-niners were an important constituency in the politics of the new state; they had both the cultural capital and the numbers to influence elections. Miners were key to the election of Democrat John Bigler as governor of California in 1851 in a close vote of 22,613 to 21,532. Bigler, a burly figure who espoused sympathy for the workingman, was a popular politician. In his inaugural address, he issued a strident call to check Chinese immigration and to persuade those Chinese already in California to leave by imposing a heavy tax on them. Bigler’s speech was printed as a pamphlet and distributed widely in the mining districts, giving white miners license to harass, attack, and take the property of Chinese. The legislature raised the miner’s tax on Chinese to six dollars a month, and in 1854 the state supreme court ruled that Chinese could not testify in court against whites. Chinese merchants wrote that the Chinese miners were “reduced to misery . . . wandering about the mountains . . . for want of food [and] in utter despair.” While Chinese continued to work at the margins of California mining, some drifted farther afield to mining areas in Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Others were hired by American entrepreneurs to reclaim land in the Sacramento and San Joaquin deltas for agricultural development. Still others headed to towns and cities where ethnic enclaves had developed to serve and provision Chinese miners. San Francisco, the main port of entry for Chinese immigrants to the United States, was the most important of these, even though in the 1850s and 1860s most Chinese did not actually settle there. According to the 1860 federal census, taken four years before Jeu Dip’s arrival and five years before Charles Crocker had the inspired idea to use Chinese labor to build the western section of the

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transcontinental railroad — just 2,700 of the 20,000 Chinese in California lived in San Francisco. When Jeu Dip arrived in California, he would have heard that work in the mining areas had become scarce. Railroad work was not his aspiration. He figured it was better to stay in the city. He went to work as a house servant for Matthew Sterling, a dairy rancher on Van Ness Avenue. Matt Sterling and Jeu Dip had things in common, although neither would have admitted it. They were both immigrants, risk takers, strivers. Sterling had emigrated from Scotland to New York in the 1840s and then moved to California in the late 1850s with his wife, Anna, and two small children. They went west with practically nothing, drawn like thousands of others in those days by the promise of opportunity in San Francisco — not just the gold rush, but the myriad businesses, large and small, that flourished in its wake. For several years, Sterling struggled as a laborer. But by 1870, he was working as an assayer of metals, an occupation that still supported a busy trade, though not as thriving as it had been in 1849. Sterling did well enough to bring his wife’s mother over from Scotland and to buy a few acres on Van Ness (where the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall stands today). In addition to his assaying work, Sterling grazed cows and sold their milk. He became comfortable enough to hire a Chinese houseboy. We do not know how Sterling came to hire Jeu Dip. He might have asked a neighbor’s servant to bring an acquaintance or relative to work for him, or perhaps he asked someone at the Chinese mission church or the immigration office to recommend a boy. The demand for Chinese houseboys and cooks was great, owing to the relative scarcity of women and the unwillingness of white men to perform domestic labor. In fact, it was not easy to employ a Chinese servant. Many Chinese shunned the work, for it was both arduous and servile.

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The Lucky One

Jeu Dip’s chores would have been typical of those of domestic servants in American upper- and middle-class homes in the midnineteenth century: hauling water, emptying slop buckets, sweeping and washing floors, washing and ironing clothes, cleaning the silver, washing windows, cutting kindling for fires, cleaning the chimney, running errands. Many Chinese house servants also prepared food. Anna Sterling may have taught Jeu Dip to cook, or she may just have had him help with kitchen work, peeling potatoes and cleaning poultry. His pay was probably only fifteen dollars a month. Most likely, Jeu Dip lived in the Sterling household, perhaps in the attic or even in one of the outbuildings. The work began before sunrise and ended after sunset. (“Work very hurry each morn” and “no time rest one minute today,” wrote the servant Ah Quin, a contemporary of Jeu Dip, in his diary.) One also had to take orders and withstand scolding. (“He say I not wash [floors] clean, then made me work on Sunday,” Ah Quin wrote. And after failing to blacken the shoes, Ah Quin complained, “Christ, what I do all morning.”) It was an isolating existence; if Jeu Dip had contact with other Chinese people, it was with the servants of neighbors. He would have gone to Chinatown occasionally, perhaps while out on an errand for Anna Sterling or on his day off. The California Street cable car was not built until 1878, so he had to walk to Chinatown, about two miles away. There he might have stopped by an English-language class run by missionaries or a performance of the Cantonese opera, gotten a shave, or eaten a five-cent dinner. San Francisco’s Chinese quarter, or Chinatown, was still very new. It had grown up around the intersection of Sacramento and Dupont streets, just up the hill from Portsmouth Square. A decade before Jeu Dip’s arrival, white-owned businesses abandoned the hill in favor of the new, expanded wharf-front commercial area built on landfill, and Sacramento Street building owners then rented to Chinese merchants. A small concentration of Chinese commercial and public   grocery and general stores, restaurants, functions grew up there —

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district and clan association halls, temples, lodging houses, gambling houses, opium shops, and brothels. Not all Chinese in the city lived in Chinatown; some settled closer to their places of work, such as the fishermen at the mouth of Mission Creek (named China Basin) and the workers at the woolen mills and ropewalk on Potrero Hill. The Chinese called Sacramento Street “Tangren Jie,” meaning “Tang people’s street,” after the Tang dynasty (618–907), when the ancestors of the Cantonese people in the south became integrated into the Chinese Empire. Since then, Tangren Jie has come to mean “Chinatown” wherever Chinese have settled around the world. Jeu Dip’s excursions to Chinatown may have included stops at his huiguan (native-place or surname association). Most if not all immigrants registered with their huiguan. Membership (about five dollars) gave them a place to lodge when in town, to receive mail, to pay off their credit tickets, and to send money home. The huiguan loaned money, made job referrals, settled disputes, arranged for medical care in the event of illness, and, in the event of death, returned a person’s bones to his ancestral village. It was the basic social organization of the immigrant community. Jeu Dip, a Siyi person, would have been a member of a spinoff from the Siyi Huiguan, the Ning Yeung (Ningyang). Jeu Dip’s contacts with other Chinese may have confirmed his higher standing compared to those who were, for instance, working as factory laborers. Servants wore relatively better clothing than did workingmen, suggesting a higher social status. Some identified with their employers, in the belief that the association elevated their status even more. Many years later, published accounts mythologized Jeu Dip’s early life in revealing ways: his obituary states that he worked in the household of Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate and governor of California, and his son boasted to a journalist that the dairy ranch on Van Ness had belonged to D. O. Mills, founder of the Bank of California. Neither claim can be corroborated, but census records do confirm that one “M.  R. Stirling [sic]” owned property on Van Ness and that his household included a Chinese boy servant. 12

The Lucky One

In the early 1870s, Jeu Dip began driving the milk wagon for Mr. Sterling. Whether his wages increased or not, it was definitely a step up from domestic work. Driving meant not only that he could shed the posture of servility but also that he would get to know the city, its residents, and its places of work. He would be able to practice his English and make contacts for the future, when, he dreamed, he would start his own business. And he would meet his future bride.

13

2. The First Rescue

Jeu dip’s milk route took him past the Chinese girl’s home; perhaps he even delivered milk to it, for she lived in the same neighborhood, at the home of the Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society on Franklin Street, a block west of Van Ness. Started by the wives of Protestant ministers in the 1850s, the Ladies’ Society began by caring for women who were in temporary need of shelter and assistance. Its founders emphasized that these women came from good families; they were not indigent by fault of character or class. They had followed their “pioneer husbands, brothers, and sweethearts” to San Francisco but found themselves upon arrival deserted and without funds. Their men had been unable to find work and had gone to the mines or, worse, had died as a result of accident or illness. By the early 1860s, the society was caring mostly for children, whose parents had found only misfortune in California and whose predicaments reflected a new set of social and moral problems for San Francisco. Of these children, the society reported, “some are deserted by an abandoned mother, or a vagabond father, and are outcasts. Some come by sudden sickness of parents [or] death of a fa-

14

The First Rescue

ther or mother in poverty, rash speculation, the gaming table, or the curse of drunkenness.” To meet the growing demand to provide protection and relief for these unfortunates, the society erected an imposing Italianate building at the corner of Franklin and Post streets in 1864, an area that was as yet mostly unpopulated. This choice of site was in the nineteenthcentury custom of locating asylums and orphanages away from the settled part of cities. The new home had fifty rooms and stood on a hill overlooking the southern part of San Francisco. Its construction, funded by the city’s merchants and bankers, was a testament to the good works of its leading ladies and to the “noble and liberal” charity of its elites. By the early 1870s, the home had a staff of 12 caring for about 175 children a year. While some of the children were ultimately “restored” to their parents, others were adopted out. The Chinese girl was the only nonwhite child at the home. Her Chinese name was never recorded in America, and she herself never acknowledged it. She was called Mary McGladery, after the assistant matron who took her in, just a few months after she arrived in San Francisco in 1868, at the age of eleven. She came from somewhere near Shanghai, unaccompanied by any adult relation. It was later said that she was an orphan brought by Christian missionaries, but there is no evidence to confirm this. If missionaries brought her, it is unclear what led them to abandon her once they arrived. Many years later, after her death, her son would say that she came from an “aristocratic Pekin family.” If that claim was true, the whole truth would be even more tragic. The girl’s mother would likely have been a number-two or number-three wife, a concubine, discarded for displeasing her master — perhaps for not bearing a son — and, destitute, forced to sell or give away her daughter. The girl may have been traded again before ultimately ending up in California, brought as an indentured servant, what the Cantonese called a mui tsai. Mui tsai were common in China. They were daughters of impoverished parents, sold into domestic servitude until the age of eigh-

15

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teen, at which time they were to be released into marriage. A mui tsai was bound to her mistress, received no wages, and had no legal recourse in the event of abuse. Formally considered a form of charity for poor girls, the mui tsai system did treat some girls well. But others bore heavy workloads, beatings, and rape. The most unfortunate were not freed upon majority but were instead resold into prostitution. The mui tsai brought to California in the nineteenth century were sometimes servants in Chinese merchants’ families, but more often they were connected to the prostitution industry. They were brought to perform menial and domestic work in the brothels of Chinatown and were generally intended for prostitution when they became older. Sex trafficking was, as always, lucrative for the traffickers. Brothel owners earned $2,500 a year on each prostitute, far more than the $500 average annual income for a Chinese immigrant. From the 1850s through 1875, several thousand Chinese women immigrated to California. By 1860, eight years before Mary’s arrival, there were 654 Chinese women living in San Francisco, not a small number, though still dwarfed by the male population, which accounted for 95 percent of the Chinese in America. EuroAmerican travel writers, journalists, police, missionaries, and census takers believed that save for a handful of merchants’ wives with bound feet, nearly all Chinese women in the city were prostitutes — according to the census, as many as 97 percent in 1860 and 72 percent in 1870. A Euro-American writer described Chinese women arriving in port in 1872 as being “from the lowest class, and often of the vilest character.” Prostitutes of all kinds were numerous in the West, both in towns and in the mining areas, where there were relatively few women. Contrary to popular perception, most prostitutes in mid-nineteenthcentury San Francisco were white women. Those who came from the East to work in western brothels ranged from independent spirits to fallen women. Among the Chinese, there were a handful of highclass courtesans who entertained white men, such as the famous 16

The First Rescue

Atoy, who was said to be so beautiful that it cost an ounce of gold (worth sixteen dollars) just to look at her. But most Chinese prostitutes were trapped in debased conditions. Americans called both mui tsai and Chinese prostitutes “slave girls.” Not all Chinese women in San Francisco were sex workers, however. Some worked as shoe binders, servants, tailors, launderers, and gardeners. They were wives of merchants, fishermen, and workingmen. Some of the single women in Chinatown may have been living in the manner of the zishu nu (self-combed women) of the Pearl River delta, independent “sworn sisters” who lived in “girls’ houses” and worked in the textile workshops. Yet the association of Chinese women with prostitution was widespread, a perception paralleling the notion that Chinese men were “coolies.” The growing sense that Chinese were a racial menace to white society was fueled in part by the stereotypes of Chinese coolies and prostitutes. By the time of the girl’s journey to America in 1868, steamships had been introduced in transpacific travel. She would have come on one of the four wooden-hulled side-wheelers put into service the year before by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, when it won the U.S. government contract to carry mail between San Francisco and Yokohama and Hong Kong. The Pacific Mail’s wharf now had two arched entries — marked “PMSS-Co. New York and Panama” and “PMSSCo. China via Japan” — both to the “East.” The transpacific mail service inaugurated the first regularly scheduled crossings between the United States and East Asia and obviously carried much more than mail. Contemporaries noted that the steamers were “richly furnished and luxuriously fitted,” with “splendid smoking saloon[s]” on the main deck. These novelties were aimed at attracting European and American passengers, but the real business remained in cargo and third-class accommodation, or steerage. The Pacific Mail both anticipated and generated a high volume of trade and emigration from China. A writer observing the arrival of the America in November 17

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1869 wrote, “She is the largest vessel I have ever seen . . . Built with all the modern improvements in naval architecture, and also with a view to the greatest practical usefulness, she is capable of bearing a large number of classes of passengers. The travel of white persons between here and China is comparatively small, but that of Chinese greater.” If the girl had been brought to San Francisco by missionaries, she would have traveled with them in cabin class, which was expensive — upwards of $200 a ticket — although missionaries enjoyed discounted rates. But if she’d been shipped as a mui tsai to work in a brothel, she would have traveled in steerage. Although steam travel improved accommodations for cabin-class passengers on the Pacific routes, steerage conditions remained poor, well below so-called European steerage, the standard set by the transatlantic immigration trade. The area below decks was divided into large, dimly lit compartments, each arranged with two or even three narrow berths one above the other. Each compartment accommodated as many as two hundred people, along with their baggage. “Women’s steerage” separated the sexes. Ventilation and light were scant; privacy was nonexistent. Because steerage was located forward and amidships, close to the engine room and the enormous paddle wheels, noise and vibration were constant. Yet conditions in Asiatic steerage were not as bad as those aboard the coolie ships bound for South America, which carried indentured workers to plantations as replacements for African slaves. Even at age eleven, the girl may have understood that ship conditions for Chinese travelers were a reflection of their place in the colonial world order, with coolies a notch above enslaved Africans and voluntary emigrants a notch below Europeans. It is possible that the girl arrived on the Colorado, which steamed into San Francisco on August 16, 1868. The ship carried twenty thousand packets of tea and silk, along with eighty passengers in cabin class and eight hundred Chinese in steerage. The girl might have been one of the unnamed members of two parties traveling in cabin class: Reverend A. Folsom with his wife, two children, and servant; 18

The First Rescue

and Choy Chew with his “w’fe & s’vt.” But more likely she was one of thirty women and girls traveling in steerage. The Colorado had left Hong Kong in June, stopping in Yokohama and at the coaling station on Brooks Island (later renamed Midway), the first extra-continental territory claimed by the United States, in 1859, as a commercial and naval outpost. The voyage was unusually long and rough—sixtyeight days in strong headwinds. Upon arrival in San Francisco, the girl was likely met at the dock by someone from the brothel. The procurers or their representatives routinely met the women and girls who came under contract to them, took them directly to the Chinese quarter, and put them to work. The labor of a brothel mui tsai was similar to that of a domestic servant — cleaning floors, emptying slop buckets, and doing other household chores — but in addition to her arduous labor, a mui tsai had to endure involuntary confinement in a house of prostitution. Instead of going directly to a brothel, the girl may have been detained by the police when she stepped off the boat. During the 1860s, huiguan leaders attempted to thwart the “traffickers in frail humanity” by asking the police to detain all female passengers on arriving ships. Huiguan representatives would then question the women and deliver bona fide wives to their husbands, while holding the rest for return to China on the next outbound steamer. The strategy worked for a while, but by the late 1860s, brothel owners were getting their women released by petitioning the court on the women’s behalf for habeas corpus. The judges tended to discharge the women (none admitted to being brought to the United States for prostitution), although they would not release young girls. In one case, the court placed two teenage girls in the care of the Magdalen Asylum, an Irish-Catholic home for former prostitutes. In another, two “very young girls” were remanded to the sheriff ’s custody. Whether she ran away from her procurers or was placed in the care of the sheriff, a few months after her arrival the girl came to the attention of Reverend Augustus Loomis, head of the Presbyterian Chinese mission in Chinatown. She may have escaped from her 19

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keepers, perhaps while sent out on an errand, with a kind soul taking her to the “Jesus man,” or she may have been referred by the sheriff. She then became the charge of Reverend Loomis. But what was he to do with her? His wife had recently died, and Loomis had neither the time nor the facilities to care for a young girl. He may have wanted to place her in the home of a Chinese-Christian family, but that was risky, for no one could have safely harbored a runaway slave girl in Chinatown without fear of reprisal and abduction. The Magdalen Asylum was not appropriate — it was for fallen women, not young girls, and it was a Catholic home besides. So Loomis brought the girl to the Ladies’ Society home. Although the home cared only for white children, the matron could not refuse the minister and the frightened girl. This was not an ordinary case, but one that involved a rescue from “slavery.” At the home, the girl joined some eighty other children. Miss McGladery found her particularly bright and took considerable interest in raising her. She taught her not only to read but also to play the piano and to draw. Under Miss McGladery’s tutelage, young Mary became a genteel, westernized girl in a Chinese body, her former Chinese self repressed into the unconscious. The Chinese girl called Mary McGladery was one of the first Chinese “slave girls” to be rescued by the Protestant missionaries in San Francisco. Her story was not publicized, although the missionaries who met her were inspired to commence work among Chinese women and children. Prior to this time, the missionaries had focused their attention on male Chinese laborers, reaching out to them by offering English-language classes and by visiting their places of work. Women were harder to approach because they remained indoors, whether as wives of merchants and workers or as prostitutes. Mary’s arrival at the home may have prompted the president of the Ladies’ Society and other Protestant women to organize the Women’s Union Mission of San Francisco to Chinese Women and Children in 1869. The Women’s Union employed Mrs. Sing Mi, a bilingual Christian,

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The First Rescue

to translate for white missionary women during home visits and discussed plans to start a school for Chinese children. Mary also inspired the Methodist missionary Reverend Otis Gibson to take up work among Chinese women. Gibson paid a visit to the Ladies’ Society home in 1869, after Mary had been there for a few months, and saw “one or two Chinese women” who had “escaped their cruel servitude” and been brought to the home by Reverend Loomis. Although Loomis was already advocating for “some home or house of refuge” for the pitiable prostitutes, it was Gibson who created a “female department” at his mission house. His wife organized the Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast in 1870. But the missionaries did not know how to establish contact with prostitutes. It was a year before the first woman came to Gibson’s mission home — a woman who had tried to drown herself in the bay and was brought to the mission by the police. More women came as word of the refuge slowly spread. It would be another decade before rescue became a public project, with sensational raids of brothels and success narratives of rescued prostitutes converted to Christianity, taught English, trained in the domestic arts, and married off to Chinese-Christian men. The first girls and women were rescued quietly and without publicity. Anonymity allowed them to deny their pasts, bury their shame, and become new people. In Mary’s case, silence about her experiences before she arrived at the home was a prerogative she would exercise throughout her life. Mary was eighteen years old when she met Jeu Dip in the spring of 1875; he was twenty-three. If she still spoke Chinese, it was not any of the Cantonese dialects that were prevalent among the immigrants. So Jeu Dip courted the Chinese girl named Mary McGladery in English. In fact, both of them spoke English well, if not fluently, learning it as they had at a young age and through virtual immersion. They were, in other words, fast becoming Chinese Americans.

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To be Chinese American in 1875 was to be something new. No one yet used the term to suggest hybridity or assimilation. Nearly all Chinese in San Francisco were first-generation immigrants, and even the merchant families with American-born children lived and worked in the Chinese quarter and were not acculturated to American ways. Jeu Dip and Mary McGladery were different; they had come to America without Chinese parents and lived among EuroAmericans. Their ability to speak English, their manner of dress, and their everyday practice — he in the public sphere of commerce and she in the domestic arts — indicated their acculturation. At the same time, they were the only Chinese in their respective worlds and were thus marked by a double difference — different from the white people around them, different from other Chinese. When they met, each was poised on the cusp of adulthood, facing a future that was not without possibility but also was uncertain. No one really knew what it meant to be “Chinese American” in a world that separated Chinese from Americans culturally, socially, and spatially. Jeu Dip and Mary McGladery recognized in each other a kindred spirit, another rare and marginal subject. Perhaps she sat next to him atop the milk wagon while he lingered outside the home; maybe they took walks along the dusty streets in the neighborhood. They probably spoke about their dreams — he to have his own business, she perhaps to pursue music or painting. They also no doubt encouraged each other. Despite knowing that Chinese were not favored in California, they perhaps felt justified in their confidence because they knew they were different from other Chinese. But if Jeu Dip and Mary McGladery were both prototypical Chinese Americans, they had come to their new identities along different psychic routes. We can piece together enough of Mary’s background to know that her experience must have been traumatic. By contrast, Jeu Dip appears to have had a kind of cunning, a combination of smarts and good luck that enabled him to turn situations to his favor. His own repression of the past seems to have been more a

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The First Rescue

product of will than of trauma. Like Mary, he was a survivor, but he had never had to put himself entirely into the hands of another or remake himself in that person’s image. He was full of confidence and ambition. He was determined to be his own man, and he played each chance he got to the fullest.

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3.  Joseph and Mary

Six months after they met, Jeu Dip and Mary McGladery were married. Reverend Loomis, who had rescued Mary from an unspeakable fate, was happy to perform a Christian ceremony for the couple, although neither Jeu Dip nor Mary was baptized. Reverend Ira Condit, a new addition to the Presbyterian Chinese mission in the Bay Area, assisted. The wedding took place on November 16, 1875, in the First Presbyterian Church, the imposing Gothic revival structure on Stockton Street. The First Church had a white congregation, but it permitted the Presbyterian Chinese mission to use the church for special occasions. Holding the wedding there would have allowed the couple to accommodate white guests: the Sterlings, Miss McGladery, and other women from the Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society. As a newly married couple, the two had much to discuss and to decide. Not least was the matter of what they would call themselves. Jeu Dip’s adoption of the name Joseph, to accompany his bride’s name, Mary, completed the couple’s Christian identity. They took the German name Tape, coincidentally, perhaps, because “Joe Tape” echoed “Jeu Dip.”

24

Joseph and Mary

Joseph left Matthew Sterling’s employ and began his own business as a drayman. We don’t know where he got the money for his business. If he had not gambled or sent money to his family in China, he might have saved enough to buy a wagon and a horse. Or perhaps he got a loan from his huiguan or a loan, even a gift, from Sterling. Hauling goods for other people was not a glamorous job, but that didn’t matter to Joseph. He would never be a servant or a hireling again. There was also the question of where they would live. The young couple decided on the Cow Hollow (then called Black Point), west of Russian Hill. The choice reflected the couple’s middle-class aspirations and Mary’s discomfort with living in Chinatown, a place of unfamiliar dialect and, worse, disturbing memories. The Cow Hollow was even more sparsely settled than the area around Van Ness Avenue, where both had previously lived. Here again, there were very few Chinese, mostly servants in the homes of wealthy merchants. But there were Chinese vegetable plots in the area, and farther out, closer to the Presidio, there was a peach orchard owned by Chinese. The Tapes lived for a year or two on Vallejo Street, near Octavia Street. A child, a girl, was born in the summer of 1876. Mary delivered her at home, but not with a Chinese midwife, as was the custom. A white doctor and nurse attended the birth. One of the Tapes’ neighbors on Vallejo was a nurse, boarding in the home of a lawyer, and she might have been Mary’s contact for a physician-assisted birth. Such births were unusual at the time, as most people, even EuroAmericans, were still using midwives in the late nineteenth century. The Tapes’ decision to use a physician indicates their knowledge of and aspirations to practice social conventions that were both elite and modern. The Tapes named their daughter Mamie Hunter in honor of themselves: Mamie from Mary, Hunter to reflect Joseph’s favorite pastime. She would be the only Tape child with a Chinese name, Yuen Heung (Yuanxiang, or “distant fragrance”).

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Meanwhile, Joseph built a small house around the block on Green Street. The Tapes were only the third family to build on the 1700 block of Green Street. Their house was a modest one-story dwelling, much smaller than the homes of their neighbors across the street, a contractor and a printer’s widow. The Chinese drayman also built a small stable at the rear of his lot. A second child, a boy named Frank Harvey, was born in 1878. A third, Emily, arrived in 1880. Each birth was attended by a doctor and Sarah Eveleth, the printer’s widow from across the street, who had become Mary’s friend. Joseph Tape’s draying business was growing. Even with the contacts he had made while delivering milk for Sterling, however, he had difficulty getting business from white clients and instead built his business among Chinese. He handled large deliveries for wholesale Chinese merchants, hauling their imports from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s docks at the foot of First Street to the Chinese quarter, a distance of two miles. These goods included rice, dried foodstuffs, opium, tea, herbal medicines, clothing, silks, and porcelain, which the merchants sold to both Chinese and white customers. The Euro-American market for Chinese products — tea, herbals, and “fancy goods” — had grown steadily since the gold rush, especially among suddenly wealthy prospectors who wished to impress. By the early 1870s, the value of Chinese imports coming into California was more than $1.5 million a year (equal to $24 million today), which was modest compared to exports, but the import business sustained a steady trade for Chinatown merchants and the Chinese drayman who delivered their goods to them. Before long, Tape expanded his services to include expressing (carrying) immigrants’ baggage from the docks to Chinatown. This was a felicitous move, for the Pacific Mail was bringing more and more Chinese to America. By 1875, the year of Joseph and Mary’s marriage, the Pacific Mail was offering more than thirty transpacific sailings out of San Francisco a year, not only to Yokohama and Hong 26

Joseph and Mary

Kong but also to Auckland and Sydney, by way of Honolulu and Fiji. It replaced its wooden side-wheelers with iron-hulled, screwpropulsion ships, which were faster and more efficient. Each time a Pacific Mail ship docked in San Francisco, upwards of a thousand Chinese immigrants were on board. Minimal procedures mandated by state law attended the disembarkation of immigrants. A health officer boarded the ship and held those who were sick in quarantine. The rest of the immigrants had to settle accounts with the steamship company, at least confirming the guarantors of their credit tickets. The steamship company also had to pay a head tax on each passenger, demanded by the local authorities as a hedge against immigrants becoming public charges. Customs officers inspected baggage for dutiable items and for contraband, especially opium. Male and female passengers alike were patted down; their clothing was examined; and their trunks and bundles were turned upside down and inside out, “emptied of all [their] contents, and every piece smelled, tasted, handled, torn, broken, shaken, pinched, etc. etc.” Once they had cleared customs, the immigrants gathered their belongings and headed to the dock. The scene was exciting and chaotic. Baggage was strewn around the wharf area. People bustled about as they sought out relatives or representatives from their home villages and districts whom they expected to meet them. The air was filled with shouts of recognition and greeting. The immigrants’ relatives and clansmen showed them to horse-drawn wagons, which took them to the Chinese quarter, where they could find lodging, food, and information about work, perhaps railroad construction in Nevada or a laundry in San Jose. In some ways, the landing of Chinese immigrants was similar to that of Europeans in New York in the mid-nineteenth century. The latter also were met upon their arrival by relatives, friends, and representatives of emigrant aid societies, as well as by a horde of “runners,” who offered railroad tickets, baggage handling, information about boarding houses, and the like, usually at exorbitant prices. In 27

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1855, New York established Castle Garden in Battery Park as a centralized immigrant depot in order to eliminate the abuses of the runners, but the new system was quickly marred by corruption, as immigrants were again charged inflated prices for necessary services. In San Francisco, the Chinese had a tighter system, built around the native-place and surname associations, so there was less chaos and probably less cheating of the new arrivals. The huiguan offered many services, but handling baggage was not one of them. In fact, there were no Chinese teamsters in the city before Tape came on the scene. An observer wrote in 1869, “Someone must convey trunk and owner home, and who shall do it is the question. Their brother Chinamen in San Francisco keep no teams, and only a few possess them in the country, and therefore, some ‘foreigner’ must this time become ‘John’s’ servant. Watchful ‘Pat’ is on hand with his horse and wagon, and this time smiling very pleasantly, he offers to take all in one load for $2.50. Here, at least, John and Pat meet in peace.” Tape’s entry into expressing baggage was no small accomplishment. He had tapped into a complex and sophisticated network of businesses that surrounded global and domestic migration. All manner of middlemen and brokers traded in the movement of strangers — emigration agents, steamship and railroad agents, labor contractors, moneychangers, suppliers of provisions, dockside inn and tavern keepers, baggage handlers, expressmen. The requirements of long-distance migration generated a vast industry that followed migrants on their every step, by wagon and carriage, steamboat and railroad, from countryside to town to port city, across oceans and continents. The long distances also made migrants vulnerable to those who would take advantage of their foreignness, their lack of familiarity with the route to a new region or country. For the immigrant broker, working just one node in the transportation network could be lucrative, especially if one had exclusive privileges connected to a steamship or railroad company or a government agency, such as New York’s Castle Garden. Bernard “Barney” Biglin, for instance, held the only contract for transporting im28

Joseph and Mary

migrants’ baggage at Castle Garden for some twenty years and was also the sole agent for a number of railroads. In the West, there was frequent public outcry at price gouging by express companies, which often had intimate ties to the steamship and railroad companies. The Southern Pacific Railroad, for example, became the largest shareholder of Wells, Fargo & Co. when the latter added express service by rail to its famed stagecoach routes. Indeed, baggage handling and expressing was a growing business, created by foreign and domestic migration, as well as by the rise of high-class overland tourism in the late nineteenth century. (In 1873, Scribner’s reminded tourists traveling from New York to Yosemite that the railroads allowed for one hundred pounds of luggage per person.) Joseph Tape managed to carve out a tiny share of this industry. He was certainly no Wells Fargo, but by making Chinese immigration his domain, he prospered. He handled baggage for both the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the Southern Pacific Railroad, by which Chinese immigrants traveled to points in California and beyond. By 1880, he had opened an office at 704 Dupont Street, near the intersection of Sacramento, at the nexus of Chinatown. The Chinese teamster’s office was located conveniently for both immigrants and merchants. Tape shared the storefront with Chan Ning Tock Yee, an herbalist company, one of four Chinese herbalists on the block. His neighbors included a jeweler, a clothier, and several merchandisers of “fancy goods — Chinese and Japanese,” all housed in handsome brick-fronted buildings. Tape ran his business not from an alley where fish was sold or a side street lined with boot and sewing factories, but from one of the most respectable blocks in Chinatown — one that white people patronized as they made their way from downtown to the growing residential districts on Nob Hill and beyond. Using his express business as a base, Tape expanded his services. Operating on the principle that his wagons should never be idle, he got into the funerary business. He opened an undertaking firm in Chinatown, at Sacramento Street and Waverly Place, called 29

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the Wong Hai Company. Although Tape was nominally a Christian, neither he nor the members of the community seemed bothered by the fact that he directed Chinese funerals. He did not deliver eulogies, but he did organize the various ritual elements: the urns and incense, the wailing female mourners dressed in white gowns, the food offerings arranged on the canopied platform (roast pork, oranges and pears, pastries), and the paper banners with messages to the deceased that streamed from the walls and then were placed over the coffin. After the ceremony, Tape led the cortege to the cemetery at Lone Mountain (now the Inner Richmond district, but at that time beyond the western edge of the city). He also delivered foodstuffs and other items to the cemetery for use in gravesite rituals during the annual springtime Qing Ming festival. And after the three years’ requisite wait, when the deceased’s family members or huiguan removed the bones to send back to China, Joseph’s wagons attended to that, too. Thus Tape’s businesses grew along the major arteries of Chinatown society: the arrival and departure of immigrants, the importation of goods for merchants, the ceremonies of burial and return. He became a wealthy businessman and prominent member of the community. He also gained prestige among whites, for his knowledge of both Chinese and English enabled him to communicate with a range of parties — the steamship company, customs officers, immigrants, district associations, merchants. Because he was, by the late 1870s, so well positioned, the Chinese consul in San Francisco sometimes called on him to serve as an interpreter. Yet even as Joseph Tape became a well-known figure in Chinatown, he remained somewhat apart from its people and social activities. He and Mary lived in a white neighborhood and had Euro-American friends, people whom Joseph knew from the Pacific Mail and whom Mary knew from the Ladies’ Society. They adopted pastimes that were virtually unknown among the Chinese and unusual even among the white middle class. Mary pursued her painting, favoring land30

Joseph and Mary

scapes and still lifes. Joseph continued to be an avid hunter — he became known as an “excellent wing shot” — and he collected bird specimens. He kept two gun dogs, a pointer and a spaniel. The couple explored the California countryside together each summer, enjoying free passage on the Southern Pacific, which was Joseph’s privilege as an associate of the railroad company. (It is unclear whether they brought the children.) The Southern Pacific promoted tourism as a way to boost rail travel in the West, publishing Sunset magazine for that purpose. Joseph and Mary visited many of the destinations that were featured in Sunset — Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe — enjoying each other’s company while he hunted and she painted. The titles of some of Mary’s early paintings recall these excursions — Sentinel Rock (Yosemite), Cliff House, Blue Mountains, Hunting. In 1885, Mary exhibited her work at the juried exposition of the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute, a biennial show that featured many amateur women artists. She also had an interest in painting porcelain and earned a certificate in ceramic arts. Still, the Tape household was not entirely devoid of Chinese culture or customs. The vegetable men who brought produce from the city’s outskirts passed through the neighborhood and often left bok choy (baicai, Chinese cabbage) and gailan (jielan, Chinese broccoli) on the Tapes’ doorstep. These were benign threads of cultural difference that did not intrude upon the Tapes’ good relations with their white neighbors and associates. But the Tapes could not evade for long the “Chinese problem” that loomed over San Francisco’s politics in the mid- to late 1870s. This was a time when anti-Chinese sentiment grew sharply in the city, especially among Irish workingmen. The anti-coolie movement drew on the politics of the mining era, but in many ways it was a new phenomenon, a response to the displacement of a large workforce of both whites and Chinese after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Some Chinese continued in railroad work on the various regional lines in the western states, but many gravitated to the cities, especially San Francisco. That trend coincided with the 31

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arrival of unemployed whites from rural areas, as well as record numbers of new migrants from the older regions of the country — a mass migration made possible, of course, by the transcontinental railroad. That same national connection meant that San Francisco was no longer an isolated and protected market. The railroad brought manufactured goods from eastern factories to the West Coast, creating pressure on the high prices and high wages that had previously flourished in a market of scarcity. Far from delivering untold wealth and development to the Pacific Coast, the railroad brought joblessness and poverty — the long tail of the national depression of 1873– 1877. By 1876, there reportedly were fifteen thousand unemployed workingmen in San Francisco, nearly one-quarter of the workforce. In this context of economic transition and depression, a workingmen’s movement emerged that blamed Chinese “coolies,” railroad barons, and other monopolists for the dislocation of white labor. The Chinese were imagined as complicit partners of big business, their cheap labor used by the latter to drive whites out of work. It was an argument with a distinctly racial logic, in which “coolieism” was deemed inherent to Chinese culture. The Chinese would never assimilate to American culture, it was claimed, but would remain a “yellow peril” that would relentlessly drive down the standard of living of whites. The movement was led by craft unions, representing an elite stratum of labor — tradesmen and mechanics. Chinese labor never threatened these elite jobs, but the unions found in the Chinese question a means to build their political base among the mass of white workingmen. The other main force in the anti-coolie movement was the small-producer guilds (shoemakers, boot makers, cigar makers), whose handcrafts were being displaced in the market by cheaper goods that were mass-produced by wage labor back east or Chinese labor in San Francisco. The guild members were not proletarians; rather, they feared that they would lose their independence and become proletarians. 32

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The anti-coolie clubs used boycotts to put economic muscle behind their demand to expel Chinese from manufacturing jobs. These boycotts were the first to use brand identification as a tactic: consumers were urged to purchase, for example, only those cigars that came in boxes with a label declaring “Made by white labor.” The white label, then, was the ignominious precursor of the union label. Violence against Chinese became commonplace. The anti-coolie clubs held sandlot rallies at which speakers railed against the depraved and immoral coolie class, the “yellow peril” that threatened to drown white civilization. These speeches excited white crowds, prompting them to roam the streets, assaulting any Chinese they came across, breaking windows, and burning Chinese places of residence or work. Chinese “wash houses” (laundries) all over town were vulnerable to attack by gangs of “hoodlums.” Chinese were “promiscuously stoned and outraged” on the streets of San Francisco. Reverend Ira Condit of the Presbyterian Church assailed the persecution of the Chinese: “They have been stoned, spit upon, beaten, mobbed, their property destroyed, and they themselves unjustly imprisoned and murdered.” Joseph Tape was in the thick of it, experiencing anti-Chinese violence firsthand when he transported newly arrived immigrants from the docks to the Chinese quarter. Gangs of white youths routinely assaulted wagons as they traveled up Third Street, the main route into town. Their favored tactic was to set upon a wagonload of Chinese and snatch their hats. Tape and other wagon drivers switched to using Second Street, but that was arguably worse. The mobs lurked on the bridge overpass at Harrison Street and dropped rocks and clods of dirt on the passing wagons. Tape never recorded his thoughts about these incidents, but one imagines that he drove his horses hard through the fusillade while calling to his passengers to hang on, not to panic, that they would survive their initiation to the gold mountain and soon avail themselves of its riches. If the anti-Chinese movement was driven by white labor politics and its tenets acted on by hoodlums, there were other Californians 33

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who defended Chinese immigrants. These were businessmen who had no particular love for the Chinese but saw in China an important source of trade and in Chinese immigrants a solution to labor scarcity in the West. Theirs was another version of manifest destiny, a vision of America’s expansion across the Pacific and its capture of the China market. From the early 1850s on, ambitious entrepreneurs saw along the Pacific Coast the makings of a vast empire of agriculture, industry, and commerce from Alaska to the Isthmus of Panama. White labor was scarce and dear, but Chinese labor would make the vision possible. The booster James Rusling gushed, “This yellow stream . . . seems as irresistible as the tide, if not as inexhaustible . . . [but] we have room enough and to spare, for all [of China’s] surplus millions.” During the 1870s and 1880s, Euro-American merchants, manufacturers, agriculturalists, shippers, and other commercial men would testify at government hearings about the virtues of the Chinese as both workers and businessmen. William Babcock, the director of the San Francisco commercial house Parrott & Company, described Chinese factory workers: “If you will look at their hands and feet and neck you will see them as clean and neat-looking people as you ever saw in the world. They are different from the lower white classes.” Richard Sneath of the Merchants Exchange praised Chinese merchants for their honesty and reliability. “I have never had a single one of them fail to live up to his contracts,” which, he said, was more than one could say for the white race. Other businessmen disputed the charge that Chinese workers were enslaved to Chinese headmen; some went further and credited them for defending their own interests. George Roberts of the Tidewater Reclamation Company testified, “There is nothing of that kind [coolie contracts] at all. I find my Chinamen entirely independent of the [Chinese] bosses. When the bosses do not pay them they come to me. If the boss does not pay them any wages they tie him up and call on us . . . I find that each man has his account and he holds the boss accountable.” 34

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Lest they be accused of pursuing their own profits at the expense of white labor, the pro-Chinese advocates said there was no threat to whites. To the contrary, they argued that the existence of a large class of cheap, unskilled labor would elevate whites to skilled and managerial positions. They also professed to be sanguine about the possibilities of assimilation. Some pointed to the progress made in Christianizing blacks in the South. Rusling predicted that American schools and churches would “receive and absorb . . . Sambo and John” and “fashion even these into keen American citizens.” The Christian missionaries’ stance on the Chinese question dovetailed with that of the business class but also reflected their particular interests. Early on, the missionaries understood the links between transpacific commerce, immigration, and evangelical work. They knew that restrictions on Chinese immigration would fuel Chinese resentment against Euro-Americans and make conversions more difficult. Reverend William Speer advocated for Chinese immigration in terms of both political economy and Christian morality. He spoke about the potential of cotton and silk production in California and advised that cotton and slavery were not necessarily connected. In contrast to allegations that Chinese labor was unfree, Speer envisioned cheap Chinese labor as a free-labor solution to the problem of southern slavery — indeed as the “hope of the emancipation of the negro.” Yet the missionaries were no more advocates of assimilation than the exclusionists were. Assimilation was counterproductive to the missionaries’ goal of recruiting native (that is, Chinese) Christians for evangelical work in China. Reverend Otis Gibson explained that “the missionaries, who understand their business rather better than newspaper writers do, know that true religion requires a change of heart rather than a change in the cut of the hair.” He added, “A number of Chinese who are very far from being Christian have also changed their dress and discarded the cue [sic],” for reasons that were “exceedingly material and practical.” The missionaries were not cultural relativists; they believed in the superiority of Western civili35

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zation and that as long as Chinese were “heathen,” they were not civilized. But they targeted idolatry and superstition, not clothing and hairstyle. In 1877, the trade unions and anti-coolie clubs formed the Workingmen’s Party to promote their anti-monopoly, anti-coolie program. Its chief slogan was “The Chinese must go!” The party was led by Denis Kearney, a recently naturalized Irish drayman made famous by incendiary sandlot speeches. Mass meetings, street rallies, and petitions — backed by boycotts and made edgier by violence — established the movement as a force in city and state politics. In July 1877, San Francisco was engulfed by violence and arson committed by anti-coolie agitators. Mobs of twenty, fifty, or a hundred men went on nighttime rampages — often upon the adjournment of Workingmen’s Party rallies — attacking and setting on fire Chinese wash houses throughout the city. On the evening of July 23, a mob that had grown to five hundred set upon several laundries and proceeded to Dupont Street with the “evident intent of raiding the Chinese quarter.” They were beaten back by a phalanx of police, and Chinatown was boarded up tight. The next evening, the mob stoned the Methodist Chinese mission house on Washington Street, showing its animus for Reverend Otis Gibson. On the night of July 26, the rioters stormed the Pacific Mail docks, striking directly at Joseph Tape’s livelihood. A crowd of several hundred people were determined to burn the dock and destroy the steamships that carried so many Chinese to the United States. Unable to gain access to the steamship company’s property, the mob set a fire in the adjacent lumberyard, hoping it would spread to the dock. The clash between rioters and police resulted in two deaths, scores of injuries, and the destruction of the lumberyard. The summer days of rage subsided, but agitation against the Chinese continued. The following July — the year Joseph Tape’s second child and only son, Frank, was born — events again played out close to Tape’s life. The workingmen launched an attack on the city’s Je36

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suit leadership, which was erecting a new building for St. Ignatius Church and College (the future University of San Francisco) on Van Ness Avenue, on the site of Matt Sterling’s ranch. The Brickmakers Protective Union objected to the Jesuits awarding a contract for six million bricks to a company that employed Chinese workers. The Workingmen’s Party threatened to hold an “indignation rally” on the site of the future church to ensure that “there would not be a brick made by coolie labor in the edifice.” The Jesuit fathers defensively claimed that they had only sought “first-class hard brick” and were ignorant of the fact that the company hired Chinese labor. A deal was struck, by which the company discharged 150 Chinese workers and hired 200 whites, and the Jesuits agreed to pay fifty cents more per thousand for bricks made by white men. The union did not object when the company hired back 20 Chinese to pull bricks from the oven, which ran at 240 degrees Fahrenheit, a job that white men refused to do. The Workingmen’s Party continued to grow in influence. Its members won nearly forty percent of the seats at the 1880 state constitutional convention and wrote into the California Constitution a section condemning Chinese as dangerous to the welfare of the state. The party did not last, as its leaders were shortly co-opted by the Democrats, and the state’s Republicans soon also embraced the demand for Chinese exclusion, notwithstanding the party’s constituents in the China trade. Support for Chinese immigration among the industrial class waned as manufacturers became more able to replace Chinese workers with white labor, of which there was no longer a shortage, thanks to new migrants from the East brought by the transcontinental railroad. Anti-coolieism achieved bipartisan consensus, and well into the twentieth century, the despised Chinese laborer would remain a ready scapegoat who could be trotted out whenever times were hard. Throughout the 1870s, the anti-Chinese movement in California pressured the U.S. Congress to pass legislation banning Chinese im37

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migration. This took some time to accomplish. Members of Congress had no special attachment to Chinese immigrants, but in the aftermath of the Civil War, it was difficult to justify explicit racebased discrimination. Congress also subordinated the Pacific Coast’s regional political interests to American diplomatic and trade relations with China. The 1868 Burlingame Treaty between the United States and China included a provision that recognized the “mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects.” American diplomats were not invested in Chinese immigration, but they wanted friendlier relations with China. In general, however, the Burlingame Treaty left undisturbed the main provisions of the Treaties of Tianjin (1858), negotiated after the second Opium War, in which Great Britain, France, the United States, and other Western powers imposed unequal terms of trade on China, including unequal tariffs and the privilege of extraterritoriality, by which foreigners in China were not subject to Chinese law. By the late 1870s, however, the free migration provision of the Burlingame Treaty, written in the conventional treaty language of reciprocity, had become a controversial obstacle to Chinese exclusion. Chinese exclusion was now a powerful issue in national politics. The councils of organized labor embraced opposition to Chinese immigration, and both Democrats and Republicans called for restrictions on Chinese immigration in their national platforms of 1876. For the Republican Party, this was a retreat from the principles of racial equality that it, the party of Lincoln, had espoused. It was no coincidence that national bipartisan support for Chinese exclusion occurred at the same time as the famous Compromise of 1877, which settled the contested presidential election of 1876 in favor of the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, in exchange for a withdrawal of federal troops from the South. That agreement ended Reconstruction, paving the way for the disenfranchisement of black freedmen and the return of the planter class to power. And just as the end of Reconstruction reflected the demise in influence of aboli-

38

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tionism — antislavery and equal rights based on religious and moral principles — the Christian missionaries found themselves marginalized in the debate over the Chinese question. Congress passed the first Chinese exclusion law in 1875. Known as the Page Act, it sought to exclude most Chinese while specifically banning criminals, contract laborers, and “Mongolian” prostitutes from immigration. Taking aim at unfree “coolies” and “slave girls,” the Page Act did not contravene the Burlingame Treaty’s provision for “free migration.” Under the Page Act, Chinese female immigration dropped precipitously—not because all Chinese women were prostitutes, but because they were interrogated and inspected upon arrival as though they were. However, the law did not deter the immigration of Chinese men, because they were not, in fact, indentured. Under bipartisan pressure for Chinese exclusion, President Chester A. Arthur directed a revision of the Burlingame Treaty in 1881 to allow for a temporary ban on migration between the United States and China. In 1882, after some fifteen years of agitation from the Pacific Coast, Congress passed a law suspending the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. Merchants, diplomats, students, treatytraders (those authorized to trade by the Treaties of Tianjin), and ministers were not excluded. The law also barred all Chinese, regardless of class, from becoming naturalized citizens. Notwithstanding its temporary nature and the exemption of nonlaborers, the act was the first — and only — U.S. immigration law ever to name a specific group for exclusion on grounds of its alleged racial unassimilability. Proponents of transpacific commerce had once argued that the China trade required an open Chinese immigration policy. But the exclusion laws suggested a different kind of link between the two. The racism of manifest destiny was not only an assertion of white entitlement in the West. It was also a claim of American colonial ambitions across the nation’s newest frontier, the Pacific Ocean. Chinese exclusion was as much a product of overseas colonialism — the view that China was a backward, heathen nation that produced and ex-

39

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ported prostitutes and coolies — as it was a product of domestic racism and the perception of job competition from coolie labor. For Joseph and Mary, these were tense times. The anti-Chinese movement threatened Joseph’s business in the immigration trade and the Tapes’ hopes that they could assimilate into white, middle-class society. Mary, especially, had invested so much in that prospect: she had buried her past as a mui tsai, adopted the persona of a white person, and turned her back on Chinatown. English was the primary language in her household, her friends were white, and her children’s playmates were from white families in the neighborhood. If people took notice of the fact that she was Chinese, it was always to remark how Americanized she was. Mary also believed that anti-Chinese sentiment was limited to whites of the lower classes, “hooligans” and “bummers.” She knew from her own experience that not all white people were racist. She had been raised by Christians, was accepted by her neighbors, and freely circulated among the city’s amateur artists. Joseph may have endured the rocks thrown at his wagon without telling Mary much about it; he would have wanted to protect her from too much talk about racist violence and the exclusion laws. Their home would be a sanctuary. They would ride out the storm.

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S c h ool D a y s (1884–1894)

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4.  “That Chinese Girl”

Florence eveleth, the teenage daughter of Mary Tape’s friend and neighbor Sarah Eveleth, took on the Tape children as a kind of project. She had the idea to teach them reading and arithmetic, and Mary welcomed the attention Florence gave to Mamie and Frank. In 1884, when Mamie was eight and Frank was six, the Tapes discussed enrolling them in school. They undoubtedly understood that their children needed to be educated if they were to move about in Euro-American circles. But social custom and local school board policy excluded Chinese children from the public schools. There were the mission schools in Chinatown, but that was some distance from the Tapes’ home. Mary wanted to send them to the public school in the neighborhood, and Florence encouraged her. After all, both women reasoned, the Tapes were just like white people. Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act just two years before. In the meantime, anti-Chinese agitation had not abated but actually increased, as legal exclusion gave whites license to harass, lynch, and drive Chinese out of small towns throughout California. Joseph, well aware of the racial hostility against Chinese, may still have hoped that the Tapes’ acculturation would protect them from 43

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the exclusionists’ ire. And so on a warm autumn day in September 1884, Mary Tape dressed her daughter in a checkered pinafore, tied a ribbon in her braid, and took her to the Spring Valley Primary School on Union Street, a one-story wooden building with five classrooms. When they arrived, the principal, Miss Jennie Hurley, refused to admit Mamie to the school. Florence Eveleth later recalled that it was she who urged Joseph to sue the San Francisco Board of Education over Mamie’s exclusion. This might have been the case, although he did not need a white person to explain the concept of “rights” to him. Neither was he ignorant of the American legal system. Chinese had learned how to use the American courts not only in their business affairs but also to protest municipal ordinances designed to discriminate against them. Especially after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1875 that immigration was a matter of federal, not state, regulation, and frustrated that they could not use state law to prevent Chinese from immigrating to California, San Franciscans had zealously passed a spate of local laws aimed at discouraging immigration by making life for them costly and miserable. These included steep licensing fees required of Chinese-owned laundries; an ordinance prohibiting anyone from transporting on city sidewalks baskets attached to poles carried across the shoulders; a minimum “cubic air” requirement for residences, which targeted the lodgings of laborers (and focused blame on the Chinese, rather than on their white landlords, for the health hazards associated with crowded living quarters); and the “pigtail” ordinance, which called for the county jail to shear the hair of Chinese prisoners to within one inch of the scalp. This last, aimed at humiliating Chinese men — for whom the queue was a required manifestation of respect for the Manchu dynasty — was so obnoxious that the mayor vetoed it. Chinese laundrymen, vendors, and others — backed by the Chinese consulate or the Chinese Six Companies, the council of the local huiguan, challenged these laws in the courts. The most important ruling to come from these cases was Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), which 44

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declared that a municipal ordinance that imposed burdensome fees on Chinese laundry owners was unconstitutional. In Yick Wo, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protects the rights of all persons, not just citizens, to equal treatment and due process of law. Principal Hurley could not have known that her refusal of Mamie Tape would lead to a watershed case that would extend the Chinese community’s claims for equality to the realm of education. In the nineteenth century, California’s laws on common-branch schooling (public education) initially excluded “Negroes, Indians, and Mongolians” from public schools but later allowed for segregated schools. Chinese in San Francisco, however, found that even a separate school was hard to come by. From 1859 to 1871, they had only sporadic access to public education, despite ongoing appeals to the school board by both Chinese merchant leaders and white Protestant missionaries, who argued that the Chinese paid taxes and that their exclusion from tax-supported schools was a form of taxation without representation. The first school for Chinese in San Francisco, started in 1853, was not a public school but one funded by Chinese merchant leaders and white Christian missionaries. English classes for some twenty Chinese boys and men were held in a small room on Sacramento Street. Contemporaries understood the link between language acquisition and assimilation. An observer wrote that the students, fifteen to forty years of age, reportedly made “rapid progress” and showed “eagerness to become acquainted with our language, manners and customs. We venture to assert that if the Chinese can be induced to settle permanently among us, that in time our country will be greatly benefited by their accession.” For the missionaries, though, English-language instruction was, as we’ve seen, not so much aimed at assimilation as at conversion and sprang from the hope of recruiting native Christians for missionary work in China. The Presbyterian minister William Speer, who had spent four years in China before opening his Chinese mission in San 45

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Francisco in 1853, wrote, “I have considered it an important branch of my missionary work to impart a knowledge of the English language, literature and science .  .  . and such things as would best illustrate our later advancement and tend to disabuse their minds of idolatrous fears and superstitions.” Indeed, in the late nineteenth century, teaching English was the central missionary strategy in dealing with Chinese in America. According to Reverend Ira Condit, Chinese were “extremely suspicious” of Christians and “had no desire to learn the religion of those who had treated them so unjustly and cruelly .  .  . [But] as the Chinese were anxious to learn English, the plan of Chinese Sunday Schools was adopted.” Guy Maine, who directed the Episcopal Church’s “Chinese guild” in New York, similarly described English-language instruction as a “practical method” of uplift “by first making intelligent men then Christians.” The Congregationalists bluntly advocated “baiting the Gospel hook with the English alphabet.” Nearly all the Protestant mission-sponsored schools and classes were for adults and were held during the evening and on Sunday. Only in San Francisco, where there was a relatively larger and more settled community, did the missionaries operate day schools for children. Speer, who was dedicated both to religious conversion and to opposing race discrimination against the Chinese community, directly appealed to the school board to provide instruction for Chinese, arguing that, “as taxpayers, they have a civil right to school privileges.” With Speer’s prodding, the school board in 1857 unanimously agreed that “Asiatics, and particularly the Chinese youths, should have every opportunity to acquire a knowledge of the English language.” School board member E.  B. Goddard said that the board’s aim should be to “Americanize the Chinamen,” who paid more taxes and were better behaved than the “low class of American citizens.” The board voted not to admit Chinese to the evening school, however, on the grounds that their presence would excite white students. Instead, the board provided limited resources for a separate Chi46

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nese school. Beginning in 1859, it paid for a teacher for a single class for Chinese pupils, which was held in the “gloomy basement” of Speer’s Presbyterian mission in Chinatown. Bible reading was the principal form of instruction. The superintendent of schools, James Denman, was pessimistic about the project. “The prejudices of caste and religious idolatry are so indelibly stamped upon their character and existence,” he said, that teaching them was “almost hopeless.” Yet the teacher, Benjamin Lanctot, soon proudly reported that the “little Celestials were very apt at learning. The younger ones knew nothing whatever of the English language on entering, but they picked it up with marvelous facility. Writing they learned with even greater ease than Yankees.” Denman’s successor as superintendent of schools, George Tait, acknowledged in 1864 the school’s “good results,” which he considered all the more remarkable in light of the fact that “missionaries [in China] after a life-long devotion to the spiritual regeneration of this unprogressive and unimpressible race, show little fruit of their exhaustive labor.” The reason for the school’s success was no mystery. As the missionaries understood, Chinese in America were motivated to learn English so that they could get along in the new society. The Chinese pupils included some children but consisted mostly of teenagers and young adults — sons of merchants who were sent to acquire the knowledge they needed to “transact business with [white Americans] and . . . to act as clerks and interpreters for their countrymen.” Observers noted that these older students attended school only long enough to acquire a working knowledge of English — as Speer conceded, “only a few necessary words and sentences, to assist in mining, traveling, bartering, marketing, and procuring various kinds of employment.” Some school board members believed the Chinese pupils’ motives were opportunistic, even though the city sponsored an evening school for adult European immigrants to meet a similar demand. Other critics opposed the “long prayers and reading the Bible” in the Chinatown school and argued that “so long as the school was sup47

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ported by the public moneys, it was wrong to allow it to be construed as a religious school.” Nevertheless, the arrangement was the least expensive for the school board — that is, next to having no school at all. Over the years, the board frequently closed the school, citing low attendance or lack of funds, only to reopen weeks or months later under pressure from the community. At times, the board authorized only evening classes, which catered to adult learners. The sporadic nature of public schooling during the 1860s and 1870s reflected the indeterminate status of Chinese in San Francisco at the time. As racial animus against them spread, so did opposition to their admission to public schools. Racist thinking blamed the Chinese for being unassimilable, but that same thinking opposed education precisely because it threatened to assimilate and hence permanently establish the Chinese population. The exclusionists believed that keeping out new immigrants would be for naught if a permanent settlement were allowed to become established and accrete by natural population growth. After all, the exclusionists’ slogan was “The Chinese must go!” Exclusion and expulsion were their aims, not segregation, the policy for blacks and American Indians. San Francisco’s Daily Morning Call summed up the danger of public schooling: “The [Chinese] race is striving to take root in the soil. They desire or profess to desire, to mingle their youth with ours, with a view, doubtless, to more thorough assimilation in the body politic.” The San Francisco Board of Supervisors echoed that view. “Guard well the doors of our public schools, that [the Chinese] do not enter,” it resolved. “For however hard and stern such a doctrine may sound, it is but the enforcement of the law of self-preservation . . . by which we hope presently to prove that we can justly and practically defend ourselves from this invasion of Mongolian barbarism.” Public education was thus one of the first casualties of the antiChinese movement. In 1871, the San Francisco school board terminated support for the Chinatown school, upon the recommendation of James Denman, who had by then resumed the position of school superintendent. Denman found sanction in California’s 1870 school 48

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law, which required districts to operate separate schools for “African and Indian children” but omitted any mention of Chinese or “Mongolians.” Denman concluded that San Francisco no longer had an “obligation to continue support” of the schooling of Chinese. The closing seems particularly ill-timed, for just then there was a growing population of school-age Chinese children in California. Throughout the 1870s and early 1880s, three thousand Chinese children lived in the state, two-thirds of them in San Francisco. By 1885, there were an estimated one thousand school-age Chinese children in San Francisco, most of them born in the United States. Education was no longer the concern only of young adults in mercantile and other businesses. Yet only a few hundred Chinese children attended the missionary schools each year. Throughout the 1870s, the San Francisco school board ignored or dismissed individual petitions by Chinese for admission to public schools. In 1878, the state legislature similarly disregarded a petition from thirteen hundred Chinese residents of San Francisco, Sacramento, and other towns on behalf of the three thousand Chinese children residing in California. “Chinese merchants and laborers,” the petitioners averred, “being under the protection of your Constitution and laws, are entitled to the same rights and privileges accorded to foreigners generally.” They spoke out against excluding Chinese from the benefit of public education while Chinese paid more than $40,000 a year in taxes to the state, saying, “This we hold to be unjust.” In 1880, California passed a new school law that entitled all children in the state to public education. But San Francisco’s school board continued to ignore Chinese requests for schooling — until Joseph Tape took his daughter’s case to court. Who was Jennie Hurley, this woman who rebuffed Mamie Tape at the schoolhouse door? She, too, was an immigrant, having been born in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1844 and come to San Francisco in the 1850s with her parents, Irish immigrants. Theirs was also a double 49

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migration, like that of the Scots dairy farmer Matthew Sterling, who had come to New York before settling in California. Jennie’s father, Patrick, prospered in San Francisco as a carpenter. Jennie became a teacher, as did her younger sister, Mary. Like most other career schoolteachers, the Hurley sisters never married, and lived at home with their parents and, after their parents died, with each other. Jennie Hurley rose quickly in the school system, having been elected to the position of principal of the Spring Valley Primary School in 1867 at the age of twenty-seven. Her professional attainment no doubt required political as well as administrative skills. That meant she got along with the school superintendent, Andrew Jackson Moulder. Moulder was a die-hard racist who had long vowed “to resist, to defeat, and to prohibit” the admission of “Africans, Chinese, and Diggers [Miwok Indians] into our white schools.” He, too, was a migrant — he had come to California from the slave South. A wealthy lawyer, he was active in state politics and made education his specialty. In his former position as state superintendent of schools in the 1850s and 1860s, and then as San Francisco’s superintendent, Moulder successfully lobbied for laws that not only segregated the public schools but also imposed sanctions against local school districts and officials who violated the laws. Joseph Tape appealed to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco to help open the schoolhouse door for his daughter. The consulate had been established in 1878, the same year the Chinese government established an embassy in Washington, D.C. The stationing of Chinese government representatives in California indicated the imperial Qing government’s recognition that despite its official ban on emigration, there was a community of Chinese in America and that they suffered in a hostile environment. The emigrants themselves had long called for their government to protect them. Tape was known at the consulate because he occasionally did interpreting work for it. He knew that the consul backed, even initiated, lawsuits against discriminatory laws and practices. He asked the consul for help. The consular official who intervened in the Tape school affair was 50

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the vice consul, Frederick A. Bee, a white attorney. Bee had represented Chinese miners in El Dorado County as early as 1855 and the Chinese Six Companies in the 1870s. He was part of a sizable cohort of white lawyers, many of them prominent legal figures in San Francisco, who represented Chinese individuals and organizations in immigration and civil rights matters. After Joseph’s visit, Bee immediately lodged a protest with the school board, claiming the exclusion was “inconsistent with the treaties, Constitution and laws of the United States, especially so in this case as the child is native-born.” A majority of the board opposed admitting Chinese to the schools and believed the board’s action, which had been endorsed by the state superintendent of education, was lawful. The board resolved not only to uphold the exclusion but also to “absolutely prohibit . . . each and every principal of each and every public school” from admitting any “Mongolian” child, under pain of dismissal. The resolution passed by a vote of eight to three. Board member Isidor Danielwitz was ready for whatever legal battle might ensue, declaring that he would rather go to jail than admit Chinese to the schools. Board member Charles Cleveland “objected to the whole thing,” saying it was “wrong all through in principle.” He favored the schooling of all American-born children, “whether from Africa, Portugal, Great Britain, Ireland, or China.” But Cleveland, a physician known for “eccentricities of intelligence,” was outvoted, and the battle lines were drawn. Joseph Tape retained a lawyer, William Gibson, to sue on Mamie’s behalf. Gibson was the son of the Methodist missionary and Chinese advocate Otis Gibson. He had been born in China and was a graduate of Harvard Law School. He was counsel for the Chinese missions in San Francisco, attending to the disposition of their properties and to their investments, as well as providing legal assistance for the rescue of “slave girls.” Tape v. Hurley was the biggest case of his career. The case had a high profile in the local press. By late 1884, the San Francisco Evening Bulletin reported updates to the Tape story under the simple headline “That Chinese Girl.” Chinese and white San 51

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Franciscans alike understood what was at stake: would Americanborn Chinese be accorded the status of citizens and all of citizenship’s privileges and benefits? Despite widespread hostility toward Chinese immigration, some Euro-Americans, such as Charles Cleveland, believed that all children born in the United States were, like it or not, entitled to the rights of citizenship. As Cleveland said, “If Chinese may sometime be allowed to vote, they certainly ought to be educated.” Attorney Gibson argued that excluding Mamie Tape violated both California’s 1880 school law and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of equal protection and due process to all persons. Joseph Tape’s own statement to the court differed somewhat in emphasis by stressing his and his family’s assimilated character — that is, their lack of Chinese-ness. Arguing in this manner, the Tapes appeared to be a kind of exception that proved the rule. Joseph’s affidavit (which was most likely written by Gibson) stated, “Fifteen years ago I discarded my queue, and have never since worn one. My wife and I are now, and for fifteen years past, have been clothed in the American costume. The said Mamie Tape is now and always has been dressed in the American costume, in the manner common and usual for a child of her years.” In addition, Tape said, “the said Mamie Tape is not a child of filthy or vicious habits, or suffering from any contagious or infectious disease,” a reference to the only grounds in state law for excluding a child from public school, which exclusionists routinely cited to justify barring Chinese. A studio photograph of the family taken during the time of the lawsuit underscored the Tapes’ status as a bourgeois American family. We don’t know if the photograph was submitted into evidence, but it reads as a brief in which the Tapes declare themselves, by their demeanor and attire, to be respectable and assimilated. Mamie stands at the center of the portrait: her face has a steely look, and she holds her brother’s hand, showing the family’s unity (and perhaps also steadying her nerves).

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The Tapes’ two-pronged legal strategy, which made a straightforward civil rights claim on the one hand, and a claim based on mistaken racial identity on the other, was not uncommon. When a train conductor ejected Homer Plessy from a white passenger car in Louisiana in 1892, Plessy argued both that the law requiring separate cars for whites and blacks violated the Fourteenth Amendment and that he personally should not have been ejected because he looked like a white person, having only one-eighth African blood. The Supreme Court disagreed and sanctified the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson. The dual approach was again evident in the 1910s when two Asians, Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Singh Thind, sued for their right to naturalized citizenship, which the law reserved for “white persons” and “persons of African nativity or descent.” Ozawa stressed his assimilated character; Thind argued that South Asians were Aryans and therefore Caucasian. They both lost. As late as the mid-twentieth century, civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) chose the most assimilated blacks and Japanese Americans to bring civil rights test cases. It was thought that one made the strongest case to the courts by emphasizing one’s respectability. But the strategy was not without cost, for it conceded that the unassimilated, laboring classes of nonwhites were, in fact, the undesirable racial inferiors of EuroAmericans. Assimilated middle-class African Americans and Chinese Americans themselves often wrestled with the conflicting feelings of racial pride and shame. These dynamics led them, in turns, to advocate for their people, to seek to uplift them, and to distance themselves from them. The Tapes fit well this model of middle-class ambivalence. In January 1885, Mamie Tape won her case at trial. Superior Court judge James Maguire’s ruling was comprehensive, citing the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, state law, and the fact that Chinese paid school taxes. The decision also held

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that the provision for excluding children of “filthy and vicious habits” was meant to apply to individual cases, not racial groups. One school board member immediately resigned in protest, and the board vowed to resist the court’s decision. But on March 3, the California Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. Anticipating this eventuality, the school board had rushed through the California legislature an act authorizing separate schools for “children of Chinese and Mongolian descent.” If the courts were going to force the City of San Francisco to educate Chinese children, it would comply, but in segregated schools. In effect, the school board had been forced to elevate Chinese to the same status as African Americans and American Indians. This may seem a dubious promotion, given the standing of those two groups at the time, but it was an important acknowledgment that Chinese had, despite the exclusion laws, settled in the United States. In late March 1885, the board announced that it would open the Chinese Primary School on the edge of Chinatown, at the corner of Jackson and Stone streets, near Powell Street. Central Chinatown was a crowded and still mostly male-dominated place that the board may have considered too unwholesome. The school occupied the second and third floors above a grocery store, a space that had formerly been occupied by the Morrow Guard, a citizens militia. Miss Rose Thayer was hired to be the teacher. But the Tapes did not want to send their children to a school in Chinatown. They were already living a life apart from Chinese people; they wanted their children to be raised and educated as Americans, not as Chinese. On April 7, before the Chinese Primary School opened its doors, the Tapes sent Mamie back to Spring Valley. The eight-year-old arrived at the school with her parents and two lawyers. Miss Hurley, however, was prepared. Rather than flout the law directly, she threw bureaucratic obstacles in the girl’s path, claiming first that the child did not have the proper vaccination papers, and second that the class, with more than sixty pupils, was overenrolled. She offered to put Mamie on a waiting list. At a meeting of the school 54

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board that evening, Superintendent Moulder repeated his intention to keep Mamie out of Spring Valley and urged the board to expedite the opening of the Chinese school. Incensed, Mary Tape wrote a long letter to the Daily Alta. “Dear sirs,” she wrote. “Will you please to tell me! Is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn’t God make us all!!! . . . Do you call that a Christian act to compell my little children to go so far to a school that is made in purpose for them.” She assailed those adults who “persecuted” an eight-year-old child just because “she is of Chinese descend.” At the same time, Mary echoed the argument made by her husband’s court affidavit, which read “Chinese” as culture, not ancestry. By this standard, the Tapes were not really Chinese: My children don’t dress like the other Chinese. They look just as phunny amongst them as the Chinese dress in Chinese look amongst you Caucasians . . . Her playmates is all Caucasians ever since she could toddle around. If she is good enough to play with them! Then is she not good enough to be in the same room and studie with them? You had better come and see for yourselves. See if the Tape’s is not same as other Caucasians, except in features. It seems no matter how a Chinese may live and dress so long as you know they Chinese. Then they are hated as one. There is not any right or justice for them.

Mary’s identification with white people was not simply a matter of legal strategy. As a girl, she had run away from Chinatown, found refuge among white people, and created for herself a new persona, the “same as other Caucasians, except in features.” Mary’s white identity was not an elitist or ambitious rejection of the Chinese community; it was imposed on her by the circumstances of her own experience. Her knowledge of what it meant to be “Chinese” — the most personal of that knowledge buried deep below what she knew intellectually of racial discrimination — accounts for the angry tone of her letter. Ironically, it was not discrimination by white peo55

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ple against Chinese, but the cruel treatment by Chinese against their own people, that underwrote her estrangement from them. At the end of her letter, Mary swore: “Mamie Tape will never attend any of the Chinese schools of your making! Never!!! I will let the world see Sir What justice there is When it is govern by the Race prejudice men! just because she is of the Chinese decend . . . I guess she is more of a American then a good many of you that is going to prewent her being Educated.” In fact, Mamie and Frank were the first students to arrive at the Chinese Primary School when it opened on April 13, five days after Mary wrote her letter. A reporter from the Evening Bulletin was there for the occasion. Like most white Americans, he was obsessed with the peculiarity of Chinese hairstyles and dress. He described the Tape children’s appearance in detail, saying that both “are dressed neatly in clothes like those worn of American children . . . Frank has no queue, his black hair being allowed to grow as it was meant to do, and neatly trimmed. Mamie has the traditional braid of American children hanging down her back and tied with a ribbon.” The reporter described four other children who arrived at the school as “bright Chinese lads, two twelve years of age and two ten, [who] politely doffed their hats when Miss Thayer appeared.” The reporter noted that these boys, though in “queues and distinctive style of [Chinese] clothing,” had all been to mission schools. Their parents — Lee Tong Hay, Tam Hing, Jee Gam, and Tong Gin — wanted them to exercise their newly acquired right to attend public school, which they understood was part of their rights as citizens. The boys from the mission school could read and write English, were proficient in arithmetic, and complied with Miss Thayer’s method of instruction. According to the reporter, they “conducted themselves as well as any other children would do.” The Tape children, on the other hand, having never been to school, were “somewhat restless” in the classroom, despite their evident brightness and fluency in English. When it came time for recess, the four Chinatown boys “had no trouble ‘marching out’ in a line .  .  . Only Frank and 56

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Mamie could not see the use of going as far as the door in line, and came trooping back to have a frolic.” Still, a reporter from the Daily Alta conceded that Mamie was perhaps the “most intelligent member of the class.” For several years, the Tape children commuted to Chinatown, riding to school each morning in one of their father’s horse-drawn wagons. Florence Eveleth continued to be a presence in the Tapes’ home, tutoring Mamie and Frank and playing with little Emily, who was two years younger than Frank. In October 1890, a fourth child was born, Gertrude Ella. But things on Green Street were changing. The Tapes’ side of the block had become built up, and the family’s house now looked like an odd insertion in the middle of a row of new two-story homes with high front stoops and bay windows — vernacular Victorian housing that was not grand but certainly grander than the Tapes’ little house. The more white families there were in the neighborhood and the tenser the racial climate in the city became, the more conspicuous were the Tapes. In 1890, Florence married and moved away. Frank was now twelve years old and fought with the Irish boys in the neighborhood. Emily was going to school, so there were now three children to shuttle back and forth every day, plus the baby at home. Mary and Joseph also began to worry that their children’s marriage prospects would be dim unless they met other Chinese, for both Chinese and whites frowned on mixed marriages. With all these things in mind, they decided it was time to go.

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5.  Chinatown’s Frontier

The tapes’ new home was a simply constructed wood-frame cottage with a small garden at the rear of 927 Washington Street, where the hill steeply rises just before Powell Street, not actually in the Chinese quarter but at its western edge. This was an area that during the late 1880s had begun to turn, as the urban demographers would say, as Chinatown’s growing population began to push beyond Stockton Street, which had been an informal yet distinct boundary between Chinatown and lower Nob Hill. Mary likely continued to refuse to live in the central Chinese quarter, which ran below Stockton down to Portsmouth Square. Chinatown was jam-packed with tenements, lodging houses, stores, temples, and restaurants; cigar, shoe, and clothing factories; fishmongers and butcher shops; gambling halls, brothels, and theaters. During the 1870s and 1880s, as the Chinese population increased, the community had built inward, not outward, giving Chinatown its dense quality. Tenements and cottages went up in the courtyards behind the older buildings, and lanes and alleys were carved out of the original town plat to accommodate yet more buildings. Certain alleys and streets became known for certain businesses: Washington 58

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Place, an alley running between Jackson and Washington streets, was called Fish Alley because of the numerous fishmongers there. Bartlett Place, running between Jackson and Pacific Avenue, was known for its many brothels. If Mary did not think Chinatown was a place to raise children, that is not to say there were no families there. Although the general custom was for men to emigrate and leave their wives and children in China, in the homes of the emigrants’ parents, not a few men brought their wives to America. They tended to be merchants, who could better afford to sustain a family in California, but before the exclusion era, some laborers also brought their wives. Many families lived in rear buildings and alleys, reflecting their later arrival in the community, and they often clustered in the same buildings. Although Chinese were as aware of social distinctions as others, the women in these buildings socialized across class lines. Some of their children went to the mission schools, and others went to the public school, but they all knew one another. In contrast to the cheek-by-jowl character of Chinatown, the area between Stockton and Powell streets where the Tapes now lived was much less densely populated and more ethnically mixed. Within a block of their home, there were a few Chinese-operated businesses— shirt factories and a stable where Joseph probably kept his horses and wagons — and a few tenements occupied by Chinese. Several of the residents were families, suggesting that people with children were beginning to move out of central Chinatown to areas closer to the Chinese Primary School and where larger flats were available. But most of the residents in the Tapes’ new neighborhood were not Chinese. They were white families, headed by mechanics, clerks, and small business owners, living in single-family homes; single male workers (mostly European immigrants) living in a few lodging houses; and white Americans, Europeans, Mexicans, and African Americans renting flats and tenement apartments. Only a minority of households comprised conventional nuclear families. In the house directly in front of the Tapes’ home lived two older 59

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Euro-American sisters with an adopted nine-year-old boy. Two households with mixed Anglo-Mexican families lived in the next building. Down the street, the widow Lucy Armstrong ran a lodging house for Chinese and Japanese, including some married couples but mostly solo men: a newspaper editor, merchants, store managers and clerks, a photographer. Across the street from the Tapes lived a Chinese cook named Woo Liu and his wife, Mary, an Irish woman, along with their young children, Binny and Annie. Bridget Dowling, who boarded three Irish and Australian widows, all domestic workers, also lived there. Charles Middleton, an Irish American janitor, lived up the street with his wife, his wife’s sister, and five male lodgers — a German tailor and four black men (a barber and three janitors). The Protestant mission churches were close at hand. The Chinese Presbyterian Church was around the corner on Stockton Street. A block down from the church was the YMCA. Several ChineseChristian families lived just down the street from the Tapes at number 920, including Reverend Nam Art Soohoo, one of the first Chinese ordained by the Presbyterian Church. And at 916 Washington was Reverend Otis Gibson’s Methodist mission. The mission housed several classrooms and a “female department,” which the Chinese girl named Mary McGladery had inspired Gibson to found some twenty years earlier. A dozen or more young women lived at the mission: some were servant girls who had run away from their employers; others were former prostitutes who had been saved (or bought from their brothels) by lovers who desired marriage. A woman in such a situation, with neither employment nor kinfolk to support her, was allowed to live at the mission for as long as a year, with the man paying her board at five dollars a month. The arrangement allowed the mission to be confident of the suitor’s good intentions while the woman prepared to be a Christian wife. Three “native” — that is, Chinese — preachers also lived at the mission house. They worked at a small chapel in the heart of the Chi-

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nese quarter, on Jackson Street near Kearny, called the Gospel Temple, or Foke Yam Tong (fuyiantang; literally, “good news hall”). Reverend Gibson opened the chapel because the “mission house [was] too far removed from Chinatown proper to attract crowds of indifferent, careless heathen from their lazy rambles on the street.” Gibson found the method of proselytizing used by the Presbyterian missionaries — visiting shops and factories — too embarrassing. No doubt this was in part because Gibson, who had worked in Fuzhou for ten years, spoke Cantonese poorly. (Reverend Loomis also was not able to master Cantonese, but he went everywhere with a translator, the church elder Chin Shing Cheang.) The native preachers at the Gospel Temple preached in Cantonese — probably in the Siyi dialect — to anyone who ventured in. The strategy was fairly successful, as the Methodists baptized some seventy-four Chinese during the 1870s. Mary undoubtedly felt that she and her daughters were secure in this environment, with its high concentration of white people, Christians, and other people of the artisan and middling classes. In this polyglot setting, the Americanized Chinese family would not have seemed so anomalous: they were in-between people living among other in-between people. The girls played by the house, under their mother’s watchful eye, but Frank claimed Chinatown’s streets as his own and quickly earned a reputation as a “tough kid.” The children went to the Chinese Primary School a block away and pursued private musical instruction: Mamie played the piano, Emily the violin, and Frank the French horn. The older girls also learned embroidery and taxidermy, to preserve their father’s bird specimens, which were displayed alongside books (Shakespeare, the Encyclopaedia Britannica) and seashells. The children made friends in the neighborhood. Little Gertrude, born the year that her family moved to Washington Street, played with a black child, Mabel Marriot, the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant and an African American, who lived half a block away on

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Stone Street, between the Methodist mission and the school. Gertrude, who did not speak Chinese, probably had difficulty playing with Chinese-speaking children. The older children made Chinese friends in school, but they also played with children who were not Chinese, including some Euro-Americans. By 1890, the Chinese Primary School had more than one hundred students. Nearly all were boys; at one point, there were two girls and then, after one dropped out, just Mamie. In this respect, the Tapes were clearly different from other Chinese, who did not see any value in educating their daughters. Mamie was not as shy as the Chinatown girls. She and Frank probably did look “phunny” next to the other children in Chinese attire, and they likely took some abuse for their white acculturation and privilege. But they were also becoming Sinicized. They had to learn Cantonese, the language the other schoolchildren used among themselves. Just as their parents had learned English to get along in the white households of their youth, Mamie and Frank learned Chinese to survive in Chinatown’s schoolyard. At least on one occasion, the Tape children wore Chinese-style garments to school. They appear this way in a group photograph of the Chinese Primary School’s pupils, taken around 1890 by Isaiah Taber, one of San Francisco’s leading studio photographers, who frequently photographed Chinatown scenes during the 1880s and 1890s. Mamie is the only girl in the photograph. Frank is seated next to her, his forelock tucked under the edge of his cap. In contrast to the plain dress of most of the other children, Mamie and Frank are wearing stylish silk garments. Mamie’s dress is that of the current fashion in Shanghai, suggesting not only the family’s wealth but also its ongoing social and cultural knowledge of China. Most likely Mamie and Frank did not wear these clothes to school every day but donned them especially for the occasion. But still, we want to know, did they like wearing Chinese clothes because it made them more like their friends? Or did they do so under pressure from the teacher, the photographer, or even their parents? 62

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Taber carefully composed the sitting, positioning the betterdressed children in the front two rows, with Mamie at the center. But the children in plainer dress, who are slightly more numerous, dominate the photograph. Taber achieved this effect by placing a very tall boy at the center of the back row; his height and his simple dark-­ colored gown, accentuated by the two boys flanking him in white, command our attention. It seems that Taber wanted the EuroAmerican viewer to see a group of pupils of the laboring class (in plain dress), even though most of them, regardless of their dress, were most likely the children of merchant families. Mary was well aware of photography’s power to signify. In the late 1880s, she made photography part of her artistic repertoire. Although she continued painting on canvas and porcelain, photography increasingly appealed to her. She was as interested in mastering the technical dimensions of photography as she was in the aesthetic potential of the medium. In fact, Mary was in the thick of a popular movement of the 1880s and 1890s, when the hand-held camera and commercially produced dry plates made photography more broadly accessible. Amateur photography, especially among women, exploded after George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera in 1888. The Kodak held a twenty-foot roll of photographic paper, enough for one hundred images. Mary was not interested in the Kodak; she was not impressed with the idea of sending an entire roll (the whole camera, in fact) back to the company for development. She was fascinated with the science and craft of photography as a modern art form, and she approached its practice more as a creator than as a consumer. In the late 1880s, she began working with Wong Hong Tai, a retired watchmaker who lived on Washington Street and was also an amateur inventor, photographer, and telegraphist. Wong taught Mary telegraphy, but their principal collaboration was in photography. Wong built cameras with increasingly fast shutter speeds, while Mary made dry plates with faster exposures. Mary’s challenge was to refine the 63

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sensitivity of the plates to accompany Wong’s camera improvements. Starting with old daguerreotype six-second plates, the pair experimented with timings up to one-twenty-fifth of a second and one-fiftieth of a second. They declared that they would not be satisfied until they could photograph “trotters in motion and birds in their flight.” When the California Camera Club was formed in 1891, Mary became a member. The club was one of hundreds sprouting up across the country. Open to professionals and amateurs, men and women, these clubs marked a democratic turn in photography as an artistic practice, albeit one largely limited to the upper middle class on account of the expense and leisure time involved. The California club was wildly successful; two thousand people subscribed to its publication, Pacific Coast Photographer, before the first issue came out. Mary’s membership entitled her to the use of the club’s darkroom facilities, attendance at its workshops and lectures, and participation in its annual shows. She continued making dry plates and prints and also learned how to make magic lantern slides — glass slides to which a positive image was transferred and then projected onto a blank wall or screen. Her abilities in this regard were unusual for an amateur, and the “Americanized Chinese lady” earned a reputation in club circles as a “slide expert.” Although Mary took hundreds of photographs, only a few survive. Some of these were taken on the Tapes’ summer outings to the California countryside (a redwood forest, a country lane). Others featured her children. Published accounts that mention Mary’s photography refer to landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and street scenes. What kind of street scenes did Mary photograph? Did she roam the streets of Chinatown with her camera, like Arnold Genthe, the German immigrant widely known for his photographs of Chinatown people and scenes? In fact, between 1890 and 1906, not just Genthe but hundreds of San Francisco photographers took to the streets with their cameras, and Chinatown was one of their most favored locations. Chinatown offered middle-class white photographers exotic streetscapes and subjects — “others” — against which 64

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they could define their budding artistic sensibilities. Fishmongers, butchers, cobblers, New Year’s parades, men with queues, and children were popular subjects. Many photos were composed according to conventions inherited from studio photography, but Genthe and others exhorted photographers to find authenticity in anonymity and spontaneity. In either case, the white, middle-class amateurs who descended upon Chinatown in the 1890s must have been as curious to Chinatown’s residents as the residents were to them. A Chinese “would notice you no more than a post — unless you pulled a camera on him,” said Genthe. How did Mary Tape, an in-between person, fit in? Her identity as a photographer and as Caucasian, “except in features,” as well as the social distance her girlhood estrangement from Chinatown produced, might have allowed her to photograph Chinatown street scenes much like a Euro-American photographer. Yet it may have been awkward for her to treat as subjects — as “others” — people who had the same “features” as she did or, more to the point, people she might have actually known: acquaintances of her husband, the vegetable merchant, the butcher. Aside from photographs of her children in front of the Tapes’ home, there is only one extant photograph that she took on the street — that is, in public. The photograph shows Gertrude and an unidentified Chinese girl walking on Clay Avenue, a small side street. They are dressed in their Sunday finest, perhaps coming from the nearby church or Sunday school, but they do not seem to be walking together. The sense of bodily distance is emphasized by the difference in their dress — Gertrude’s Victorian, the other girl’s Manchu — as well as the difference in their size. Gertrude is dainty and composed, carrying a bouquet of irises in one hand; the other girl, who is much larger, appears fat and clumsy next to Gertrude. In addition, Gertrude’s eyes meet the camera’s gaze, while the other girl’s eyes are averted downward, making her seem out of place and Gertrude the one who belongs. The image contrasts with contemporary photographs of Chinatown, which rarely include European figures; 65

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when they do, the Europeans are posited as outsiders in the Chinese world. The Tape family moved to an apartment at 2 Clay Avenue in 1893 or 1894, to a building that was newer than the rear cottage on Washington Street, perhaps newly built. The house next door comprised five Chinese households, four of which had children. The last building on the block housed Reverend John Litton. Clay Avenue was a less diverse and quieter environment than Washington Street. Joseph hired an amah (servant) to help with the household, a sign of the family’s status and prosperity. The amah cooked, taught Mamie and Frank to speak Cantonese, and cared for Mary, whose health had grown chronically poor. Evidence suggests that she had diabetes. Before insulin was discovered in 1921, there was no treatment for the disease. Chinese traditional medicine called it xiao-ke, or “wasting and thirsting disease,” which was understood to be an excess of internal heat (yang) caused by an improper diet, emotional disturbances, and a deficiency of yin. Joseph or the amah may have treated Mary with Chinese herbal medicines, such as Korean ginseng and powdered balsam pear, or “cooling” foods, such as spinach, pumpkin, and tofu, to bolster her yin. Mary, who had a white doctor deliver her children, may have resisted a regimen of spinach reduction — that is, spinach leaves boiled down to a thick, bitter potion. But Western medicine offered only other dietary restrictions, such as the elimination of breads and sweets, and the use of opiates. Difficulties other than Mary’s ill health followed the Tapes to Clay Avenue. Shortly after the family moved, the school board announced that the Chinese Primary School would be relocated to a larger space to accommodate its growing enrollment. But the school board resented the increased cost of running the school, so it came up with a plan to move the school into the basement of the former Commercial High School, on Powell Street between Clay and Sacramento streets. The fact that the high school had been closed and condemned as un66

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safe did not seem to bother the board, which calculated that the new site would save the city $1,000 a year. The Chinese Primary School was already run on a meager budget — by one account, the expense of the existing school was $2,800 a year, far less than the $8,000 the board received annually from the state to educate the city’s Chinese students. But the plan faced heated opposition from white property owners on Powell Street, who had been watching with alarm as Chinese residents and businesses moved up the hill. They wished to stop the encroachment, to keep Powell Street associated with Nob Hill, the affluent white neighborhood to the west, and petitioned the school board in this regard. Residents claimed that Chinese had an offensive smell and warned that the value of their property would drop by twenty-five percent if Chinese people began “strutting” along Powell Street. The Daily Morning Call editorialized, “Portions of streets are now given up to Chinese, which not many years ago were occupied by white people of good social standing.” It conceded that the city could “not forbid an individual Chinaman from buying real estate in a white man’s block if he can find a white owner willing to sell, but it can and should refuse to be a pioneer in that kind of traffic.” School board members offered plans to require the Chinese students to enter and leave the school by way of a side alley or a back staircase, which the board proposed to build “up over the forty-five foot hill from Clay Street,” but these failed to appease the Powell Street residents. The board found an alternative site for the school on Clay Street. Perhaps it was this ugly incident that prompted the Tapes to leave San Francisco’s Chinatown. Or maybe it was simply the accumulation of racist incidents, large and small, that continued to dog the Chinese of San Francisco. True, the elder Tapes maneuvered around the strictures of segregation — Joseph worked for the Pacific Mail and Mary circulated among artists and photographers, even during the high tide of anti-Chinese sentiment — but it was another matter for their children to grow up under conditions of racial isolation and 67

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with the stigma of segregation. They would continually suffer from insults, such as the decision that even the back entrance to the basement of a condemned school building was too good for them because it was in a white neighborhood. On a more practical level, although Mamie and Frank had completed primary school and could have attended a public high school (as a few Chinese were doing at the time), Emily and Gertrude would have to remain in the segregated Chinese school. So the family decided to move across the bay to Berkeley, where Chinese were not prevented from buying property or segregated in the public schools. The experiment of living near Chinatown, in a transitional neighborhood on Chinatown’s frontier, had failed. The middle ground had become too small and too tense. But the short time that the family lived there was terribly important. The Tape children joined a social cohort of Chinese Americans, mostly the children of Chinese merchants, introducing them to lifelong friends and future marriage partners.

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Nativ e So n s and Daughters (1895–1904)

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6. Suburban Squire

Berkeley was a world away from San Francisco’s Chinatown. The town was situated on land that Mexico had granted to the Peralta family, Mexican settlers, in the 1820s and that had passed to Anglo ownership in the early 1850s, after the Mexican-American War. Berkeley had an industrial section and working-class settlement along the bay front and an elite community that had grown up around the campus of the University of California, three miles east of the bay, after it was founded in 1868. By 1890, Berkeley was a leafy town of forty thousand, with elegant homes, a modest commercial district, and a number of farms. There were industries at its edges and still much undeveloped land. There were quite a few Chinese in the East Bay, though not in Berkeley. Chinese laborers were employed in and around Oakland on farms and in fisheries and industries, including a dynamite factory. By the 1880s, Oakland had five Chinese labor contractors. Its Chinatown contained lodging houses, general stores, clan associations, vice houses, restaurants, and five Chinese churches and missions. In Berkeley, there was a small Chinese population living in the vicinity of Dwight Way, in the central business district, mostly laun71

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drymen and house servants, known locally as “Chinese help.” There was a Chinese gambling hall run by one Ge Thang, but not much else in terms of a Chinese community. The Tapes, of course, did not live among Berkeley’s Chinese. The family’s new house was on Russell Street, near Shattuck Avenue, in a newly subdivided area in the southern part of town. In some ways, life on Russell Street recalled the Tapes’ time on Green Street in San Francisco during the 1870s: both areas were sparsely populated and on the cusp of development. Even as the town grew, though, development in south Berkeley was slow. Although the neighborhood had been subdivided in 1875, there were only a few homes on Russell twenty years later when the Tapes arrived. The entire block of Oregon Street behind the Tapes’ house was held by Elizabeth Shattuck Havens, the younger sister of one of the town’s founders, and would remain undeveloped for several more decades. In the early 1890s, William Bissell, a contractor-realtor, built three identical speculative houses in the neighborhood. These were small, wood-framed Victorians with high stoops, bay windows, and gabled roofs. Joseph bought one of these houses, at 2123 Russell, for about $1,000. He fenced in the property and built an arbored trellis over the front gate. He also acquired the adjacent lot, where he built a small shed and stable, dug a well, and installed a water tank and a wind-powered pump. These investments enabled the Tapes to enjoy modern conveniences, such as a flush toilet, that were not yet commonplace in south Berkeley. It would be another decade or more before the neighborhood would have city sewer lines and paved streets. The Tapes had only a few neighbors on Russell: John Brothers, who was a clerk with the Southern Pacific, and a widow, a con­ fectioner, and a stenographer, all German Americans. Around the corner on Shattuck Avenue, there was a lumberyard and the Peralta Volunteer Fire Company, which Joseph and Frank, now sixteen, joined. Just beyond lay the Southern Pacific’s freight yards. There is no evidence that Joseph worked there, but he was never one to miss a business opportunity. It is possible that he expanded his express 72

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business to Berkeley, even as it remained centered in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 1896, Knox Presbyterian Church, formed by local residents who had been members of Berkeley’s First Church, went up across the street. The Tapes did not join the all-white congregation. They were not regular churchgoers and in any case associated with people from the Chinese missionary circles in San Francisco and Oakland. When they moved to Berkeley, there were as yet no Chinese missions there; it would be another decade before the Methodist Episcopal Church bought the rear building of Robert Agers’s soda water factory near Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way to use as a Chinese mission church. Berkeley’s public schools were not segregated. Gertrude and Emily went to the LeConte School, a six-room schoolhouse built in 1892, just a few blocks from their home. Their childhood was in many ways the one their parents had desired ten years earlier for Mamie — attending school and playing with white children. This was especially true for Gertrude, the youngest, who had never gone to the Chinese Primary School in San Francisco and, unlike her siblings, had never learned to speak Chinese. Mary insisted on the girls’ training in the arts: Emily continued to take violin lessons and became skilled at embroidery; Gertrude started on the piano. Things were not as easy for Mamie, who was eighteen when the family moved across the bay. She did not go to school in Berkeley, although she continued to be tutored at home, and she must have missed her friends in Chinatown. Frank more readily settled into the good life. One telling family photo shows him romping as a “señorita,” confident in his ability to charm and entertain his younger sisters. He may have attended Berkeley’s Commercial High School, but if he did, it was not for long. He much preferred working with his father, from whom he learned to ride a horse, hunt and fish, and feel important. By the turn of the century, Frank was commuting with Joseph across the bay, driving his father’s express wagon between the docks 73

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or the railway station and Chinatown and helping out in his father’s office. By this time, in the mid-1890s, Joseph’s business was thriving. He had become an actual employee of the Southern Pacific when the railroad company acquired the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Joseph was the company’s official “transportation clerk” for Chinese passengers, delivering baggage for those arriving on both Pacific Mail vessels and Southern Pacific trains. The service was free for arriving passengers, but the company did not pay for departing passengers’ baggage to be picked up; that work was done by Joseph’s private company. Joseph also became the Southern Pacific’s “Chinese passenger agent,” in which capacity he sold steamship and train tickets to Chinese customers, earning a commission on each one. It was a fabulously advantageous position: he had a monopoly on these services, and his employment by the railroad insulated him from downturns in the business cycle. But he was not merely prosperous. Being a broker meant that he knew important white people in the transportation industry and the immigration bureau. Among the Chinese, his position was highly prestigious. Frank strived to be like his father — respected and successful — but he did not have Joseph’s discipline. The only son, he had been spoiled as a child and now was entitled and boastful. And soon worse: there were stories in Chinatown of customers whose valuables (notably, Mexican silver) had disappeared from their luggage between Chinatown and the docks. On more than one occasion, Joseph had to appear before the Chinese Six Companies to answer to these charges. Chinese were not averse to suing one another in American courts — they had done it for decades in mining claim disputes and other business matters — and with the rise of overland domestic travel in the late nineteenth century, a body of “baggage law” had emerged defining the liability of common carriers for personal belongings committed to their care. But in most cases, complainants likely sought adjudication through the huiguan, because they did not discover their losses until after they had left the country. Joseph

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conceded no wrongdoing on the part of his son, but he made half payment for lost goods. Joseph’s business thrived despite these incidents and, more generally, despite the fact that he had been forced to grow it in the face of official Chinese exclusion after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Exclusion did not actually eliminate immigration from China; merchants and their families were exempt from exclusion and continued to immigrate, as did laborers who had established residence in the United States before 1882 and were therefore eligible for reentry (at least theoretically) if they went to China for a visit. Others gained admission by falsely claiming to be merchants or native-born citizens. All who entered, whether legally or illegally, needed transport to Chinatown or tickets to points beyond San Francisco, and Joseph Tape was there to assist them. Immigrants who returned to China — either temporarily, to visit family or conduct business, or, in light of the hostile environment in California, for good — needed Tape’s express service to deliver their baggage to the steamship dock. In the face of his father’s sweeping success in the business realm, perhaps it is no wonder that Frank’s feelings — entitlement, possibly insecurity, and even resentment — were complex. The customs bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department was responsible for enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The bureau had no experience with immigration, but it already had officers posted at the ports and relationships with the steamship companies. The Treasury Department created within the customs bureau a new division, the Chinese bureau, and a new position, the Chinese inspector, but issued very little in the way of procedures and instructions. The act required the Chinese government to determine prospective immigrants’ eligibility to enter the United States and to issue certificates to those who were deemed admissible. As a result, the immigration inspector at the port of arrival relied largely on the Chinese government’s process.

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Even so, the customs bureau had to communicate with arriving immigrants. The bureau’s first Chinese interpreter in San Francisco was John Endicott Gardner Jr. Having been born in China to an American missionary father and a half-Chinese, half-American mother, Gardner was fluent in Chinese. He was a direct descendant of John Endicott, the first governor of Massachusetts, the state supplying most American foreign mission workers in the early nineteenth century. Gardner came to San Francisco in 1882 with his mother and stepfather, Reverend Daniel Vrooman, a missionary whom his mother married after his father’s death. When the Chinese Exclusion Act passed that year and the collector of customs was scrambling to hire a Chinese interpreter, Vrooman’s bright nineteen-year-old stepson was one of the few, perhaps even the only, bilingual white people available for the job. His partial Chinese ancestry was apparently overlooked in light of the urgent need. At first Gardner’s job was perfunctory. He merely asked arriving passengers to show their documents — “section six” certificates issued in China for the exempt classes, such as merchants and students — and departing Chinese residents of the United States to show their “leave permits,” which were issued by the Chinese consul in San Francisco and entitled them to reenter the country upon their return. There was little interrogatory; no statements were taken. But officials soon came to believe that some Chinese were entering with fake certificates or false claims. A rumor that the head of the Chinese Six Companies had brought one hundred reentry permits to China to sell there led officials to suspect a budding brokerage business in entry papers. Gardner was advised to ask all landing passengers their place of birth. The San Francisco Evening Bulletin warned of “the necessity of vigilance.” Meanwhile, it became clear that detaining arriving passengers on board ship was problematic, especially when passengers who were denied entry had to wait either for an appeal to be heard or to be shipped back to China. The customs collector believed that “after the journey of thirty days in their confined and cramped quarters, not 76

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only humanity, but practical sanitary considerations require that, upon landing, they should be removed from the [arriving] vessel.” Some of the first Chinese arrivals held for detention were transferred to the hulk China, one of the Pacific Mail’s old wooden-hulled side-wheelers that remained in the harbor awaiting the breaker’s yard. Another decommissioned vessel sitting on the mud flats, the bark Columbia, was used to quarantine arrivals who had smallpox. Notwithstanding humanity and sanitation, the steamship company continued to detain Chinese whose admission cases were pending aboard its steamers, sometimes transferring them from one vessel to another when scheduled departures required it. With limited space on board these ships, the customs bureau sought other solutions. The collector of customs released some merchants on bond while the bureau investigated their cases. He lodged women at the Protestant mission homes. He also transferred some Chinese, particularly those awaiting deportation, to the county jail at Broadway and Dupont. Joseph Tape’s business profited from these arrangements: he was paid ten dollars to transport people between the jail and the dock and forty cents per person per day for board. One imagines that he purchased food in Chinatown for less than that amount, but we have no way of knowing how large his cut was. These ad hoc arrangements, especially the constant moving of the floating Chinese population from ship to ship, was an ongoing logistical nightmare for customs personnel charged with enforcing the exclusion law. With just one full-time interpreter and two stenographers, the burden of work was great. Gardner not only hopped from ship to ship interviewing arriving passengers, but he also translated confiscated letters and coaching notes, which incriminated those who hoped to circumvent the exclusion law by posing as people who were legally admissible, such as merchants or U.S. citizens by native birth. Officials considered these practices evidence that Chinese had no respect for the law. That the stringency of the exclusion laws would lead would-be immigrants to adopt extraordinary measures to gain entry into the country was given no shrift. 77

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Many of those arriving in San Francisco were, in fact, legitimate immigrants, but how was the immigration inspector to know who was truly the person he or she claimed to be and who was a fraud? Questions of law and evidence abounded: the definition of “merchant,” the veracity of certificates issued in Canton and Hong Kong, the relative reliability of testimony from Chinese and white witnesses. Racial prejudice against Chinese — that they were all coolies and inherently untrustworthy, cunning, and prone to telling lies — infected the manner in which these issues were addressed. In November 1884, Gardner resigned from his position, perhaps from exhaustion. The Evening Bulletin noted that his resignation will deprive the Custom House . . . of one bar against fraudulent entry by this device [claiming citizenship] .  .  . Intercepted Chinese letters have taught the customs officials as much about Chinese wiles as any other source of information. It has been difficult to find any white interpreter — and a Chinese interpreter is out of the question — who can read Chinese readily . . . The interpreter stands between the Government and the Chinese Consulate, and the [next] appointment will be based on character as well as upon linguistic accomplishment.

Gardner returned to his position in San Francisco in 1896, after several years as a preacher and part-time immigrant interpreter in Victoria, British Columbia. The U.S. Bureau of Customs would soon give him a dual appointment as Chinese interpreter and Chinese inspector, the latter a higher rank with the authority to decide cases. Projecting an air of erudition and Christian moral bearing, he was the only employee in the bureau ever to hold both job titles. In Chinatown, Gardner was known as “Pak Wah Jon” (“Baihua John,” Chinese-speaking John); he treated Chinese with condescension, perhaps to compensate for his own mixed racial heritage. Gardner’s long career in the Chinese bureau would be marked by controversies over where his loyalties lay. Despite his acculturation as a Euro-American, his superiors distrusted his Chinese “racial tem78

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perament,” which was thought to “seriously impair his efficiency as an impartial and unbiased interpreter.” Local Chinese merchants accused Gardner of mistreating immigrants. But Reverend Ira Condit of the Presbyterian Chinese mission wrote in his defense: “Mr. Gardner has been largely instrumental in breaking up the illegal landing of bad Chinese women; and such charges come from those whose very lucrative traffic has thus been spoiled . . . What he has done is entirely approved by the Chinese Legation, the Christian Chinese, and all the better class of that people here.” In 1898, the steamship company’s ability to detain Chinese aboard ships was thwarted when the U.S. military chartered seven vessels in the Pacific Mail’s fleet to transport troops to the Philippines for the Spanish-American War. The company converted the second floor of its wooden office building at one end of its thousand-foot-long covered wharf into a detention facility. The wharf complex, known as the “mail dock,” had storehouses for coal and wood, equipment repair shops, warehouses for imported merchandise, and the so-called office house, where Joseph Tape kept a small office. Several hundred people were crammed into the second-floor loft, which measured 150 feet by 100 feet, the size of a “four-room cottage.” The “detention shed,” as the loft became known, quickly became a symbol for all that was rotten about Chinese exclusion. Detention could last for weeks as cases awaited investigation and longer still for those on appeal. Regardless of one’s view of exclusion, the shed was a problem. Missionaries and civic-minded people decried the deplorable conditions there, noting that the shed was “built over the water where the odors of sewage and bilge are most offensive; unclean, at times overrun with vermin, and often inadequate to the numbers to be detained.” Chinese living in San Francisco protested the detention of their relatives and friends. They congregated on the wharf, especially at the foot of the stairs leading up to the loft, calling out the names of their loved ones, trying to make contact, to send up a package with food, to reassure them that witnesses who could vouch for them were being located. The immigration inspectors inter79

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preted these communications as efforts to coach the arrivals with the proper “answers” for their interviews. They also suspected the Pacific Mail employee who delivered food to the shed of smuggling coaching notes to the detainees. That person may well have been Joseph Tape or one of his employees. During the late 1890s, the collector of customs in San Francisco, John P. Jackson, heard a growing number of Chinese native cases, in which the arriving passenger claimed to be an American citizen by native birth. Jackson was inclined to accept testimony from the immigrant’s relatives or acquaintances. (“I remember he was born on Clay Street in 1875. His parents took him back to China when he was two years old.”) Unlike other officials, he did not demand white witnesses. By 1898, he was rejecting approximately thirty percent of native-case claims, but officials in Washington considered this figure to be too low. Most suspected that native cases were, as a rule, fraudulent, and they wanted to require white witnesses for the cases, even though there was nothing in the statute or the administrative guidelines stipulating it. Those who were denied admission often appealed their cases to the district court. Judges there, though not necessarily sympathetic to Chinese, were inclined to accept as legitimate evidence uncontradicted oral testimony from “friends” and “relatives” — often people who had not testified at the immigrant’s arrival but now appeared conveniently to vouch for his or her identity (“I remember he was born on Clay Street . . .”). In approximately half of these cases, the court overruled the customs bureau and ordered the immigrants to be landed. The court’s discharge papers in such cases — releasing the immigrant from custody on the grounds of his or her U.S. citizenship — became the legal document authenticating the immigrant’s status as a citizen. This in turn became the basis for the future admission, as “derivative” U.S. citizens, of the person’s offspring (or others posing as his or her offspring) born in China. Thus commenced the decades-long practice of “paper-son” immigration, by which tens of thousands of Chinese circumvented the exclusion law. 80

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In light of the various ways that Chinese managed to slip through the Golden Gate, immigration procedures grew even tighter in the 1890s. The practice of releasing merchants on bond was discontinued, and merchants complained bitterly that they were “restrained of [their] liberty and detained for about a week in the wooden sheds on the wharf of the Steamship Company, practically in the same manner as if [they] were charged with [a] crime.” Local Chinese were no longer permitted on the wharf when the steamers made port, and so were denied the ability to greet passengers, “a recognized custom of all races, and usually indulged in, partly by desire, and partly by duty.” The interview upon arrival also grew more elaborate and now focused on catching native citizens in a lie that would expose their imposture. The burden of proof was placed on the immigrants, and questionable cases were determined in favor of exclusion. The role of the interpreter as the language mediator was crucial, not just for communication but also for identifying truth from falsehood. Racial suspicion of Chinese led San Francisco customs officials to hire only white interpreters, who were, of course, in short supply. A few had lived in China, such as John Gardner and Hipolite Eca da Silva, a Portuguese from Macao. One or two others had learned Chinese while living in San Francisco and had translated for the courts and police before working for immigration. Joseph’s success in the immigration business brought the family wealth and social status, but it also created pressures for the second generation. Like most immigrants, Joseph and Mary regarded their children’s achievements as measures of their own success in assimilation. They had focused on their children’s schooling and their relationships with white people. Mary, who believed in the arts as a means of achieving refinement and respectability, also had insisted on their musical education. Joseph was preparing his son for the family business and his daughters to marry men of intelligence and ambition. The pressures on the children were even greater because 81

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the Tapes were among the first Chinese to test the social limits imposed by exclusion. There were few others in their position and few, if any, role models to follow. At the turn of the century, the younger children appeared to be doing well. Emily seems to have been self-sufficient and eventempered. She enjoyed dancing (Frank taught her the popular dances) and was a serious student of the violin. Gertrude, the little darling, had been least influenced by Chinatown’s ways and, as is evident in Mary’s photographs of her, was her mother’s finest accomplishment. Although she was still only ten years old, her parents could imagine a rosy future for her. But from the parents’ point of view, the two oldest children were falling short. Frank struggled constantly to live up to his father’s expectations. Though spoiled, he also had a certain fearlessness, which perhaps grew from his desire to impress Joseph. In December 1898, while fighting a fire with the Peralta Volunteer Fire Company in south Berkeley, he fell through the building’s roof into a burning room below and was “rescued with difficulty.” He sustained serious injury to one leg and arm. Was Joseph proud of his son’s heroism, or did he think that Frank had been reckless? Frank’s stealing from his father’s customers may have been, in part, a young man’s rebellion, but his behavior must have both worried and angered Joseph. The lawsuit that had won Mamie the right to go to school had taught her to question authority. Now she appeared merely willful. Despite her parents’ objections, she was seeing a boy from Chinatown whose future seemed unpromising at best. Had Joseph sued the school board, stood up to Miss Hurley and that pig Moulder, and brought her up as Caucasian, “except in features,” so that she could marry a mere servant boy?

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7. Two Marriages

Herman lowe, the object of Mamie’s affection, was also a Chinese American. He was born as Lo You Huen (Lü Yaoxuan) in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1875, in his parents’ home, a room on the third floor above the Tuck Wo butcher and grocery shop at the corner of Jackson Street and Fish Alley. The alley, lined with fishmongers, poultry dealers, gambling houses, and opium shops, was “one of the most malodorous spots in Chinatown.” His father, Lo Kwai (Lü Guai), had worked for many years in San Francisco as a cook, peddler, and laborer before he could afford to send for his wife, Lau Shee. Lau Shee gave birth to her son in the Chinese way, attended by a midwife and two other women from the neighborhood. Lo You Huen and his younger sister went to the Baptist mission school on Clay Street, the only primary school located in central Chinatown. His parents were not Christians, but Lo Kwai may have spoken about the children’s schooling to someone at the Gospel Temple, a block away on Jackson Street, or Lau Shee, who was herself illiterate, may have broached the subject with one of the female missionary workers who visited the tenements. Anna Vrooman, mother of the Chinese immigration interpreter John Gardner, was known 83

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to visit families in Fish Alley. Lo You Huen’s teachers Anglicized his name to Herman Lowe. When Herman finished the eighth grade, his teacher helped him find work as a domestic servant in a white household. Although he did not formally continue in school, one of the Baptist teachers, Miss Martha Ames, tutored him privately at the mission house on Waverly Place. In this way, he became known at the mission and more broadly among the missionaries, which in turn gave him connections to Euro-Americans who hired him for various kinds of work, from domestic service to odd jobs. It was also probably by spending time in mission circles that he met Mamie Tape in the early 1890s. We do not know why Joseph thought that Herman Lowe was an unsuitable mate for Mamie, but it is not difficult to imagine that he disapproved of Herman’s lowly status. Although Herman had gone as far in school as had Joseph’s own son, Frank, he was from a poor family. It was certainly possible for a son to go further than his parents (after all, Joseph Tape was a self-made man), but there was no indication that Herman had any ambition or that he would rise above the mass of Chinese laborers, despite his Christian education. In 1894, Herman went to Guatemala, most likely as a servant to a Euro-American engaged in some kind of business there, perhaps farming or agricultural export. Did Joseph arrange to have Herman sent away? Or did Herman simply pursue an opportunity, even if it meant leaving Mamie behind? Although Joseph’s opposition seemed to doom the relationship, Mamie was in love with Herman, and she waited patiently for him to return. He came back three years later, in 1897, and secured a job as a sewing machine operator in a Chinatown shirt factory. Much to Joseph’s consternation, he and Mamie renewed their relationship right away. Their separation had only intensified their desire for each other. Mamie did not want to lose Herman again. She determined that she would marry him, even if it meant going against her parents’ wishes.

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Mamie left no record as to why she loved Herman so much that she was willing to defy her parents. Perhaps the characteristics Mamie experienced as loving and gentle in Herman were the same ones that her father read as dull and passive. Clearly, Mamie imagined a satisfying life with Herman, living in Chinatown and being part of a social circle of American-born Chinese mostly clustered around the Protestant missions. Easy access to mission social life would have been especially important to Mamie, for whom life in Berkeley had often been isolating. On September 8, 1897, Mamie and Herman were married at the Alameda County courthouse in downtown Oakland by the county clerk. Reverend Charles Hobart of Oakland’s First Baptist Church served as witness. Afterward, Mamie sent word to Joseph and Mary of her elopement. It would be another year before they spoke. Mamie and Herman moved first to a mostly white area on Clay Street, well outside the boundaries of Chinatown, around the corner from the home of the Baptist minister Reverend J. B. Hartwell and Miss Ames, Herman’s former teacher. Soon, however, they moved closer to Chinatown, to a little rear cottage on Prospect Place, an alley a half block from Clay Avenue, where the Tapes had recently lived. There were several families with children on the street, including Chong and Martha Yee, a mixed Chinese-white couple with five children who had come to San Francisco by way of Illinois, and an Irish American family, the Shays, with two boys. Mamie and Herman started their own family: a son, Harold, was born in 1898. Mamie’s relationship with her parents began to thaw, especially with her mother, whom she had made a grandmother. The young couple remained active in mission church circles. Herman participated in a music program for children, perhaps coaching a singing group or a band, and sang in mission benefit performances. Mamie befriended girls at the Protestant mission home for women, run by Miss Donaldina Cameron for the Women’s Occidental Board of Foreign Missions, which was half a block away from the

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Lowes’ home. Since the time of Mary Tape’s informal rescue in 1868, “rescue” had become a major missionary activity. Cameron and others, accompanied by police officers, staged dramatic raids at Chinese brothels, after which the police turned over rescued “slave girls” to the mission home. Other women, living as prostitutes, sent word to the missionaries, requesting rescue in order to marry. At the mission home, the women entered a program of rehabilitation in accord with Christian and Victorian principles of purity, piety, and domesticity. The mission also raised girls who were orphans or had been left by parents unable to care for them. Marriage was the usual goal, whether to an existing suitor or a marriage arranged by the missionaries to a Chinese-Christian man. Rescue was thus one method of addressing the severe sex imbalance of the Chinese population — in the late nineteenth century, there were twenty-two men for every woman — for both men desiring a wife and women seeking alternatives to sexual exploitation. Mamie became close friends with Miss Cameron’s assistant and interpreter, Wu Teen Fook (Wu Tianfu), who was eight years old when Miss Cameron rescued her. Her story was often told to illustrate the cruelties of child servitude and the beneficence of Christian rescue and conversion. In fact, her story could have been Mary Tape’s. One newspaper wrote: After years of famine and bad debts, little Tien Fu went with her father to the port city of Shanghai, ostensibly to visit Grandma, but found herself locked aboard a ship, sold into domestic child slavery in America. The “little tyke” was sometimes sent on scurrying errands to shops near the gambling den where she was the “chore girl.” Her bruises, dark and swollen, drew attention and word got to “The Home,” as Cameron Home was then called. Rescue workers with police aid discovered her, after strenuous search, under a bed, behind trunks. At the home, health and strength were restored to Tien as she proved to be a strong-willed, determined young girl 86

Two Marriages . . . Her determination to liberate her people, her skill in both Chinese and English, her strong will, her devotion to Christ, the church, and Miss Cameron, made her a rock on which others would be able to depend as they began to rebuild life.

Miss Cameron described Wu Tianfu as “dear elder daughter” to the other girls. She was director of the nursery and rose to become “supervisor of all girls,” a position of considerable authority. She accompanied Cameron on rescue missions in town and in the mining districts and served as her interpreter in court. It is not surprising that Wu Tianfu and Mamie Lowe, both young, strong-willed, and determined English-speaking women, became friends. Wu Tianfu also brought some of the older teenage girls at the home to visit Mamie’s house and play with her baby boy. Yet even as Mamie found friendship and sociability among rescue home women, her mother continued to keep her own experience of servitude and rescue hidden behind an orphan narrative. For Mamie, it seems this was a happy time. She had a family and friends of her own. Living on Prospect Place, she marveled at the sight of cable car tracks and a water line being laid through Chinatown, signs of modern city living that had been slow to penetrate the community. At the turn of the century, San Francisco was prosperous and cosmopolitan, dubbed by elites as the “Paris on the Pacific,” but Chinatown was still reviled as a crowded and dirty slum. Although Chinatown was just a mile or two from the city center — from its new City Hall, with its magnificent copper dome; its grand hotels and European opera; and its new park, named after the Golden Gate and conceived by Frederick Law Olmsted, who had also designed New York City’s Central Park — it was also a world away. If the city was improving Chinatown’s infrastructure, it was not because San Franciscans cared about Chinatown, but because the community was located between the downtown business district and the new white, middle-class neighborhoods to the west. Indeed, for most San Franciscans, Chinatown was a blighted area 87

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that was increasingly out of sync with the city’s sense of progress. Racial tensions flared in the spring of 1900, when the autopsy of a body of a Chinese man found in the basement of a hotel determined that the man had died of bubonic plague. Officials believed that the disease had been brought to San Francisco by Chinese on board a ship that had arrived from Hong Kong. Scientists had recently identified the plague bacillus, but it was not yet understood how the disease was transmitted. Many believed that infection was spread through food or open wounds. Although some suspected that rats were involved, it was not yet understood that fleas carried the disease from rats to humans. San Francisco’s response to this one case of plague was guided by racism and politics. The board of supervisors quarantined all of Chinatown, blockading its perimeter with police and allowing only whites to pass. Anti-Chinese nativists seized on the issue as an opportunity to call for evacuating and then razing Chinatown. “Clear the foul spot from San Francisco and give the debris to the flames,” editorialized the Daily Morning Call. At the same time, fearing that news of a plague epidemic would damage San Francisco’s commerce, city officials denied that there was any health crisis at all. Residents of Chinatown protested the quarantine and then, after it was lifted, refused to cooperate in an effort to inoculate every Chinese person, suspecting that the measure was a cruel plot to kill them. The Lowes, perhaps hoping that things would eventually return to normal, stuck it out through the crisis. Like many other Chinatown residents, they may have believed that Chinatown was experiencing a racially motivated panic, not a serious threat to public health. But there were other cases of plague, and if they were cautious, Mamie and her young son may have stayed indoors for much of the time, especially because Mamie was now pregnant with her second child. By the end of the year, twenty-two people had died from the disease, nearly all of them Chinese. When the Lowes’ baby girl was born in February 1901, the health and political crises had eased. Mamie named her Emily Gertrude, 88

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after her two sisters. Mary came to see her new grandchild right away. Perhaps she carried a message of reconciliation and asked Mamie to move her family to Berkeley, to be closer to the family. Mamie may have demurred: Herman’s parents lived in Chinatown, and according to custom, she had entered her husband’s family upon their marriage. But Mamie and Herman decided to move when city health officials and Chinese huiguan leaders announced that they had agreed on a plan to sanitize Chinatown. The plan involved exterminating rats, cementing over basements, disinfecting houses, and demolishing buildings deemed beyond repair. That spring, more than 1,200 houses and 14,000 rooms were scoured and disinfected. Mamie and Herman, who were modern in their sensibilities, would not have opposed these sanitary measures on principle, but the scale of the undertaking may have overwhelmed the young family’s sense of security and comfort, especially with a new baby in the house. In March, just a few weeks before the sanitation drive commenced, the Lowes moved to the East Bay. Joseph bought them a house on Whitney Street, about half a mile south of Russell and just over the town line in Oakland. It was one of three identical raisedbasement Victorians on a newly developed block and cost $1,500. The house had a bay front, a high stoop, and a small front porch. It seemed like a good place to raise a family. It was, in fact, a busy time for both family building and house building. Later that year, in November, Emily Tape married Robert Leon Park, an up-and-coming leader of the second generation in Chinatown. If Joseph had had reservations about Herman Lowe, he most certainly approved of Robert Park. Perhaps Joseph had once suggested Robert to Mamie as a marriage partner: he and Mamie were the same age, and his advocacy for civil rights seemed a perfect match for the girl who had forced open California’s public schools to Chinese pupils. But if that had been Joseph’s plan, it was not to be. Mamie loved Herman. Robert Park married the second daughter. Robert’s Chinese name was Leon Quai Park (Liang Guibo). Like 89

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Herman Lowe, he was born to a family of modest means in Chinatown, the second son of Leon Tin and Niu Shee, who lived above an herbalist on Dupont Street. The entrance to their home was in the rear, on Bartlett Place, which was notorious for its concentration of brothels and “female boarding” quarters. Joseph Tape knew Leon Tin, who was also a teamster. Their children knew each other from the Chinese Primary School and the Presbyterian mission church. Like the Tape children, the Leons were Americanized: they had Anglicized their names, and Robert was known around Chinatown as the “boy without a queue.” Robert was exceptionally bright; he was the first Chinese to graduate from San Francisco’s Lowell High School and among the first to attend the University of California. In the mid-1890s, Robert was part of a group of young men engaged in a new brand of politics in Chinatown. These young men talked about forming a new kind of organization, one unlike the district and clan associations or the secret societies that dominated Chinatown’s social landscape. Their goal was to achieve full and equal citizenship rights for Chinese Americans. Park’s associates included Frank Fook, an interpreter and clerk for a Euro-American lawyer, and Ng Goon, a graduate of the University of California who had inherited property in San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. A future leader of the group would write that these men were the “young turks” who sought to “throw off some of the old-world handicaps of extreme conservatism to accelerate their assimilation to the American way of life.” In 1895, they formed a fraternal order called the “Rising Sun Parlor No. 1” and applied to join the Native Sons of the Golden West, California’s preeminent fraternal organization. This was a bold move, for the Native Sons’ bylaws stipulated that membership was for white males, and the organization was known for its support of Chinese exclusion. A few members of the Native Sons of the Golden West, however, felt that the Rising Sun parlor (branch) should be admitted. C. C. Higgins, a druggist and past master of the San Francisco

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parlor, and a colleague, “Doc” Richards, coached the Chinese group in writing their bylaws. Higgins and Richards also taught them the “side degrees,” or fraternal initiation rituals, such as drinking a quart of warm salt water. According to Higgins, “The Rising Sun boys enjoy this kind of sport.” Most members of the Native Sons of the Golden West viewed the admission of a native Chinese parlor as racial anathema and voted it down. Their petition rejected, the Chinese Americans formed a kind of ethnic shadow group called the Native Sons of the Golden State, with bylaws allowing membership only to American citizens of Chinese descent. Adapting their rules to Western moral conventions, the group declared that no “highbinders” (members of tongs, the secret Chinese brotherhood societies that controlled the vice trades) or opium users would be admitted. Members pledged loyalty to the United States and fraternity to one another. The Native Sons of the Golden State was not the first Chinese American civil rights organization. In the Northeast, the peripatetic civil rights advocate Wong Chin Foo (Huang Qingfu) formed the Chinese Equal Rights League and published a bilingual broadside, the Chinese American (Huamei xinbao), in 1892. Wong’s immediate purpose was to fight the Geary Act, passed that year, which required all Chinese to register with the U.S. government and carry a certificate of identity at all times. Wong’s broader political agenda promoted citizenship and civil rights for Chinese in America but made no concession to assimilation as a goal. He wore flowing Mandarin robes for public lectures on Chinese philosophy titled “Why Am I a Heathen?” Neither the group nor its publication survived for more than a few years. In the end, there was not a large enough population of native-born Chinese Americans in the East to sustain an organization that had citizenship rights at its center. In California, however, the Native Sons of the Golden State estimated that there were 20,000 native-born Chinese. Reverend Ira Condit of the Chinese Presbyterian Church wrote at the turn of the century that 400 Chinese

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Americans — the children of immigrant Chinese born in the United States — had reached maturity; that 150 were literate and thus eligible to vote; and that 80 were actually exercising the franchise. When Robert married Emily, he was president of the Native Sons of the Golden State. He was also active in the Sam Yup Association (Sanyi huiguan), which, with its concentration of merchants who had originally come from the three counties outside Guangzhou, was one of the most powerful huiguan of the Chinese Six Companies. As a leader in two important civic organizations, one Chinese American and one traditionally Chinese, Park occupied an unusually influential position. He was no doubt active in the pressing issues of civil rights and discrimination — most recently, the fight against City Hall’s quarantine of Chinatown during the plague. Robert also worked as an interpreter in the Hall of Justice, San Francisco’s criminal court, and was managing editor of the Chinese World (Shejie ribao), which entailed translating articles from the mainstream English-language newspapers into Chinese. In appearance, Robert and Emily were somewhat incongruous as a couple. They were the same height, about five feet two inches, but he was small in stature, and she had a large frame. A photograph taken of Emily at age twenty-one, on the eve of her wedding, shows a buxom young woman who carries herself well. She is dressed in a dark suit and has a luxurious feather boa draped over her shoulders. Her hair is piled on top of her head, and her hat, adorned with flowers and plumes that match her boa, adds six inches to her height. She looks quite handsome, a testament to her parents’ wealth and social standing. The Daily Morning Call described the wedding as “picturesque” and found it remarkable that both Robert and Emily were nativeborn Chinese Americans who followed American customs. It noted that Robert had studied at the University of California and that Emily was an accomplished violinist. Her trousseau included “richly

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embroidered kimonos and other dainty articles of feminine apparel, which are the work of the bride’s skillful fingers.” The wedding was held at the Tape family home, where the garden was decorated with Chinese lanterns. The bride wore a gown of mousseline de soie, a bolero jacket of Battenberg lace made with gold thread, and a long, heavily embroidered tulle veil. Reverend Ira Condit — who had assisted Reverend Loomis at Joseph and Mary’s wedding back in 1875 — led the ceremony under a wedding bell made of pink and white chrysanthemums. Sixty guests attended, including “prominent Americans” from both sides of the bay. Edward Park (Liang Jin) served as best man for his brother; Emily’s bridesmaid was Florence Chan, a girlhood friend from the Protestant mission home in San Francisco. A supper was served in the large basement, where the walls were covered with white canvas and decorated with American flags, flowers, ribbons, and tiny electric lights. Emily and Robert moved into a new house at 2133 Russell Street in Berkeley, just down the block from Joseph and Mary. Unlike the elder Tapes and Mamie and Herman, whose houses were built by developers, the Parks hired an architect to design theirs. It was a onestory cottage with a windowed corner turret and was charming in a way not evident in the vernacular housing going up in the area. Mary painted a large still life for Emily’s house — larger than her usual canvases — a vase brimming with chrysanthemums, her favorite flowers. Emily would live in that house for the rest of her life. In 1902, Emily gave birth to a son, whom she named Frank, following the Tape siblings’ practice of naming their children after one another. Joseph arranged a position for Robert with the Southern Pacific Railroad, probably in the passenger department as an assistant agent. The commissions Robert earned selling steamship and train tickets supplemented his income from court interpreting and the newspaper. During the summer, Emily and her family accompanied her parents and younger sister, Gertrude, on extended vacations at Camp Meeker, near the Russian River in Sonoma County.

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Joseph and Mary were pleased that Emily had married well, was settling into a comfortable middle-class life, and was living close at hand, part of the extended household. But they continued to fret about their two oldest children. Frank, more interested in spending money than in earning it, had not yet settled down. Although Joseph and Mary had made amends with Mamie, one senses a rift that never fully healed. Herman apparently had no interest in working in one of Joseph’s various sinecures at the Southern Pacific, preferring employment in a sewing factory instead. Like Mamie, he jealously guarded his independence. The couple’s participation in Chinese mission church circles also may have irritated Joseph, who saw the church as a means to other ends, not an end in itself. In 1904, Joseph devised a plan for Mamie’s family and Frank to attend the St. Louis World’s Fair, where Frank and Herman could work in the fair’s Chinese Village. Joseph cannily understood that by sending his son and daughter away, he might ultimately draw them closer to him. Indeed, in St. Louis they would not only experience a major international event as a family. Frank and Herman would also find careers as immigrant interpreters, setting them on the path that Joseph had pioneered: the path of a broker in the immigrant trade, the best path for success for their generation.

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8. The Chinese Village

In early 1904, Frank and Herman traveled with Mamie and the two children to the fair — formally known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition — and stayed for the duration, about nine months. The men worked for the Hong Tai Company, organized by San Francisco Chinese merchants to run concessions in the Chinese Village, located on the fair’s midway. The village included curio shops, a restaurant and teahouse, a temple, magic and juggling acts, games, artisan demonstrations, and a theater. The men were among some one hundred Chinese Americans from San Francisco employed by the village. The family went under the “fair conditions,” which is to say that the company paid all their expenses. The Chinese Village at St. Louis was the fourth to be staged on a midway at an American world’s fair. The first had been at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, followed by Atlanta’s Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895 and Omaha’s TransMississippi Exposition in 1898. These villages were not official exhibits sponsored by China, but entrepreneurial projects organized by Chinese Americans. In fact, before 1904 China did not have an official national exhibit at any international exposition. Throughout the 1890s, the imperial 95

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Qing government resisted engagement in international affairs, and in 1893 it officially declined to participate in the World’s Columbian Exposition as a protest against Chinese exclusion laws. Most independent countries of Europe and the Americas had official buildings at these early fairs. Unlike China, Japan invested heavily in presenting itself at international expositions as a strategy to gain recognition and respect as a modern nation. Official participation at a world’s fair signaled a nation’s status as part of the civilized world and as a member of the international community. The national pavilions offered dignified displays of their respective histories, cultures, and contributions to industry, science, and the arts. By contrast, the midways were honky-tonk entertainment zones with enormous Ferris wheels, beer halls, and cafés; reenactments of events (from the Creation to the Galveston Flood and the Boer War); ethnological displays of “primitive” peoples; and exotic performances (belly dancing, snake charming, and spear throwing). The primitive and the exotic on the midways were not merely entertainment; they were also part of the didactic mission of the fairs, serving as foils for the demonstrations of the superiority of Western civilization presented on the main exposition grounds. Although show businessmen and ethnologists organized most of the midway exhibits, Chinese American entrepreneurs sponsored the first Chinese Villages. These culture brokers sought to fill the gap created by China’s official absence by presenting Chinese civilization to American audiences, while at the same time providing entertainment that defined the midway experience. They understood that the fair was a global stage on which modern and competitive nation-states were compared and contrasted. The civil rights activist and journalist Wong Chin Foo praised the three Chinese American investors in the first Chinese Village at the Chicago fair in 1893 as “courageous” men, who acted to represent China when China herself would not “come out like a man boldly, and face the music like other modern nations to maintain national honor.” It was ironic that the task of representing China fell to Chinese Americans who were 96

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themselves committed to assimilation, men who “acted like [American] citizens” by investing in real estate, learning to speak English, and wearing Western-style clothes. But this irony was characteristic of the ambivalent, in-between status of immigrant culture brokers. The sponsors of the Chinese Villages, of course, were as interested in making money as they were in cultural exchange, perhaps even more so. The first village at the Chicago fair brought modest gate receipts — about $64,000, less than ten percent of the amount earned by the midway’s top two moneymakers, George Ferris’s amazing wheel and the Streets of Cairo. Although the Chinese theater, joss house, and café enjoyed a steady stream of visitors, there was negative publicity about the Cantonese operas, with their long performances, unfamiliar staging, and strange music. The Wah Mee (Hua Mei, Chinese American) Company declared bankruptcy before the fair closed. The next villages modified their offerings. The operas were gone—despite their popularity among local Chinese laborers and merchants — and the theaters focused instead on performances by acrobats, jugglers, and magicians. More space was allotted to the bazaar and the sale of Chinese goods, from expensive silks and teas to souvenir trinkets. In addition to performers, the village companies brought from China scores of people to demonstrate Chinese “occupations” and “modes of living.” The Chinese American entrepreneurs also learned that if they wanted to sell the exotic, they had to have women — many women. The Chicago village had only one woman — Toy Shee, the wife of Hong Sling, one of the investors and the village’s manager — who sat in the International Hall of Beauties, where observers described her variously as melancholy, bored, and ignored. Of the 226 Chinese brought to the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, 34 were women. They were displayed in native Chinese provincial dress, in a beauty show, and appeared in the theater, where the display of bound feet was a big hit among Euro-American women. Chicago’s Hong Sling also organized the Chinese Village at the 97

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1898 Omaha fair, having been awarded the concession from a pool of half a dozen Chinese merchant applicants from New York to Seattle. Hong was a successful businessman who, like Joseph Tape, had come to America at a young age and established himself as a broker. He had been a railroad labor contractor in Ogden, Utah, before moving to Chicago. There he opened a store, invested in property, and was the Chinese passenger agent for the railroads serving Chicago’s Chinese population. For the Omaha fair, Hong brought from China an even greater number of Chinese performers and women, the latter performing as “beauties” as well as working as waitresses. His triumph, however, was to feature the magician Ching Ling Foo. The magician and his troupe of acrobats and jugglers packed the Chinese theater with thousands of people. Described as the “king of all magicians,” Ching was said to “introduce something new every day. His celebrated trick of producing a large bowl of water from nothing continues to be the sensational feature of the Midway.” Hong Sling bid again for the Chinese Village concession at St. Louis. His chief competitor was the Hong Tai Company of San Francisco, which sent its lawyer, Gaston Straus, to present its proposal to the committee on concessions. The San Francisco merchants had an elaborate plan that involved bringing more than six hundred people from China to demonstrate Chinese occupations and habits: “Silk men, Tea men, Opium manufacturers, Bamboo manufacturers, Cloth weavers, Lantern makers, Silk weavers, Artificial flower makers, Boat builders, Pottery workers, Actors, jugglers, salesmen, cooks, waiters, artists, Stone cutters, Doctors and Cotton Beaters . . . The more people we have the better we can illustrate Chinese life.” When asked why the concession could not use Chinese already residing in the United States, Straus replied on behalf of the San Francisco bidders, “You can’t get those men unless you pay them exorbitant wages.” Straus told the committee that the project had ten investors who had committed $200,000 each, including one of Chinatown’s wealthiest merchants, Tom Lung. He also presented letters of reference from the deputy surveyor of the Port of San Francisco and vice president of the Pacific Mail. 98

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But the contract did not go to Hong Sling or the San Francisco merchants. It went instead to the Yee Ging Company, a group of Philadelphia merchants headed by Lee Toy, a local merchant and occasional court interpreter. Lee Toy had two Euro-American business partners, A. Budd of Philadelphia and G. B. Hartford of Boston, both involved in vaudeville. The concessions committee did not record its reasons for selecting the Philadelphia group; the Yee Ging Company simply may have had the most competitive bid. But it is also possible that the committee, alert to the problem of Chinese using employment at the fairs to circumvent the exclusion laws, mistrusted both Hong Sling and the Hong Tai Company. They may have considered Hong Sling complicit in, if not responsible for, the “disappearance” of more than three hundred Chinese from the Omaha fair and wanted to avoid dealing with San Francisco, the center of Chinese American power in the United States. Lee Toy’s alignments would not have been entirely reassuring either. His uncle was Tom Lee, head of New York’s On Leong Tong and hence one of the most powerful Chinese Americans in the East. Although most tongs were known for their control of the vice trades (gambling, opium, and prostitution), the On Leong Tong was an association of wealthy merchants engaged in both legitimate and illicit businesses. It was an alternative power base to California’s Chinese Six Companies in the Midwest and East. Tom Lee had many connections with white commercial and political leaders in New York, who dubbed him “the Mayor of Chinatown.” Lee Toy was not merely a local Philadelphia merchant; he represented On Leong there and was likely a proxy for his uncle’s interests at the fair. The Hong Tai Company was not cut out of the action entirely. Lee Toy brought it in as a subcontractor to run the concessions in the Chinese Village. Lee Toy’s contract with the exposition company authorized him to supply “not less than 250 nor more than 500 Chinese”; Hong Tai was contracted to bring 125 of these people to the concession. Lee Toy may not have had the capital or the personnel to run the village on his own. A deal also may have been struck be99

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tween Tom Lung, Hong Tai’s major investor, and Tom Lee — that is, between San Francisco and New York Chinatown interests. It’s not clear how Joseph got his son and son-in-law jobs with Hong Tai. As a prominent immigration broker, he would have known a well-established merchant like Tom Lung. He would certainly have known the Pacific Mail and port officials who vouched for Hong Tai (perhaps he even arranged for their endorsements). Joseph also may have been a member of the On Leong Tong himself. Although there is no evidence (aside from hearsay appearing in U.S. government reports) that he was associated with any of the Chinatown tongs, such an association would not have been any more unusual than a white businessman belonging to the Masons. In any event, when Frank Tape and the Lowe family went off to St. Louis under the sponsorship of the Hong Tai Company, it promised to be a thrilling experience. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was the largest world’s fair yet in America. If it lacked the aesthetics of Daniel Burnham’s White City in Chicago, it made up for it in size. Covering two square miles and built at a cost of $50 million (more than $950 million today), it included 1,576 buildings and 75 miles of walkways and roadways. If a visitor wished to see everything, it would take him or her eighteen days. All the U.S. states and territories and thirty-eight nations participated. The fair’s midway, known as the Pike, featured thirty-six attractions, from the Tyrolean Alps to Jerusalem. Eighteen million people attended the fair over the course of eight months. There they were introduced to air conditioning, the infant incubator, iced tea, and the ice cream cone — the latter two invented accidentally in response to the summer’s heat. One of the most popular exhibits was that of the Philippines, the United States’ newest territorial acquisition. It was not on the midway, but on the main fairgrounds, where it was intended to offer a serious education in American colonial uplift. It showed the various Filipino ethnic groups along a continuum, from barely clad Igorot 100

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and Negritos, to Christianized Filipinos learning to sew and read, to a detachment of the Philippine Scouts, a junior military corps attached to the U.S. Army. The concept that “savages” could be civilized was a novel intervention in the didactic of world expositions, which before had simply juxtaposed “advanced” Western civilization with midway “primitives” without allowing for the possibility that the latter could progress. The lesson seemed lost on most fairgoers, however, who flocked to see the spear dances but showed interest in little else. The exhibit may as well have been on the midway. The fair was also notable for hosting the first official exhibit from China. Exposition officials considered China’s agreement to sponsor a pavilion to be an important coup for America’s “open-door” policy in Asia. This policy advocated for free trade as a way for the United States to compete with Britain, France, and other European nations with colonies and concessions. The exposition company had worked hard to secure the involvement of China and other Asian nations, sending its Oriental commissioner, John Barrett, a former American diplomat in Siam (Thailand), to Asia to court them. Barrett won an audience with China’s Dowager Empress, to whom he extended President William McKinley’s invitation to China to take part in the fair. In the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the Qing imperial court was receptive to overtures of comity, and the invitation was accepted. The Qing decided to send the emperor’s nephew, Prince Pu Lun, to represent China at the fair. China’s pavilion was to be a replica of the prince’s summer palace. These official, indeed royal, ceremonial trappings belied the fact that China’s participation was mostly organized by Euro-Americans who ran the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. Long directed by Sir Robert Hart, an Englishman, the customs house facilitated the flow of trade through the treaty ports that the Opium Wars had forcibly opened. It was said that Hart, “although a British subject, is intrusted with the administration of the principal revenues of the Chinese Empire.” Hart had sent Chinese imperial commissioners to previous world’s fairs (he often went himself, accompanied by 101

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a few Chinese) to present products in the exposition buildings for manufactures and liberal arts. At St. Louis, the customs service did the same thing, ordering twenty thousand tons of goods to be sent to the Palace of Liberal Arts for display. For the first time, however, the enterprise included diplomatic representation. China’s official delegation was headed by two impe­ rial vice commissioners — Francis Carl, an American cousin of Hart’s who had worked for twenty years in the Chinese customs service, and Wong Kai Kah (Huang Kaijia), an imperial diplomat who had been educated at Yale. The two formally shared the same rank, but their division of labor reflected China’s semicolonial status. Carl was responsible for the organization and management of China’s building and displays; Wong oversaw diplomatic and ceremonial functions. Carl installed the commercial items in an expansive 127,000square-foot exhibit space in the Palace of Liberal Arts. The goods were arranged not according to the general schema of the fair, which was by type, but by treaty port of origin. The point was to make it easy to place direct orders for goods. Even though the exhibit was mainly commercial, it did have a didactic element: it included anthropological displays (for example, models of wedding and funerary processions) and lectures on cloisonné and silk cloth manufacturing. Carl astutely understood that opening the China market involved promotion not just of China’s goods but also of China’s culture. At the fair, however, that culture was limited to artisan crafts. No Chinese paintings or sculptures were exhibited in the Palace of Fine Arts, save for one portrait of the Empress Dowager painted by Miss Kate Carl, the vice commissioner’s sister. The official China building was not an actual replica of Prince Pu Lun’s summer palace, but a miniaturized version. Designed by Atkinson and Dallas, a British architectural firm in Shanghai, the pavilion was, in fact, a parody of a Chinese palace. Its gateway and ornamentation were elaborate, to be sure, but it was so truncated that the defining element of Chinese imperial space — scale — was completely lost. The little pavilion looked even more pathetic next to 102

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its oversize neighbors. But with these humble offerings — offerings offerings — offerings not even fully under her control — China control — China took a step onto the world stage that was the international exposition. Far from overshadowing the village, the official presence of China and the diplomatic ceremonies surrounding the visit by Prince Pu Lun generated greater public interest in China. That was, of course, good news for the Hong Tai Company. The village had a good location on the Pike, between the Siberian Railroad and Constantinople and across from Cairo. Architecturally, it was larger, more elaborate, and more ostentatious than the Chinese Villages at Chicago and Omaha. Its advertisement read: read:

b

on the pike is the true oriental show of the world : the 9

chinese viLLage

B

cost over $100,000

200 ~ natives from the Celestial empire ~ 200 the features are:

1

t h e C h I n e se m u se u m all the odd things of a Nation 4,000 years old t h e C h I n e se t h e at r e World’s renowned Chinese Jugglers, Magicians and Acrobats t h e C h I n e se w e d d I n G this most unique and interesting ceremony at every performance t h e C h I n e se r e sta u r a n t The delicacies of the celestial Chef served at low prices Ideal kitchen open for inspection t h e C h I n e se t e a Ga r d e n A Panorama of Oriental Magnificence — Tea served by 50 beautiful Chinese Girls t h e C h I n e se s t o r e s The latest importations of the Beautiful Art Wares and Silks of China t h e C h I n e se Jo s s Worth going miles to see — only real one outside of China Adults 25 cents ~ admIssIon ~ Children 10 cents.

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For the Tapes, the fair was a junket. Herman’s and Frank’s jobs were less than taxing. Herman worked as a clerk for the Hong Tai Company, Frank as manager of one of the village’s restaurants, the Dreamland Café. Frank, a boxing enthusiast, may have named it himself, after the Dreamland Pavilion in San Francisco, which hosted boxing matches. It was not a very Chinese-like name, although it did evoke a bit of the exotic. Mamie probably did not work; Joseph Tape would not have intended his daughter to be in a display or to work as a waitress. She took care of her family and spent time with the other wives. The children had the run of the place. Harold and Emily were among a dozen or so children who, dressed in Chinese costume, roamed the village looking cute. Sometimes the little culture brokers plied the Pike, handing out flyers urging fairgoers to visit the Chinese Village. Everyone adored Emily, the youngest child in the village. Guidebooks presented her as an ethnographical specimen: “Emily Lo, one of the many bright children in the ‘Chinese Village.’ This little girl is a full-blooded Mongolian 3 years old and measures only 2 1⁄2 feet in height. The pride of the ‘Chinese Village.’” Years later, Emily recalled her childhood experience at the fair. “Everyone thought we were from China,” she said with a chuckle, “but we were all from San Francisco.” Sometimes fairgoers caught a glimpse of the children’s knowledge of English and things American. Edmund Philibert, a local carpenter who kept a journal of his many visits to the fair during the summer of 1904, observed the cultural hybridity of “three or four little Chinese boys and girls from about five to eleven years of age” whom he came across. “They sang in Chinese and English,” he wrote, “and one sang Yankee Doodle and told his age, he was right cute looking.” But in general, the children were viewed (and recorded in the guidebooks for posterity) as being “Chinese,” an identity that precluded the possibility of being “American.” In fact, it mattered greatly that the Tapes were Chinese Americans — indeed, U.S. citizens. Their status gave them a privileged position among the Chinese at the fair. Everyone coming to the fair from 104

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China had to contend with the Chinese exclusion laws. Although the laws formally excluded only laborers, all world’s fair–bound Chinese, whether diplomats, merchants, exhibitors, actors, tourists, artisans, or workers, faced a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape, harassment, and worse. The U.S. Bureau of Immigration viewed all Chinese arriving in San Francisco and headed to the world’s fair with suspicion. It believed that the fairs had created a giant loophole through which Chinese laborers could enter and remain in the United States in violation of the exclusion laws. The bureau reminded Congress that “many of those admitted [for the Omaha exposition] never reached the grounds of the exhibition.” Fully 360 persons were missing from the Omaha exposition grounds before the close of the village, and there was no information as to their whereabouts. In response to these concerns, Congress enacted in 1902 new provisions to admit Chinese who were supposed to take part in the fairs. The immigration bureau imposed stringent inspection rules on all fair-bound Chinese landing in San Francisco, including interrogation, fingerprinting, and Bertillon measurement (a system developed by criminal anthropology to identify prisoners), as well as a requirement of a $500 bond per person to ensure his or her departure from the United States when the fair closed. The first casualties of this treatment were merchant exhibitors and employees of China’s national exhibit. These people understood that they were beginning a new phase in China’s relations with the United States, and they dared to imagine that equality between the two countries might be possible. Chinese businessmen bound for the fair were shocked when immigration inspectors in San Francisco treated them like coolies. The insult was especially upsetting because merchants and diplomats were categorically exempt from the exclusion laws and should not have experienced difficulty entering the country under any circumstances, at least theoretically. Convinced that an unnamed “syndicate” in China was working in cahoots with Chinese officials in Guangzhou to certify “flocks of coolies” as mer105

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chant exhibitors, U.S. immigration officials determined to “throttle and expose the rascality and rottenness” of the scheme. When Vice Commissioner Francis Carl arrived in San Francisco in February 1904, inspectors refused to land ten Chinese in his party who were “government employees under him.” In March, when the first of some three hundred merchant exhibitors began to arrive, immigration officials subjected them to humiliating treatment. For example, they required Young L. Fong, secretary of the Tea, Porcelain, and Silk Syndicate, to post bond and, once in St. Louis, to “report frequently to the local immigration officer” under pain of deportation. Some of the artisans that came to construct the Chinese pavilion were denied admission. Carl and Chinese consular officials vigorously protested these incidents. Vice Commissioner Wong Kai Kah also published a scathing critique in the North American Review, warning that such hostile treatment of the rising class of modern Chinese would push the China trade away from the United States to friendlier nations. The U.S. State Department persuaded the immigration bureau to interpret the rules in a more liberal manner — to land merchants and exhibitors holding the requisite certificates without interrogation and without bond. Because Chinese actors and others engaged to work in the Chinese Village were considered laborers, they did not enjoy the guardianship of the imperial delegation. If the immigration bureau had to back down on its treatment of merchants and diplomats, there would be no liberal interpretation of the rules for those destined for the village. During the spring and summer of 1904, immigration officials began to hear rumors that confirmed their worries that Chinese were “using the fair as a blind to gain entry to the United States and that they expect to stay here if landed.” It was said that Lee Toy, who had gone to China to recruit for the village, was planning to bring to St. Louis several hundred “coolies” and “bogus merchants” who had no legitimate business at the fair and no intention of returning to 106

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China. The $500 bond posed no obstacle; in fact, officials alleged, fair organizers had concocted a “substitution scheme,” in which Chinese already in the United States who wanted to return home would take the place of actors who wanted to stay. The price of such a “freedom contract” was reported to be $1,000 (so that even if the bond was forfeited, a profit would be made). Rumors that Lee Toy was bringing in upwards of fifty women for a “Chinese Court of Beauty” led immigration officials to believe that the women would be sold into prostitution. The U.S. commissioner general of immigration, Frank Sargent, considered the alleged plot afoot in St. Louis to be “the most daring and infamous attempt ever made to violate the Chinese exclusion laws.” The immigration bureau was prepared to thwart Lee Toy’s plans. The first group of approximately two hundred Chinese (including twelve women) to arrive in San Francisco in August was landed under bond of $500 each. The party was taken to St. Louis by train, confined in locked railway cars and accompanied by more than sixty U.S. soldiers and immigration officials. According to the St. Louis Republic, the Chinese walked from the train station to the fairgrounds and then up the Pike to the Chinese Village “with soldiers, immigration officials, and department representatives in front of them, behind them, and to the right and left of them, to see that none broke away and took to the tall timbers in a desire to remain and enjoy the blessings of a land of liberty.” The Chinese were subjected twice to Bertillon measurement (upon landing in San Francisco and upon arrival in St. Louis) and put under virtual quarantine in the village with a round-the-clock watch. The immigration inspector in charge in St. Louis, James Dunn (who had been Chinese inspector in charge in San Francisco in the late 1890s), decided to apply the regulations narrowly, confining the actors to the “village inclosure instead of the entire fairgrounds.” They could leave only on a forty-eight-hour pass and with an escort. No other group of foreign performers or workers was subject to 107

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such extraordinary restrictions and surveillance. But if the Chinese fair workers wished to stay in the United States, they were not alone. Inspector Dunn reported that more than five hundred Europeans working at the fair had asked to remain in the country. Dunn conceded that there was little he could do about it as long as they could show that they were not liable to become public charges. His attitude differed with regard to some twenty Africans working in the Boer War exhibit, who reportedly disappeared from the fairgrounds and were believed to be hiding in St. Louis, “harbored by Negroes.” Dunn said that they had “no money and were undoubtedly not desirable as citizens.” Dunn bolstered his strategy of containing the Chinese by hiring Frank Tape as an interpreter. Dunn told his superiors that Tape, “an intelligent Americanized Chinaman claiming to be able to obtain correct inside information,” had been “recommended to me by a prominent federal officer here.” The anonymous reference was likely Dunn himself, who surely knew Joseph Tape from his tenure in San Francisco. The job was a great opportunity for Frank—a coveted position with the immigration bureau, which in San Francisco still did not hire interpreters of Chinese descent. Frank quit his job managing the village’s restaurant and on August 17, 1904, was sworn in as “Chinese Interpreter in the US Immigration Service at Large,” at an annual salary of $1,200. The “at large” status indicated that the bureau may have intended to use Frank at different locations around the country, according to need. Frank did not really do interpreting work, at least not in the conventional sense. Dunn did not interview people with Frank acting as interpreter. Rather, Frank was Dunn’s undercover informant, the inspector’s eyes and ears in the Chinese Village. Frank hung around the village and picked up information; sometimes he positioned himself under a window outside the village’s living quarters, eavesdropping on conversations and reporting them to Dunn. He corroborated the immigration bureau’s belief that the women who were brought to 108

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the fair — fifteen to fifty women, according to Frank — would enter as laborers and post the $500 bond, then be “spirited away, allowing the bonds to be forfeited, the amount of the bond being a mere bagatelle in estimating the value of a Chinese prostitute.” Frank’s reports were inconsistent, however. In one, he reported that at least four women in the village had relatives in the East (suggesting that they were not prostitutes) and that one was the wife of one of the partners of the Hong Tai Company. But in another report, he claimed authoritative knowledge that twelve of the thirteen women in residence were without doubt prostitutes. On August 26, Lee Toy returned from China, landing in San Francisco with twelve women. He was with his associate, Hipolite Eca da Silva, the Macao-born man who had recently been fired from his position as a Chinese immigration interpreter in San Francisco. The women were accompanied by Dong Moy, a “notorious Chinese procuress who was deported in April 1901” for her dealings in the “slave trade.” Despite her history, the San Francisco immigration commissioner Hart Hyatt North landed her and the twelve women. Four of them, however, “confessed” that they had been bought in China by Lee Toy. The women were all mui tsai in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, told by Lee Toy that they would be working as waitresses in the Chinese Village’s tea garden. Once aboard the steamer, Lee Toy told them that they would be kept in America to work as prostitutes. When four of the women objected, they were beaten by da Silva. Upon their arrival in San Francisco, the four were sequestered at the Presbyterian mission home, and the other eight were shipped to St. Louis under da Silva’s charge. Lee Toy remained in San Francisco awaiting the arrival of a second party. Meanwhile, Commissioner General Frank Sargent went to St. Louis to investigate the village personally. He found “quite a pretentious building” but only about 20 men and women “who might be regarded as legitimate people gathered for the purpose of exhibition” and 239 others, “of the typical coolie class.” He was convinced that this “so-called Chinese Village Company was simply organized for 109

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the purpose of bringing in Chinese in violation of the law.” He took immediate steps to assign additional watchmen and inspectors to guard the village and to arrest Lee Toy and da Silva. On September 17, police arrested Lee Toy in San Francisco for having imported four women for purposes of prostitution. A few days later, da Silva was taken into custody in St. Louis and ordered removed to San Francisco. The newspapers leaked a letter da Silva wrote to Agnita Burbank, one of his many girlfriends in San Francisco. Addressing Burbank as “my onliest pretzel,” he told her that he planned to “marry” the women to local Chinese men, saving them from deportation without forfeiting their bond. “Dunne [sic] guards these Chinese too closely,” he wrote, “but when my plans mature I will beat Dunne out before the close of the exposition.” News of Lee Toy’s and da Silva’s arrests filled the Chinese Village with “great consternation” and “excitement,” ostensibly because the “freedom contacts” were now in jeopardy. Inspector Dunn described the situation as “restive” and “ugly,” saying that the Chinese were “constantly assum[ing] a threatening attitude and many of them are armed.” By the end of October, Dunn reported that the Chinese Village had “virtually gone to pieces.” The weather had turned cold, visitors were few, and the only activities there were a juggling act and three small concessions selling curios. The village owed the exposition company $5,000 in rent. Abandoned by their managers, the actors had to buy their own rice. With Lee Toy still being held in San Francisco, his white business partners moved to shut down the village. Dunn began prosecuting arrests for deportation. On October 22, he arrested Chem Kual Young (also known as Dong Ah Muey), who was working as a “saleslady” in a Chinese village concession. She had been ordered deported in San Francisco months before but had disappeared from the city. On November 4, Dunn arrested six women in the village on prostitution charges. On November 10, immigration inspectors raided all the laundries in St. Louis’s small Chinatown, looking for Wong Kai, a “bonded Chinaman” who had gone miss110

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ing from the fairgrounds. Dunn’s men did not find Wong, but they picked up a dozen or so others, some of whom had documents, others not. There is no record as to whether Frank Tape took part in the raid, but it is likely that he did. One of the men caught in the dragnet was Yip Kon, the body servant of the second secretary of the Chinese legation in Washington. Dunn released Yip with profuse apologies. Finally, on November 17, Dunn removed the remaining 201 Chinese from the village on grounds that the building was unsanitary and a firetrap, and he prepared to deport them all back to China. Only the jugglers, who had secured a vaudeville contract, were spared removal and deportation. The Chinese Village was finished a month before the official closing of the fair. On the eve of the final deportation, the Chinese Village stood under heavy guard. There were rumors (probably conveyed by Frank Tape) that “an attempt would be made by the natives to burn the village and in the pell-mell to escape.” Thirty federal inspectors, an extra force of local police, and a squad of the Jefferson Guard (a citizens militia) kept watch on the desolate deportation party. The following day, Lee On Chung, one of the Chinese Americans working for Hong Tai, filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal district court on behalf of Sing Yu, one of the Chinese villagers facing deportation. Lee argued that the condition of the villagers’ bond was that they leave the country within thirty days of the fair’s closing. The fair had not yet closed, so the villagers had not violated the terms of their contract or their bond. The court issued the writ. Federal marshals proceeded to serve Dunn the writ, which would have required him to explain to the judge why the Chinese should be deprived of their liberty. But the marshals could not locate Dunn. At five o’clock, Dunn’s men tied the deportees’ hands with rope; put them, in parties of ten, into patrol wagons; and drove them to the train station, where they were transferred to six locked railroad cars. The train left Wabash station at 8:15 that evening, carrying the deportees, watchmen, and marshals, as well as interpreter Frank Tape. •  •  • 111

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In addition to the alleged prostitutes and Chinese village performers, the deportation train carried Dong Ah Muey, the “saleslady,” and Sutang “Anton” Wang, a twenty-year-old “dapper” Chinese who had been valet to Dr. Hugo Hardy of the German commission to the fair. Hardy had fired him in St. Louis on the grounds that Wang had begun to show a “disposition to adopt the flippancy and independence of American servants.” Also on board were thirteen Japanese women who had been employed as geishas at the “Fair Japan” concession on the Pike. The women had quit their positions in October in order to contract with an American “theatrical syndicate.” They were to be paid more than $1,000 each for forty weeks on a circuit tour. The Japanese commissioner ordered them to return to Japan, stating his fear that “if they stayed in America it would eventually result in their ruin .  .  . and eventually bring discredit upon Japan in the eyes of the American people.” When they refused, the commissioner turned them over to Dunn, who arrested them for deportation on grounds of violating the alien contract labor law. While awaiting disposition of their case, the women were held under house arrest at a Christian mission home in St. Louis. Stories about them circulated constantly in the news — myriad tales about the definition of “geisha” (“skill, cunning, handicraft trade, artist”), attempted kidnappings, and Christian conversions. On November 17, when the women were taken to the train station for deportation, twelve of the thirteen prayed, cried, and sang “Come to Jesus” with their benefactress, Miss Harding. The thirteenth, twenty-two-yearold T. Uyeki, remained on the third floor of the house and refused to leave. Four men carried Uyeki out while she “fought them all the way downstairs, kicking, scratching, and biting at every step.” A local journalist remarked that although there were more Chinese deportees, the case of the geishas “presented by far the greater dramatic interest.” Dainty and composed (notwithstanding Miss Uyeki’s resistance) and amenable to Christian conversion, the Japanese compared favorably to the Chinese, who, the writer said, were 112

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low-class and allegedly prostitutes. The comparison extended to the two groups’ comportment aboard the deportation train. The Japanese women were “exceptional” in maintaining their personal hygiene and appearance, manicuring their hands and feet every morning, whereas the Chinese never washed. Worse, they threw rice on the floor, slept on top of one another, and smoked and gambled incessantly. These characterizations were consistent with the relative general reception of the Japanese and Chinese at the world’s fair. Japan was an experienced player at international expositions. It presented national pavilions that projected its cultural aesthetic as centering on beauty and serenity, reflected in Japan’s fine arts, tea ceremony, and exquisite gardens. The evocation of a traditional culture emphasized the nation’s ancient lineage (ironically, with Chinese roots) and authenticity, while legitimizing Japan’s claims to modernity and progress, much in the way that Europe relied on ancient Greece and Rome for its civilizational heritage. It was only because Japan was a modern nation that its traditional culture could be valued. China, however, was not yet a respected modern nation. Many perceived its ancient civilization still to be in full force, an indication of China’s backwardness in the contemporary world. Horace Flack, a St. Louis newspaper columnist, wrote, “The building China opened . . . has in it thirty centuries of the Chinese view . . . That same building as it stands now, with all its delicate work in every phrase of the grotesquely artistic figures . . . might have been finished a thousand or two years ago . . . As it was then it is still.” Flack and other observers considered China’s participation in the world’s fair as a step, albeit a tiny one, out of its historical stagnation. This transitional moment underlay the confusing perceptions and conflicting receptions of Chinese people and things at the fair: the limited sovereignty implied in a miniature national pavilion and a trade show organized by Euro-Americans, the application of the exclusion laws to the modern commercial class, the arrest of a diplomat’s servant in a Chinese laundry. 113

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Nowhere was this confusion more apparent than in the perceptions of Vice Commissioner Wong Kai Kah and Prince Pu Lun. Wong, who spoke fluent English (his Yale nickname was “Breezy Jack”), impressed American audiences with his dignified bearing and lectures on Confucius and Mencius. At the same time, the local press was obsessed with such seemingly trivial matters as the number of gowns brought by Wong’s wife and the couple’s style of dress. It made much of Wong’s supposed conversion from Mandarin robes to Westernstyle trousers after he discovered the utility of pants pockets. Similar wonder was made of his wife’s purchase of custom-made, lace-up ankle boots of French kid — just seven inches long to fit her tiny feet. In fact, the discussion of clothing was a way of suggesting the winning influence of Western culture. The official ceremonies and receptions presenting Prince Pu Lun and his imperial entourage were dignified, according the prince treatment befitting his rank. He was welcomed by the president of the exposition with a cablegram from President Theodore Roosevelt and sat with Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the reviewing stand. Parties held in his honor were lavish and quickly became the most important social events in elite world’s fair society. At the same time, the press mocked Chinese royalty with feature stories such as “How to Approach Prince Pu Lun,” complete with cartoonish figures and ludicrous guidelines: “You should knock your head against the ground 270 times before speaking to one of the royal family”; “Your eyes are forbidden to lift above the button on the left breast of Pu Lun’s coat.” Yet journalists who met the prince marveled at his cosmopolitan sensibilities. According to one, meeting Pu Lun was an “eye opener . . . Physically and mentally, he dignifies our conception of the Chinese.” The prince spoke of China “earnestly, thoughtfully, and frankly,” expressed his affection for the American people but candidly criticized their bad manners (their propensity to stare), and argued that the exclusion laws violated the norms of international relations. Another writer was astonished that when he met Pu Lun aboard a train, the 114

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latter “sprang from his seat in the drawing room and extended his hand democratically.” On another occasion, the prince even got up to open the door of his hotel room to admit a visitor, not bothering to wait for a servant to do so. Presenting a modern view of China was not possible for the sponsors of the Chinese Village, even though they were themselves modern, entrepreneurial Chinese Americans. In the overall scheme of things, these Chinese Americans were small-time players. They were disconnected from the major currents of the China trade, which was controlled by Euro-Americans and comprador Chinese in the homeland, and their relationship with the Chinese government was weak, notwithstanding their ties to the imperial consul in San Francisco. The Chinese Village lacked the capital and finesse of Fair Japan, which was directly sponsored by the Japanese commission and played by the rules. Fair Japan did very well financially, taking in $200,000 in gross receipts, as much as the popular Galveston Flood attraction and far more than the $67,000 recorded income of the Chinese Village. Sadly, there was a kind of bumbling quality to the Chinese Village. It opened in June, but the first contingent of actors from China did not arrive until August. In the interim, the Chinese Americans from San Francisco had to staff the village attractions and concessions. The much-promised two-hundred-foot-long silk dragon from Chicago did not arrive until September. By late September, Lee Toy and da Silva were arrested, and the village began to unravel. It had flourished for barely a month. James Dunn’s recruitment of Frank Tape also had a sad essence to it. Frank’s opportunity for a career in the immigration service was, at least initially, tied to his willingness, even his eagerness, to inform on the Chinese villagers. The whole affair ended ignominiously with the deportation train. Knowing that the majority of Chinese from the village were not formally deportable and fearing that another habeas writ would be served, the immigration bureau directed the train to Oakland, not San Francisco. Quietly and under cover of night, it 115

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transferred the deportation party on a small boat to the SS Coptic, which waited outside the Golden Gate. Once in Oakland, Frank left his charges. Perhaps he made a quick trip to Berkeley to visit his parents. If he did, he did not linger. He was eager to return to his post in St. Louis, and once there, he threw himself into the work of pursuing illegal Chinese immigrants. He raided Chinese laundries and arrested those without proper papers. He broke up a ring of merchants who were selling counterfeit certificates of identity. His escapades got written up in the newspapers. Frank was flying high.

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9. Blood and Fire

Herman and mamie traveled back to California separately from Frank, avoiding the humiliation of the deportation spectacle. In April 1905, shortly after returning to the Bay Area, Herman was hired as an interpreter by the immigration bureau. He was the first ethnic Chinese hired as an immigration interpreter in San Francisco; his employment was reported in the Daily Morning Call with the headline “Chinese Blood Goes into the Bureau.” The item noted that Lowe was the son-in-law of the “well known Chinese broker, Joseph Tape.” The San Francisco Chronicle made its position clear with a headline linking Herman to the recent scandal in St. Louis: “Man Employed by Slave Importers During St. Louis Exposition Is Presented with a Good Federal Position.” The San Francisco district office of the immigration bureau was unique in its long-standing “whites only” policy. East Coast districts had hired Chinese as interpreters since the late 1890s. There it was a matter of practical necessity: if there were few Chinese-speaking white people in San Francisco, there were even fewer in other parts of the country. The number of Chinese interpreters throughout the bureau increased in 1904, when Congress transferred responsibil119

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ity for enforcing the exclusion laws from the Treasury Department to the Department of Commerce and Labor. Terence Powderly, the new commissioner general of immigration, deemed the increase necessary. To be sure, the exclusion laws sharply curtailed Chinese immigration. But Chinese still ventured to America, often via San Francisco but also, in light of increasingly stringent entry procedures there, via other ports, where the chances of getting in were said to be better. Some sailed from China to Mazatlán, Mexico, then traveled north to be smuggled over the U.S. border. Others entered Vancouver (paying the hefty $50 Canadian head tax in order to do so legally), made their way east via the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then crossed into the United States in upstate New York or Vermont. Chinese would present themselves at immigration stations in places such as Malone and Ogdensburg, New York, and declare their status as native citizens. Someone from the huiguan in Boston or New York, along with an interpreter and sometimes a lawyer, would appear to vouch for their citizenship. Inspectors did not trust these interpreters, who they believed were coaching immigrants to commit perjury, and practically begged the immigration bureau to hire its own interpreters. Between 1900 and 1907, the bureau hired thirty-five Chinese interpreters, in addition to half a dozen white Chinese-language interpreters. San Francisco had five interpreters (including John Endicott Gardner); other districts — Richford, Vermont; Portal, North Dakota; El Paso, Texas; Toledo, Tampa, Tacoma, San Diego, and others — each had one. Most interpreters were paid on a per diem basis (usually four dollars a day); Frank, in St. Louis, and Herman, in San Francisco, were among the seven interpreters to draw an annual salary of $1,200 a year. That was nearly as much as the junior-grade inspectors, all of whom were white. Those who earned an annual salary did not have civil service appointments, but were “excepted” from civil service rules. This meant that they did not have to take an examination but also that they lacked civil service job protection and pensions at retirement. Still, government work held out many 120

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advantages: good pay, a month’s paid vacation each year, and no extreme overwork. Chinese who could speak even a modicum of English coveted these positions. Although most Chinese interpreters secured their jobs through connections (as is often true with government work), some had unusual backgrounds and were well educated. William S. Lee was born in New Zealand to a Chinese merchant, was raised in Oregon and Wisconsin, and worked as a translator for banks in New York and Pittsburgh. Seid Gain (Xue Jing) was the son of a wealthy Portland, Oregon, merchant, labor contractor, and opium smuggler. Seid was educated at the Baptist mission school and Bishop Scott Academy in Portland, and he received an LL.B. from the University of Oregon’s law school in 1907. Like Frank Tape, Seid was appointed Chinese interpreter at large. Most interpreters were not well educated, however, in either English or Chinese. Many immigrants had learned English in the Protestant mission churches and spoke with only a fair degree of facility. In some cases, they spoke a kind of pidgin, the simplified contact language of Hong Kong and other colonial port cities in Asia. Only a few, like Seid Gain, Frank Tape, and Herman Lowe, were born and raised in the United States and hence fluent in English. Although some, like Frank, were barely proficient in Chinese, the American-born interpreters had the greatest advantage within the immigration bureau. By 1906, three men of the extended Tape family were working as interpreters: Frank Tape and Herman Lowe for the immigration bureau, and Robert Park for Chinese defendants and witnesses in San Francisco’s criminal court. Robert’s younger brother, Edward, also secured a job as an immigration interpreter in San Francisco. Edward sold his businesses in Berkeley — a grocery and a pigeon and chicken farm — even though they were doing quite well, opting instead for the steady income and social status associated with a government interpreter’s job. Save for Frank, who was in St. Louis, they all lived in Berkeley. Emily and Robert Park still lived with their young son on Russell 121

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Street, down the block from Joseph and Mary. After their sojourn at the world’s fair, Mamie and Herman returned with their two children to their home nearby. Edward Park married Florence Chan (Emily Park’s bridesmaid), and the couple lived in a big house on Cedar Street in north Berkeley. They were all raising their children in white, middle-class neighborhoods and were familiar figures in the Chinese mission churches of San Francisco and the East Bay. Joseph and Mary were no doubt pleased and proud at the successes of the second generation. Perhaps Joseph entertained the notion that he had started a dynasty. In fact, however, the Tapes were foundational members of something even bigger: a new social class, the interpreter class. No amount of job success could have prepared the Tapes for the events of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, when the great earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco. When the earth shook at 5:12 in the morning, members of the Tape family would still have been asleep in bed, or perhaps just rising, in their homes in Berkeley. It’s unlikely that Joseph, Herman, or Robert had yet left for work in the city. The earthquake was as severe in Berkeley as it was in San Francisco, though not nearly as devastating. Chimneys and other tall structures such as water towers toppled all over town. Building damage was seemingly random. The university’s buildings emerged practically unscathed, but Berkeley’s primary schools and high school were damaged and would remain closed for months. There were some fires, but these were contained. In fact, the scene in Berkeley was nothing like San Francisco’s, where fire spread uncontrollably through San Francisco’s densely built city blocks. The earthquake had broken many of the city’s water mains, crippling firefighters’ efforts. Not all the buildings in San Francisco’s Chinatown collapsed during the quake, but those that were still standing that morning burned to the ground by nightfall. Chinatown’s high concentration of woodframed buildings, built mostly before the city’s 1882 fire code, was 122

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tinder for the flames. Residents who had fled from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs huddled on Van Ness Avenue, just west of Chinatown, and watched in horror as the fire crept inexorably toward them. From their vantage point on Russell Street in Berkeley, the Tapes watched San Francisco burn. They had a clear and frightening view of huge clouds of smoke rising over the city. They also could hear the blasts across the bay as the army dynamited buildings, attempting to create firebreaks. More than 25,000 structures on 490 city blocks, an area of 8 square miles, were destroyed in the four days before the fire was finally stopped by the breaks. Several thousand people were dead, and 200,000 were left homeless, including Chinatown’s entire population of 25,000. Although the smoke made clear to people in Berkeley that the city was suffering a disaster of catastrophic proportions, they remained without specific information for most of the morning of April 18. Many Berkeley residents had telephones, but these were simple oneway lines on which one could place a call but not receive one. In any event, telephone service was cut when a steel construction girder toppled and struck Berkeley’s telephone exchange building on Shattuck Avenue. The Tapes must have worried about relatives and friends in San Francisco: Herman’s mother, Robert’s parents, Mamie’s friend Wu Tianfu and the other girls at the mission home. Joseph would have been anxious, too, about his horses and wagons, his office, and the general situation at the mail dock. But the family probably could not imagine the horror that was later described by Reverend Ng Poon Chew (Wu Panzhao), editor of Chinatown’s Chung Sai Yat Po (Zhongxi ribao): “The gases, the smoke, the cinders, the copper sun, the haze, made it a hideous dream.” The offices of the immigration bureau survived the devastation intact. Hart North, the district commissioner, reported to Washington that the customs house, which housed the bureau’s offices, emerged “in the best condition, probably, of any structure in the business quarter . . . one of the very few that were neither touched 123

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by the earthquake or the more terrible fire,” notwithstanding a “severe siege of fire” from three directions. Firefighters faced down the fire, aided by a company of soldiers and a detachment of sailors from Chicago that happened to be in port. “Equipped with wet sacks and pails of water, [they] occupied every window and put out the flames before they could gain a fair start.” “Many of our men,” North continued, “were here at the post of duty every day,” from Wednesday through Saturday, when the fire was finally extinguished. On Friday, fire still threatened the building, and North ordered the bureau’s most valuable files removed. They were placed under guard on a nearby street that had already burned over. Even the sheds of the Pacific Mail wharf survived, “although they were on fire a number of times.” North proudly reported that the bureau’s office was “kept open every day during the terrible scenes.” On the second day, “in the heat of the conflagration, Inspectors Crawford and Meahan, Interpreter Persch and yours truly boarded the China as soon as she was released from quarantine.” North did not say where the China’s passengers were taken after they went through inspection. Perhaps the ship took them to Oakland to disembark. If they landed in San Francisco, they would have joined the stream of shaken and stunned refugees leaving the city. For several days, trains and ferries shuttled refugees to safer havens, mainly in Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento. The railroad, ferry, and steamship companies put everything they had into service free of charge. The Southern Pacific took some 225,000 people out of San Francisco. Homeless San Franciscans who did not leave the city immediately gathered in makeshift camps in squares and parks. Within a few days, they moved to large U.S. Army–run tent cities. By midday on April 18, people began arriving at the train station in downtown Berkeley. By the following evening, Berkeley was providing relief to some seven thousand people, boarding them in private homes, in churches and civic halls, and on the university campus. Twenty thousand Chinese went to Oakland’s small Chinese 124

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quarter on Eighth and Ninth streets. Most were rerouted to a refugee camp, which was segregated, as were the refugee camps in San Francisco. In Berkeley, the “Oriental department” of the city’s relief committee arranged for segregated accommodations for about a thousand Chinese and Japanese refugees in the Dwight Way district, including in Ge Thang’s gambling house at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Blake Street, which was turned into a nursery for “more than forty babies from two weeks old to six years.” Soon an outdoor camp with twenty tents was erected at University Avenue and Sacramento Street. The Methodist Episcopal Chinese mission home, newly established farther east on Regent Street, also took in Chinese refugees. What did the Tapes do during those extraordinary days? According to a story passed down through Mamie’s family, the Tape households in Berkeley put up earthquake victims from San Francisco. These probably were the parents and siblings of Herman Lowe and Robert Park, and possibly some of Joseph’s coworkers from the Southern Pacific. If that was the case, Mary and her three daughters would have been busy caring for their houseguests. Mamie, because she was active in Chinese mission circles, might have worked as well at the mission in Berkeley or at one of the churches in Oakland’s Chinatown. Joseph and his sons-in-law were probably active in some aspect of public relief work. Joseph may have assisted the Southern Pacific and Pacific Mail in their refugee relief runs on either side of the bay. He might have been the person who arranged for the Pacific Mail’s Mongolia to deliver a shipment of rice to Berkeley’s Chinese refugees. Herman probably reported to the immigration bureau office in San Francisco, perhaps to attend to the Chinese in the Pacific Mail’s detention shed. Robert Park had recently become president of the Sam Yup Association, the huiguan for Sanyi people. As one of the few Englishspeaking leaders in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he would have been involved in protests and negotiations with the mayor and the city’s 125

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relief committee over the treatment of Chinese during the disaster. There was, for example, the demand that the army protect Chinatown property from the looters who swarmed over the community’s ruins. There were ongoing negotiations with the city over where to locate the segregated Chinese relief camp, which was moved several times on account of complaints by white residents. It was finally set up on the far reaches of the Presidio, the parade ground above Fort Point, the “most remote, fog-shrouded, wind-lashed, rain-swept location . . . in all of San Francisco.” The struggle over where to put the Chinese relief camp was connected to a fierce political battle that had broken out over Chinatown’s future even before the flames were extinguished. AntiChinese elements had found in the earthquake an opportunity to advance their exclusion agenda by permanently relocating the Chinese community to a remote location. The Overland Monthly proclaimed, “Fire has reclaimed to civilization and cleanliness the Chinese ghetto, and no Chinatown will be permitted in the borders of the city . . . It seems as though a divine wisdom directed the range of the seismic horror and the range of the fire god. Wisely, the worst was cleared away with the best.” Others were motivated less by ideology than by sheer economic gain, seeking to get hold of Chinatown land, valuable property adjacent to the central business district. The Argonaut plainly stated that Chinatown should be moved because it occupied “one of the best parts of the city.” San Francisco mayor Eugene Schmitz formed a committee on Chinatown’s relocation and endorsed the idea of building a new Chinatown at Hunters Point, on the city’s southern edge. That plan faltered when it was pointed out that Hunters Point was over the city line and that therefore the city would collect no tax revenues from the Chinese. Businessmen hesitated, too, when Los Angeles, Oakland, and Seattle announced that they would gladly take the China trade if San Francisco did not want it. Moving Chinatown to another area in San Francisco proved impossible because no other neighborhood would stand for it. 126

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The Chinese Six Companies and Chinese consulate adamantly refused to go along with permanent removal. These organizations were among a handful of Chinese property owners, and they made it clear that they would rebuild on their land. An official of the Chinese legation told city officials, “America is a free country, and every man has a right to occupy land which he owns provided he makes no nuisance.” Rebuilding in Chinatown got under way quickly, as it did in the city generally. Chinese merchant leaders led the effort, signing longterm leases with white absentee property owners and even underwriting the construction of new buildings. Two wealthy merchants, Look Tin Eli and Lew Hing, founded the Canton Bank to assist with Chinatown’s redevelopment. They also wanted to refashion Chinatown according to the architectural vision first seen in the Chinese Villages at the Chicago and St. Louis world’s fairs — one meant to promote tourism and social reform in order to overcome Chinatown’s reputation as overcrowded, diseased, and vice-ridden. Tourism in Chinatown was not new, but it had been associated with the Barbary Coast and middle-class slumming. Chinatown leaders now wanted a wholesome tourism for a broader audience, a climate in which restaurants and shops would thrive. Look Tin Eli wanted to create an “Oriental city [of] veritable fairy palaces.” Toward that end, the merchants hired American architects, who stuck pagoda-inspired rooflines and other Eastern motifs onto conventional Western façades in order to create an “Oriental” streetscape. Look’s building at the corner of Grant Avenue (formerly Dupont Street) and California Street, one of the first to feature the new style, housed a restaurant and an Oriental bazaar. Street gates adorned with dragons and Confucian maxims, exaggerated upward-curved eaves, and red, yellow, and green lacquers became ubiquitous architectural markers. It was a fake and flashy Orientalist presentation for tourists that would mark not just restaurants and souvenir shops but also banks, the Chinese Hospital, and the headquarters of the huiguan. In San Francisco, the Chinese Six Companies’ new building 127

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featured red doors and a portico with yellow columns and a greentiled roof decorated with flying carp. The aesthetic of the Chinese Villages at the world’s fairs, created by the early Chinese American culture brokers, became — and is still today — the architectural style of American Chinatowns throughout the United States. As San Francisco’s people started to rebuild the city and their lives, the immigration bureau turned to the question of its Chinese interpreters. Since their hiring at the turn of the century, there had been charges of incompetence and corruption. In the spring of 1907, Frank Sargent, the commissioner general, took steps to bring the force into line. First came agency-wide transfers. Bureau officials imagined that if interpreters were sent to an unfamiliar city, without contacts and relatives in the local population, they would lack opportunities for graft. Interpreters were told that they could take their assigned transfers or resign. Frank was sent from St. Louis to Portland, Oregon; Herman went from San Francisco to Detroit. Next, Sargent issued rules that forbade any officer or employee from maintaining “outside business relations” with Chinese, including employee ties to insurance companies and Chinese mercantile firms. Finally, the commissioner general ordered a thorough review of the bureau’s Chinese interpreting staff. The bureau dispatched two white Chinese interpreters, John Gardner and T. W. G. Wallace from the New York district office, to evaluate Chinese interpreters working in eighteen cities across the country. Sargent wanted an evaluation of each man to determine his linguistic abilities, as well as his “general bearing” and “personal conduct.” Is he “addicted to the use of intoxicants or drugs,” and “does he associate and affiliate with the Chinese people, or does he hold himself aloof from them and attend strictly to his business as a government officer?” Sargent believed that it was “more important to have honest interpreters than to have interpreters with finished educations.” Gard-

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ner’s report, submitted in October, should have pleased Sargent, as he did not find the interpreters to be corrupt or otherwise of bad character. He did, however, sharply criticize the interpreters for their low level of competence. Only a handful, he said, could translate written documents; the majority “I find to be merely interpreters, and some of them not any too proficient at that.” Eight interpreters, or forty-four percent of those examined, including Frank Tape, were reported as “below the average.” Alas, Gardner concluded, “it is generally considered that inferior as most of these interpreters are they are the best that can be secured on this side of the Pacific.” In fact, interpreting in Chinese immigration proceedings did not demand a high level of skill. Interrogation had become a rote examination of “facts” based on the transcripts of prior interviews: “Does your mother have bound feet?” “How many water buffalo in your village?” “What direction does your family’s house face?” If the applicant gave the wrong answers, he or she was considered an identity fraud. The correct answers, of course, were given as the result of coaching and memorization — which made the interrogation process a bureaucratic farce, a ritual performance that had nothing to do with who the immigrants really were. It required little sophistication on the part of the interpreting staff. Sargent understood that “these several interpreters have each been employed for a considerable length of time, and that the officers under whom they have served have been able to transact the business in which their services were required in a fairly satisfactory manner.” Still, he sent Seid Gain on an “educational tour” to reexamine the eight interpreters found to be below par and to determine whether their competence level could be raised with further instruction. Seid was also asked to scour the Chinese population for prospective hires — men of integrity who could both interpret and translate. During his visits, Seid coached the interpreters, but he did not attempt to provide serious language instruction, which was impossible

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to undertake in the span of a few days. For example, Seid spent four days in Portal, North Dakota, with interpreter Eng Chung. Gardner had previously found Eng to be a “practically uneducated man,” whose spoken English was extremely poor and who was barely literate in either Chinese or English. Seid recognized that Eng had “a faculty of getting information from the Chinese witnesses in a manner which I am informed is very satisfactory to the examining inspector.” Seid endeavored to impart to him “some of the knowledge gained by myself through experience as interpreter and some instructions which I believed would assist him materially.” Seid visited Portland and examined Frank Tape. His report confirmed Gardner’s previous evaluation: Tape had “a very limited knowledge of the Cantonese dialect, and no knowledge of written Chinese.” Tape’s poor linguistic evaluations were the least of his troubles. He had gone from St. Louis to Portland in the summer of 1907, as part of the bureau-wide transfers, with a cloud over his head. Earlier in the year, several Chinese in the St. Louis area had filed complaints against him. Jue Hong Yee, a merchant in St. Louis, wrote to the immigration bureau in Washington that Tape had extorted money from a Chinese family to ensure the admission of their relatives and had made unwarranted arrests of Chinese residents for deportation. Soon afterward, Leonidas Dyer, a U.S. congressman, alleged in a letter to the bureau that “Chinamen [had] been terrified into paying money to inspectors to square their cases and prevent arrest.” Dyer cited the case of Mr. Lum Ling, formerly in business in St. Louis, who had taken his two children to China to be educated. Upon his return to San Francisco, he was denied entry on the grounds that he had trachoma (a contagious eye disease). A friend in St. Louis telegraphed Lum to say that he would have to pay $150 to secure entry. And there was more trouble: Tape was directly accused by the Wong family of Deadwood, South Dakota, of trying to extort $500 for his favorable report on the admission of a son of family head Wong Won. Tape’s 130

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demand, according to the family, was made in the presence of his St. Louis supervisor, James Dunn, but “he was so deaf that he could not hear . . . What use to send a thief interpreter and a deaf inspector?” Tape’s former superiors in St. Louis were disinclined to believe this small tsunami of charges. They considered them trumped-up, aimed at getting rid of Tape, whom they valued as an effective immigrant agent. The St. Louis office had information that Chinese merchants had collected $400 to $500, mainly from laundrymen, for the purpose of having Tape transferred. Dunn expressed his confidence in Tape — after all, he had helped Dunn break the importation of illegal coolies and prostitutes during the world’s fair, and afterward had continued to pursue illegal immigration cases zealously. The St. Louis press said that Tape was “exceedingly active in the performance of his duty and was disliked by the Chinese,” and that “local government officials laugh at the charges against Tape.” Although Dunn and his colleagues considered accusations of graft to be concocted as retaliation against Tape, rounding up Chinese immigrants — which we know he did — and extortion in admission cases were not necessarily incompatible or mutually exclusive. Frank’s need for attention, even aggrandizement, would have been fed by his position as immigration interpreter. That position made him feel important — indeed, he embodied the authority of the federal government. He didn’t wear a badge, like a sheriff or marshal, but he acted as though he did. Frank also may have had an uneasy relationship with Chinese people, a result of his sense of estrangement from the social world of Chinatown. Frank, as we’ve seen, barely spoke Cantonese and had been raised by his mother to be the “same as other Caucasians, except in features.” But of course, he was never fully accepted by either whites or Chinese. The only way he could be accepted by his white colleagues was to be a Chinesehating Chinese. Rounding up illegal immigrants would have pleased his white superiors; extorting money from immigrants would have shown people in Chinatown his power. Regardless of Tape’s motives, the Chinese community found 131

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his actions morally reprehensible. An anonymous letter writer in St. Louis expressed the feelings of Chinese people against Tape and Dunn: “All our Chinese will have no life to see the sky and sun. O! Why our Chinese have so much misfortune happen to them and have such a cruel and corrupt officer; then what can we do?” For Chinese immigrants in America, the immigration bureau was an institution of state power that positively oppressed them. It held them for weeks upon arrival as though they were criminals, interrogated them in ways that created difficulty even for lawful applicants, and enforced laws that codified their racially stereotyped status as “coolies” and “prostitutes.” Chinese immigrants did not consider smuggling or paper-son immigration morally wrong, even though they knew it was breaking the law. Chinese considered exclusion to be immoral, even if it was legal. Not just Frank Tape but translators in general, a social group of in-betweens, were widely mistrusted by Chinese immigrants. When the Qing reform leader Liang Qichao visited the United States in 1903, he conducted his own study of the Chinese population in America. His informal census of fifty thousand Chinese reported some five hundred translators, more than twice the number of physicians (including herbalists) and ministers combined. The translators, wrote Liang, were “the men who work at little law firms, local courts, tariffs and customs. Their salaries are relatively high, but most of them are morally degraded people, and since they have considerable power in their respective cities, Chinese immigrants hate them most.” Liang’s comment echoed the critique made in China of those who did translation work for European and American businesses. The Confucian literati, as well as elite reformers, believed that translators were corrupted by Western materialism and individualism. “Linguists” were considered “boorish” men, who knew “nothing except sensual pleasures and material profit” and who possessed only slight knowledge of foreign languages, limited to “names of commodities, numerical figures, some slang expressions and a little simple grammar.” 132

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It is not clear, however, whether judgments about the corrupting influence of Western commerce and culture held the same purchase among the Chinese population in America. The overwhelming majority of Chinese immigrants were not intellectuals, but laborers and merchants who had come to pursue economic ends. In the context of racial subordination and, by the late nineteenth century, legal exclusion, authenticity was less a matter of cultural identity than a problem of race loyalty in the face of hostile state authority. Government interpreters were quite literally mouthpieces for the coercive state. And certainly, the state could not exercise its authority over the immigrants without such mouthpieces to make that authority intelligible, even as government officials mistrusted the mouthpieces. Yet the interpreters also made it possible for non-English-speaking immigrants to “speak” to the offices of power, to defend themselves or make claims in their own interests. These crosscutting interests created a complicated and unstable position for interpreters. There was much room for meanings to be lost in the translation. Two men conducted an official inquiry of the charges made against Frank Tape in St. Louis: Seid Gain, the bureau’s Chinese interpreter at large, and Richard H. Taylor, a Secret Service agent who investigated allegations of internal corruption in the federal agencies. Seid and Taylor both concluded that the charges were, in Seid’s words, “ridiculous,” the result of several Chinese who had “gotten [it] up as a scheme against” Tape and had gone to Congressman Dyer with their accusations. Although Seid had already developed a dislike for Tape — they were both working in the Portland office — and had heard that he was dishonest, the St. Louis case was so “fixed up” that he reported in Tape’s favor. In March 1908, Frank was officially exonerated. But the experience had soured him on the bureau, and he tendered his resignation. His decision also may have been influenced by his unhappiness working in the Portland office, where Seid Gain was a likely irritant. Seid, who was far better educated than Frank and fluent in written 133

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and spoken Chinese, saw through Frank’s game. It is unlikely that Frank, whose ego matched Seid’s, liked the other man any better. Frank may also have chafed under the supervision of Portland’s Chinese inspector, John Sawyer. The genteel son of a Protestant clergyman who read Goethe and Schiller, Sawyer was a very different man from Tape’s former boss in St. Louis, the zealous James Dunn. Sawyer took no joy in arresting Chinese without certificates of residence for deportation. In one case, Sawyer, Tape, and a deputy sheriff arrested Ng On, the fifty-three-year-old proprietor of a Chinese laundry in Pendleton, Oregon. Sawyer described Ng more sympathetically than one imagines either Dunn or Tape would have. “His face,” wrote Sawyer, was “wrinkled beyond his years, [he was] of slight build and short stature, his expressionless gaze bespeaking an indifference to fate resulting from years of hardship, his bare feet protected from the Winter’s cold [by] only a pair of slippers, his buttonless vest held together by safety-pins, the sleeves of the coat given to him by some charitable white man reaching to his finger tips.” There were some in the bureau who believed that Frank was an asset to the government’s immigration work. There was also, to be sure, a shortage of Chinese interpreters. Frank was convinced to withdraw his letter of resignation and given a commitment that he would be reassigned. It was not easy to find Frank another posting that he found acceptable. He seems to have been rather picky. He turned down an assignment in New Orleans in May 1908, and when he was offered a posting to Chicago in June, he hesitated. But also in June, he eagerly accepted a special three-month assignment to serve as Chinese interpreter for Richard Taylor, the Secret Service agent. (Frank was unaware that Taylor had investigated his case in St. Louis.) Taylor would be investigating the smuggling of Chinese immigrants from Mexico into southern California, and Frank found the prospect of accompanying him exciting.

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For frank to be sent on special assignment to work with Richard Taylor, the bureau’s special investigative agent who reported directly to the commissioner general — that surely would have made Joseph proud of his son. It was indeed an important mission. The decision to send Taylor to investigate the problem of smuggling Chinese across the U.S.Mexico border indicated how serious the bureau believed the problem had become. Taylor was not the first immigration agent at the scene. In recent years, two Chinese interpreters had gone undercover into Mexico, and another special investigator had toured the southwestern U.S. districts. But the problem seemed impossible to solve: the border was long, porous, and difficult to patrol; the Chinese were wily and determined; the Mexican government didn’t care; and U.S. immigration inspectors and railroad employees were susceptible to bribes. Indeed, smuggling Chinese into the United States from Mexico had become big business. According to one newspaper account, the government was “much exercised” over the “wholesale smuggling of Chinese” from Mexico.

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This smuggling was a relatively new problem. Before 1903, Chinese had favored the northern border for surreptitious entry. They were willing to pay the $500 head tax to legally enter Canada at Vancouver and then proceed east by rail, only to slip into the United States somewhere along the line. This situation, in which Canada collected the head tax but the United States got the Chinese, frustrated American officials. In 1894, the immigration bureau negotiated an agreement with Canadian steamship and railroad companies allowing American immigration inspectors to examine all U.S.-bound passengers at Canadian seaports and on trains while still on Canadian soil. In 1903, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) agreed to the immigration bureau’s request that the CPR itself determine the admissibility of Chinese immigrants headed to the United States and deliver them directly, under guard, to four designated ports of entry in Vermont, New York, North Dakota, and Washington State. By these agreements, the United States extended the reach of its Chinese exclusion laws into Canada. The Canadian agreements did not eliminate illegal entry from Canada, but it did make it more difficult. Smugglers now crossed the border at remote locations in the “wild districts” of northern Montana, Idaho, and Washington and in small boats across Puget Sound. Others circumvented the CPR agreement by traveling by rail to Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, then backtracking on a different railroad line to Lacolle, Quebec, near the U.S. border. Chinese also increasingly turned their efforts to the Mexican border. Unlike Canada, Mexico welcomed Chinese immigrants as part of its general policy of labor recruitment. Mexico also was not willing to negotiate with the United States anything similar to the Canadian agreements. Noting an increase in reports of Chinese entering via Mexico, the director of immigration in San Diego paid local ranchers liberal rewards for information that led to the arrest of smuggled Chinese. In 1904, when the immigration bureau sent Chinese interpreters Yong Kay and Moy Gop Jung undercover into Mexico, 136

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they discovered an extensive smuggling network running from Mexican seaports such as Ensenada, Guaymas, and Mazatlán to border towns such as Calexico, Nogales, and Ciudad Juárez. Chinese boarding houses and restaurants served as rendezvous points for Chinese immigrants and their Mexican smugglers. Chinese brokers sold the immigrants Chinese laborer certificates of identity. With the assistance of Mexican guides, the Chinese entered the United States. According to Yong Kay, “The price for those who [are] without laborer certificates and go by freight car is $320.00 per head, $260.00 of this amount to be paid to the Chief Immigrant and Custom Officer.” The officer arranged for twenty Chinese at a time to board a freight train bound for Los Angeles or San Francisco. It was also common simply to walk across the border a short distance from a town and then find refuge there among local Chinese residents before proceeding to California or traveling east. Some immigrants, wearing Mexican-style clothes and mumbling a few words in Spanish, entered in full view of immigration inspectors. Although the modern reader might express skepticism at the efficacy of that strategy, immigration officials believed that it was quite difficult to distinguish Chinese from Mexicans. By 1904, eighty mounted customs officers were patrolling the Mexican border for illegal Chinese immigrants. But as one inspector wrote, “There is a broad expanse of land with an imaginary line, all passable, all being used, all leading into the United States. The vigilance of your officers stationed along the border is always keen; but what can a handful of people do?” Richard Taylor’s operation was different from previous investigations in that he was an outsider to the bureau, sent from the Secret Service at the request of the secretary of commerce and labor. President Theodore Roosevelt used the Secret Service to investigate cases of official misconduct throughout the federal government, such as fraudulent contracts, kickbacks, and bribes. Taylor, a former naval cadet and real estate man who had entered the Secret Service in 1901, 137

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had been one of President Roosevelt’s bodyguards. It was the president’s trust in him that led to his being assigned to clean up messes within the federal bureaucracy. Roosevelt understood that in order to expand the size and power of the executive branch, he also had to attend to civil service reform. Taylor was on the inside of that project, unearthing the dirt for TR. Between 1904 and 1907, Taylor investigated cases in the Justice Department, the customs bureau, and the War Department. His work took him from San Francisco to Montana to Louisiana to Hawaii. Often his work led to the dismissal or arrest of federal employees, including many in positions of authority. In 1907, when the secretary of commerce and labor asked the secretary of the treasury to assign one of his Secret Service agents to investigate the immigration bureau, it was because he had concluded that Chinese smuggling was linked to corruption in the U.S. Immigration Service. The chief of the Secret Service, John Wilkie, sent Taylor, who had earned a reputation as a criminal investigator, to do the job. Taylor worked in immigration for six months before Frank teamed up with him. Taylor’s first assignment was in San Francisco, investigating Chinese inspector and interpreter John Endicott Gardner, who was accused by local Chinese of landing prostitutes. The charges against Gardner had been persistent over the years, although he also had his defenders, especially among the missionary establishment. Taylor found in Gardner’s favor in every instance. When he was done in San Francisco, he went to investigate Chinese smuggling in Texas, New Mexico, and other states. During that tour, he effected the arrest or dismissal of immigration inspectors in charge in Albuquerque, Galveston, Chicago, and New Orleans. Frank received notice of his detail to Taylor in June 1908 while he was in San Francisco, where he was officially on vacation, pondering whether to take the assignment in Chicago he’d been offered. It’s likely that he had strong reservations about Chicago, where the Moy family controlled both Chinatown and the local immigration interpreting staff. Frank would not have wanted to play second fiddle to 138

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the Moys, and he had learned in St. Louis that jealousies among the Chinese could result in frame-ups and other indignities. Joseph may not have felt that Chicago was the best situation either, but perhaps he counseled Frank to stay in the service. It was not a career to give up lightly. The prospect of working with Taylor to break up smuggling rings in southern California would have thrilled Frank. He was instructed to meet up with Taylor in Los Angeles in July, but upon hearing that Taylor was in San Francisco, he went to the immigration office there and asked for an introduction. He probably identified with Taylor right away, for his new boss was a field agent, not a paper pusher, and practically lived on the road. Taylor was a widower, had no permanent address, and reported directly to Washington. He was about a decade older than Frank and may have been an instant role model. Taylor believed the Los Angeles district commissioner to be utterly incompetent and the Chinese interpreter there complicit with smugglers. Both the U.S.-Mexico border and the seacoast were virtually unguarded, allowing for “squads of Chinese” to enter the country there. Off the coast, smugglers launched small skiffs at high tide from isolated beaches in Baja California, near Ensenada. They were then picked up by powerboats and taken to isolated beaches in southern California. These small power craft, disguised as fishing boats, were low and fast, hard to detect in the water. Over land, smugglers used every means of conveyance imaginable, from wagons to automobiles to freight trains. During the summer of 1908, with Frank assisting, Taylor worked on four cases in which smugglers from Mexico had been apprehended while conveying Chinese into California. In the first case, a group of Chinese hiding in a hay wagon and their Mexican drivers were apprehended near Los Angeles. In another, an arrest was made after a car accident exposed a long-standing operation based in Santa Ana. The third case involved a Chinese merchant in Los Angeles, who paid Mexican smugglers $150 for each Chinese delivered to him. This enterprise was quite cosmopolitan, as 139

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reflected by the names of the men who were apprehended: Antonio Downey, Lowe Tung (also known as “Old Jim”), William Gerald, Woo Way Kay, and Frederico Goldbaum. This case was particularly hard to crack, for Taylor found that he was working at cross-purposes with other law enforcement officers and even an amateur investigator, who had granted Downey immunity from prosecution in exchange for information. The amateur, Francisco Sanford, a physics professor at Stanford University, was traipsing around southern California, injecting himself into cases under the imprimatur of the U.S. Immigration Commission. Chaired by Senator William Dillingham, the commission is best known for its forty-one-volume report on immigration, issued in 1911, but it also engaged in independent field investigations and was especially interested in the problem of Chinese smuggling. Sanford’s connection was to Jeremiah Jenks, a Cornell sociologist who was on the commission staff. Taylor was beside himself trying to amass evidence that would be admissible in court. Frank seems to have played a limited role in these three cases, but he made an important contribution to the fourth. In that case, three Mexicans were assisting six Chinese to get on a freight train near Imperial Junction, California. They had come from Mexicali, and after crossing the border on foot, the Mexicans and Chinese were sleeping in separate camps, six hundred yards apart, when they were discovered. To secure evidence against the smugglers, Taylor sent Frank into a jail cell in Los Angeles where the Chinese were being held. Frank spent three days in jail with them, posing as another apprehended alien. His mission was to befriend the prisoners and find out what had happened—that is, to secure information against the smugglers that could be used in court. If Frank had thrilled at the prospect of undercover work, sitting in a jail cell was likely not what he’d had in mind. Nonetheless, he secured confessions from two of his cellmates, Mar Look and Chin Bow, showing Taylor that he could do the job. Tape and Taylor forged a bond. They were not equals, of course — 140

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Tape was a sidekick to the seasoned agent — but Taylor did become something of a mentor to Frank, who was an eager learner in the ways of investigation and apprehension. Frank had never been really interested in interpreting. Ever since his first assignment in St. Louis, he had managed to parlay his position as an interpreter into assignments that involved field investigation. For his part, Taylor thought that the immigration bureau’s field service lacked agents trained in criminal investigation, and he sought to train district personnel, including Chinese interpreters, whenever he could. Taylor did not regard the interpreters as language robots; rather, he believed they could be valuable as detectives and informants. Frank also found in Taylor a supporter who was directly connected to the upper reaches of the Washington power structure: the commissioner general, the secretary of commerce and labor, even the president. Frank so identified with Taylor that he borrowed details from Taylor’s life to enhance his own persona. He would later tell people that he had been a Secret Service agent, which was not true. He would also relate dubious stories of his adventures as a government agent: when investigating a freight train near the Mexican border, he was shot in the shoulder by a smuggler before killing his assailant; during a knife fight with a smuggler in St. Louis, he also killed his attacker; he was a mole in Pancho Villa’s camp; he infiltrated a smuggling operation in the Caribbean; he went undercover in Europe as a “Mandarin prince.” There is no record of Tape ever having been shot or knifed, or of having killed any smugglers (such events were rare), let alone of any missions to Mexico and Europe. He did later make a trip to Jamaica with Taylor, but there are no reports of his infiltrating a smuggling ring there. Most likely, Frank refurbished other immigration agents’ experiences and appropriated them for his own résumé. Some of the stories are so fantastic that they were probably products of his own imagination. In September 1908, Frank completed his assignment with Taylor and was posted to Seattle. It is unclear why the Chicago assignment, 141

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which remained on the books, was canceled. Perhaps Frank was no longer needed there, or perhaps Taylor had intervened on his behalf, although Taylor’s telegram to Washington closing his work in Los Angeles says simply, “Have finished with Tape wire instructions for him.” Seattle held out more possibilities than Frank had had in Portland or perhaps than he imagined he would have in Chicago. The city was a major port in transpacific migration; thousands of people from China, Japan, and India disembarked there each year. The district office landed immigrants and was engaged with the defense of the U.S.-Canada border against Chinese smuggling. When Frank arrived at the Seattle office, his colleagues knew that he was coming from a special assignment on the Mexican border. Frank played this information for all it was worth, hinting, if not boasting, that he was a detective with direct ties to Washington and not a mere interpreter. The district staff believed that he was an agent with a “great reputation,” who had come to Seattle with a “special commission” from Washington. In fact, Tape’s appointment to Seattle was a conventional posting as a Chinese interpreter. But Frank insinuated himself into the role of investigator, offering to take Chinese cases that the inspectors could not resolve, and the inspectors were only too happy for the assistance. He also got involved in district efforts against smuggling. In one case, in which nine Chinese stowaways on a steamship that had landed in Seattle were apprehended, Tape secured the confession of one of the ship’s Chinese crew, the sail maker, that he was responsible for smuggling the stowaways into the country. He also learned that the ship’s quartermaster had been bribed to provide food to sustain the stowaways while at sea. Frank cut a very different figure from the other Chinese interpreter in the Seattle office, Quan Foy (Guan Kui). Quan, who had been hired in 1901, was one of the longest-serving interpreters in the bureau. People frequently remarked on the differences between the two men: whereas Quan was tall and quiet, Frank was short and loud. 142

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More important, Quan was not interested in investigative work. His superiors described him as loyal and reliable, as someone who was interested only in the work of interpreting. Tape, who according to the inspector in charge “was doing an inspector’s work practically,” may have benefited the district, but his air of self-importance and his putative connections to the bureau’s brass stirred resentment in the office. He had a “very free hand” in the district, coming into the office “when he saw fit.” Still, his superiors gave him high marks for his work — rating him in the ninetieth percentile in his annual evaluations. If his Seattle superiors valued Tape, Seid Gain continued to distrust him. Although Seid had exonerated Tape on extortion charges in St. Louis in March 1908, he continued to suspect that Tape was dishonest, and he firmly believed that he was incompetent as an interpreter. In 1909, Seid submitted a memorandum to the bureau with the recommendation that three Chinese interpreters be dismissed, including Frank Tape. The bureau fired one — an alleged opium smoker — but rejected Seid’s other recommendations and, moreover, rebuked him for overstepping the bounds of his authority. This hurt him deeply, as he believed it had been his charge to evaluate Chinese interpreters throughout the bureau on the basis of their linguistic ability as well as their moral bearing. The bureau transferred Seid to Sumas, Washington, to work as an interpreter, which Seid understood — correctly — to be a demotion. After a few months, he resigned from the bureau. With Seid Gain’s departure, it seemed that Frank Tape was untouchable. Frank made one more investigative tour with Richard Taylor, to Jamaica in 1911, where the team spent two months looking into the island as a base for smuggling Chinese into the United States. Taylor also occasionally visited the Seattle district, as part of his investigations into Chinese smuggling. During one such trip in 1909, Tape was not officially detailed to Taylor, but he helped with Taylor’s investigation of Ah King, one of Seattle’s wealthiest Chinese merchants. Frank reported that Ah King used his mercantile company 143

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as a front to bring Chinese into the country, its forty-four “partners” taking turns bringing in their “sons.” Reprising his work in St. Louis, Frank also investigated Ah King’s Chinese Village concession at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, which was taking place in Seattle at the time. Frank informed Taylor that the Chinese working at the Seattle fair’s village had “paid their own passage and also furnished the money for their bond and that it was their intention to escape and remain in the United States when the opportunity presents.” Although Frank was informing Taylor of Ah King’s illicit activities, the merchant was probably unaware of it. Frank was establishing himself in Seattle’s Chinatown; his position as an immigration man gave him status. If it was known that he was an informant, it would have destroyed his reputation. While Frank led local Chinese to believe that knowing him gave them an in with the government, he was also making alliances that were useful for his own purposes. For example, he joined a rotating-loan group, a common source of credit in immigrant communities, in which each member of the group contributed a certain amount per year, and members took turns taking loans from the pot. The group Tape joined dealt in relatively high sums; each year it paid out $500 to $900 ($11,000 to $20,000 today). Frank began investing in businesses, especially cannery contracting, arranging for Chinese laborers to work in Alaska in the fish canneries. Each contract brought the labor contractor a commission, which was taken from the worker’s wages. Labor contracting was another common form of ethnic brokering. It operated on the same basic principle of connecting two parties who lacked the linguistic and social resources to engage with each other directly and gave the broker exclusive access to both sides. Frank made upwards of $1,800 a year from brokering cannery contracts, more than his annual salary as an immigration interpreter. As Frank built a reputation as an important figure in Seattle’s Chinatown, he was simultaneously leading a life among Euro-Americans in which he came close to being their social equal. The district immigration staff regarded him as “simply an unusual man among 144

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Chinese interpreters,” based on the belief that he was a detective and because he was “American born and thoroughly Americanized and associates altogether with whites.” He was counted in the 1910 census as “white”; the census taker would not have had difficulty seeing him in this way, given his name, his style of dress, and his residence in a white neighborhood. Frank tested the limits of social acceptance when he began living with a white woman named Lena Sutherland sometime around 1911. We don’t know much about her; even her name is uncertain, as she is sometimes referred to as Lena Sullivan. She had been married to one Peter Sullivan in Pennsylvania, although she was also called Mrs. Sutherland. It is not clear how or when she landed in Seattle and he in Canada’s Yukon Territory, where he opened a saloon. Although the Sullivans were not legally divorced until 1912, Frank referred to Lena as his wife before that time. She was rumored to be independently wealthy, with an income of several hundred dollars a month. Frank was known to claim that her wealth came from an inheritance, but that may not have been true. Lena and her sister, who was married to the manager of the Frye, a downtown Seattle hotel, were “fast friends” who were known about the Seattle social scene, although they seem to have been comers, not part of polite society. Frank’s relationship with Lena stirred criticism among those who frowned upon race mixing, not to mention cohabitation. But some took it as evidence that Frank had come as close to social acceptance by whites as any Chinese could. Meanwhile, Herman Lowe had taken his brother-in-law’s place as interpreter in Portland, moving there in the spring of 1908. Herman transferred from Detroit, where he had been stationed for seven months. It must have been a relief for Herman and Mamie to leave Detroit, where the Chinese population was very small and the winter very cold. Portland had a settled Chinese community dating to the 1860s, when it was a provisioning center for Chinese going to work in the Oregon mining, lumbering, and railroad industries. It grew 145

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again in the 1880s as a refuge for Chinese who had been driven out of Tacoma, Washington, and small towns in northern Oregon. Although Portland was not without anti-Chinese racism, it was, relatively speaking, a gentler place than California and Washington. Frank may have found working in Portland boring, but Herman had a different disposition and likely welcomed the stability the district offered. Unlike San Francisco and Seattle, Portland was not a seaport that received transpacific steamships. Therefore, the district did not deal with landing immigrants. At considerable distance from the Canadian border, Portland also was not a site for alien smuggling. The district’s work with regard to the Chinese exclusion laws involved investigating local cases of laborers suspected of being in the country illegally and applications for admission at other ports by Chinese who claimed to be returning merchants from Oregon or to have been born in the state. There seems to have been relatively less corruption in the Portland office than in other district offices, if there was any at all. John Sawyer, the Chinese inspector there, was known to be a straight shooter. The Lowe family never lived in Portland’s Chinatown. Herman and Mamie settled in a white neighborhood on the other side of the river, on Southeast Taylor Street near Southeast Twelfth Street. Herman maintained cordial relations with the local huiguan, on account of his position with the immigration bureau, but the Lowes did not socialize with the Chinatown folks. Their choices require some explanation because unlike Mamie’s mother, or for that matter her brother, Frank, the Lowes were not alienated from the Chinese community. Although Mamie had been raised to be the “same as other Caucasians, except in features,” she had become more Chinese by her marriage to Herman, and she spoke Cantonese with much more proficiency than her siblings. But in 1908, Portland’s Chinatown was not an ideal place for the Lowes to live. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it was, like most Chinatowns in America, suffering from population decline. The exclusion laws had taken their toll. There were shops and restau146

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rants, families and mission churches, but the atmosphere was not as vibrant as in years past. The area was a bit worn, if not seedy. It was also quite possible that Herman did not want his wife and children living or spending time in Chinatown because of the so-called tong wars, which were bringing violence to Chinese communities across the country. Finally, the Lowes may not have easily integrated with Portland’s Chinese because Herman’s people were neither Siyi nor Sanyi — the dominant district groups — but Liuyi (in Cantonese, “look-yup,” a different area of Guangdong Province), and there were very few “sing Lo” (that is, with the surname Lü) in Portland. Although it would have been convenient for Herman to live in Chinatown, which was near the district immigration office downtown, he could afford to buy a home in a residential neighborhood outside the central business district. The Lowes’ first home on Southeast Taylor Street was in a neighborhood of native-born white Americans of the working and lower-middle classes. It was a modest single-story, wood-framed house with a small yard. A rosebush — the rose being Portland’s signature flower — grew next to the front steps. The family’s neighbors included a teamster, a railway brakeman, office clerks, loggers, and salesmen. The Lowes’ next-door neighbor, a machinist named A. E. Newcomb, had two children close to Harold and Emily in age. The Lowes’ lifestyle was middle-class and Chinese American in ways that seem familiar today but were highly unusual at the time. Emily and Harold went to school with whites and spoke only a little Chinese. They went to Chinese-language school in Chinatown for a few years but did not persist in it; probably it was too difficult to go during the week after regular school hours, and weekend instruction alone was insufficient to achieve satisfactory results. Nevertheless, their parents instilled in them a strong sense of Chinese ethnic identity. Herman in particular maintained some ties to Portland’s Chinatown. In 1912, he organized a marching band for young people, likely drawing on his experience with a children’s music group in the Chi147

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nese mission church in San Francisco in 1900 and 1901. It was a very Chinese American kind of project, for it taught Chinese children to play Western musical instruments. With the backing of Portland’s huiguan, Herman solicited donations from Chinatown’s merchants to buy instruments and hire a teacher. We don’t know whether Harold and Emily participated in the band, but it seems likely that they did, in part as a way for them to meet other Chinese American children. The little band played in Chinatown, as well as in “Caucasian parades,” perhaps even in Portland’s annual rose parade. The Lowe family’s identification as Chinese was important because although Herman had a government job and the family lived in a white neighborhood, it was not possible for Chinese to live in an entirely white social world. There were still distinct limits for Chinese in Portland. The city did not have the same kind of virulent anti-Chinese racism as, say, San Francisco. But jobs outside the ethnic economy were mostly closed to Chinese, interracial marriage was socially unacceptable, and as late as World War I, some public accommodations and theaters were racially segregated. During the 1910s, when Harold and Emily were going to high school, the only work outside Chinatown available to young, English-speaking Chinese American men was summer work in the Alaskan salmon canneries; the only work available to young women was cleaning restrooms in movie theaters. Harold and Emily, however, had not been raised to settle for menial labor or second-class citizenship. They pushed the limits of social exclusion and discrimination. While in high school, Emily and her friends refused to sit in the upstairs “colored” section of the movie theater, persisting until they were seated downstairs, albeit on the side. Harold would go on to college and become a dentist. During the early 1910s, Mary Tape made a few trips to the Pacific Northwest to visit Mamie in Portland and Frank in Seattle. Joseph does not seem to have accompanied her, but on one occasion she traveled with Gertrude, on another with Emily. Mary found her two oldest children both doing well, albeit in very different ways. Mamie 148

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and Herman were settled in Portland, leading a comfortable and stable life with children and a small piece of property. Herman was living out the dream of lifelong security (if also obscurity) that was the hallmark of government employment. Frank was living a different kind of dream, as an outsize government agent and big shot in Chinatown, who wore his status and wealth conspicuously. He purchased a powerboat (with money from his parents), then later sold it and bought a Kissel, a large, expensive touring car. He wore a diamond ring. Frank and Lena lived in a suite at the Calhoun Hotel and then in an apartment on Capitol Hill, a desirable residential neighborhood. What did Mary think about Mamie’s and Frank’s accomplishments? Was she happy that Mamie was happy, even if her husband still seemed to lack ambition? Was she proud that Frank held an important position, was making good money, and was married to a white woman? Or did she wince at Frank’s self-aggrandizement, his profligate spending, and his marriage to a divorcée? Did Mary sense any trouble on the horizon?

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With frank and mamie living in the Pacific Northwest, the rest of the Tape family in Berkeley settled into a life of comfort and small pleasures, but also one in which happiness was unevenly spread. The good life was based, foremost, on Joseph Tape’s expanding business interests. He had already done well with his express company and the baggage-handling privilege that he held for the Pacific Mail and Southern Pacific, in addition to myriad other concessions. As the Chinese passenger ticket agent for the steamship and railroad companies, Joseph received a commission on every ticket he sold. Although Chinese were not required to purchase their tickets from Tape, common language, convenience, and trust meant that nearly all did. In 1913, a $99 ticket from Chicago to Hong Kong via the Southern Pacific and Pacific Mail brought a commission of $7.50. We do not have any records of Joseph’s business accounts, but we can estimate that he earned several hundred dollars each month in commissions (upwards of $10,000 today) from this piece alone. Joseph soon became involved in bonding. Under the exclusion laws, bonds were required of Chinese when they were in the United States temporarily. The bond was meant to serve as a guarantee that 150

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they would not stay indefinitely or permanently. The bond policy was imposed after the courts ruled against the immigration bureau’s efforts to exclude all Chinese who sought temporary admission. One type of bonding was for Chinese who arrived at a U.S. port but whose final destination was another country, typically Mexico or Cuba. These “transit” passengers had to post a bond to ensure that they would, in fact, proceed to their final destination. Others who required bonding included Chinese working at the world’s fairs and, after a policy decision based on the immigration bureau’s unsettling experience at the fairs, actors on tour in the United States. The government also required Chinese crew members working on ships putting into American ports to post a bond as a condition for shore leave. Joseph Tape brokered bonds for all of these people. He entered the business — one that required substantial capitalization — step by step. He began, simply enough, by delivering the bonding paperwork from the ships at the Pacific Mail’s wharf to the downtown office of William H. Thornley, a customs house agent and bondsman, then to the immigration office, and back to the ship. Soon he did the paperwork himself, relieving a ship’s officer of the chore. He would go to each department of the ship, ask who wanted to go ashore, and help crew members fill out the application. He then brought their applications to the ship’s officer for signature. At first Joseph may have received a modest gratuity for delivering the paperwork, but one imagines that very quickly he charged a fee for his service, although it is not clear whether he was paid by the steamship company or the bondsman (or both). Sometime around 1910, Joseph became an agent for Thornley and began handling bonds for Chinese crew members on the Pacific Mail and Toyo Kisen Kaisha steamship lines. Together these two lines handled ninety-five percent of Chinese passenger traffic across the Pacific. As an agent, Joseph would have made a direct commission on each bond, a portion of Thornley’s take. By the late teens or early twenties, he had amassed sufficient capital to broker bonds directly. Typically, he 151

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bonded thirty or so crew members per ship. If he charged ten percent for each bond, he would have made $50 on each $500 bond, upwards of $1,500 per ship if thirty members went ashore. With at least one landing a month, he would have earned a handsome income of $18,000 a year ($375,000 today) from this piece of his business alone. To serve his diversified interests, Tape opened a second office at 804 Clay Street in Chinatown, which handled ticketing and bonding for Chinese crewmen and transit passengers. (His express office had relocated to 755 Grant Avenue, formerly Dupont Street, after the earthquake.) Joseph’s expanding businesses show how experienced he had become at seizing opportunities to broker parts of the immigration process. The increments of commissions and fees added up to make him a wealthy man. In 1906, Joseph and Mary built a new house at 2121 Russell Street, at the back of their lot, next to the family’s first Berkeley home. The following year, they built a duplex in the adjacent lot, at 2119 Russell — a large, clapboard Colonial revival with a corner bay and two six-room flats. Joseph’s mini–building boom was part of Berkeley’s expansion in the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, when tens of thousands of people left the city and settled permanently in the East Bay. The new houses were roomier than the old Victorian. Joseph and Mary moved first to the duplex at 2119, renting out their houses at 2121 and 2123, and some years later to 2121, after moving the house to the front of the lot and renovating it. The interior of 2121 was conventional, with a fireplace, a high wainscot, and floral wallpaper in the living room. The furniture was of its time — a velvet sofa, a floor lamp with a thickly fringed shade, Mission-style rockers. There were some nice touches, such as a ceiling light fixture and matching wall sconces made of tinted glass. Mary’s paintings hung on the walls. The rental properties generated income for the Tapes for many years. During the 1910s and 1920s, their tenants — who were all white people — included a real estate broker, a master carpenter, and the 152

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driver of a milk wagon, who surely brought to Joseph and Mary memories of their first meeting and courtship. Around 1910, Joseph bought a large house in the Haywards (present-day Hayward and Castro Valley), a rural area in the foothills of the Contra Costa mountain range, about twenty miles south of Berkeley. The area was favored by San Francisco and Oakland elites as a summer resort, with its mild weather and commanding views of “unsurpassed loveliness over a large extent of territory.” The Tapes called their property “the ranch.” It had a white, two-story, wood-framed house with a wraparound porch and ample room for the extended family. It was a lovely spot, with a garden and shade trees, close to woods and fields for walking and gathering wildflowers and to Lake Chabot for fishing. During this era of extraordinary prosperity, Joseph also purchased a large piece of property, likely several hundred acres, in Mendocino County, near Ukiah, where he built a hunting lodge, and some land on the San Joaquin River, as a fishing retreat. The Tapes also began to acquire automobiles. In 1910, they bought an E-M-F roadster and then, in the years following, a Buick and various grand touring cars, including a Cadillac and a Peerless seven-passenger car that was marketed for women (both Emily and Gertrude drove). It was fitting that the family, whose fortune had been made in the business of transportation, was so enamored with driving. To be sure, the automobile was the status symbol of the day. It embodied all that was new and modern: it compressed time and space, enlarging the physical realm of one’s freedom, and was a marvel of new technology. To reflect this status, contemporaries called automobiles “machines.” Driving made it easier for the Tapes to get to the Haywards ranch and to take excursions, especially in the South Bay area — to Marsh Creek and the water temple at Sunol — as well as down to the beaches at Santa Cruz and Pacific Grove. In the early 1900s, the Tapes’ vacations at Camp Meeker near the Russian River had required travel by train and a greater commitment of time. Now, with a car, they took frequent day and weekend trips. •  •  • 153

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It is unclear how much Mary Tape enjoyed these pleasures of uppermiddle-class life. Her health seems to have continued to decline during the 1910s. Photographs of her from this period show her appearing sickly and depressed. Mary often appears in photographs with her daughter Emily, who also looks unwell, possibly both as a result of diabetes. Emily also may have been lonely; her husband, Robert Park, seems not to have been much of a family man but was, rather, consumed with work, business, and civic activity. Robert almost never appears in photographs of Tape family gatherings. Emily’s closest companions were her son, Frank; her mother; and her girlhood friend and sister-in-law, Florence Park. Perhaps at Mary’s urging, Emily took up painting porcelain. Mary may have installed a kiln at the ranch; one imagines mother and daughter spending time together firing, painting, and gilding china pieces. Mary’s and Emily’s poor health, perhaps even depression, contrasted with Gertrude’s blossoming in the 1910s. The baby of the family (she was ten years younger than Emily), Gertrude was only four when the Tapes moved to Berkeley. Unlike her siblings, she never learned to speak Chinese. More than they, she grew up in material comfort. Although she studied typing and shorthand at Berkeley’s Commercial High School, she did not work. She played the piano and as a young woman performed at her friends’ parties and weddings and may have given some recitals. Gertrude grew up as a socialite, destined to get married, have children, and lead a life of leisure. In 1913, Gertrude married Herbert Chan, the son of a wealthy Chinatown merchant, Chin Fook Cheung. Chin had been a labor contractor in the 1880s and then a partner of the import firm and bazaar Wing Sing Lung/Yokohama Company, one of several ChineseJapanese bazaars on Dupont Street in San Francisco that sold silks, porcelain, art objects, and other Oriental goods to Euro-American customers. Herbert, whose Chinese name was Chan Bok Hong (Chen Buotang), was the third of eleven children born to Chin Fook Cheung 154

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and Wong Fun. His older brother and sister died when they were young, so Herbert became the eldest when he was four years old. In 1903, when Herbert was twelve, his parents returned to China, to his father’s village in Xinning. It is not clear why they went back. Perhaps Chin’s parents needed him, or perhaps he went to acquire goods for his store. They took their children with them — at the time, four — save for Herbert, who did not get along with his parents and did not want to go to China. Before leaving, Chin Fook Cheung took Herbert to Sacramento and arranged for him to attend the Chinese mission school there. Herbert lived with Mrs. Martha Page, a widow who taught at the school and took in young men, both Chinese and white, as boarders. Five years later, Chin Fook Cheung returned to California with his wife and children, now numbering six. They moved to Oakland, as San Francisco was still recovering from the earthquake and fire. Chin reinvested in businesses in San Francisco’s Chinatown, including the Gawk Gah (Guojia), or Republic Drugstore on Grant Avenue. Herbert was not interested in returning to his father’s home in Oakland. He had become close to Mrs. Page and stayed in Sacramento until he completed high school. Herbert’s concession to his father was to study pharmacy. In 1913, he enrolled in the California College of Pharmacy in San Francisco, which was affiliated with the University of California. This was an unusual move. During the 1910s, Chinatown residents still, in the main, relied on traditional Chinese herbal medicines; Western medicine was barely practiced in Chinatown. The Tung Wah (Donghua) Dispensary, a small clinic that had opened in 1900, was destroyed in the earthquake, and although there was talk about building another, it was not until 1923 that Chinese Hospital opened. Herbert was looking to the future, planning for a modern career and a modern business. He was one of a handful of Chinese and Japanese students at the College of Pharmacy, which graduated only nine Asians during the 1910s. The training of pharmacists had become more rigorous in the 155

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early twentieth century in response to the industrial production of drugs around the turn of the century and the advent of federal regulations in 1906 governing their manufacture. Pharmacy education emphasized lectures and laboratory work in chemistry, botany, toxicology, bacteriology, and the like, as well as “pharmacy jurisprudence” and business. The requirement for “drug store experience” was dropped, another indication of pharmacy’s shift from an apprenticed trade to a profession. Herbert studied pharmacy for two years. Actually, he took the first year of study twice, failing to advance both times. He was not academically inclined and probably fared poorly in classes such as organic chemistry. He did not graduate. He did, however, circulate among Chinese and Chinese American college students at Berkeley and Stanford. Both universities enrolled very few Chinese students before World War I. Berkeley graduated five Chinese in 1912, two from Shanghai, two from Guangzhou, and one Chinese American. Herbert joined a Chinese student club at Berkeley. Two of his closest friends, also sons of Chinatown merchants, were students at Stanford. One, Wah S. Lee, was active in the Cosmopolitan Club and later the Chinese Students Club, which formed after a white student threw a Chinese student down the stairs of University Hall. They were all part of a social circle of Chinese students from Berkeley and Stanford that held joint social events, often in Oakland, with eating, singing, and dancing. All the students were male, but their parties included young Chinese American women known through the various networks of Protestant churches and the well-to-do Chinese merchant families. Herbert and Gertrude may have met at one of these socials. Or they may have met directly through mission church circles. In fact, these social worlds overlapped a great deal, the college students comprising one age cohort of mission society. Gertrude became close to W.  S. Lee’s fiancée, Daisy, and the two couples went on outings together. Joseph Tape probably did not arrange Herbert and Gertrude’s 156

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marriage — the couple was too modern, too independent for that — but he certainly would have approved of it, as Herbert’s father was a wealthy and prominent member of the community. The couple wed at a lavish event at the Hotel St. Mark in Oakland. They exchanged vows in a Christian ceremony, which was followed by a banquet for 150 people in the ballroom. The Oakland Tribune ran a story with the headline “Occident and Orient Are Wed,” focusing attention on the Americanization of the Chinese couple. It remarked that “throughout the entire ceremony the English language was employed” and that “the American custom prevailed in the dress as well as in the service,” even though most of the guests were Chinese. It misrepresented Herbert as a model minority student, calling him “one of the brilliant Chinese graduates of the class of 1912 of the University of California” and one of the “wealthy and intellectual class of Chinese students.” The couple’s elite standing was conveyed by conventions that would have been familiar to readers of the society page: the groom’s party, his fraternity brothers, were all attired in tuxedos; Florence and Edward Park’s little girls threw Cecile Brunner roses in the bride’s path; the newlyweds spent their honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. In these ways, the story distanced Herbert and Gertrude from the “Chinese-ness” of the immigrant generation. The article barely mentioned Gertrude’s parents and made no mention at all of Herbert’s. It gave the groom’s name as “Herbert Page Chan,” suggesting that Herbert’s mission teacher was his maternal figure. It was as though Gertrude and Herbert had sprung forth as fully formed Chinese Americans — and wealthy and educated ones, at that — disconnected from the experiences of their immigrant parents and, by implication, from all Chinese immigrants. The newlyweds settled into a Craftsman-style bungalow at 2125 Russell Street, next door to Joseph and Mary’s first home on the block. There were now five Tape-owned houses on Russell: the elder Tapes’, Emily and Robert’s, Gertrude and Herbert’s, and two that were rented out. Herbert worked at the Gawk Gah drugstore in San Fran157

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cisco but did not stay there long; without a degree and a license, there would be no career in pharmacy. So Herbert joined Joseph’s bonding business, accompanying him to the ships, taking photographs of the crewmen for their bonds, and delivering paperwork here and there. In 1916, Herbert and Gertrude attended W.  S. Lee’s graduation from Stanford. Shortly thereafter, W. S. and Daisy got married and moved to Berkeley, to the same neighborhood as Edward and Florence Park. The couples formed a tight circle. The women especially spent much time together. Gertrude was a beloved auntie to Florence’s daughters, Bernice and Winifred. The women took the girls on trips to the beaches in Monterey and Pacific Grove or up to Sacramento, and often to the Haywards ranch. They were very fashionconscious, wearing the latest styles of dresses and hats and permanent waves in their hair. On occasion, they donned Chinese dress — for fun, not for going out. But here, too, they knew the latest styles. Gertrude and Daisy posed in the haute couture of republican China in the 1910s — narrowly cut tunics with high, standup collars worn over straight-legged pants — called the xinhai style after the Chinese designation for the year 1911, the year of the republican revolution. For Gertrude, the first four or five years of her marriage seem to have been a particularly happy time. She led a life of ease and privilege, although she does not seem to have had a spoiled nature. Gertrude kept photograph albums as a way of cherishing fond memories and narrating a life made meaningful by family and friends. She wrote captions that were loving and playful: “our bunk” (2125 Russell), “Dais and Gook” (with Daisy), “some bunch!” (family group photo), “my car?” (sitting in a Cadillac), “a Yama Yama kid” (Bernice in a Halloween clown costume). Most of the photographs are from 1914 to 1917, then they stop. What in Gertrude’s life changed that she no longer wanted to record it for posterity? For one, Gertrude was unable to get pregnant. Whatever the precise reason, it must have saddened her enormously not to have children and a family of her own. Depression and frustration also might have strained her marriage. In the late teens, Herbert took a position 158

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as “secretary” of the Western Canning Company, a Chinese-owned firm in nearby Emeryville. In 1920 or 1921, the couple moved to Oakland, to a house on Walavista Avenue, in a middle-class neighborhood near the Oakland-Piedmont line. It is unclear why they left Berkeley. If their marriage was strained, that may account for why Herbert stopped working for Joseph. It is also possible that Herbert’s mother, who lived in Oakland, wanted him close by. Moving to Oakland would have distanced Gertrude not only from her family but also from her friends, who were moving away, too. After living in Berkeley for only a few years, Daisy and W. S. Lee moved to Texas, where W. S. worked only briefly. Lee had a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford, but it was not easy for Chinese Americans to find professional employment in the United States. In the late teens, like many college-educated Chinese Americans at the time, he and Daisy moved to Hong Kong. The move offered Lee professional opportunity and allowed him to answer the call to serve the new Chinese republic. Indeed, opportunities for Chinese American college graduates were limited in the United States. Chinese American physicians, dentists, and pharmacists could practice only in Chinatown. Outside of the ethnic economy, the only good-paying mainstream jobs were in public and private institutions that served the Chinese population, such as the government offices and transportation companies that had provided the Tapes with such an extraordinary living. These jobs were rare, and so jealously guarded, with those who held them hoping to pass them on to their own relatives. For most Chinese who came to California in the 1860s and 1870s, whether laborers or merchants, Chinatown was their social universe. Born and raised in these families, Herman Lowe, Robert Park, and Herbert Chan were typical of the first nonimmigrant generation. Their parents were not Christians, but they had known that the missionaries were trustworthy bridges to white society and that the services they provided were useful, especially for the education of 159

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their children. With some exceptions, the first generation of Chinese Americans, those born in the United States, can be considered “secular Christians.” They were not religiously devout but were acculturated to mainstream Protestant social conventions and mores. Their collegiate and fraternal associations built on the mission church networks from their childhood and adolescence. These Chinese Americans were educated and self-consciously modern, following trends in American popular culture, consumption, and slang. The acculturation of these Chinese Americans distinguished them from the immigrants, yet the persistence of racism in America also distinguished them from the mainstream of white society. They did have Euro-American friends: Martha Page and her family visited the Chans at Russell Street, and Florence Eveleth Fontecilla, who knew the Tape children from birth, moved to Berkeley in the 1910s and renewed her friendship with the family. But in the main, middle-class Chinese Americans who came of age during the first decades of the twentieth century developed their own ethnic social circles. They all lived in white, middle-class areas but remained connected to Chinatown through employment, business, and the mission churches. Although they may have gone to school with white children, their marriage partners and their closest adult friends were other Chinese Americans like themselves, with whom they formed their own fraternities, athletic leagues, music groups, and charity organizations. Such was the social world of the Tapes in the 1910s. Gertrude’s photographs show it to be a world of material success and ethnic camaraderie. Having had a head start of one generation, the Tapes were quintessential figures of the new Chinese American middle class. Beneath the trappings of wealth and ethnic sociability, though, they nursed the hurts of poor health, loneliness, and marital discord.

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Frank arrived in seattle in the autumn of 1908 with a reputation as a “detective” and a “trusted employee of the department.” But his standing in the district office began to erode within the year. His colleagues’ suspicion that he was a confidential agent of the commissioner general generated resentment, and there was conjecture over whether the source of his extra income was his father, his wife, or graft. However, Frank had the support of Ellis De Bruler, who served as the district commissioner from 1909 to 1913. De Bruler considered Tape “a good interpreter and a good detective . . . [whose] general work was all right, no complaint.” He believed that the gossip about Tape was part of an atmosphere of whispering and “tattling” that pervaded the office. But rumors that Tape was involved in “irregular” work continued and became “most persistent” by 1911, coinciding with his relationship with Lena Sutherland and his growing extravagance — the Kissel, a chauffeur and maid, hunting and fishing trips, the gold he always had in his pocket. In the fall of 1913, Henry White was appointed district commissioner in Seattle, replacing De Bruler. White

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did not have his predecessor’s equanimity about Tape and undertook a secret investigation of his activities in Chinatown, his wife’s background, and their finances. White obtained Tape’s bank statements and went to “at least 20 attorneys, to the leading department stores in the city, and jewelry stores” to track Lena’s spending. He concluded that the Tapes were living at a rate of $8,000 to $10,000 a year ($165,000 to $200,000 today) — far more than Tape’s government salary of $1,200 could support. Aware that Tape had told people in the office that Lena’s first husband had died and left her a substantial inheritance, White tracked the husband to the Yukon Territory, where he was alive, running a saloon, and only quite recently divorced from Lena. White’s queries also led him to a man in Seattle, the manager of a hotel, who alleged that Lena was an adulteress and a blackmailer of married men, having so threatened to ruin his own marriage. White also interviewed “a great many Chinamen and attorneys for these Chinamen” and learned that Tape “was no respecter of persons whatever. He thought that a certain sum of money was due him on every case that went through the office.” Tape would allegedly demand $50 or $100 or $250 to “get your man out tomorrow” or to “fix up that case and land your son or your wife or whoever it was.” Despite these broad allegations, White secured affidavits from just three people to the effect that they had paid bribes directly to Tape or to his representatives. In the spring of 1914, White advised Frank that he was under investigation and asked him to explain the nature and amount of his income. White believed that Lena’s income was about $300 a month (more than $6,000 today), but Frank told White that he would not make a statement about her income. Frank was seemingly stung by the charge that his money was ill-gotten. As White told it, Frank “talked again about how much money [his father] was making, and the trouble that the different interpreters throughout the United States had got into. And tears came into his eyes, and then he talked of resigning.” 162

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Frank had offered his resignation before, in 1908, over the allegations of misconduct in St. Louis. It may have been that his racial insecurities were so great that any accusation from a white superior could pierce him profoundly. The gesture to resign can be read as a decision to give up in order to forgo a nasty fight, which would only bring more insult to his dignity and to that of his family — or, alternatively, to prevent exposure of even more damning information. Frank sent a telegram to his former boss Richard Taylor asking for advice. He admitted to “interest in canneries with Chinese” but objected to questions that were “personal.” He asked Taylor whether he should “stand pat and not tell,” adding, “I have no fear.” Taylor advised Frank to “insist on statement in writing giving reasons for request your financial standing and defer replying until you hear from me regarding particulars written me.” Henry White’s zeal against Frank Tape takes on another dimension in light of the commissioner’s ongoing conflicts with Taylor, whose investigations brought him regularly to the Seattle area. Taylor was now in charge of a nationwide operation against Chinese smuggling. In addition to ongoing problems in southern California, Taylor believed that Chinese were being smuggled over the Canadian border “in larger numbers than ever before” and sounded a “general alarm” to the northern districts. But White, who felt that Taylor undermined his authority, was not cooperative. It irritated him that Taylor constantly made requests to change personnel assignments throughout the district. Even more irksome to White, Taylor seemed to speak endlessly in favor of Tape, praising his past work and loyalty, while criticizing inspectors in the district (who outranked Tape) as incompetent. In the spring of 1914, when White was gathering evidence against Tape, Taylor requested White to assign Tape to him, to investigate suspected smugglers near the border. White objected, stating that he did not think it was proper to send an interpreter for such work. He said that he “would not detail Mr. Tape on secret work of our office 163

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unless I was absolutely ordered to do so.” He must have been furious when he received a wire from the commissioner general with just such an order. On June 15 or 16, Tape “went to work on the outside” (secret work). But White did not accept defeat. On June 17, he wrote to headquarters detailing the “evidence that I had secured relative to [Tape’s] expenditures, relative to his income and the work about the office, and asked that he be removed.” White received no direct reply from the bureau, but the commissioner general dispatched Rafael Bonham, the district commissioner in Portland, to Seattle to investigate. At Bonham’s request, the bureau suspended Tape pending the investigation. Taylor, now visiting the district, told Bonham that he thought Tape was “all right” and that the stories about his wealth were exaggerated. At the same time, recognizing that Bonham had been authorized to investigate Tape, Taylor told Frank to tell Bonham everything that he knew. When Tape met with Bonham, however, he continued to refuse to answer questions about Lena — about whether they were married and what her finances were. He told Bonham that his excess income came from gambling, an explanation that Bonham considered “preposterous.” The case caught the attention of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, chaired by Frank P. Walsh, a Democrat and labor lawyer from Kansas City, Missouri. Congress had mandated the commission to look into issues related to the conditions of labor and the causes of violent class conflict, such as strikes by coal workers in Ludlow, Colorado; silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey; and garment workers in New York City. The commission’s interest in “Asiatic smuggling” stemmed from organized labor’s long-held contention that Chinese “coolie” labor undermined the wages of white workingmen. In August, while Bonham was still collecting information about Tape, the Walsh Commission held hearings in Seattle. It grilled Tape

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about his source of income and his bank accounts, and it interviewed the principal officers of the Seattle immigration district, as well as local Chinese merchants who alleged that Tape had tried to extort money from them. Members of the Walsh Commission were particularly interested in Tape’s racial identity (“What race is Mr. Tape?” “Chinaman.” “Full, half, or quarter?” “Full, he is an American-born Chinese”), his relationship with Lena, and Lena’s spending habits and moral reputation. They also inquired about a white woman named Pearl with whom Tape had allegedly lived when he was in Portland. Tape refused to answer questions about Lena, Pearl, or his finances, other than to say that he had interests in canneries. When the commission held hearings in San Francisco, it conducted a lengthy interrogation of Taylor, inquiring about his efforts against smuggling along the Mexican and Canadian borders and along the Pacific coast. It took a special interest in his relationship with Tape and in seeking to establish whether Taylor had acted improperly by trying to protect Tape. Taylor stood by his friendship with Tape and his opinion that he “had been faithful to me in every undertaking that I had with him.” He said that he would recommend Tape as “one of the best investigators [in the service] . . . If I send him out to find a man, he will find him for me.” Taylor said that he had not tried to help Tape cover up anything, but he had advised him to cooperate only in an authorized investigation, as that was his right. Taylor also cast doubt on the allegations made against Tape, stating that it was easy to take statements from a range of people and string them together: “You can build up a case against anyone that way.” In late August, shortly after the Walsh Commission hearings in Seattle concluded, Rafael Bonham submitted his report to the commissioner general. It was a devastating document, including eighty-one pages of testimony from sixteen Chinese witnesses, six white attorneys, twelve immigration inspectors, and a copy of Tape’s bank ac-

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count showing that more than $9,000 had gone in and out of it in the past year. Bonham wrote: Interpreter Tape extorted money from a large per cent of the Chinese passing through Seattle office irrespective of the merits of their cases — the less meritorious ones, of course, affording the better opportunities for heavy exactions .  .  . Women and children were not exempt from the payment of tolls, but on the contrary, because of the anxiety aroused incident to any delay in their cases, their husbands and fathers fell the readier prey to his demands. It seems that in some instances where men stood upon their lawful rights and refused him tribute he so misinterpreted their testimony or threw such suspicion on them that meritorious cases were made to appear fraudulent and in some instances the applicant actually deported.

Chinese witnesses testified that they had paid Tape via one of several intermediaries, Tape’s so-called collectors, including the cook at the immigration detention station. Bonham also submitted testimony saying that Tape was preparing to expand his operations to China, making arrangements to charge $1,400 “Mexican” (that is, silver) per head to smuggle people into the United States. It seemed clear but still incredible, wrote Bonham, “that any man within this Service, [could for] so long, so extensively, and so uninterruptedly prostitute his office and prey upon the Chinese people as has this interpreter.” On September 2, 1914, the commissioner general authorized Tape’s dismissal from the immigration bureau. Because Tape had been employed with “exception” to civil service rules, he was summarily fired. The U.S. attorney in Seattle, Clay Allen, picked up from there. On September 15, Tape was arrested and charged with accepting or demanding money in Chinese immigration cases. He spent one night in jail before posting bond for $7,500 and hiring a former U.S. attorney as legal counsel. Although White’s and Bonham’s investigations were supposed to 166

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be confidential, Frank Tape’s notoriety in Seattle meant that bits of news about them circulated freely in the local press. When investigators found Frank and Lena’s marriage license in his apartment, the newspapers reported that, too. The public eagerly consumed the sensational story, which combined several topics that Americans found endlessly fascinating: government corruption, Chinese criminality, and interracial sex — all prime evils that were imagined to threaten the future of Western civilization. The sensation grew as the trial neared. Most ominously, Lum Kong, the government’s chief witness against Tape, was shot in Chinatown. At three o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, September 26, a man with a revolver walked up to Lum near the corner of Sixth Avenue and King Street and put two bullets into his abdomen. The victim told the police officer at the scene that his assailant was a man named Ching Kow. Lum died in the hospital the following day. According to the press, before his murder Lum had asked Commissioner White for protection, since he allegedly knew there was a $300 price tag on his head. It was also reported that the shooting had taken place outside the headquarters of the Hip Sing Tong and that the perpetrator had run into the tong’s building. Ching Kow, who was from Portland, was said to have been hired to kill Lum in order to “make an example of him for giving information to the authorities,” implying that Tape was associated with “highbinder” (tong) violence. In fact, the Hip Sing Tong’s building was a block away, and its president claimed that it was a benevolent society, not a criminal syndicate. Also, the deceased and not the killer was a member of the tong. This information did little to correct the impression that Tape’s case was somehow related to the tong wars. Ching was not a stereotypical tong man, but a Chinese American from Portland who was well-known among white people there. It is unclear whether he was a hired gunman or had acted on his own. He apparently harbored a grudge against Lum: when Lum had notified authorities of Tape’s misdeeds, he’d spoiled an attempt to bring Ching’s nephew into the country with a fake certificate of identity. 167

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A police manhunt failed to turn up Ching Kow until October 4, when his body was found hanging in the doorway to his boarding house room. His head was bruised, and his shoelaces were untied. There was speculation that he had been killed and then hanged to give the impression of a suicide, perhaps by parties who were afraid he’d talk. But police were inclined to think it was a suicide and closed the case on both Lum’s murder and Ching’s death. Still, the plot to silence witnesses continued to unfold. On the same day that police discovered Ching’s body, they arrested Hartvig Norman, a former deputy sheriff in Seattle, for attempting to bribe a U.S. marshal in order to gain a list of witnesses against Tape. Norman confessed that he was working with Tape, who he said was willing to pay $3,000 for the government’s witness list. Within the week, police arrested Tape; his attorney, Victor Place; and a man named Eng Dan, also known as “China Dan,” for conspiracy to intimidate witnesses. In November, the federal grand jury handed down two indictments against Tape: one for breach of duty and malfeasance, comprising fourteen counts covering seven specific incidents, and a second for extorting money from Chinese residing unlawfully in the country. These indictments stood separately from the charge of conspiracy to intimidate witnesses. Tape had to stand trial twice. The first trial, on the conspiracy charge, opened in late November. The prosecution’s case rested on the testimony of Hartvig Norman, who had turned state’s evidence, and a piece of red paper with Chinese characters on it, found in China Dan’s apartment. The paper was allegedly a “contract” in which Frank Tape agreed to pay China Dan $1,000 for the murder of Lum Kong. Quan Foy, the Seattle immigration district’s other Chinese interpreter, testified against Tape, his coworker, in court. He read his translation of Frank’s alleged agreement with China Dan, written in Chinese: “Because Lum Kong is a witness to injure me therefore I offer award of $1000: Eng Dan has undertaken to kill Lum Kong. If

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he is not successful in killing Lum Kong he will not be paid 10 cents . . . [Signed] Chue Tip.” The press declared that Quan Foy’s reading of the contract was “the most sensational feature of a trial which has been replete with sensation.” Tape’s defense attorneys sought to discredit the contract, calling it the “rawest piece of manufactured evidence .  .  . ever seen.” Tape testified that he could not read or write Chinese. He conceded that “Chue” (also Chew or Jeu; the transliterations in the press were not consistent) was his Chinese surname, but curiously, there was no discussion as to why the letter used his father’s Chinese name, Jeu Dip. In fact, Frank did not have a given name in Chinese. The Chinese newspapers in San Francisco referred to him as “the son of Jeu Dip” and sometimes as “Jeu Fook Lo” (Zhao Fuleng), which was truly a roundabout name because “Fook Lo” was a Cantonese transliteration of “Frank.” The government argued that someone else had written the contract and that Frank had signed it, based on Quan’s opinion that the signature was written in the manner of someone unfamiliar with Chinese characters and in a different hand from the body of the text. As soon as the jury withdrew to consider the conspiracy case, another jury was impaneled. The second trial against Tape opened on December 9. This trial concerned the original charges against Frank for accepting bribes and extorting money in connection with Chinese immigration cases. The Chinese witnesses against him were three Seattle merchants, Wo See Jock, Ah King, and Wo Jen, who described various incidents of paying money to Frank to fix cases. Frank was the sole witness in his own behalf. He declared that the witnesses had threatened him because he worked to keep undesirable Chinese from entering the United States. Both juries eventually acquitted Frank and his codefendants. The acquittal on the charge of conspiracy to intimidate witnesses was announced in the middle of the bribery trial. A week later, Frank was found not guilty of accepting bribes. China Dan, however, while also

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acquitted of the conspiracy charge, was immediately rearrested on a secret indictment charging him with smuggling illegal Chinese aliens and opium into the United States. Reporting on Frank Tape’s acquittal on bribery charges, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote that when the not guilty verdict was read, Tape’s friends, gathered around him in the courtroom, offered their congratulations. The friends were not named; if Lena was present, the press made no mention of it. Tape left the courthouse immediately with his lawyers. He said nothing to reporters. Frank had dodged another bullet, but he was out of a job, and his career was ruined. His name and character had been smeared within the bureau and in public over the course of a year, through months of investigation that culminated in a murder, a suicide, and twenty days of courtroom drama. There is a certain pattern to Frank Tape’s career. In many instances, he was a zealous immigration agent who pursued smugglers and illegal aliens. That work earned him the respect of Inspector James Dunn in St. Louis and Special Agent Richard Taylor in southern California and Seattle. But there is considerable evidence that Frank engaged in extortion in Chinese admission cases. These practices — partnering with the government to pursue Chinese aliens and also bribing these aliens to ensure their entry — appear paradoxical, but both show Frank’s desire for aggrandizement, as well as a certain disregard for Chinese immigrants, whether on behalf of the government or himself. Frank got away with extorting money from immigrants for as long as he did because many Chinese were reluctant to speak to the authorities and, especially, to testify in court. Officials also did not help themselves by mounting cases that relied on hearsay and speculation rather than hard evidence. In a strange way, Frank benefited from the resentments that others harbored against him, as these led people to make exaggerated claims that could not be sustained. There was an element of the fantastic, after all, in the idea that Frank 170

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Tape could single-handedly influence the greater part of Chinese immigration at a busy port station — and that he had done so through multiple, monumental impostures as a detective, a confidential agent of bureau headquarters, a big man in Chinatown with pull inside the government, and a person who passed for white. After the trial, Frank tried to pick up the pieces of his life. He decided to do what he believed he had always excelled at: investigation. Hadn’t Richard Taylor said that if he sent Frank to find a man, Frank would find him? He opened a private detective agency, renting an office in downtown Seattle, but business was slow. That should not have been much of a surprise in light of Frank’s notoriety. The public probably remembered his trial more for the murdered witness than for Frank’s acquittal. After two years, he threw in the towel and returned to California. When Frank left Seattle, he seems to have left Lena, too. Or perhaps she left him. During the trial, Frank had gone to the King County courthouse and filed quit-claim deeds transferring real estate and personal property, mostly furniture, worth $5,000 (more than $100,000 today) to his wife. We do not know what was behind the transfer. Was Frank preparing to take care of Lena in the event that he went to jail? Or did he hand over his property to buy her silence or his way out of the marriage? We do know that when Frank finally left Seattle, he left his career, his wife, and his property behind. He returned to the relative security of his family. No doubt Frank told his parents that he had been framed, the victim of so many jealousies and resentments. He moved in with his parents in Berkeley and began working at Joseph’s bonding and ticketing agency in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Joseph gave him easy tasks at first, such as accompanying bonded transit passengers on the Southern Pacific traveling from the Bay Area to Mexico or Cuba. Joseph knew that there were Chinese who used “transit” as a ruse to get around the exclusion laws. But if someone was willing to buy a ticket from Galveston 171

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to Havana and to pay Joseph the bonding fee as the cost of evading the law, it would be Joseph, the bondsman, who would have to make good on the bond if the person failed to leave the United States. By accompanying transit passengers, Frank could safeguard his father’s bonds while enjoying the ride, chatting with passengers and trainmen, watching the countryside roll by, thinking about his future.

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Joseph tape was soon to learn what it was like to be publicly accused and shamed. About nine months after Frank’s ordeal in Seattle, Joseph had his own run-in with the corruption mongers. He was implicated in a scandal involving stowaways aboard the SS Mongolia, one of the Pacific Mail’s steamships. At around noon on October 27, 1915, the customs bureau office in San Francisco received an anonymous letter written in Chinese with information that the Mongolia, which had just pulled into port, was carrying Chinese stowaways. The letter carried detailed information — “the no. 1 boatswain has eight of them. Fireman Cheung has 25. The no. 1 Saloon waiter has 20,” and so on — and said that the stowaways would go ashore posing as crewmen. They would do so, it claimed, with the connivance of the immigration watchman, David Graham, whose job was to stand at the head of the gangway and check each passenger and crew member leaving the ship. By the time the note was translated and a small team of three customs and immigration inspectors arrived at the dock at 7:00 p.m., the ship’s passengers had either landed or, in the case of steerage passengers, transferred for examination to the immigration sta173

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tion on Angel Island, which had opened in 1910. When the customs team went below to steerage quarters, they found a number of Chinese milling about. None could show steamship tickets. An all-night search of the ship uncovered eighty-six stowaways, far more than had been captured on any other ship. They had hidden in every conceivable place — under benches in the dining room, in the fire room, in a huge steel bucket buried beneath a coal supply — as well as in plain sight, wearing crew uniforms. Joseph Tape, who had exclusive bonding privileges for Chinese crew members on Pacific Mail steamships, was suspected of abetting the landing of the Mongolia’s stowaways. But unlike Frank’s case in Seattle, which focused on him alone, the Mongolia query cast a wide net, investigating, in addition to Joseph, ship’s officers, Chinese and white crew members, and immigration personnel such as watchman Graham. No one in San Francisco — neither government officials, the press, nor Chinatown’s residents — believed the Mongolia incident was an isolated case. Everyone considered it evidence of sophisticated, lucrative, and widespread smuggling. As such, it became an outsize press event that stoked the fires of exclusion politics. San Francisco remained easily excited by the Chinese question; the anti-Chinese crowd regarded any corruption in the immigration bureau that undermined the exclusion laws to be the worst kind of betrayal — a racial betrayal — of the public trust. Secretary of Labor William Wilson, whose portfolio included the Bureau of Immigration, might have sent Richard Taylor for this job, for he was one of the best investigators in the federal government and was already familiar with the San Francisco immigration district. But Wilson chose instead John Densmore, the Labor Department’s solicitor general, touting him as its “most expert investigator.” No doubt Densmore was a crack investigator. More to the point, though, he was politically savvy and experienced at handling the press, not an attribute of the less political Taylor. Central to Densmore’s investigation was the question of whether there had been a plan to land stowaways by having them pose as crew 174

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members leaving the ship for shore leave. The charge reflected the long-standing fear that shore leave was a dangerous crack in the wall of exclusion. It also reinforced the popular idea that substituting stowaways for crewmen was easy because all Chinese looked alike. By the early 1910s, there were some 100,000 Chinese working on cargo and passenger steamships for the various Asia-Pacific lines. The Pacific Mail had replaced its “white seamen and negro stewards” with Chinese crews as early as 1867. By the turn of the century, it was commonplace for steamship companies to hire Chinese crew members while in Hong Kong or Guangzhou for ships serving Pacific seaports — Yokohama, Sydney, Seattle, San Francisco. The Pacific Mail praised its Chinese employees as competent and loyal. It favored the use of Chinese as stewards and cooks because the practice pleased its Chinese passengers. Equally if not more important, hiring Chinese labor was economical. Wages were considerably lower for Chinese than for white seamen. A white oiler, for example, earned a monthly wage of $45 (gold), whereas a Chinese oiler made $18 per month (Mexican silver). And the cost of feeding Chinese crew members was fifteen percent of the cost of feeding white crew members. Chinese seamen had a particularly difficult time in part because seamen in general had limited rights at the turn of the twentieth century. American courts were just beginning to outlaw corporal punishment, imprisonment for desertion, and other kinds of penal enforcement of the maritime employment contract — conditions that amounted to servitude. True, conditions for seamen employed on American merchant ships were not as bad as they had been in the eighteenth century, when Samuel Johnson famously quipped, “Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.” But to seamen, conditions seemed worse, because after the Civil War other forms of bound labor were virtually eradicated. Well into the age of free labor, shipping company employers spoke like antebellum slave owners as they invoked paternalistic rationales to justify extraordinary means of discipline to bind their crews to them. Sail175

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ors, they said, were “incapable of making civil contracts”; they were “wards of the nation . . . taken care of ” by their employers as though they were “orphans.” As late as 1897, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the imprisonment of sailors for desertion, arguing that the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and all forms of involuntary servitude, did not invalidate the “surrender of personal liberty” that was inherent in the seaman’s contract. Understanding the similarities between seaman’s law and the Fugitive Slave Act, sailors called the Court’s ruling “Dred Scott II.” Seamen gradually won the rights of free labor, including the right to shore leave as a necessary reprieve from weeks or months at sea. According to the courts, detaining alien crew members aboard ship while in port was oppressive and a threat to healthy international commerce. A federal court ruled in 1907 that the immigration laws, which required shipping companies to “take precautions to prevent landing of aliens at time or place not designated,” did not apply to seamen and that shore leave did not constitute an immigration “landing.” Rather, said the court, “sailors should go ashore.” However, Chinese seamen’s access to these rights was constrained by the exclusion laws. Immigration officials at the various ports believed that Chinese seamen were not bona fide sailors, but mere coolies who were scheming to enter the United States in violation of the exclusion laws. They were loath to grant shore leave to Chinese crew members, believing that they would “jump ship” — that is, desert their contracts and disappear into Chinatown communities, adding to the population of illegal Chinese aliens. Chinese seamen got no support from the union representing American merchant seamen, which regarded Chinese as a source of labor competition. In fact, the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific sought to exclude Chinese sailors from working on American-owned vessels. The courts, however, ruled that Chinese seamen were not “laborers” under the exclusion laws and had the same right to shore leave as other alien seamen. In light of the exclusion laws, however, the

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courts upheld the use of bonding as a hedge against desertion, because desertion would turn a Chinese “seaman” into a “laborer.” Bonding was not uniformly applied in all ports until 1922, but it was used in San Francisco during the 1900s and 1910s. Even with bonding, though, the comings and goings of Chinese seamen provoked anxiety among exclusionists, who warned that Chinese were so determined to enter the country that they would forfeit their bonds in order to do so. It was, of course, the same charge as had been made during the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904: that Chinese actors (“coolies”) and waitresses (“prostitutes”) would forfeit their bonds and desert the fair. There was also fear of a “substitution racket,” whereby crewmen going ashore under bond would be replaced by other Chinese residing in the United States, allowing the former to stay and the latter to go home for a visit. Joseph Tape had had trouble with the Mongolia before the 1915 incident. In 1908, a single such substitution on the ship had prompted complaints that the practice was widespread, part of a “coolie smuggling ring.” The ring allegedly operated with the connivance of steamship company and immigration officials. One newspaper report implied that the Chinese bonding agent “Joe Take” was involved. But Chinese were not indistinguishable and interchangeable units of coolie labor. Sailors had acquired skills and could not simply be replaced by another body. In 1909, Richard Taylor reviewed crew procedures and manifests from 1907 to 1909 and found that escapes and substitutions were not widespread. With one watchman assigned to a ship with two hundred crew members and six gangways unloading passengers and cargo, Taylor stated, it was impossible to prevent the occasional escape. Taylor also concluded that large-scale substitutions would require the collusion of the ship’s entire crew, a proposition he believed was “ridiculous.” He likewise exonerated immigration personnel. He recommended that more watchmen be hired and, as a further precaution that seems excessive in view of his

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findings, that all shore leave, including that under bond, be discontinued for all Chinese crew members arriving in San Francisco. For a while, after Taylor’s 1909 report, Chinese seamen were kept aboard ship while docked in San Francisco. But after the federal courts upheld their right to shore leave, if only under bond, the practice was reinstituted. In San Francisco, the bonding requirement was strictly enforced. The district commissioner of immigration emphasized in 1911 that Chinese seamen could go ashore without bond only in the event of a shipwreck. Bonding, of course, was the source of Joseph Tape’s expanding business. When the Mongolia pulled into San Francisco on October 27, 1915, Tape went immediately aboard to arrange bonds for crew members desiring shore leave. He deviated from his normal practice of waiting a day, until after quarantine and the inspection and landing of cabin-class passengers. Tape’s delivery of forty-two bonds to the immigration station that afternoon aroused suspicion. The ship’s captain had already informed the station that there would be no shore leave for the Mongolia crew on account of the ship’s scheduled departure for Hong Kong in three days. Tape’s explanation that he had acted quickly to execute the bonds in light of the Mongolia’s brief stay in port did not impress District Attorney John Preston, who believed that Tape had planned to substitute stowaways for crewmen — at least forty-two of them. Other theories about how the stowaways would be landed involved their disembarking along with cabin-class passengers (with the connivance of the immigration official at the head of the gangway) and their jumping into the bay during the transfer of steerage passengers to the immigration station on Angel Island. (Cabin-class passengers were inspected on board the vessel. Steerage passengers were sent to Angel Island for inspection.) Indeed, immigration authorities believed that these two scenarios had already been enacted, as they claimed that some thirty to fifty Chinese had already sneaked ashore before the midnight search turned up the eighty-six stowaways.

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District Attorney Preston pursued this line of belief, even as Densmore’s investigation was under way. On Preston’s urging, immigration authorities undertook a massive raid of San Francisco’s Chinatown on the night of November 17. Fifty immigration agents raided Waverly Place and then spread to other streets, battering down the doors of lodging houses and other buildings where they suspected stowaways might be hiding. Although not one stowaway was found, the raid sent a wave of fear through Chinatown and stoked rumors that a “sweeping deportation” of Chinese was coming. In January 1916, Densmore issued his report to the secretary of labor. His findings were remarkably similar to Taylor’s in 1909: he found gaps in the system that made it possible, if difficult, for stowaways to enter the country, especially in large numbers, and he exonerated immigration personnel from charges that they abetted the landing of stowaways. Densmore found that the photographs that Tape had affixed to the forty-two bonds were those of the bona fide crew members and not those of the stowaways. This evidence was enough to clear Tape in Densmore’s view. In fact, the investigation revealed that Tape was a prudent businessman when it came to issuing bonds to Chinese sailors. According to the immigration watchman Graham, “Tape would not accept [just] anybody.” He routinely bonded seamen whom he had gotten to know after ten or fifteen trips, but he would not give a bond to a new man unless he had a “sponsor” from “uptown” — that is, a clansman from Chinatown — to vouch for him. Graham had glimpsed how Tape tapped into Chinese kinship and native-place networks. “If the store [merchant] . . . gave an assurance to Joe Tape that a boy will be on that ship he would be there,” Graham said. That was “characteristic” of how Chinese conducted their affairs. Vouching for someone from the same clan or village was “just as good as a million-dollar bond.” Densmore’s findings disappointed San Franciscans who were counting on a cleanup of the immigration service. Rather than

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charge immigration personnel with wrongdoing, Densmore did the opposite: he praised them for preventing the landing of eighty-six “contraband” Chinese while “in the ordinary performance of their duty.” But District Attorney Preston, whose investigation paralleled Densmore’s and was presenting evidence to a federal grand jury, had a different opinion of the matter. The grand jury handed up twentysix indictments in the Mongolia case on February 8. Among those indicted were five employees of the immigration service (including those who had uncovered the stowaways), six officers and thirteen Chinese crew members of the Mongolia, and Joseph Tape and William Thornley. Tape stood out as the only Chinese American on the list. Nothing came of the indictments: no one was arrested, and no one stood trial. It remains unclear how they were quashed. Preston, a local political official who was invested in pleasing California’s exclusionists, received favorable publicity from the indictments. But in light of the contradictory claims of the Department of Labor’s official investigation, Preston backpedaled before the press, claiming that the grand jury had acted without his approval. Densmore, too, was caught in an awkward position. While denying that he had conducted a “whitewash,” he wrote to Secretary Wilson and asked that his report be “withdrawn for further investigation.” There was no further investigation, at least not specifically of the Mongolia. But Densmore returned to San Francisco a few months later when a scandal erupted at the immigration station on Angel Island. As part of his Mongolia report, Densmore had recommended that the immigration station be transferred back to the city. In his view, Angel Island, situated in the middle of San Francisco Bay, was too inconveniently located and too expensive to run. It now appeared also to be a den of corruption. The anti-Chinese energies that had swirled around the Mongolia affair were channeled to a new scandal.

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The immigration station at Angel Island had been opened in January 1910. It had taken nearly five years to build, with an initial appropriation of more than $250,000 (nearly $6 million today), and was touted by government officials as a vast improvement over the detention shed at the Pacific Mail wharf. To be sure, the shed had long been San Francisco’s shame. It was overcrowded, unsanitary, and, worse, from the government’s point of view, sorely lacking in security. Immigration officials believed that moving the detention center to the island would offer immigrants better facilities and also isolate them, making escape impossible. The immigrants would be inaccessible to relatives and huiguan representatives, with their coaching materials and cheat sheets aimed at getting the new arrivals through inspection. The immigration station on Angel Island had been built during the same years as the military prison on Alcatraz, and the similarities between the two were not lost on members of the Chinese community. One day after Angel Island formally opened, the Chung Sai Yat Po called on the community to protest and resist the new facility. The Chinese merchants and their allies in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce protested the detention of the “cultured class” of Chinese at Angel Island and warned that such offensive treatment threatened U.S.-China trade relations. They also charged, more generally, that Chinese were held incommunicado on the island for months, that detainees were denied their rights to habeas corpus and legal counsel, and that conditions on the island were worse than those accorded to prisoners in penitentiaries. In response, the immigration service allowed cabin-class Chinese passengers to undergo inspection while aboard ship and to disembark at the Pacific Mail wharf in the city. For steerage passengers transferred to Angel Island, however, conditions did not improve. Immigrants detained on Angel Island were isolated from their compatriots, but the island was far from impenetrable. A large staff serving the station was ferried between the island and the city every

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day. Provisions and supplies had to be delivered. Official business required personnel to make numerous trips. The immigrants themselves had to be shuttled on and off the island. There was plenty of opportunity for mischief. In October 1916, an anonymous source wrote to the immigration commissioner of San Francisco that a clerk, Presley McFarland, was switching photographs in files in the Angel Island records room so that unauthorized Chinese could gain admission by claiming the identities of others with legal standing. The tip came from someone in Chinatown who was concerned for the “heap lot trouble” that the document tampering would make for “Chinamen with good paper.” In March 1917, Densmore was again dispatched to San Francisco by the Department of Labor. He conducted an investigation that included extensive interviews in and around the district bureau, as well as undercover surveillance, wiretapping of suspects, and entrapment. He also received tips, ranging from dubious to useful, from Chinatown residents and immigration personnel. In the end, Densmore’s investigation revealed extensive manipulation and theft of documents, extortion of money from immigrants, and fraud in the examination of applicants for admission. The practice involved clerks, stenographers, typists, watchmen, inspectors, and interpreters, as well as law firms, brokers and fixers, photographers, and counterfeiters working on the outside. It was estimated to be a $100,000-a-year business ($1.6 million today). Joseph Tape was not suspected of any wrongdoing, although his name was on a list of “attorneys and brokers who practice in Chinese cases” that was found in a barrel in the Angel Island plumbing shop. The barrel was said to be one of the places where the illegal immigration ring hid stolen and altered records. Heads rolled. In June 1917, six immigration employees were fired, including interpreter Edward Park, Emily Tape’s brother-in-law. In October, fifteen people were indicted on charges of conspiring to mutilate government records and to land aliens illegally. At the bureau, they included an inspector, three clerks, a stenographer, and a 182

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watchman. On the outside, attorneys Henry Kennah (a former inspector), Robert Riley, and Embert Lee (one of the few Chinese lawyers in the city), three Chinese brokers, and a Euro-American car salesman who provided rubber stamps and seals for “authenticating” fake certificates also were indicted. Kennah’s law offices were at the center of the operation. People in Chinatown were overjoyed to learn of the dismissals and indictments. As one person wrote to Densmore, “You have done a great justice to our Chinese peoples. (That is you have made a clean sweep oust all the crooks, and grafters, which is in Angel Island.)” For Chinese immigrants, the oppression of the exclusion laws was compounded by the burden of having to pay bribes to get through the immigration system — even if one was legally eligible for admission. One man testified, “If you go to Chinatown you hear it every day. They talk every day about the grafting — that you can’t do anything without money. If you have money you can do anything.” It was as though a double oppression, the exclusion laws and the bribes required to circumvent them, weighed on the immigrants. In fact, Chinese had been writing to the immigration bureau with complaints about extortion and smuggling among bureau officials for years. But it was not always clear whether these complaints were grounded in fact, came from people who were angry that their cases had not been approved, or were instigated by the fixers involved in the illegal alien business in hopes of getting rid of the honest inspectors and interpreters. Investigations of corruption frequently exonerated those charged, although in some cases it was suspected that the exonerations were actually cover-ups. Indeed, how could one judge what was “honest” or “corrupt” when the Chinese believed that the exclusion laws themselves were unjust and immoral? As a result, most Chinese did not consider it morally wrong to effect unlawful entry into the country, even though they knew it was illegal. Arriving immigrants often expected Chinese interpreters to help them — perhaps they thought that their relatives in the United States had paid off the right people, or maybe 183

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they simply assumed that they could trust their co-ethnics — and they were sorely disappointed when the interpreters did not provide assistance. One Chinese immigrant who was apprehended in Chicago confided to the interpreter that he had been born in China, contradicting his testimony before the judge that he had been born in California and taken back to China by his parents at a young age. The interpreter dutifully translated the formal testimony but also reported the damning information obtained in the private conversation, which led to an order for deportation. This immigrant learned a cruel lesson: one could make no assumptions about a Chinese interpreter’s loyalties, because those loyalties were conflicted by the interpreter’s position as an in-between figure and by the murky moral world created by Chinese exclusion. The scandals implicating Frank Tape, Joseph Tape, Edward Park, and scores of others in the early twentieth century reveal a dense web of practices and transactions that undermined the administration of the Chinese exclusion laws. Contrary to the racialized publicity surrounding these scandals, corruption had no color or racial signature. Rafael Bonham, the immigration inspector who investigated Frank Tape in Seattle, understood this. When Bonham was asked whether he believed that the immigration bureau should employ only “American” (that is, white) interpreters, Bonham replied, “Our past experience has been that . . . they need as much watching as anybody else.” Both Chinese and Euro-Americans, as well as African Americans, Mexicans, and Native Americans, were lured into the business of illegal immigration by the potential for financial gain. Among Euro-Americans, brokers and lawyers profited substantially. For the smaller fry lower down the chain — the Angel Island clerk who stole records and stashed them in a barrel for someone else to pick up — the cut was modest. But on a steady basis, corruption could make possible a more comfortable life. The Chinese involved in these schemes made out well. Edward Park was said to demand $80 a case, Frank Tape from $100 to $250. 184

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They lived conspicuously, showing off cars, homes, and material possessions that were out of reach for the vast majority of Chinese in America. They also had little trouble finding employment after exposure and dismissal. Edward Park eventually relocated to Los Angeles and became a court interpreter there. Other interpreters went to work for banks and steamship companies. Although the temptation to take bribes may have been formidable, not all brokers and interpreters — regardless of their ethnic background — were corrupt. Corruption requires more than opportunity; it requires a certain inclination, a certain lack of moral certitude. Most employees of the immigration bureau were not on the take. There is no evidence that interpreters Herman Lowe, Seid Gain, or Quan Foy, among many others, engaged in illegal acts. Joseph Tape was a canny businessman, one who knew how to exploit an opportunity, but he was probably not crooked. He was particularly careful about how he handled his bonding business. We’ve seen that he would not bond a ship’s crewmen unless they were known to him or vouched for by a merchant or a huiguan. He dispatched his son, Frank, to accompany transit passengers on the Southern Pacific Railroad, to make sure they left the country, so that he would not forfeit their bonds. These practices indicate that he was averse to risk, and corruption in the immigrant broker business was all about risk.

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Pa r t V

R e i n v e n tio n s (1917–1950)

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14. The New Daughter-in-Law

When the united states entered the Great War in Europe in 1917, it required all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty to register with the military for the draft. In the Tape family, only Gertrude’s husband, Herbert Chan, who was twenty-five at the time, was at risk for being called to duty. Herbert claimed that the earnings from his job at the Pacific Mail were the sole support of his wife, his recently widowed mother, and five siblings under the age of twelve. The statement was probably not true — Herbert had never been a reliable breadwinner, and his sister likely contributed to their mother’s support — but it won him a deferment. In September 1918, the draft was extended to men between the ages of eighteen and forty-four, which required Frank Tape and his brothers-in-law Robert Park and Herman Lowe, all around forty, to register. Mamie’s nineteen-yearold son, Harold Lowe, also had to register. At the time, Harold was studying dentistry at Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) in Corvallis, but there were no deferments for college students. Mamie and Herman’s children were on a trajectory for success — Harold would be the first Tape to graduate from college, and

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Emily, age seventeen, was pretty and popular — which the war threatened to disrupt. But they were all fortunate, for the war ended just two months later, too soon for anyone to be sent overseas to battle. Shortly after the armistice of November 11, 1918, Frank Tape turned forty. He had recently returned to San Francisco from Seattle to take his place as the number-one son and Chinatown big shot. Even so, he was still stuck in the role of the profligate son. His need to transform his image from playboy to respectable family scion resulted in his marriage to the young Ruby Kim — an addition to the Tape family who would be a regenerative force in Joseph’s and Mary’s later years. Ruby was the daughter of a prominent Chinese merchant in Marysville, a small city north of Sacramento. Strategically situated in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and at the confluence of the Yuba and Feather rivers, Marysville had been a thriving town during the gold rush — the major point of debarkation for the riverboats arriving with miners headed for California’s northern goldfields. The town grew and prospered as a provisioning and banking center. In 1857 alone, Marysville’s banks shipped $10 million in gold to the U.S. mint in San Francisco. In the 1860s and 1870s, Marysville had the largest Chinese settlement in California after San Francisco and Sacramento. Chinese called it Sam Fow (Sanfau), or number-three city. Like Joseph Tape, Ruby’s forebears were Siyi people. Her paternal grandfather came from a place called Pineapple (boluo) Village, near Changsha in Kaiping, one of the four counties of the Siyi. He came to California around 1870, worked in a laundry in Stockton, and then started his own laundry in Marysville. He brought over his son, Ruby’s father, in 1880, when the boy was sixteen. Like many Chinese in the United States, the boy’s name was mangled by the Americans. The family name was Joe (Zhou), but Ruby’s father, Joe Kim Wing (Zhou Zhanyong), was known among Americans as Kim Wing. Like Joseph Tape, he was known to white people by one name and to Chinese by another.

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Kim Wing worked in his father’s laundry business, delivering laundry to white residents in a horse-drawn wagon. It wasn’t easy; white boys often harassed him along his route, throwing rocks and pulling his queue. But he built up a good business and was one of the few Chinese in Marysville who spoke English well, so he became known to both whites and Chinese as an informal interpreter. In 1893, Kim Wing married Woo Que (Hu Jiao), the sixteen-yearold daughter of a prosperous Siyi merchant in San Francisco. Woo Que was literate in both English and Chinese, which was unusual for a girl at the time. Kim Wing’s ability to arrange such a marriage for himself indicated his own elevation in status in Marysville. There were very few Chinese married couples (and even fewer with children) in town, especially after the late 1880s, when anti-Chinese agitation drove out half of Marysville’s Chinese population. By marrying and establishing a family, Kim Wing would contribute to sustaining Marysville’s Chinese community. Kim Wing and Woo Que had nine children, of which six survived. Ruby, or Yet Kin (Yueqing), born in 1898, was the oldest. Like Joseph Tape, Kim Wing was an entrepreneur who pursued myriad opportunities. When Ruby’s grandfather died, her father sold the laundry and bought a cigar stand, and then a general Chinese merchandise store, where he etched “Kim Wing” (jinyong, meaning “elegant glory,” a homophone for his name in Cantonese) in the glass storefront window. He also owned a pork chop joint, the Busy Bee, which catered to whites, and a building in Chinatown, which brought rental income from single male laborers and an occasional prostitute. He had a poker table in the back of his store and, because he was trusted with other people’s money, was tapped to manage the gambling for the Suey Sing Tong, one of four Chinese fraternal lodges in Marysville. By 1910, Kim Wing was president of the Suey Sing Tong and Chinatown’s leading resident. His fellow Chinese called him zhufan, “the one who made it”; the white establishment dubbed him “the Mayor of Chinatown.”

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When Ruby was nine, her mother took her and her younger sister Edna to China, back to Pineapple Village. They traveled by railroad to San Francisco, on the steamship Manchuria to Hong Kong, by riverboat to Guangzhou, and finally by sampan to Kaiping. From the riverbank, coolies — who Ruby imagined were slaves — carried Woo Que and her daughters by piggyback to the village. The houses were old and primitive, but Ruby thought the village was beautiful, with its acres of lichee orchards and a pond that villagers stocked with fish during the lunar new year. The three stayed for about a year. The ostensible reason for the visit was to help the family prepare for Kim Wing’s nephew’s wedding, but more generally Woo Que was responding to the Confucian ethic of serving the household of her husband’s family. Woo Que had been born in San Francisco, not China, and her willingness to conform to Chinese family custom was limited. Her primary responsibility, as she saw it, was to Kim Wing and their family in Marysville. In fact, Woo Que, who was more educated than her husband, kept Kim Wing’s business accounts. To satisfy the family’s wishes, though, she had agreed to a lengthy visit and to leave behind a daughter to fulfill her obligation as a daughter-inlaw in the patrilineal order. Woo Que planned to place Ruby with her in-laws, but Ruby flatly refused. She had had fun during her stay in Pineapple Village, playing with her cousins and generally being treated like visiting royalty. But by the time the visit was over, Ruby was ten years old and could discern the contours of village social relations. She knew that she would be at the bottom of the household hierarchy, a servant, if not a slave, of her grandmother. What a different life than the one she had in Marysville, riding a bicycle and playing games with boys! Ruby cried and kicked and screamed that she would not stay. To leave the littlest daughter, Edna, must have been heartbreaking for Woo Que. It was, too, a far less traditional and satisfactory arrangement than if Woo Que herself or the older girl had stayed. The fact that it was Edna who was left behind speaks to the extraordinary 192

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will of both Woo Que and Ruby. Five-year-old Edna would not have understood that she was being assigned to a life of familial service. But she did understand separation from her mother, and she cried when told she would be staying in Pineapple Village. Ruby mourned the loss of her sister, but like her mother, she was unwilling to sacrifice herself for the patriarchal family. Like so many of the Tapes, she was a survivor. In some ways, the Marysville that Woo Que and Ruby returned to was frozen in time. Marysville’s Chinatown was unlike San Francisco’s, which continued to receive new immigrants, and hence new ideas and practices from China, and to include a growing Americanborn generation. By 1910, there were just a few hundred Chinese in Marysville, nearly all of them solo men, and only half a dozen families. Chinese social life was organized around gambling and prostitution; the old men smoked opium in the Bok Kai (Beiyi) Temple by the levee. The public schools had just been opened to Chinese children, and Ruby, who started the first grade upon returning from China at age ten, was one of just two Chinese pupils. Woo Que, who had modern leanings and an interest in Chinese politics, was an oddity among most of Marysville’s Chinese. Ruby, too, was an anomalous figure in Marysville’s male-dominated social world, but it was the familiar world of her childhood. Because her father was a tong leader, she knew the town’s prostitutes. When these women needed medical attention, she often accompanied her mother, who interpreted for them. When local men were arrested for possessing opium, Kim Wing would send Ruby to interpret for them in the federal court in Sacramento. Her youth and gender no doubt helped the defendants. Ruby would explain to the judge that they were not “operators”: Judge says do you deal with opium? Then I interpret “no.” Judge says why do you smoke it? “I smoked it for so long, I have to have it. It’s a habit now. If I don’t I won’t be able to work.” I told the judge, “all these [old] fogies, they get 193

reinventions together and have a smoke, it’s not harming anybody but themselves.” Judge says, “oh well, let it go. Case dismissed.”

She always maintained, though, that she and other Chinese kids were not corrupted by that world. Her mother, she said, would “tell us between right and wrong and try to do the right thing. We always used our head.” She also knew there was no meaningful future for her in Marysville, a town of “longtime Californ’ ” Chinese men. Although Ruby went to Marysville High School for a year, she was an unhappy outsider. There were only a few other Chinese students, and she was older than most of them because she had started school late. She wanted to meet boys, but there were no Chinese boys her age in Marysville. She loved to dress up for special occasions, but she had only her younger brother Joe to escort her. She was restless. So she went to San Francisco. She was nineteen. Arriving in San Francisco in 1918, Ruby boarded at the Methodist mission at 940 Washington Street and enrolled in Heald College’s secretarial school. She made friends at the mission and at Heald’s, and these contacts generated a lively social life: bowling after classes, long walks down California Street, eating at Sam Wo in Chinatown. Ruby’s parents assumed that she was being properly chaperoned at the mission, but she soon finagled her own key so as not to be subject to the curfew for the girls staying there. Ruby was on the leading edge of a movement of young American women freeing themselves from the strictures of Victorian mores. The cause of woman suffrage gained new life as it became tied to novel ideas about personal independence, even sexual freedom, which were stoked by movies, music, and fashion. Even though Ruby was from a small inland city, she was a third-generation Chinese American. Compared to the daughters of immigrants who had grown up in San Francisco’s Chinatown, she had had broader exposure to white society and new ideas. Although they, too, had modern aspirations, their social lives were tightly organized around the Chi194

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nese mission churches. Ruby circulated through these institutions, too. But because she was living in the city on her own, without parental supervision, she could, for instance, go dancing at a club organized by local boys on Sacramento Street — the kind of activity that was off-limits to most Chinatown girls. Sometime around 1919 or 1920, Ruby met Frank Tape at a function in the community room of the Methodist mission house. Like Ruby, Frank’s association with the church was more social than religious; he often said that heaven and hell were here on earth. Ruby had met members of the Tape family before, when her family had visited the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. She knew about the Tapes’ social status and wealth. Frank was twice Ruby’s age; he was loud and paunchy and smoked cigars. But he was heir to the Tape business and family fortune, and this made him a dream catch. Ruby probably could have had any Chinese boy she wanted: she was beautiful and vivacious and the daughter of a prominent Marysville family. Her decision to date Frank Tape revealed the extent to which she desired social status and wealth. Frank probably courted Ruby by taking her to dinner and driving her around in his car; by inviting her for walks around Lake Merritt in Oakland; and perhaps by giving her expensive gifts. He regaled her with exaggerated stories of his former career as a “government agent.” Ruby no doubt matched him with stories of the tong wars in Marysville, especially about the time the police chief gave her father safe haven in the city jail to help him avoid attack by the Hip Sing Tong. Frank and Ruby married in 1921. There is no record of a wedding, let alone a grand celebration like the ones bestowed on Frank’s sisters Emily and Gertrude. This is curious, for both Joseph Tape and Kim Wing could have easily afforded a lavish event. Neither Frank nor Ruby was shy; one imagines that both would have loved a big party. But there are no wedding photographs in Ruby’s albums, no write-ups in the newspapers. One can only speculate: Was Frank intent on avoiding public scrutiny of his previous marriage in Seattle? 195

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He had settled with Lena, giving her the house and its furnishings, but there is no record of a formal divorce proceeding. Frank’s World War I draft registration card from 1918 mysteriously lists his next of kin as “Mrs. F. Tape, address unknown.” Perhaps Ruby’s parents did not approve of her marriage to an older man and were unwilling to participate in the wedding, although such an age gap between husband and wife was not unusual among Chinese immigrants. Or perhaps Ruby’s keen sense of her own modern independence did not include being cast in the role of a demure bride in a traditional Chinese wedding. She would not have forgotten her mother’s story of her own wedding. When Woo Que’s family arrived at the Zhou family’s laundry in Marysville on her wedding day, the groom’s party welcomed them in for a meal but made the bride herself wait in her carriage until four o’clock, the appointed time of the wedding. As she waited, a gaggle of white people crowded around to gawk at her. In any event, the couple settled in the Richmond district of San Francisco. Frank bought a stucco house on Twentieth Avenue near Bal­boa Street, likely with funds from Joseph. This was a white, middle-class neighborhood, where most property deeds included covenants banning sale to blacks, Jews, or “Orientals.” There were complaints about the Chinese couple moving in, but Frank, who acted white and nearly looked it, stood his ground. Frank may have seen Ruby as a trophy wife: she liked fine things, and the couple often threw big parties at their home. But she was much more than that. As the oldest child in a large family, Ruby had a strong sense of both personal independence and family responsibility, and she brought these traits into the marriage. She was a devoted daughter-in-law to Joseph and Mary, offering companionship to the older couple, who had been buffeted by their own offspring’s troubles. She and Frank took the elder Tapes on trips to the country, where the men shot birds, and the women gathered wildflowers. Ruby and Gertrude, being close in age, also became friends. Neither woman could have children, which may have helped bring them together. Ruby’s childlessness probably suited Frank, who didn’t care 196

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for children. He had little interest in Ruby’s baby brother, Jackie, whom she brought to San Francisco to visit during the summers. Frank didn’t exactly ignore the boy, but he mostly talked to Jackie about himself. Frank and Ruby’s was not a traditional Chinese patriarchal marriage, but a modern, American middle-class one, in which companionship was more important than obedience. Frank called Ruby “his pal” and “the boss at home.” He brought out in her the tomboy of her childhood. They loved to spend time at the Tapes’ properties near Ukiah and on the San Joaquin River. The lodging was rough, but they were always out-of-doors, hunting, fishing, swimming, riding, clearing brush, and maintaining the road. There were lots of animals around — hunting dogs, cats, horses — and although Ruby preferred fishing, she also shot game. Frank often invited a bunch of his friends from the Southern Pacific to join them, and Ruby would take care of them all. Being married helped Frank’s reputation in Chinatown. During the early 1920s, he continued to work in the Tapes’ ticketing and bonding agency, and Joseph made him head of the office. Now in his sixties, Joseph did not want to go into the city every day to work; he wanted Frank to take over. But Frank liked being the boss more in name than in deeds. He really wasn’t interested in, or good at, running a business, and Joseph knew it. Joseph might have brought Emily’s husband, Robert Park, in to run the business, as he had worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad for a couple of years in the early 1900s. But Robert now had his own successful career as an interpreter, newspaper editor, and civic leader. Besides, his marriage to Emily was faltering. Robert would not have wanted to go to work for Joseph just as he was moving away from Emily. Gertrude’s husband, Herbert Chan, was not an option either. Herbert was a bit like Frank, spoiled, and he was unable to hold a job for long. In the early 1920s, after stints at Joseph’s bonding business and at the Western Canning Company in Emeryville, Herbert got a 197

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job in the Pacific Mail’s passenger department, probably through Joseph’s connections. The job involved tracking down passengers who had paid the immigration head tax as part of their passage and were owed a refund because they were American citizens, not immigrants. The job was a reasonable fit for Herbert, as it allowed him to spend part of the day strolling around Chinatown, looking up people and knocking on doors. But his lackadaisical attitude toward his work did not make Joseph inclined to turn the reins of the family business over to him. Suen Kai Lai (Li Qixuan) became Joseph’s true business partner. Like Robert Park, Lai was a Sanyi man and a leader in the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. The son of a merchant, he had graduated from Oakland’s Technical High School. Joseph hired him as an assistant to Frank in 1924, but it soon became clear that Lai had the business sense and responsibility that Frank lacked. Within a year, Joseph promoted Lai to general manager of the Chinese department of the Southern Pacific. He would also make him a partner in the bonding side of the business. If Frank chafed at being passed over for Lai, who was nearly twenty years younger than he, he didn’t show it. Frank still had a good arrangement, working nominally at the ticketing agency, entertaining guests with his beautiful wife in town and country, acting the part of raconteur and culture broker. In 1923, Frank was called to serve on a jury, the first Chinese in San Francisco to be chosen for this citizenship duty. It was a “new precedent in American jurisprudence,” according to one newspaper, a milestone in race relations for the city that had for so long denied that Chinese Americans were really citizens. In an earlier day, Frank would have been an unlikely choice to carry the family’s civil rights torch, but now the civic recognition was well in line with his reinvention of himself as respectable middle-class citizen. The San Francisco Chronicle summed up Frank’s new persona: “Frank Tape Glad of Opportunity to Serve in Court . . . 44 years old, American, Chinese parentage, married, and in the bonding business.” The article characterized him according to 198

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his own embroidered narration of his life as a “special investigator” for the government, a job he held “in connection with smuggling.” It continued, “During his fourteen years of service in that capacity [he] became internationally known. He made a number of sensational arrests.” Most important, the newspapers emphasized Frank Tape’s American-ness. He was a “successful American businessman,” who lived “according to high American standards.” “Altogether,” it was said, “he is strictly and purely American in thoughts, ideals, manners, customs, habits, dress and speech.” Indeed, the story went on, Frank was so American that he had grown up speaking English, not Chinese. It was only as an adult that he had studied and become fluent in Chinese. The story, of course, was only half-true — the half that Frank had grown up speaking English, not Chinese. But the fabrication about his adult mastery of the Chinese language served to make him an ideal immigrant culture broker. It solved the problem of loyalty: his ostensible knowledge of Chinese was not a product of his heritage, not his mother tongue, but of his “American” intellect and industriousness. The press described the father-and-son business on Clay Street as a “link between Orient and the Occident” in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The Tapes “handle the bonding work among the Chinese for the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., the Southern Pacific, and the Toyo Kisen Kaisha Steamship Company, besides settling many business matters for the people of Chinatown. They maintain an informal information bureau where problems are solved and questions answered.” Through an artful presentation of his identity, Frank Tape had seemingly managed at last to rise above the problem of race loyalty that had long plagued the immigrant brokers. Ruby’s entry into the Tape family had transformed its least tractable member and brought stability to familial relations. And if Frank’s refurbished image was that of a new kind of culture broker — American-born and modern — it was Ruby who brought substance to that role. She renewed the family’s activism in community affairs, becoming a presence in Chinatown’s charitable circles. Ruby’s pedi199

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gree from Marysville and her married name gave her legitimacy in various causes during the 1920s, including the campaign to build the new Chinese Hospital. She brought boundless energy to community projects, although she was not interested in being a leader. Perhaps owing to her limited formal education and her attenuated connection to the Protestant missions, she deferred to others in that regard. But she maintained a strong sense of herself, as well as of her responsibility to her family and her community, throughout the 1930s, when marital and family life, as well as the world beyond, became tumultuous.

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Frank’s new persona as upstanding citizen and businessman supplanted his former images as a street tough and a player — although he could not resist the occasional interview, supplying reporters with colorful, if false, material of daring former exploits. John Bruce’s column in the San Francisco Call Bulletin, “Skylines of the City,” featured Frank twice. Frank still took long hunting trips to Ukiah, sometimes with Ruby but more often with his Southern Pacific friends. By the early 1930s, Frank and Ruby’s marriage had begun to sour. Ruby may have grown impatient with Frank’s lack of work ethic, his self-aggrandizing posture, and his extravagant spending habits. More important, Frank had liaisons with other women. Of course, this hurt Ruby. But it also embarrassed her and damaged her own reputation as a civic activist in Chinatown. Frank was becoming less an asset to Ruby’s social ambitions and more a liability. In 1933, Ruby went back to Marysville to help her widowed mother. It was the trough of the Great Depression. Ruby’s father had died earlier in the decade, and Joe, the oldest son, had moved to Stockton to run the Suey Sing gambling hall there after the Orange Crush bottling plant where he worked closed. Although her parents’ 201

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store was the only Chinese grocery in Marysville, there was little business. A trickle of money came from the kitty of the mahjong table in the back, where old laborers and farmers whiled away the days. Ruby managed to feed the three young children under her care — two nephews and her youngest sibling, Jackie — relying on “simple food and milk.” She raised money to build a playground in Marysville and turned an empty storefront in one of her father’s buildings into a recreation hall for the town’s older Chinese boys. Ruby considered her move to Marysville a separation from Frank, even if Frank did not. She occasionally went to San Francisco to see him, but the visits became less and less frequent. Frank and Ruby’s separation was the fourth Tape marriage to fail. The first was Frank’s previous marriage to Lena. Emily’s separation from Robert Park during the late 1910s turned out to be permanent. Emily, still overweight and depressed, and probably suffering from diabetes, was close to her mother and to her son, Frank. He remained loyal to her after his father left the family. Frank continued to live at home while studying dentistry during the late 1920s and opening his own practice in San Francisco in the early 1930s. Gertrude and Herbert Chan divorced in 1927, after the once merely unmotivated and fun-loving Herbert fell into gambling and drugs. Gertrude left her home in Oakland and moved in with her parents, who renovated and enlarged their house at 2121 Russell Street to give her a two-bedroom suite. In 1933, after Frank and Ruby separated and Ruby left for Marysville, Gertrude was further saddened. That same year, Herbert was arrested on narcotics charges. He was convicted and sentenced to six years in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The only one of Joseph and Mary’s children whose marriage endured was Mamie — the one who had married for love, without regard to wealth or social status. Herman and Mamie’s move to Portland in 1908, though not intended to remove them from the Tape orbit, did 202

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enable them to create a family life that was quieter and without the ambition and status consciousness of the Bay Area’s Chinese American brokering class. That is not to say that the Lowe family was poor or lacked social standing; they were among Portland’s most successful Chinese Americans, living on a comfortable income in a white neighborhood. Mamie and Herman’s children, Harold and Emily, improved on their parents’ standing by entering the professional class. Their success was no small achievement; in Portland at the time, Chinese Americans generally remained stuck in menial jobs. In 1926, Harold married Esther Sun, the daughter of a prosperous Chinese hops farmer in Salem, Oregon. The couple bought a house in Portland, in the same neighborhood as his parents, and Harold established a successful dental practice in downtown Portland that served both Chinese and whites. After finishing high school, Emily worked as a salesclerk in a retail store and then married Kenneth Lum, a graduate of Reed College and the medical school of the University of Oregon. He was one of the few Chinese physicians in Portland who was trained in Western medicine, and he quickly grew a successful practice. Lum built for his wife a large, two-story, woodframed house on Fifty-seventh Avenue, in a white, middle-class area of southeast Portland. Mamie and Herman moved in, as did Herman’s elderly mother. The Great Depression of the 1930s profoundly affected Chinese Americans. Many Chinese who made their living in service occupations for white people, such as cooking and laundering, suffered declining business as a result of the general unemployment. Ironically, though, the economic marginalization of Chinese and their concentration in Chinatown enclaves — products of a long history of discrimination — spared them the high levels of unemployment experienced in mainstream industry and manufacturing. The garment industry in San Francisco’s and New York’s Chinatowns continued to provide some employment for Chinese women, who benefited from the ethos of racial inclusion and militant organizing of the garment 203

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workers union. The New Deal also benefited Chinese, giving them access to poor relief and public works projects. The curious combination of the historical legacies of discrimination and the liberal political climate helped protect Chinese from the worst ravages of the Depression. The Chinese brokering class was in a more precarious position, having one foot in the ethnic economy and the other in the mainstream. Labor contractors for the lumber companies and fish canneries had less work. Banks and insurance companies laid off employees in the face of business decline or collapse. Government jobs were not necessarily secure. In 1933, the immigration bureau merged with the naturalization bureau and retired all employees with thirty years of service as a cost-cutting measure. The longest-serving Chinese interpreters were let go, and, not being civil service employees, they were retired without pensions. The brokers had enjoyed good incomes, and many had property and savings, but they had more to lose than the average worker, especially if they owned stocks. In Portland, Mamie and Herman were able to weather the Great Depression better than many others. Herman continued to work as an immigration interpreter; he had been hired by the immigration bureau in 1905 and just missed the thirty-year cutoff for mandatory retirement. As a physician and dentist, respectively, the Lowes’ son-in-law, Kenneth, and son, Harold, provided necessary services to the community. Their practices may have slowed down some, but they continued to work. Both started families during the 1930s, their children representing the fourth generation of the Tape family in America. The Depression was less kind to the Tapes in California. Joseph was responsible not only for himself and Mary but also for two daughters who had recently separated from their husbands. Emily may have received some support from Robert Park, but we have no record of it. Gertrude certainly received no help from Herbert Chan, who was in prison. Joseph and Frank’s main source of income was the ticketing and bonding business, and if Joseph had formally made 204

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S. K. Lai a partner, the Tapes would have shared that income with him. The enterprise depended on commissions, which certainly fell during the Depression as immigration dropped off and fewer people traveled. Family visits to China in particular declined precipitously during the 1930s with the spread of Japanese aggression there. We don’t know whether Joseph owned stocks; if he did, they would have lost half their value in the crash. It was probably during the Depression that he began selling off some of his property — the fishing camp on the San Joaquin River, perhaps even Mary’s beloved ranch in the Haywards — though he held on to the lodge in Ukiah. Frank gave up his house on Twentieth Avenue in San Francisco and moved back to his parents’ home in Berkeley. They weren’t destitute — no one went hungry, and they still owned three houses on Russell Street (the family home and two that they rented out) — but the Tape family had to tighten its belt. Losses much greater than financial ones struck the Tapes in 1934 and 1935. Mary Tape and Emily Tape Park, mother and daughter, died in the autumn of 1934. In September, Emily died at age fifty-three. Just two weeks later, Mary died at age seventy-seven. One or both may have succumbed to complications from diabetes. A few months later, in March 1935, Joseph, bereft without his wife and companion of nearly sixty years, died at the age of eighty-three. The three were buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. Joseph probably designed the family plot — perhaps after Mary died—with a central headstone bearing his, Mary’s, and Frank’s names and separate flanking stones for daughters Emily and Gertrude. There was no stone for Mamie, who, in a nod to Chinese custom, was considered to have gone to her husband’s family. Perhaps, in the manner of another Chinese custom, the headstones were engraved with the names of both the dead and the living, the latter colored red until their passing. The markers subtly record a second generation of failed marriages — the son, alone on his parents’ headstone, without wife or children; the daughters in their parents’, rather than 205

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their in-laws’, plots. There was no stone for Emily’s son, Frank, who by custom would be buried with his father, despite their estrangement. Frank Park moved out of his late mother’s house in 1935. He married Maxine Sun, the younger sister of Esther Sun, his cousin Harold Lowe’s wife. Perhaps Harold (also a dentist) and Esther introduced them. The Parks soon moved to San Francisco, where his dental practice was located. Gertrude and Frank Tape retreated to the family home at 2121 Russell Street, which Joseph had bequeathed to Gertrude. In 1935, Frank turned fifty-seven, Gertrude forty-five. Gertrude, raised for social rather than professional attainment, had never held a job. She might have been able to land a job associated with one of the federal relief programs in San Francisco’s or Oakland’s Chinatown — there were clerical and distribution jobs, and she had the family connections to get one — but she didn’t care to work. Frank’s professional career as businessman and broker, of course, had been more image than substance. With their parents dead, their spouses gone, and their social lives tattered, Frank and Gertrude must have felt quite alone. But at least they were alone together.

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Several years passed before Frank and Gertrude reentered the world. The impetus was the Second World War, as Chinese Americans joined the fight for world democracy on the battlefront and behind the lines. The enormity of the fight against fascism and the bustle of mobilization that coursed through the country, including Chinatown communities, were impossible for even Frank and Gertrude, the two most self-absorbed of the Tapes, to ignore. It was not just the war but also a new era in race relations that the war ushered in. Citizenship and democratic rights for Chinese Americans suddenly appeared within reach. Members of the Tape family, each in his or her own way, engaged with these developments — selling and buying war bonds, working in the defense industry, serving in the military. For Chinese in America, World War II began not with Pearl Harbor, but a decade earlier, in 1931, when Japan attacked the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang (Mukden) and occupied Manchuria. The threat of further invasion into China loomed large. Throughout the 1930s, Ruby followed political events in China, probably much

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more so than other members of the Tape family. Neither Joseph nor Mary had maintained any family ties in China, and neither they nor their children ever returned there to visit. Ruby’s family was more typical of Chinese in the United States, who commonly wrote letters, sent money, and made occasional trips to their home villages, sometimes for prolonged periods of time. Ruby’s mother had long been an activist in the Marysville branch of the Guomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). It was not until 1937, though, that Ruby became actively involved in war-related support work. Up until that time, she had been preoccupied with running the store in Marysville, taking care of three children, and participating in local community affairs. But in 1937, two things happened. First, Ruby’s mother died, leaving her with a large and complicated grief. Second, in the summer of that year, the Japanese army launched an attack near the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugouqiao) outside Beijing. That city fell, then Tianjin, and the Japanese were on the move toward Shanghai, China’s commercial and industrial center, and Nanjing, the seat of the national government. It was now full-scale war. The Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, who throughout the 1930s had insisted on fighting his Communist rivals rather than the Japanese, finally agreed to form a united front against the foreign aggressor. Ruby’s nationalist feelings were stoked by the Chinese army’s valiant, if ultimately unsuccessful, four-month battle for Shanghai and the horrible atrocities at Nanjing that followed. A foreign missionary wrote of Nanjing: “Never have I heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet . . . People are hysterical.” The Japanese slaughtered nearly 300,000 civilians in Nanjing. The Chinese army was in retreat; the national government moved to Chongqing. Ruby felt compelled to act. Her grief over her mother’s death would be assuaged in part by giving herself over to China’s resistance and salvation. 208

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Ruby joined a whirlwind of activity in support of China’s war of resistance that was spreading throughout Chinese communities, large and small, across the United States. In fact, Chinese Americans had been organizing since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, raising funds and exhorting Chiang Kai-shek’s government to armed resistance. Chinese in America had always known that their status in the United States was tied to China’s fate. As long as China was weak and bullied by the big powers — whether Britain, Russia, the United States, or Japan — they would remain degraded in the eyes of Americans. If China was independent, modern, and strong, she would command respect, and so would the Chinese in diaspora. With the formal commencement of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, relief work in the United States proceeded with greater urgency and on a grander scale. Chinese Americans raised funds for medical supplies and ambulances for the Chinese army. Some organized aviation clubs, learned how to fly, and went to China to join its fledgling air force. Immigrant women sewed cotton clothing and blankets for soldiers; second-generation women of the middle class organized fashion shows to raise money. Committees organized boycotts of silk stockings (silk came from Japan) and picketed American ships sending scrap iron to Japan. The most arresting sight of the times was that of women carrying the flag of the Republic of China at “rice bowl parties.” In these parades, women dressed in form-fitting cheongsam (qipao) carried a giant, outstretched Chinese flag measuring seventy-five by forty-five feet. The symbolism was dramatic and deliberate: while men fought on the frontlines, women served as mothers of the republic. Supporters threw coins and bills into the flag, which grew so heavy that it had to be emptied several times along the route. In all, Chinese Americans raised an estimated $25 million to support China during the eight-year war, or about $300 per person. In Portland, Mamie and Herman Lowe purchased Chinese war bonds, both first and second issue. Back in Marysville, Ruby was an active fundraiser. Marysville’s Chinese community was too small and too poor to 209

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host a rice bowl party. But Ruby drove her old jalopy throughout the countryside, asking for donations to help China fight Japan. She worked for the Chinese War Relief Association, an umbrella group that brought together most of the Chinese American relief organizations under the conservative leadership of the Chinese Six Companies. The association ran strict fundraising drives that set quotas for each member of the community. Although most people willingly contributed, those who could not or would not risked public shaming, fines, and other forms of coercion. Ruby reported that everywhere she went, Chinese enthusiastically contributed money. She was such an enthusiast herself, it is hard to imagine that she needed to pressure people for donations. Ruby also participated in the campaign organized by San Francisco’s Chinatown YWCA and the Protestant mission churches to make bandages for the front. The project was a massive undertaking that involved women in traditionally female work for the Red Cross. It was so successful that the leadership of the campaign did not know what to do with all the bandages produced. Ruby arranged for them to be sterilized at the local hospital and asked a refrigerator company to donate crates for packing them. She contacted one of Frank’s associates at the steamship company to help ship the bandages out of San Francisco. Ruby’s resourcefulness is noteworthy but probably not exceptional among the legions of Chinese American women who flocked to contribute to the war effort. Alice Fong Yu, a leading female activist (who was like a cousin to Ruby because her mother was from Marysville), commented that she was “wonder-stricken at [the] spirit” of nationalism in the community. In the summer of 1939, Ruby made a trip to the Bay Area. She may have met with people she knew at the YWCA and the China Relief Committee to update them on her activities in Marysville. She also visited Frank and accompanied him and Gertrude to the Golden Gate International Exposition, the world’s fair at Treasure Island. The threesome dressed smartly in fashionable suits and hats for the outing. While visiting the Chinese Village on the fair’s midway — 210

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with its gateway and pagoda, acrobatic performers, restaurant, and other familiar motifs — Frank no doubt regaled Ruby and Gertrude with stories of his exploits in St. Louis thirty-five years before. Perhaps only Ruby had her mind on events overseas — the United States had not yet entered the war—but it was still a moment of leisure during a tense time. Frank missed Ruby’s companionship and wanted her to return to Berkeley. But if Frank thought the couple might reconcile, nothing came of the visit. It was not that Ruby felt an attachment to Marysville. The person she was closest to there, her mother, was gone. It was also difficult to sustain a high level of war relief work in a town with so few Chinese. In fact, Ruby was restless. Perhaps it was Frank who suggested that she go up north to Portola, to run a restaurant that Joseph Tape had acquired some time earlier. It was empty, but maybe Ruby could make a go of it. Motivated less by a desire to help the Tapes than by the need to get away, she decided to give it a shot. Portola sits on the Feather River, on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, in Plumas County. It was even smaller and more isolated than Marysville, 130 miles to the southwest. The town was an old lumber center and railroad junction for trains coming over the mountains from Reno and Salt Lake City, and perhaps it was through this railway connection that Joseph had come to acquire the California Café. Ruby’s father had owned the Busy Bee diner in Marysville, which might have given Ruby some experience in the restaurant business, but in any case Ruby could run just about anything. She gave it her best effort for a year, but the restaurant barely did enough business for her to make ends meet, especially during the long, cold winter months, when five feet of heavy snow piled up. When the cook quit, Ruby closed the restaurant and went home. It was late 1940 when Ruby returned to Marysville. She had lived with the specter of war for a decade, but now, with relations between the United States and Japan deteriorating, the whole country was in 211

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war preparation mode. Ruby was appointed to the Marysville Selective Service Board, which oversaw the registration of young men for the draft. She looked forward to the prospect of the United States’ entrance into the Pacific theater. Ruby had seen how Americans had become increasingly sympathetic toward China, influenced by Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth (for which she won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature), Henry Luce’s magazines (Time and Life), and reports of Japan’s atrocities. This lessening of antipathy toward China coincided with the coming of age of a second generation of Chinese Americans, who were much more acculturated than their immigrant parents, even as they remained generally excluded from jobs and housing outside Chinatown. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States’ formal entry into the war, China became a war ally. The alliance — the joint struggle against Japan — encouraged and validated Chinese Americans’ double patriotism. Their loyalties to both their ancestral homeland and their country of birth were in sync, each legitimizing and strengthening the other. Japanese Americans, of course, did not enjoy such felicitous alignment. Although they were as loyal as other Americans, their commitment to the United States was questioned in ways that German Americans’ or Italian Americans’ loyalty was not, revealing the country’s continuing racism. In San Francisco and Marysville, Chinese and Japanese had long lived in close proximity to one another. At the turn of the century, Japanese had owned shops in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Marysville, Japanese laborers and servants lived in the Chinatown area, and Chinese patronized the Japanese-owned fish market. In both places, though, Chinese and Japanese did not mingle much with each other socially. Ruby did not bear any animosity toward Japanese Americans, and she wondered whether their removal to internment camps was just. But like other Chinese Americans, she was too invested in the Sino-American alliance to question the wartime treatment of them. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, S. K. Lai, Frank Tape’s partner in the 212

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bonding agency and a leader in the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, designed and sold a button that read, “I am a Chinese American.” The button was ostensibly made to support the alliance’s campaign to amend the exclusion laws to allow Chinese wives of Chinese American men to immigrate. But in the context of the times, it was also a way of seizing an opportunity, saying in effect, “I am not Japanese American.” Indeed, the war afforded unprecedented opportunities for Chinese to claim their place in America and their rights as citizens. Most important, the Chinese exclusion laws fell. Congress passed a repeal act in 1943 to counter Japan’s war propaganda that American immigration laws were racist. Still, the United States sought to minimize Chinese immigration by giving Chinese — regardless of their country of birth — an annual admission quota of just 105. Nevertheless, the repeal act overturned the legal theory that Chinese were racially unassimilable, enabled Chinese to become naturalized citizens, and paved the way for Chinese American family reunification after the war. There were other democratic gains for Chinese Americans during the war. The war economy opened up employment opportunities outside the ethnic enclave. Chinese flocked to jobs in defense plants and naval shipyards. After decades of exclusion from the primary labor market, their hiring was a breakthrough. Federal regulations against employment discrimination meant that Chinese Americans, like African Americans and Mexican Americans, enjoyed new opportunities to earn good wages, to learn industrial jobs, and, in some cases, to find technical jobs for which they had been trained but were not previously hired. Ruby’s younger brother Thomas secured a job as an assistant electrician in a defense plant near Sacramento. In the Bay Area, Frank and Gertrude joined the flood of Chinese Americans going to work in the shipyards. There were six yards in the area, and all of them hired Chinese, but most — including the Tapes — worked at Kaiser in Richmond, the area’s largest shipbuilder. By 1943, the facil213

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ity had a workforce of 100,000 people. It produced nearly 750 vessels during the war — able to turn out a finished Liberty ship, the U.S. fleet’s basic civilian cargo vessel, in two weeks. Kaiser aggressively recruited workers from San Francisco’s and Oakland’s Chinatowns. It ran advertisements in Chinese American newspapers and offered jobs regardless of citizenship status and English-language proficiency. It also provided free training in a variety of jobs, from marine sheet metal to ship fitting. Workers were eligible for governmentsubsidized housing near the yards. “Everyone was going to Richmond,” recalled one Chinatown resident, including women, who did everything from riveting to sweeping decks. Frank and Gertrude began working at Kaiser in 1942, he as a labor recruiter and she as a clerk. Frank’s long association with the steamship and railroad companies made him a natural labor broker for the shipbuilder. He was responsible for recruitment and was “coordinator” for the Chinese workers, who numbered close to two thousand. In addition, he was “field counselor” for Chinese workers in Yard No. 1. His general job, as he put it, was to “maintain satisfaction among the Chinese employees.” Frank was sixty-four years old, stout, and gray-haired, but he was doing what he did best: walking around and chatting with people; interpreting for supervisors and Chinesespeaking workers, smoothing over misunderstandings and adjudicating disputes; going to Oakland and San Francisco to recruit new workers. One easily imagines Frank sitting in a little office, smoking a cigar with his feet up on the desk, shooting the breeze with someone who had stopped by. Gertrude was fifty-one years old when she went to work for Kaiser. It was her first job, but in that she was not unusual, for few married middle-class women worked outside the home before the war. It suited Gertrude to be a clerk, not a riveter. It is possible that Frank created a job for her — perhaps as his assistant — much in the way that Joseph had put his son and sons-in-law on the Southern Pacific’s payroll. It’s unclear whether Gertrude enjoyed the work the way Frank did, but wartime employment got her out of the house and, 214

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importantly, was a crucial source of income for the Tapes, as the ticketing and bonding business continued to ail. With the United States formally at war with the Axis powers and with everyone and everything around her engaged in some kind of war-related activity, Ruby — always a bundle of energy and prone to restlessness — wanted to play a bigger part than serving on the draft board. She might have gone to work in a defense plant, but a recruiting poster for the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) caught her eye. She decided to enlist. This was a remarkable step, for Ruby was forty-four years old. The age cutoff for the WAC was forty-five, and the local recruiter rejected her. Nevertheless, she traveled to San Francisco to take the entrance examination and the physical. She passed — she must have passed with flying colors to overcome the age issue — and was accepted. Within a few days, she was on her way to basic training in Fort Des Moines, Iowa. It was January 1943. Ruby was one of some 150,000 American women who were recruited during the war to do clerical, communications, and administrative work for the military. By performing these jobs, they freed up men for combat duty. Initially, the women were organized as an auxiliary force that worked with, but not in, the U.S. Army and Air Force, a cautious move intended to protect the male culture of the military. But the program was a success, and by 1943, when Ruby joined, it was fully integrated into the Army. The WACs were the first women other than nurses to serve in the ranks of the U.S. Army. At Fort Des Moines, the barracks were converted stables. “FALL OUT! FALL OUT!” Ruby said, describing the training. “Then you rest. Then FALL OUT! Just to test you.” Ruby was glad that she could take every minute of it. She was asked to carry the flag during morning marching exercises, which made her proud, although at five feet two, she struggled with it. After basic training, she spent ten weeks at the “girls’ college” to learn administrative skills. She was then deployed to various army bases in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas, and 215

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Georgia. Her intelligence, maturity, and practicality served her well. She was promoted from private to technical sergeant and finally landed a plum assignment at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, which housed the Military Intelligence Training Center. Built around a lake on a wooded mountaintop, Camp Ritchie was an idyllic setting for training the “interrogator, interpreter, translator, order of battle, photo interpreter and counter-intelligence teams.” During the war, Camp Ritchie trained twenty thousand intelligence workers, including those with special linguistic abilities, such as Japanese Americans and Jewish refugees from Germany. Ruby was not the only member of the family to serve in the military. Two of her brothers, Edwin and Jack, also joined. Frank Park, Emily and Robert Park’s son, was a captain in the Army. They were among some thirteen thousand Chinese Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. They were privates, NCOs, and officers; they worked behind the lines maintaining equipment and translating documents; they fought in combat in the European, Pacific, and China-Burma-India theaters. Some eleven hundred Chinese Americans served in the Fourteenth Air Service Group, the third-line field maintenance crew for General Claire Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force, the famous Flying Tigers (feihu). Chinese American pilots flew in the Chinese-American Composite Wing, a joint project of the U.S. and Chinese air forces. Unlike African Americans and Japanese Americans, who were organized in segregated units, Chinese Americans served in regular Army units along with whites. The Navy, however, limited Chinese to mess duty until 1942, when it finally allowed them to enlist as apprentice seamen. When the war ended in 1945, Ruby decided to stay in the WAC. She had always been an independent woman, but her work in the WAC had proved something more — that she was the equal of whites. She relished her work in the Army and was in no rush to return to California. She moved to Washington, D.C., still working for military intelligence, then wangled an assignment to work in the Allied occu216

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pation of Japan. She had the idea that she should go to Asia to find her sister Edna. It had been almost forty years since they had seen each other last, when they had parted at their grandmother’s house in Pineapple Village. If Ruby could get to Japan, she figured, she’d be that much closer to Edna. When Ruby arrived in Japan in 1947, the country was still struggling to emerge from the ruins of war. The United States had leveled nearly every city by extensive bombing even before it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and food was scarce. At American military camps, Japanese women and children came “around back of [the mess halls] grubbing in GI trash cans and begging for slops.” In Tokyo, goods could be had, but at high prices. Cigarettes, perhaps prized even more than food, sold on the black market for three dollars a pack, a three thousand percent markup from the PX price. The postwar occupation under General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), had begun a process of demilitarization and democratization (for example, restoring civil liberties and moving to break up the powerful industrial trusts), which aimed to rebuild the country while destroying the foundations of militarism. As one of the victors in the Pacific war, the United States was now positioned to realize its long-held ambition to establish free trade and an open, multilateral system in Asia. But that program was quickly subsumed by the cold war. American priorities shifted to supporting conservative Japanese interests in order to rebuild Japan as an economic and military bulwark against communism in East Asia. U.S. allies, theoretically partners but reduced to bystanders of American power, complained that “every problem of Japan came to be considered for its effects on Russian-American relations.” Ruby was one of five thousand Americans working in Tokyo at MacArthur’s general headquarters, housed in a block-long row of large buildings — the former offices of Dai-Ichi (number-one) insurance company and other big companies and banks — across from 217

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the imperial palace and its moat, dubbed “Avenue A” by SCAP. American officers and many staff members were billeted at the NYK building, central office of Japan’s largest steamship company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha. Ruby may not have seen much else of Tokyo, which lay like a desert beyond the imperial moat. Sixty percent of the city had been burned to the ground by U.S. firebombing. Working in SCAP intelligence in 1947 and 1948 put Ruby at one of the nerve centers of occupation strategy, as the Americans strove to “have control of every wave in the Pacific Ocean.” The details of tumultuous events unfolding throughout Asia passed through Ruby’s office: Chiang Kai-shek’s losing battle against the Communists in China; Vietnam’s resistance to France’s colonial reoccupation; the reinstatement to power of Japan’s former collaborators in South Korea; and in Japan itself, workers’ strikes, debates over equal rights for women, and political jockeying within the government. When she completed her tour in 1948, Ruby had the choice of signing up for another three years or leaving the WAC. She was still thinking about Edna. She learned that she could work as a civilian for the U.S. State Department doing relief work in China. She got her discharge from the Army and went to Shanghai. Shanghai was a great hub of activity in the immediate postwar period. It was both the central processing site for American soldiers leaving the Pacific arena and the central intake port for humanitarian aid sent to China. Ruby worked first in State Department intelligence (having already been thoroughly vetted, or “checked three ways,” as she put it) and then at the Economic Cooperation Authority (ECA; the predecessor of the U.S. Agency for International Development). The ECA had been formed to administer the Marshall Plan in Europe, but it maintained two stations in Asia, in Shanghai and Seoul. Its mission in China was to distribute material aid and to promote industrial and rural reconstruction as part of building long-term ties between the United States and China. Conditions in Japan had been difficult — people were hungry, and the economy teetered on the brink of collapse — but they were 218

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far worse in China. Japan had ravaged and occupied an area of China equal to that held by the Axis powers in all of Europe, and the occupation had directly affected a population still larger. Scandalously, Chiang Kai-shek’s family and cronies misappropriated much of the United Nations aid sent to China, diverting it to the black market. Even blood plasma from the Red Cross was selling in Shanghai drugstores for twenty-five dollars a pint. Inflation was out of control, with prices 150,000 times greater in 1947 than in 1945. Destitution and starvation were common. When Ruby walked to work in the morning, there were dead bodies in the street, as well as those who were nearly dead, “rolled up in their blankets and waiting to die.” It disturbed her so much that she couldn’t eat or sleep. She dreaded leaving her hotel each morning. She also thought that in Shanghai the “Americans treated the Chinese terrible! Treated them like dirt!” She argued with a military police officer outside her hotel, whom she saw hit a pedicab driver with his stick. “You don’t know about these Chinamen,” the MP told her. “You got to treat him that way.” Ruby said, “I’m a Chinaman. I just came from Japan and they were our enemies and you treated them much better than you do with the Chinese and the Chinese were your allies.” The MP said, “You’ll wait. You’ll find out.” What she found out was that Americans thought the Chinese were “arrogant.” Ruby disagreed. “They are poor and just trying to make a dollar and they catered to those people like anything.” The Americans hated what they thought was false solicitude masking thievery. It recalled old stereotypes of Oriental cunning. On another level, the charge of arrogance came from Americans’ sense that the Chinese were ethnocentric, that the “Middle Kingdom” taught a lack of respect for Western civilization. These racial slights made Ruby furious. Ruby located her sister Edna. She was living on a small island near Guangzhou. She had married a man named Wang, with whom she’d 219

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had eight children in almost as many years. Wang was away from home, in the army, when the Japanese invaded the island in February 1939 as part of their occupation of Guangzhou. Edna and her children fled on foot, with a servant carrying the littlest ones in baskets on a bamboo pole. They survived. When Ruby traveled from Shanghai to visit her, Edna was running a restaurant with two schoolmates, and her husband had a job transporting goods from Guangzhou to the island. They were getting by, but in light of the civil war now taking place between the Nationalists (Guomintang) and Communists, Edna thought about going to the United States. Ruby encouraged her; perhaps she felt guilty about having left her in Pineapple Village so many years before. Edna was a U.S. citizen and had every right to return to California, but the American consulate in Shanghai, inundated with visa requests, was skeptical of such claims. Ruby’s contacts in the State Department proved invaluable in getting Edna out of China. During the ten months that Ruby worked in China, the Guomintang’s defeat by the Communists became increasingly certain. Mao’s peasant army had scored spectacular victories in northern China in 1947, and by the fall of 1948 it had captured all of Manchuria. There were large-scale defections from the Nationalist army to the Communists. In January 1949, Beijing fell; in April Nanjing. The ECA staff in Shanghai was given two days to evacuate. Ruby flew to Hong Kong, then returned home. Among the Tapes, Ruby may have had the grandest adventure during the war, but she was not the only one to be transformed by it. Whatever their war experience, the Tapes had a taste of what it meant to be accepted by Americans. Even those who were not directly engaged in wartime activities, such as Mamie and Herman’s family in Portland — whose members were either too old or too young to serve — benefited from the elevation of Chinese Americans’ social standing during the war. The Chinese American middle

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class, which had created itself in the crucible of exclusion and had long teetered on the threshold of inclusion, finally crossed the line. Sadly, neither Gertrude nor Frank enjoyed the fruits of inclusion for long. When Ruby returned to California in 1949, Frank was living alone in the Russell Street house. Gertrude had died from cancer in 1947, at the age of fifty-six. One hopes that Frank took care of his baby sister at the end of her life, that he put aside his selfcenteredness to do that. They probably did not have an easy time after the war. The repeal of the exclusion laws obviated the need for bonding, and Chinese Americans were becoming less dependent on brokers to facilitate their activities. Air travel had also cut into steamship and rail transportation. The ticketing and bonding business never really recovered. What little business there was shifted to S. K. Lai, Frank’s partner, who had done most of the work since Joseph Tape retired. Frank, who had never saved any money, finally sold the Ukiah hunting lodge. Shortly after Ruby returned, Frank suffered a stroke. She moved in to take care of him. In November 1950, Frank’s heart failed him; he was seventy-two years old when he died. A service was held at the Little Chapel of the Flowers, a mortuary chapel at Ashby Station in Berkeley, not far from Russell Street. The chapel had been built in the 1920s in the Storybook style inspired by Hollywood set designs of medieval Europe, with a fanciful turret and a faux thatched roof. It was a fitting place to say farewell to Frank, who, as the only son of a quintessentially self-made man, had also found a way to self-invent. He had fashioned his whole life as a story.

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Epilogue

Three generations of the Tape family lived through the Chinese exclusion era, protesting and profiting from the legal regime of racial discrimination. Their lives were a paradox: they broke into the American middle class by helping manage the continued marginalization of other Chinese. The Tape family was exceptional, yet it was also archetypal of the first Chinese American middle class. In the late nineteenth century, during Joseph Tape’s time, brokering was not only a desirable way for acquiring wealth and property. It also was a route to social status, not just in the immigrant community but among whites as well. Young immigrant men — often teenagers who quickly learned English, adopted Western customs, and developed ties among the Christian missionaries, like Joseph — became labor contractors, transportation agents, and government interpreters. Some of them parlayed brokering into mercantile and other businesses, legitimate and not, from which they grew yet more prosperous. Of course, they were not the only merchants in Chinatown communities, but because they were bilingual and bicultural, they tended to be the ones who were recognized by white society. •  •  • 223

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Brokering and interpreting has long been a strategy for advancement not just for Chinese but for other immigrant groups in America as well. New arrivals, regardless of whence they come — China, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Mexico — turn to ethnic social networks, especially organizations based on native-place and kinship ties, to help them find housing, jobs, and venues for recreation and spiritual sustenance. But immigrants also need a special kind of assistance when they engage with institutions of the host society: employers, transportation companies, immigration authorities, police and courts. Every group has had its brokers, who facilitate exchanges between two parties who could otherwise not communicate or do business with each other: padrones, ward bosses, notaries, coyotes. Brokering works by controlling access to a desired “good” (jobs, baggage handling, immigration papers, stocks, real estate, bail bonds). Immigrant brokers bridge the divide between social groups by trading on their knowledge of each group’s language, culture, and needs. The more they monopolize knowledge and resources, the more powerful they are. If brokers help both immigrants and mainstream institutions, they also help themselves by charging fees and commissions and, at times, by cheating and extorting money from one or another party in the exchange. Because of their unusual linguistic skills and social positions, they are often the first of their ethnic group to achieve the American dream. They are the lucky ones. Eventually, though, as immigrants become settled and learn English (especially their children), they no longer need brokers. Immigrant brokering has been, for the most part, a first-generation phenomenon. But in cases where legal barriers and racial discrimination persist, as in the case of the Chinese, brokers and interpreters held a greater measure of power over many more years than did most of their European counterparts. The Chinese exclusion laws structured the path of the first Chinese American middle-class families. Although exclusion made the immigrants dependent on the brokers, sustaining the brokers’ livelihoods, exclusion also prevented the brokers from achieving full inclusion 224

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in American society. But they came as close as was perhaps possible. Their success, though, was not without cost: their numbers were few, and their social world was insular and at a remove from both Chinatown and mainstream society. The pressure on the second generation to succeed took a toll on their marriages, and some succumbed to the temptations of graft that were created by legal exclusion. The experiences of the Tapes and others like them offer an alternative interpretation of Chinese American history and, indeed, the history of all immigrant groups in the United States. Conventional wisdom considers exclusion and inclusion to be successive phases in a linear pathway to the American dream: immigrants overcome the barriers to inclusion, it is believed, by dint of their hard work and perseverance. The brokers’ story suggests that exclusion and inclusion are not necessarily successive, but sometimes are concurrent and dynamically intertwined — if seemingly opposite — vectors of the immigrant experience. The most successful brokers were those who were canny entrepreneurs, who knew how to exploit opportunities created by cracks in the edifice of exclusion, and who dared to break the rules. There are, as we’ve seen, many ways to break the rules. For members of racial minority groups in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, merely living according to white, middle-class norms could excite resentment among Euro-Americans. Protesting racial discrimination was a further sign that one was “uppity,” or not cognizant of one’s “place” in the racial order. Taking advantage of one’s own people violated the code of ethnic solidarity. Breaking the law — smuggling contraband, graft, trading in vice — was a not uncommon way to get ahead when legitimate means of accumulation were limited. Not all brokers were crooked, but they were all driven by relentless ambition for prosperity and social recognition. In this way, the brokers were quintessentially American. If brokering and interpreting were the keys to the Tape family’s social mobility, two Tape women, Mamie and Ruby — the longest225

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surviving members of the second generation — embodied the modern spirit of the new ethnic middle class in ways that endured beyond the occupational work of brokering. Mamie was a civil rights pioneer and the one who married for love. Ruby may not have married for love, but when status and wealth proved not to be enough for her, she struck out on her own path. World War II afforded her an opportunity to become an independent woman. Each pursued a course that was highly unconventional for Chinese Americans at the time. I doubt that either ever regretted the choice she made. After Frank died in 1950, Ruby continued to live in the Tape family home on Russell Street, which was old and comfortable. She planted a garden in the back, near the spot where Joseph had long ago dug a well, growing celery, tomatoes, and on choy (kongxin cai, meaning “empty heart vegetable,” after its long, hollow stems). She also tended the apple and persimmon trees in the yard. Ruby’s youngest brother, Jackie, lived with her while he attended Berkeley during the early 1950s. Her sister Edna settled in Sunnyvale, where she managed a restaurant called the Full Moon. Ruby visited her often. Characteristically, Ruby went back to work. She held a variety of jobs over the next fifteen years: at a Chinatown import/export company, at the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Navy base in Alameda, and finally as an interpreter for an immigration law firm in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She retired in 1964. Ruby, both a modern woman and a dutiful daughter-in-law, carefully preserved a number of Tape family photo albums. The oldest was a Victorian picture album from the 1890s — the kind that was popular around the turn of the century — a heavy book with an embossed celluloid cover, brass hardware, and pages for inserting cabinet cards. Mary had painted the front cover with a cameo of a young Euro-American woman in a pink dress, framed by violets. Inside she had placed studio portraits: on the first page, the family portrait taken in 1884, during the time of the school lawsuit; on the next two facing pages, Miss McGladery, Mary’s benefactress and surrogate mother, and Gertrude (who had not yet been born in 1884) 226

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at age four. However, Mary did not include any of the photographs that she herself was taking at the time — of the California countryside or of her children at play in San Francisco and Berkeley. These were not mere snapshots but photographs carefully, if conventionally, composed in a modern style. Mary did not organize her photographs. It fell to Gertrude, twenty years later in the early 1910s, to retrieve them from wherever they had lain and to place them in another album, along with recent photographs of her own. The albums went to Ruby when Frank died, and she kept them along with her own albums chronicling her life as Mrs. Frank Tape and then, during the war, as Technical Sergeant Ruby Tape. Taken together, the albums tell the remarkable story of the Tape family from the 1870s to the Second World War and of the world of immigrant brokering that made them an American family. At the time of Ruby’s retirement in 1964, her sister-in-law Mamie was eighty-eight years old and living with her daughter, Emily, in Portland, in the big house that Emily’s husband had built for her in the 1920s. Both women were widowed. They lived among heirlooms of Mamie’s family: a still life of chrysanthemums painted by Mary Tape in 1901 hanging in the living room; a set of Mamie’s sister Emily Park’s painted porcelain in the dining room china cabinet. Mamie had three grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. Her grandson Kenneth Jr. went to Oregon State and married a Chinese girl who had been high school prom princess in Hood River. Having inherited the Tapes’ sportsman gene, Kenneth Jr. worked for the state fish and game commission; later he and his wife opened the Chinese Tea Garden, Corvallis’s first Chinese restaurant. A few years later, Mamie’s granddaughter Carolyn and her husband opened another Chinese restaurant in town, the Toa Yuen. These restaurants were not chop suey joints. True, they served chop suey, but they also served lobster with Cantonese sauce, ginger beef, and T-bone steaks, and they had cocktail lounges, the Po Wah Bar and the Dragon Bar. All of their patrons were white. Indeed, there were so few Chinese 227

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in Corvallis that the restaurants hired white students from Oregon State as waiters. The restaurants were classics of mid-century Chinese American culture, which introduced American Chinese cuisine to white, middle-class Americans. In the early 1960s, Mamie was still a lively woman, despite her advanced age and diminishing eyesight. She enjoyed Lawrence Welk on TV and always made sure the seams in her silk stockings were straight. She told stories to her great-grandchildren. They especially loved the story about the time, back in the 1880s, when Miss Hurley wouldn’t let her in the school. “They said all the ‘pigtails’ would be coming,” she’d say, but her “dad fought like heck” and sued the board of education. The children could not imagine a time when Chinese weren’t allowed to go to school or had to go to a separate school for “Orientals.” Every year at Christmas during the 1950s and 1960s, a package would arrive at the family home in Portland. It was always the same package: a box of See’s candy, California’s best. Auntie Ruby always sent lollipops — not ordinary sugar pops, but big squares made of heavy cream and butter and flavored with real chocolate and butterscotch. The candy kept the surviving branches of Joseph and Mary Tape’s family tree connected. One hundred years after Jeu Dip left Skipping Stone Village for the gold mountain in 1864, the U.S. Congress passed three historic civil rights laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The first two acts ended legal racial segregation in public venues; banned discrimination based on race, nationality, religion, and sex in hiring, housing, and schools; and ensured fair voting rights and representation for racial minority groups. The immigration law ended the system of distributing visas according to “national origin,” a discriminatory system that had, since the 1920s, restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe as well as from Asia.

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After 1965, a new wave of Chinese immigrants began coming to America from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. Since then, most have come legally, but because the demand for visas continually exceeds the supply, a new generation of brokers has sprung up to help immigrants enter the United States illegally. These include the notorious shetou (snakeheads), who smuggle Chinese into the United States under dangerous conditions and at high prices. One of the most famous snakeheads is a woman named Cheng Chui-Ping, a Fujianese immigrant in New York’s Chinatown who reportedly amassed $40 million from smuggling immigrants into the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Big Sister Ping (Dajie Ping), as she is known, owned the Golden Venture, a freighter that ran aground on Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, in June 1993. The ship was carrying three hundred Chinese in its cargo hold, ten of whom died trying to swim ashore. After eluding authorities for years, Sister Ping was arrested in Hong Kong in 2000, extradited to the United States in 2003, and convicted in 2005 on charges connected with the Golden Venture incident. She is serving thirty-five years in prison. Federal prosecutors called her the “mother of all snakeheads,” who operated a global “conglomerate based on misery and greed.” Yet many Fujianese immigrants revere Sister Ping, whom they consider a “snakehead with a heart” — someone who “helps reunite families.” Sister Ping apparently treated her clients fairly (it is said that she hired gangs to do her dirty work), and despite her wealth and power, she did not act as if she was above ordinary people. She worked in her restaurant and general merchandise store in Chinatown, wore simple clothes, and rode the subway. Sister Ping’s persona as a woman of the people is an ironic twist on the image of brokers during Joseph and Frank Tape’s time. These men wore their wealth and status conspicuously. And although immigrant smuggling continues to be a lucrative, if dangerous, business, brokering is no longer the only way to enter the middle class. Unlike the immigrants who came to America in the nineteenth cen-

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tury and during the exclusion era, Chinese immigrants since 1965 have included many professionals, such as physicians, scientists, and engineers. The new professionals live in suburbs and send their children to universities. Some of them work in Chinatowns, including doctors who serve patients there, but others have little connection to the Chinese community. They do not identify with the brokers who serve working-class immigrants today. Few of them even know that brokers like the Tapes paved the way to the American middle class.

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Glossary of Chinese Names

Chinese characters are listed alphabetically according to the pinyin romanizations of their Putonghua (Mandarin) pronunciations.

Buluo

菠羅



Chen Buotang

陳伯棠



Fushi

浮石



Hu Jiao

胡嬌



Huamei xinbao

華美新報



Huang Kaijia

黃開甲



Huang Qingfu

黃清福



Jin Yong

錦榮



Kaiping

開平



Li Qixuan

黎啓璇



Liang Guibo

梁貴柏



Lü Yaoxuan

盧堯煊



Pu Lun

溥倫 231

Glossary of Chinese Names



Sanyi

三邑



Shejie ribao

世界日報



Siyi

四邑



Xinning

新寧



Xue Jing

薛敬



Zhao Fuleng

趙輔冷



Zhao Xia

趙洽



Zhao Yuanxiang

趙遠香



Zhonghua huiguan

中華會館



Zhongxi ribao

中西日報



Zhou Yueqing

周月琼



Zhou Zhanyong

周展榮

232

Acknowledgments

Many individuals and institutions contributed to the research and writing of this book. Members of the Tape and Kim families shared with me their recollections of the Tapes and their wonderful photograph collections. I thank Jack Kim, Mitchell Kim, Linda Doler, Carolyn Lee, and Ruth Lum for their enthusiasm and generosity. I gratefully acknowledge financial and institutional support from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; the University of Chicago; Columbia University; the American Bar Foundation; the Huntington Library; the Newberry Library; the Institute for Advanced Study; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. My heartfelt thanks to research assistants who helped me sift through innumerable haystacks of material: Thomas Adams, Melissa Borja, Meredith Oda, Arissa Oh, Aaron Shapiro, Peter Simons, Christina Voung, and Hai Zhao. For information, leads, and sources, I thank Robert Barde, Al Cheng, Vincent Chin, Loni Ding, Peter Ferris, Bertha Hing, Madeline Hsu, Dorothy Ko, Mary Lui, Peggy Pascoe, Daniella Thompson, and Judy Yung. Him Mark Lai understood immediately the importance of the interpreter class and was an in233

Acknowledgments

valuable source of knowledge and support. I am sorry that he passed away before the book was completed. Much of the book was drafted over the course of two summers on the eastern end of Long Island; I thank Terry Karamanos and Mary Marcus for these idyllic environments. Special thanks to my brother John Ngai for help with scanning photographs. Over the past half-dozen years, I presented aspects of the Tapes’ story at more workshops and seminars than I can name. I thank participants and discussants for their comments and ideas. I want to especially thank my mother, Hsueh-hwa Ngai, who has been a constant reader and supporter of this book as it took shape; and Gordon Chang, Mary Marcus, John New, and Judy Yung, who read the entire manuscript and offered wise corrections and suggestions. All errors remaining are mine. For Sandy Dijkstra’s unfailing support and Deanne Urmy’s keen editorial direction, I am most grateful.

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Notes

Abbreviations Used in Notes



AC Alameda County Clerk Recorder, public records, Oakland, CA BAHA Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association BANC Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley BPL Berkeley (CA) Public Library, History Room CL Author interview with Carolyn Lee, August 7, 2005, Corvallis, OR CSA California State Archives, Sacramento CSL California State Library, Sacramento DOL Records of the Department of Labor, Record Group 174, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD EPIS Episcopal Archdiocese Archives, New York HHN Hart Hyatt North Papers, Bancroft Library HHS Hayward (CA) Historical Society HL Huntington Library, San Marino, CA HML Him Mark Lai Papers, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley INS Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC; Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, subject correspondence files, series A, part 1, Asian immigration and exclusion, microfilm, 30 reels; supplement, 14 reels JBS John Birge Sawyer Papers, Bancroft Library

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JK Author interviews with Jack Kim, August 9, 2000, and June 17, 2003, Castro Valley, CA MHS Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis ML-EL Him Mark Lai and Philip Choy, interview with Mamie Tape Lowe and Emily Lowe Lum, July 29, 1972, Portland, OR (tape recording, courtesy Him Mark Lai) NARA-PERS National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis NARA-SEA National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific-Alaska Region, Seattle NARA-SF National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific-Sierra Region, San Francisco NYPL New York Public Library OPL Oakland (CA) Public Library, History Room PRES Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia PRES-CH Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, San Francisco, Bancroft Library PRES-SF Presbyterian Archives, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA RL-LD Author interview with Ruth Lum and Linda Doler, August 8, 2005, Portland, OR RT (Chan) Jeffrey Chan, interview with Ruby Kim Tape, December 7, 1972, Marysville, CA, Combined Asian American Resource Project, Bancroft Library RT (Lai) Him Mark Lai, interview with Ruby Tape, August 9, 1970, Berkeley (notes, courtesy Him Mark Lai) SDHS San Diego Historical Society SFC San Francisco County Clerk’s Office, public records SFPL San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco History Center SLPL St. Louis Public Library, special collections STAN Stanford University, special collections UCSF University of California, San Francisco, rare books library YCPL Yuba County Public Library, History Room, Marysville, CA 1. The Lucky One

page



3 Jeu Dip (Zhao Xia): The family name “Zhao” is pronounced “Jiu” in Cantonese. I use the transliteration “Jeu” following the family’s usage; in official records, both “Jeu” and “Chew” are used. Census records list Jeu Dip’s year of birth as 1852 or 1853 and his year of immigration variously as 1864, 1865, 1866, and 1869. He gave interviews later in life in which he said he immigrated when he was “a little over ten or eleven years old” (Immigration interview of Joseph Tape, January 31, 1921, file 12016 /1908, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF). I use 1852 for his birth year

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4







5





6



7



and 1864 as the year of his immigration, which puts his age at twelve at the time he left China, but he may have come in 1865 or 1866. Skipping Stone ( fushi ) Village: RT (Lai), interview; Al Cheng to author, e-mail, June 27, 2009. In the local dialect, Fushi is Faw Shek. The boy’s ancestors: Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home (Stanford, CA, 2000), 21. Xinning is the old: Xinning (Sunning in Cantonese) was renamed Taishan (Toishan) in 1911. In the local dialect, Siyi is Sze Yup. Siyi’s hilly terrain: June Mei, “Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850–1882,” Modern China 5 (1979): 463–99; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 16–27. sweet potatoes and peanuts: Zhao genealogy, http://legacy1.net/jiu-thue-loon/ (last accessed January 20, 2010). “the gold mountain”: California would also be called Jiujinshan, or “old gold mountain,” which distinguished it from Australia, dubbed Xinjinshan, or “new gold mountain,” after many Chinese went there during the gold rush of the mid1850s. He first made his way: Cheng e-mail; Madeline Hsu to author, e-mail, June 29, 2009. On the Xinning Railroad, see Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 156–75. carried by coolies: In China, a coolie was a person who performed menial labor. In the settler-colonial world, “coolie” connoted an indentured worker sent abroad, often for plantation work. money for a ticket: Mei, “Socioeconomic Origins,” 488. The price of a ticket in 1864 was about $40, or $535 today. U.S.-China trade: John Kuo-wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown (Baltimore, 2001), 25–33, 44. might have been the Arracan: Louis Rasmussen, San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists, vol. 1 (Coloma, CA, 1965), 9; New Zealand Maritime Index, http://www .nzmaritimeindex.org.nz/izvessel.php?ID=888812388&name=ARRACAN&db =&dm=&ds=&dh=&gsn=&owner=&num=&sh=&st=&sd=&svv=&typ=&tid =0&tix=0&tot=1&wds=&pix=0&sourceid=&refid=&hit=1 (last accessed July 14, 2009). See also Robert E. Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island (New York, 2008), 112–13. first industrialization: Richard Walker, “Industry Builds Out the City: The Suburbanization of Manufacturing in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1850–1940,” in The Manufactured Metropolis, ed. Robert Lewis (Philadelphia, 2004), 92–123. “superb heads”: James F. Rusling, The Great West and Pacific Coast, or Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage-coach, Ambulance, Horseback, Railroad, and Steamer . . . (New York, 1877), 303. most other foreign miners: Malcolm Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley, 1997), 224–28; Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy (Berkeley, 1974), 54–57.

237

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7 foreign miner’s tax: William Speer, An Humble Plea, Addressed to the Legislature of California, in Behalf of the Immigrants of the Empire of China to This State (San Francisco, 1856), 7. 8 “allowed to scratch”: John D. Borthwick, Three Years in California (Edinburgh, 1857), 144–45. Contemporaries observed that only a fraction of the miner’s tax collected made it to state coffers, as tax collectors pocketed much of it (Speer, An Humble Plea, 19–20). “wonderfully clean”: Borthwick, Three Years in California, 266–67. “bevy of Chinamen”: Ibid., 144–45. 9 “by some mysterious celestial”: Ibid., 263–64. Democrat John Bigler: George Tinkham, California Men and Events (Stockton, CA, 1915), 97–98; Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 12. Chinese could not testify: People v. Hall, 4 Cal. 399 (1854). “reduced to misery”: Chun Aching and Tong Achick, letter to Governor Bigler, 1852, in An Analysis of the Chinese Question. Consisting of a Special Message of the Governor, and, in reply thereto, Two Letters of the Chinamen, and a Memorial of the Citizens of San Francisco (San Francisco, 1852), 12. The foreign miner’s tax was finally declared unconstitutional in 1870, but not before Chinese had paid an estimated $4.8 million in taxes. Hyung-chan Kim, Legal History of Asian America (Westport, CT, 1994), 48. While Chinese continued: The foreign miner’s tax and aggression by white miners drove Chinese from mining. The proportion of the Chinese population engaged in mining dropped from 80 to 85 percent in the early 1860s to 35 to 50 percent by 1867. See Randall Rohe, “After the Gold Rush: Chinese Mining in the Far West,” in The Chinese on the American Frontier, ed. Arlik Dirlik (Lanham, MD, 2001), 6. 10 Matthew Sterling: Population Census of the U.S., 1860, San Francisco district 6, series M654, roll 67, p. 415; Population Census of the U.S., 1870, San Francisco ward 12, series M593, roll 85, p. 728. All census records accessed via AncestryLibrary.com. 11 Jeu Dip’s chores: Ah Quin, diaries, SDHS, esp. vol. 3, 1878–1879. Ah Quin worked as a cook and servant in the households of U.S. Army officers at Angel Island and the Presidio; he usually had a younger boy as an assistant. Neighbors and friends of Ah Quin’s employers frequently asked him to find someone to work for them. Hart North, San Francisco’s commissioner of immigration, often referred young Chinese men to friends and colleagues for domestic employment (Hart North to V. Metcalf, October 2, 1905, and Hart North to J. McNab, March 19, 1909, box 2, HHN). My estimate of Jeu Dip’s pay is based on a comparison with Ah Quin’s — twenty-five dollars a month — about ten years later. The work began: Ah Quin, diaries, August 14 and 22, 1878. withstand scolding: Ibid., October 5, 1879, and April 7, 1878. California Street cable car: Joyce Jansen, San Francisco’s Cable Cars (San Francisco, 1995), 48–49.

238

Notes an English-language class: Jeu Dip did not record his activities on his days off, but Ah Quin regularly did these things. See especially Ah Quin, diaries, April through July 1878. San Francisco’s Chinese quarter: Christopher Lee Yip, “San Francisco’s Chinatown: An Architectural and Urban History” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1985), 84–85, 96. 12 stops at his huiguan: The first huiguan — Sze Yup Association (Siyi Huiguan) and Sam Yup Association (Sanyi Huiguan), representing the three counties in the Guangzhou area — were established in 1851. As the population grew, the huiguan organized along narrower lines, according to surnames and districts of origin. In the late 1850s, the various huiguan came together in a council, the Zhonghua Huiguan (Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association), which was known as the Chinese Six Companies, for the number of huiguan at the time. The six huiguan were Sam Yup (Sanyi); Yeong Wo (Yanghe, or “masculine accord”), representing people from the Heungshan district; Yan Wo (Renhe, or “human accord”), representing the Hakka ethnic group; Sze Yup (Siyi); Ning Yeung (Ningyang), a spinoff from Sze Yup by Xinning people; and Hop Wo (Hehe, or “united harmony”), a spinoff from Ning Yeung by members of the Yee clan. Him Mark Lai, Becoming Chinese American (Walnut Creek, CA, 2004), 39–77. See also “The Six Chinese Companies,” Overland Monthly and Out West 1, no. 3 (September 1868); William Hoy, Chinese Six Companies (San Francisco, 1942), 221; and Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Transpacific Community (Stanford, CA, 2000), 71–73. relatively better clothing: “Servants, and a few merchants, dress in good broadcloth — some quite handsomely.” Speer, An Humble Plea, 27. published accounts mythologized: On his association with Stanford, see “Joseph Tape, Local Pioneer, Is Dead,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, March 11, 1935. On his association with Mills, see Hal Johnson, “Chinese Fireman,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, November 25, 1941. Most sources, including other newspaper articles and family accounts, agree that Jeu Dip did work for Matthew Sterling; see “Chinese Pair Wed 50 Years,” Oakland Tribune, November 16, 1925; ML-EL, interview; and RT (Chan), interview. The 1870 census lists in Sterling’s household a fourteen-yearold Chinese servant named Ah Goon (Population Census of the U.S., 1870, San Francisco ward 12, series M593, roll 85, p. 728). The enumerator may have misunderstood the boy’s name (a common occurrence), or Sterling may have hired another servant after Jeu Dip began driving the milk wagon. 2. The First Rescue 14 Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society: Rowena Beans, “Inasmuch . . .” One Hundred Years of the San Francisco Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society, 1853–1953 (San Francisco, 1953), 1–4. “pioneer husbands”: Ibid., 2.

239

Notes 14 “some are deserted”: Ibid., 18. 15 “noble and liberal”: Ibid. By the early 1870s: staff and inmates: Population Census of the U.S., 1870, San Francisco ward 12, series M593, roll 85, p. 798. age of eleven: Census records list Mary’s year of immigration variously as 1868, 1869, and 1871. I have used 1868 because it is given twice, in the 1900 and 1920 censuses. If she were eleven at the time, her birth year would have been 1857. Joseph was born in 1852; Mary and Joseph were consistent in the belief that they were five years apart in age. “aristocratic Pekin family”: Johnson, “Chinese Fireman.” called a mui tsai: Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley, 1995), 37–38. 16 Sex trafficking: Ibid., 30. From the 1850s: Ibid., 24, 29; “Arrival of Chinese in San Francisco,” Reformed Church Messenger, November 10, 1869. “from the lowest class”: “Examining the Baggage,” New York Evangelist, October 3, 1872. the famous Atoy: Yung, Unbound Feet, 31. 17 Some worked as: Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 82–83. wooden-hulled side-wheelers: John H. Kemble, A Hundred Years of the Pacific Mail (Newport News, VA, 1950), 13–14; Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 83–84. two arched entries: Robert Weinstein, “West to the Orient: The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, as photographed by Carleton E. Watkins,” California History 57 (Spring 1978): 46–57. “richly furnished”: “Great Republic,” Daily Alta California, August 6, 1867. 18 “She is the largest”: F. F., “Arrival of Chinese in San Francisco.” steerage conditions remained poor: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 92. arrived on the Colorado: “Arrival of Colorado,” Daily Alta California, August 17, 1868. 19 Brooks Island: Charles Wolcott Brooks, “Our Furthest Outpost,” Old and New, June 1870, 1, 6. “traffickers in frail humanity”: A.  W. Loomis, “Chinese Women in California,” Overland Monthly and Out West 2, no. 4 (April 1869): 344. See also Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati, 1877), 143–46. brothel owners were getting: “The Imported Chinese Females in Court on Habeas Corpus,” Daily Alta California, June 28, 1868; “Arrival of Colorado”; “Foiled Again,” Daily Alta California, August 17, 1868; “Habeas Corpus,” Daily Alta California, August 31, 1868. “very young girls”: “The Chinese Courtesans,” Daily Alta California, September 1, 1868. Whether she ran away: Mary Tape later told a reporter that she had stayed in China-

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20

21 22

town for some five months before going to the Ladies’ Society home, although she claimed no memory of her time there. “What a Chinese Girl Did: An Expert Photographer and Telegrapher,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, November 23, 1892. girl came to the attention: Gibson, The Chinese in America, 201. wife had recently died: William Rankin, Memorials of Foreign Missionaries of the Presbyterian Church USA (Philadelphia, 1895), 202–4. eighty other children: Population Census of the U.S., 1870, San Francisco ward 12, series M593, roll 85, pp. 798–99. Miss McGladery found her: “What a Chinese Girl Did.” commence work among Chinese women: Wesley Woo, “Protestant Work Among the Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1850–1920” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1984), 155–57; History of the Mission of the Methodist-Episcopal Church to the Chinese in California (San Francisco, 1877), 11. “escaped their cruel servitude”: Gibson, The Chinese in America, 201–2. “some home or house”: Loomis, “Chinese Women in California”; History of the Mission of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, 11. Jeu Dip courted: Johnson, “Chinese Fireman.” American-born children: Yong Chen’s study of census data indicates that children accounted for only four percent of the Chinese in San Francisco in 1870; of those born in the United States (more than half), nearly all were under the age of nine. Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 56. 3.  Joseph and Mary

24 a Christian ceremony: Joseph Tape’s affidavit in the Tape v. Hurley case states that his marriage to Mary M. Tape was “solemnized according to the rights and ceremonies of the Presbyterian denomination, at the First Presbyterian Church of San Francisco, by the Rev. A. W. Loomis, D.D., assisted by the Rev. I. M. Condit, clergymen of said denomination” (Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473 [1885], Affidavit for Writ of Mandate, October 25, 1884, p. 2). Neither Jeu Dip nor Mary McGladery is listed in the church’s baptismal records; the wedding is also unrecorded (Session minutes and register [microfilm], PRES-CH). In 1882, in part as a response to the expansion of Chinatown to Stockton Street, the white congregation of the First Church moved to Van Ness Avenue, where it became the Old First Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian Board of Missions bought the First Church building for the Chinese mission, and it became the First Presbyterian Chinese Church (Elizabeth Lee Abbott and Kenneth Abbott, “Chinese Pilgrims: 1851–1976,” typescript, n.d., p. 12, folder 35, box 1, PRES-CH; Woo, “Protestant Work Among the Chinese,” 38–41). 25 more sparsely settled: Population Census of the U.S., 1880, San Francisco district 1, series T9, roll 78, enumerator’s district 197, p. 13. Chinese vegetable plots: ML-EL, interview.

241

Notes 25 A child, a girl: Population Census of the U.S., 1880, San Francisco ward 12, series T9, roll 78, p. 27. delivered her at home: Immigration interview of Mrs. Herman [Mamie Tape] Lowe, July 7, 1930, Portland, file 5017/562, NARA-SEA. a Chinese name: Ibid. 26 1700 block of Green Street: Sanborn fire insurance map, San Francisco, 1893, vol. 4, sheet 9, Sanborn Map Company Archives, late nineteenth century to 1990s, SFPL. A second child: Frank’s and Emily’s birth years are recorded in Population Census of the U.S., 1900, Alameda County, Berkeley ward 4, series T623, roll 83, p. 9B. wholesale Chinese merchants: “What a Chinese Girl Did.” These goods included: Speer, An Humble Plea, 9. Exports to China exclusive of silver and gold (mostly merchandise, flour, and quicksilver) ran at $2 million to $3 million a year during the early 1870s (“Commercial and Financial Statistics for the Year 1869,” Daily Alta California, January 6, 1870; annual trade reports, San Francisco Bulletin, January 4, 1870, January 10, 1871, and January 21, 1872). See also “Commerce of Asia and Oceania,” Overland Monthly and Out West 8, no. 2 (February 1872): 171–75; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 7 (San Francisco, 1890), 116, 121–23. the Pacific Mail was offering: Dorothy Perkins, “Coming to San Francisco by Steamship, 1906–1908,” in The Chinese American Experience: Papers from the Second National Conference on Chinese American Studies, ed. Genny Lim (San Francisco, 1980), 26–33; Kemble, A Hundred Years of the Pacific Mail. 27 “emptied of all”: “Arrival of Chinese in San Francisco.” Europeans in New York: Philip Taylor, The Distant Magnet: European Emigration to the U.S.A. (London, 1971), 124–29. 28 established Castle Garden: “Castle Garden,” New York Daily Times, August 4, 1855. marred by corruption: “Affairs at Castle Garden,” New York Daily Times, March 5, 1856. “Someone must convey”: “Arrival of Chinese in San Francisco.” Bernard “Barney” Biglin: Biglin allegedly held the concession through his connections to Tammany Hall, and earned $20,000 a year, double what “honest” expressing would bring, by overcharging immigrants. A critic said that he “would not trust a dog’s life in the hands of [Biglin’s] baggage smashers.” “A Political Pull: What the Castle Garden Investigation Has Revealed,” Washington Post, August 31, 1887. See also “The Railroads at Castle Garden,” New York Times, April 25, 1884; “Biglin Says He Isn’t Bad, Holds Up His Hands in Horror over Immigrant Mendacity,” New York Times, October 19, 1889. 29 In 1873, Scribner’s: “A Few Hints on the California Journey,” Scribner’s Monthly, May 1873. The estimated cost for a two-month trip was $700 to $800 per person, including $350 for a train ticket with accommodations in a Pullman drawing room, “perfect for two ladies traveling alone.”

242

Notes opened an office: Lynch maps of Chinatown, c. 1880, file 4, Chinese partnership files, NARA-SF; Anthony Lee, Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco (Berkeley, 2001), 9; Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 62. the funerary business: “Chinese Funeral,” Daily Alta California, October 23, 1889. See also “Chinese ‘Funeral Baked Meats,’  ” Overland Monthly and Out West 3, no. 1 (July 1869): 21. 30 cemetery at Lone Mountain: Yip, “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” 105. the Chinese consul: “What a Chinese Girl Did.” 31 “excellent wing shot”: Ibid. two gun dogs: Photograph, c. 1880, Gertrude Chan album, Jack Kim collection. I thank Lisa Brunet and Carola Suárez-Orozco for help with identifying the breeds. The couple explored: “What a Chinese Girl Did.” Mary’s early paintings: The following paintings were shown at the 1885 exposition of the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute: Cliff House, Sentinel Rock (Yosemite), Fruit Piece, Hunting, Mirror, Blue Mountains, St. Joseph’s Lilly, and Calla Lilly. Art Catalogue of the Twentieth Industrial Exposition of the Mechanics’ Institute of the City of San Francisco, 1885 (San Francisco, 1886), 51–53, 104. I thank Judy Yung for bringing this document to my attention. often left bok choy: ML-EL, interview. the displacement of: Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 108; William Deverell, Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad (Berkeley, 1994), 34–36. 32 a workingmen’s movement: Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 13–14. 33 “Made by white labor”: Ibid., 75. “promiscuously stoned”: Charles Walcott Brooks, “The Chinese Labor Problem,” Overland Monthly and Out West 3, no. 5 (November 1869): 407–19. “They have been stoned”: Ira M. Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him and Fifty Years of Work for Him (Chicago, 1900), 83. Gangs of white youths: Edward Murphy, “Third Street,” San Francisco’s Thoroughfares, San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1919. 34 “This yellow stream”: Rusling, The Great West and Pacific Coast, 315–16. “If you will look”: Memorial of the Six Chinese Companies. An Address to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States; Testimony of California’s leading citizens before the Joint Special Congressional Committee; Read and Judge Us (San Francisco, 1877), 21–22. “I have never had”: Ibid., 24. “There is nothing”: Ibid., 18. 35 “receive and absorb”: Rusling, The Great West and Pacific Coast, 315–16. “hope of the emancipation”: Speer, An Humble Plea, 10–17, 29–30. See also William Speer, China and California: Their Relations, Past and Present (San Francisco, 1853), 15. On how “coolies” were perceived as both free and unfree labor by different interests, see Moon-Ho Jung, “Coolies” and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore, 2006).

243

Notes 35 36 37

39

“the missionaries, who understand”: Gibson, The Chinese in America, 76–77. “evident intent”: “Rioting in San Francisco,” New York Times, July 25, 1877. The next evening: “Rioting on the Western Coast,” New York Times, July 26, 1877. night of July 26: Ibid. St. Ignatius Church: Joseph Riordan, The First Half Century of St. Ignatius Church and College (San Francisco, 1905), 215–21. The original church was on Market Street. In 1878, Sterling’s property at Van Ness and Hayes was purchased for a new church and a Jesuit college. The college, the predecessor of the University of San Francisco, opened in 1880 and was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire. continued to grow in influence: Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 108. found themselves marginalized: Gibson, The Chinese in America, 76–77. Congress passed the first: Page Act, U.S. Statutes at Large 18 (1875): 477. a law suspending: The Chinese Exclusion Act was formally called “An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to Chinese” (U.S. Statutes at Large 22 [1882]: 58). This law suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for a period of ten years. It was renewed in 1892 and 1902, then made permanent in 1904. It was repealed by the Magnuson Act of 1943. 4.  “That Chinese Girl”

43 took on the Tape children: Immigration interview of Florence [Eveleth] Fontecilla, March 29, 1940, Oakland, file 12016 /8690, SF District 12016 case files, NARASF; ML-EL, interview; Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473 (1885). 44 Spring Valley Primary School: “Historical Sketches on San Francisco Schools, 1879–1880,” http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgsch79.htm#Spprimary (last accessed February 16, 2010). urged Joseph to sue: Immigration interview of Florence Fontecilla. use the American courts: Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, 1994). The most important ruling: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886). On Chinese merchants’ use of the law, see Todd Stevens, “Brokers Between Worlds: Chinese Merchants and Legal Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1865–1925” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2003). 45 a watershed case: Victor Low, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco, 1982), 17. Unless otherwise noted, the following discussion is drawn from this book. “rapid progress”: “School for the Chinese,” Daily Alta California, June 9, 1853. English-language instruction: Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 91; Timothy Tseng, “Ministry at Arm’s Length: Asian Americans in the Racial Ideology of Mainline Protestants, 1882–1952” (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1994), 52.

244

Notes 46 “I have considered”: “Claims of the Chinese on Our Common Schools, Card from the Rev. Mr. Speer,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, June 20, 1857. “extremely suspicious”: Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 93, 102–3. “practical method”: Guy Maine, “Report of Chinese Guild,” Yearbook of St. Bartholomew’s Parish, New York, 1914, p. 1909, EPIS. “baiting the Gospel”: Woo, “Protestant Work Among the Chinese,” 118. Nearly all: In San Francisco, the Baptist Chinese mission, Chinese Methodist Church, and Women’s Occidental Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church all sponsored day schools. Chinese Sabbath School Association, “Statistics of the Chinese Churches, Missions, Schools and Institutions of North America, 1892,” 2–3, NYPL. “as taxpayers”: “Claims of the Chinese on Our Common Schools.” 47 “prejudices of caste”: Quoted in Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools (Berkeley, 1976), 32. “little Celestials”: Low, The Unimpressible Race, 23. “only a few necessary”: “Claims of the Chinese on Our Common Schools.” 48 “striving to take root”: San Francisco Daily Morning Call, March 7, 1878, quoted in Low, The Unimpressible Race, 57. “Guard well”: Quoted in Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed, 28–29. 49 “obligation to continue”: Quoted ibid., 33. Wollenberg points out that regardless of the change in state law, Chinese were still entitled to public education according to the 1868 Burlingame Treaty with China. a growing population: Yong Chen’s sampling of the U.S. census in San Francisco indicated a marked increase in the number of U.S.-born Chinese children after 1870. Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 56. one thousand school-age Chinese: “San Francisco Items,” Sacramento Union, February 4, 1885; “Chinese School Census,” Daily Alta California, April 19, 1885. attended the missionary schools: Low, The Unimpressible Race, 54. “Chinese merchants and laborers”: “To the honorable the Senate and the Assembly of the State of California, signed by 1,300 Chinese, including the principal Chinese Merchants of San Francisco, Sacramento, etc.,” 1877, trans. J. G. Kerr, BANC. Who was Jennie Hurley: Population Census of the U.S., 1870, San Francisco ward 12, series M593, roll 85, p. 715; Population Census of the U.S., 1900, San Francisco, series T623, roll 106, p. 3A. 50 elected to the position: “Historical Sketches on San Francisco Schools.” “to resist”: Low, The Unimpressible Race, 10. The Miwok Indians, native to the Sacramento area, were called “Digger Indians” by the federal government until 1922, after their practice of building subterranean homes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs officially changed its practice in response to protests by the Miwok that “Digger” was “humiliating and opprobrius.” Quoted in National Park Service, “Place

245

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50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

Where They Burnt the Digger,” http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/5 views/5views1h65.htm (last accessed February 15, 2010). Joseph Tape appealed: ML-EL, interview. consulate had been established: Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 110–14. Frederick A. Bee: Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 113. “inconsistent with the treaties”: “The School Board,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, October 22, 1884. “absolutely prohibit”: Ibid. “eccentricities of intelligence”: “School Contracts,” Daily Alta California, July 6, 1884. Gibson was the son: Obituary of William Gibson, Esq., n.d., courtesy Jeffrey Stanley. the simple headline: “That Chinese Girl,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, November 13, 1884. “If Chinese may”: “The School Board.” “Fifteen years ago”: Tape v. Hurley, Affidavit for Writ of Mandate, 3–4. When a train conductor: Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). The dual approach: Ozawa v. U.S., 260 U.S. 178 (1922); U.S. v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923). “filthy and vicious”: Tape v. Hurley at 473, 474. In late March: “The Chinese School,” Daily Alta California, April 14, 1885. Mary Tape wrote: “Chinese Mother’s Letter,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1885. “are dressed neatly”: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, April 14, 1885, quoted in Low, The Unimpressible Race, 71–72. The Daily Alta California reported that Mamie appeared at school “gorgeously attired in American clothes, including pink stockings and a light-colored leghorn hat with an ostrich plume of immense proportions” (“The Chinese School”). This description, which is at odds with the Evening Bulletin’s description and the manner of her dress in the family portrait, is highly suspect. “bright Chinese lads”: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, April 14, 1885. Their parents: Abbott and Abbott, “Chinese Pilgrims,” 12. “conducted themselves”: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, April 14, 1885. “most intelligent member”: “The Chinese School.” Florence Eveleth continued: Immigration interview of Florence Fontecilla. things on Green Street: Sanborn fire insurance map, San Francisco, 1899–1900, vol. 3, sheet 279. fought with the Irish: RT (Chan), interview, 42. children’s marriage prospects: According to Mamie, “The folks moved downtown because there was too much fan-yun [fanren; “foreigners,” meaning white people] they thought, [so they wanted us] to get acquainted with some Chinese boys and girls.” ML-EL, interview.

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Notes 5.  Chinatown’s Frontier 58 distinct boundary between Chinatown: Yip, “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” 96; Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 54–60. 59 socialized across class lines: For example, Herman Lowe (Mamie’s future husband), whose father was an itinerant laborer, was delivered at home by a midwife and attended to by his mother’s friends, the wife of an expressman and the wife of a grocer. Immigration interview of Lo Shee, July 12, 1916, Oakland, file 5027/561, Chinese files, NARA-SEA. the area between: Sanborn fire insurance map, San Francisco, 1887, vol. 1, sheet 13b. But most of the residents: Population Census of the U.S., 1900, San Francisco, series T623, roll 107, pp. 300–329. In the house: Ibid. Sisters Dennison and Brown at 927 Washington; TorresMorehead household, 925; Armstrong, 923; Woo Liu, 924; Dowling, 922; Middleton, 929. 60 Reverend Nam Art Soohoo: Listed ibid. as “Nam Art Soho,” the reverend lived at 920 Washington, across the street from the mission. Also at number 920 were others most likely associated with the mission: a widow named Ahtye with three children, Alice, Beatrice, and Dillie; Louis Gon, an interpreter, with his wife and daughter. On Soohoo’s career, see Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 133–34. Gibson’s Methodist mission: Population Census of the U.S., 1900, San Francisco, series T623, roll 107, p. 315. On Stone Street, running adjacent to the mission, Maude Williams and May Thomas, “salvationists,” lived at number 27. Ibid. 61 called the Gospel Temple: History of the Mission of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, 6–7, 13; Gibson, The Chinese in America, 163–64. not able to master: Abbott and Abbott, “Chinese Pilgrims,” 6. The girls played: “What a Chinese Girl Did.” a “tough kid”: “Personal History of 12 Chinese Interpreters now serving the Bureau of Immigration at most important stations who are without right to be in the United States,” New York City, April 30, 1914, p. 10, file 151 /121, box 154, General Records of Secretary of Labor, 1907–1942, DOL. The children made friends: Family albums contain photographs of the Tape girls playing with black and white children, but no photos of them playing with Chinese children. For photos of Gertrude at age three playing with a black girl and of Mamie and Gertrude with a white girl, see Gertrude Chan album, Jack Kim collection. I have surmised that the black girl is Mabel Marriot, whose family lived half a block away at 23 Stone Street. The Marriots were the only black family in the area with a daughter close to Gertrude’s age (Population Census of the U.S., 1900, San Francisco, series T623, roll 107, p. 315). Mamie Tape told an immigration interviewer in 1916 that a Mrs. Joseph Anfenger of San Francisco was a childhood

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friend (Immigration interview of Mrs. Herman Lowe, July 16, 1916, Portland, file 5017/562, Chinese files, NARA-SEA). just Mamie: ML-EL, interview. Isaiah Taber: Lee, Picturing Chinatown, 40–58. current fashion in Shanghai: Fashion plate 15 (1891, Shanghai), in Zhou Xibao, Zhongguo gudai fushi shi (Taipei, 1989), 533. I thank Dorothy Ko for this reference. wanted the Euro-American viewer: The process could also work in reverse. Interestingly, not a few Chinese-Christian preachers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries presented themselves in Chinese dress, perhaps as a way to suggest to prospective converts that Christianity did not make one less Chinese. By the turn of the century, the Chinatown missions were also sponsoring Chinese-language schools. These practices underscored the missionaries’ principal aim, which was not to Americanize but to prepare Chinese for evangelical work in China. Woo, “Protestant Work Among the Chinese,” 123. For contemporary photographs of Chinese Christians in both Western and Chinese-style dress, see Louis Beck, New York’s Chinatown (New York, 1898), 267, 279; Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 121, 128–34, 159. Wong Hong Tai: “Our Chinese Edison,” San Francisco Examiner, August 4, 1899. California Camera Club: Lee, Picturing Chinatown, 105–7; Pacific Coast Photographer, February 1892, p. 14. “slide expert”: Peter Palmquist, Shadowcatchers: A Directory of Women in California Photography Before 1901 (Arcata, CA, 1990), 215. hundreds of photographs: “What a Chinese Girl Did”; “Our Chinese Edison.” like Arnold Genthe: Lee, Picturing Chinatown, 114–15. “would notice you”: caption to photograph titled “No Likee,” in Old Chinatown: A Book of Pictures by Arnold Genthe (New York, 1893), fourth plate following p. 91. moved to an apartment: Langley’s San Francisco Directory (San Francisco, 1894), p. 1372. The house next door: Population Census of the U.S., 1900, San Francisco, series T623, roll 107, p. 303. Evidence suggests: According to her granddaughter-in-law and great-granddaughter, Mamie Tape had diabetes and gave herself insulin injections (RL-LD, interview). Knowing that the disease is hereditary, I have conjectured that Mamie’s mother, Mary, might have suffered from it, too, as well as her sister Emily. Photographs of Mary from the mid-1890s on and those of Emily from the 1910s show them both as overweight and sickly looking. On Chinese traditional medicine and diabetes, see Maggie Covington, M.D., “Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Diabetes,” Diabetes Spectrum 14 (2001): 154–59, http://spectrum .diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/14/3/154 (last accessed March 15, 2010). On Western treatments (elimination of carbohydrates and sugar from the diet and the use of codeine and morphine), see, for example, F. W. Pavy, “Points Con-

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Notes nected with the Pathology and Treatment of Diabetes,” Lancet 150 (November 27, 1899): 1376–79. would be relocated: “The Chinese School,” Editorial, San Francisco Daily Morning Call, March 12, 1894; Low, The Unimpressible Race, 79–80. 67 began “strutting”: “The Chinese School,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call. “up over the forty-five foot”: Ibid. 6. Suburban Squire 71 Berkeley was a world: William W. Ferrier, Berkeley, California: The Story of the Evolution of a Hamlet into a City of Culture and Commerce (Berkeley, 1933). Its Chinatown contained: Eve Armentrout Ma, Hometown Chinatown: The History of Oakland’s Chinese Community (New York, 2000), 16–20; Chinese Sabbath School Association, “Statistics of the Chinese Churches,” 2. 72 “Chinese help”: Advertisement, reproduced in Richard Schwartz, Earthquake Exodus, 1906 (Berkeley, 2005), 4. Chinese gambling hall: Schwartz, Earthquake Exodus, 63. The family’s new house: Daniella Thompson, “The Tapes of Russell Street,” part 9, “The Changing Face of a South Berkeley Block,” February 1, 2005, BAHA, http:// www.berkeleyheritage.com/essays/block_h_blake_tract.html (last accessed February 15, 2010). development in south Berkeley: The first spurt of development in Berkeley was in the 1870s, which saw the rise of the downtown business district, the establishment of rail links, and the city’s first newspaper. By the late 1880s, only one sewer line had been laid, down Dwight Way, and only after overcoming opposition from conservative townspeople, who believed there would never be enough people in Berkeley to justify even that. In 1892, the city authorized paving the two main thoroughfares, Shattuck and San Pablo avenues. On municipal water, see Ferrier, Berkeley, California, 315–24. On sewer lines, see Richard Schwartz, Berkeley 1900: Daily Life at the Turn of the Century (Berkeley, 2000), 306. On street grading and paving, see Federal Writers’ Project, Berkeley: The First Seventy-five Years (N.p., 1941), 72, BPL. The entire block: Thompson, “The Tapes of Russell Street,” part 9. Joseph bought one: City of Berkeley historical property assessment records, BANC; Sanborn fire insurance map, Berkeley, 1903, reprinted in Thompson, “The Tapes of Russell Street,” part 9. In 2009, the house was assessed at $900,000. Alameda County records, http://acgov.org/ms/prop/index.aspx (last accessed February 24, 2010). a flush toilet: The toilet was installed on the back porch. Donough Realty Records, 1942, BAHA. only a few neighbors: Population Census of the U.S., 1900, Alameda County, Berkeley ward 4, series T623, roll 83, p. 9B.

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Notes 72 Around the corner: Sanborn fire insurance map, Berkeley, 1911, vol. 2, sheet 175. 73 Knox Presbyterian Church: There is no mention of the Tapes in the session minutes and registry of the church, PRES. Joseph Tape’s obituary in the Berkeley Daily Gazette stated that he “contributed” to Knox over the years (“Joseph Tape, Local Pioneer, Is Dead,” March 11, 1935), but there is no record of any financial contribution or other association in church records. The Tapes were, in fact, connected to the First Chinese Presbyterian Church of Oakland, headed by Reverend Ira Condit, who assisted in Joseph and Mary’s wedding in 1875. Methodist Episcopal Church: Berkeley 2004 landmark designations, no. 271, Soda Water Works Building, BAHA, http://www.berkeleyheritage.com/berkeley_land marks/2004_landmarks.html (last accessed February 15, 2010). the LeConte School: Berkeley Unified School District, “LeConte School History,” http://www.berkeley.net/leconte-2/ (last accessed February 24, 2010). tutored at home: ML-EL, interview. 74 the company’s official: Advertisements for Joseph Tape/Jeu Dip appeared regularly in Chung Sai Yat Po, c. 1910. “Chinese passenger agent”: Population Census of the U.S., 1900, Alameda County, Berkeley ward 4, series T623, roll 83, p. 9B. there were stories: “Personal History of 12 Chinese Interpreters.” body of “baggage law”: “What Constitutes Baggage of Traveler,” Albany Law Journal 6 (July 27, 1872): 58. 75 eligible for reentry: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 guaranteed laborers already living in the United States the right to return after a temporary absence from the country. A laborer was granted a certificate of reentry at the time of departure. In 1888, Congress passed the Scott Act, which nullified laborers’ certificates of reentry. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Scott Act, ruling that Congress had plenary, or absolute, authority over matters of immigration. Chae Chan Ping v. U.S. (also known as Chinese Exclusion Case), 130 U.S. 581 (1889). responsible for enforcement: Erika Lee, At America’s Gates (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 49–50. 76 John Endicott Gardner Jr.: John Endicott Gardner Sr. was an American who was born in Rio de Janeiro and worked as a missionary in China, where he married Anna Rosa Hunter, the daughter of William Hunter, an American, and an unnamed Chinese woman. After John Sr. died, Anna married another American missionary, Daniel Vrooman. He brought Anna and her sons, John and William, to Australia, where he was posted for four years as “superintendent to the Chinese Catechist.” My account of Gardner’s background and employment differs somewhat from other published accounts but is based on information provided to me by his great-granddaughter Susan Briggs (Susan Briggs to author, e-mail, January 11 and February 7, 2007). When he first arrived in San Francisco, Gardner called himself John Vrooman, after his stepfather, and was hired under that name. He

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79



80 81

resumed using his birth name in the 1890s. I use Gardner for the sake of consistency. job was perfunctory: “Tracks of Chinese,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, October 4, 1884. “the necessity of vigilance”: Ibid. “after the journey”: John Jackson to Secretary of Treasury, March 30, 1899, p. 5, file 53108.89, INS. Some of the first: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 56–59. With limited space: Ibid. “will deprive the Custom House”: “Vanished Chinamen,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, November 10, 1884. interpreter in Victoria: Chinese Sabbath School Association, “Statistics of Chinese Churches,” 13; U.S. Industrial Commission, Final Report, vol. 7, Smuggling of Asiatics, 64th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 415 (Washington, DC, 1916), 6283–85 (hereafter Smuggling of Asiatics). “Pak Wah Jon”: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6298. Baihua, plain speech, or vernacular Chinese, in Chinatown referred to the Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, distinguished from non-city dialects like Siyi. I thank Marlon Hom for this information. “racial temperament”: Jackson to Secretary of Treasury, 15, 19–23. Similar charges had been made against Gardner in British Columbia; he was forced out of his position in the Presbyterian mission church there, despite the lack of clear evidence of wrongdoing, and that is perhaps why he returned to San Francisco (Smuggling of Asiatics, 6284). “Mr. Gardner has been”: Ira M. Condit to General O. L. Spaulding, May 26, 1899, file 392, INS. See also In re Yee Gee, 85 F. 145 (1897). Yee Gee was acquitted on a technicality — he tried to bribe Gardner to translate documents to his favor for a pending criminal case, but Gardner, an employee of the Treasury Department, could only be “bribed” to fix an immigration case. The case also shows how few translators there were in the federal agencies. The wharf complex: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 61–62. A photograph from the mid- to late 1890s shows Frank Tape sitting at a desk with a typewriter; the glass door is marked “Mr. Tape.” “built over the water”: Mary Coolidge, quoted in Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 68. congregated on the wharf: Jackson to Secretary of Treasury, 20. inclined to accept: Ibid., 3; Assistant Secretary of Treasury to Collector of Customs, April 25, 1899, file 53108-98, INS. practice of “paper-son”: Lucy Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), 69–93; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 55–89. practice of releasing merchants: Assistant Secretary of Treasury to Collector of Customs.

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Notes 81 “restrained of [their] liberty”: Hop Wo Lung, Pres., Chinese Merchants Exchange, to George Cortelyou, Secretary of Commerce, June 29, 1903, file 7957, INS. “a recognized custom”: Ibid. The interview upon arrival: “Rules for the Government of Immigrant Inspectors and Boards of Special Inquiry,” n.d., file “US Commissioner, misc. 1893–1909,” box 1, HHN. 82 She enjoyed dancing: “What a Chinese Girl Did.” while fighting a fire: “Upper Story Burned,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, December 8, 1898. 7. Two Marriages 83 He was born: Immigration interview of Herman Lowe, July 6, 1916, Portland, file 5027/561, Chinese files, NARA-SEA; Lynch maps of Chinatown, c. 1880, file 4, Chinese partnership files, NARA-SF. Sanborn fire insurance map, San Francisco, 1899, vol. 1, sheet 29, shows the second floor as “storage” and the third floor as “dwelling.” “most malodorous spots”: Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 204. his wife, Lau Shee: The appellation “Shee” (shi ) with the woman’s maiden name was the Chinese convention for identifying a married woman. “Lau Shee” refers to the wife that came from the family Lau. was known to visit: Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 204. 84 one of the Baptist teachers: Immigration interview of Herman Lowe, July 15, 1916, Portland, file 5027/561, Chinese files, NARA-SEA; Immigration interview of Low How, July 12, 1916, file 12016 /990, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. went to Guatemala: Herman Lowe immigration file. I find it odd that Herman and his family members who were interviewed by the U.S. Immigration Service were all vague about the kind of work he did in Guatemala, but they were specific about his other jobs: domestic, “did a lot of work for white people” (which I surmise refers to his being a handyman or doing odd jobs), and sewing machine operator. The immigration record is explicit that he was not a merchant. Domestic service for a sojourning or expatriate American businessman is a logical possibility. He also could have gone as a headman (foreman) for Chinese laborers working in agriculture or mining, but this is unlikely, because he had no experience in those fields. 85 Alameda County courthouse: Marriage license issued to Herman H. Lowe and Mamie H. Tape, September 8, 1897, Linda Doler collection. Mamie’s descendants recall her telling them that she ran away to get married because her parents disapproved and because she was “intended” for another (RL-LD, interview). Mary later testified in an immigration interview that her daughter “did not get married at home” but “later sent word” that she had wed. She said that she first saw Mamie’s firstborn child, Harold, “three or four months” after he was born (Immi-

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86

87

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89



gration interview of Mary Tape, July 12, 1919, Berkeley, file 5017/562, Chinese files, NARA-SEA). From these two statements, I infer that Mamie did not speak to her parents until after Harold was born. well outside the boundaries: Immigration interview of Low How. Reverend Hartwell and Miss Ames (who was probably boarding with the reverend’s family) lived at 1011 Mason Street. Chinese Sabbath School Association, “Statistics of the Chinese Churches,” 2–3. cottage on Prospect Place: The address was 18 1⁄2 Prospect Place, suggesting that it was not on the street but behind number 18. The 1887 Sanborn fire insurance map for San Francisco shows number 18 on a large double lot, with enough space behind the house for another small structure. Number 18 1⁄2 was built sometime between 1887 and 1900, when the census shows the Lowe family residing there. A house numbered 16 was erected next to number 18 by 1900. several families with children: Population Census of the U.S., San Francisco, 1900, series T623, roll 107, p. 304A. Robert Park, Mamie’s future brother-in-law and possibly the man her father intended her to marry, lived at 19 Prospect Place. perhaps coaching: ML-EL, interview; “Children of Chinese Mission Entertain,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, March 28, 1901. “rescue” had become: Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York, 1990). “After years of famine”: newspaper clipping, Donaldina Cameron file, PRES-SF. I am grateful to Peggy Pascoe for sharing this and other references on Wu Tianfu with me. “dear elder daughter”: Women’s Occidental Board of Foreign Missions, 1903 annual report, 33, and 1905 annual report, 64; Annual reports on missionary and confidential comments of visiting BNM personnel, 1945–1950, Wu Tianfu file, PRES. It is not surprising: ML-EL, interview. a happy time: Ibid. “Clear the foul spot”: Editorial, San Francisco Daily Morning Call, May 31, 1900. The nativist-labor press warned, “The almond-eyed Mongolian is . . . waiting to assassinate you and your children with one of his many maladies.” “SF Organized Labor: Official Paper of the State and Local Building Trades of California,” June 1900, cited in Philip Kalisch, “The Black Death in Chinatown: Plague and Politics in San Francisco,” Arizona and the West 14 (Summer 1972): 113–36. fearing that news: McClain, In Search of Equality, 234–76; Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley, 2001), 120–57. plan to sanitize Chinatown: “Bubonic Plague Hits San Francisco,” People and Discoveries, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm00bu.html (last accessed October 28, 2009). house on Whitney Street: “Real Estate Transactions, Alameda County,” San Fran-

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92

93



cisco Daily Morning Call, March 28, 1901; Sanborn fire insurance map, Oakland, 1903, vol. 3, sheet 319. Emily Tape married: Immigration interview of Robert Leon Park, January 31, 1921, file 12016 / 1908, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. “female boarding” quarters: Sanborn fire insurance map, San Francisco, 1899– 1900, vol. 1, sheet 29. “boy without a queue”: Immigration interview of Robert Leon Park. “young turks”: Y. C. Hong, “Milestones of the Chinese-American Citizens Alliance [CACA],” 1955, reprinted in CACA–Los Angeles Lodge 70 Anniversary Book (1982), 19, unprocessed box, large carton 2, Y. C. Hong Family Collection, HL. “Rising Sun Parlor”: “Chinese Natives: Organization of a Parlor of Sons,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, February 4, 1893. Wong’s immediate purpose: Wong’s opposition to the Geary Act led him to organize the test case before the Supreme Court. U.S. v. Fong Yue Ting, 149 U.S. 698 (1893), ruled that Congress’s plenary power over matters of immigration included the right to expel and that aliens in deportation proceedings were not entitled to constitutional protection. McClain, In Search of Equality, 206–13. for public lectures: Wong Chin Foo, “Why Am I a Heathen?” North American Review 145 (August 1887): 169–79; Jack Tchen and Qingsong Zhang, “The Origins of the Chinese Americanization Movement: Wong Chin Foo and the Chinese Equal Rights League,” in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era, ed. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia, 1998), 41–63. large enough population: “Chinese Natives.” at the turn of the century: Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 173. When Robert married: Biographical sketch of Liang Guibo (Robert Park), in A History of the Sam Yup Benevolent Association in the United States, 1850–2000 (San Francisco, 2000), 214. A photograph taken: “Native-Born Chinese Couple Plan Elaborate Wedding,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, November 1, 1901. described the wedding: Ibid. 2133 Russell Street: Daniella Thompson, “The Tapes of Russell Street,” part 2, “Five Residences and the Second Generation,” June 20, 2004, BAHA, http://berkeley heritage.com/essays/tape_family_part2.html (last accessed February 15, 2010). Joseph arranged a position: Robert Park is listed in the 1904 to 1906 Berkeley city directories as an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. 8. The Chinese Village

95 “fair conditions”: ML-EL, interview. In fact, before 1904: Barbara Vennman, “Dragons, Dummies, and Royals: China at American World’s Fairs,” Gateway Heritage (Fall 1996), 16–31. Although China

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98



did not officially participate in fairs before 1904, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service sponsored Chinese exhibits at thirty international fairs. These exhibits were displayed in manufacturing and liberal arts buildings. Headed by Sir Robert Hart, a British subject, the Imperial Maritime Customs House served China’s trade with foreign nations. By contrast, the midways: Robert Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago, 1984), 60–67. “courageous” men: Wong Chin Foo, Editorial, Chinese American, June 24, 1893. modest gate receipts: Report of the President to the Board of Directors of the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1898), app. E, 472–83. the Cantonese operas: Gertrude Scott, “Village Performance: Villages at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1991), 119, 124. declared bankruptcy: “Fate of the Exposition,” Omaha Daily Bee, November 29, 1898. The Wah Mee Company also raised money from Euro-American investors in exchange for a percentage of the gate receipts. The latter sued when the company declared bankruptcy. White v. More, Appellate Courts of Illinois, vol. 54 (1894), 606. The next villages: “Many Chinese Villagers for Atlanta,” Ogdensburg (NY) Journal, September 11, 1895. Toy Shee: “The Beauty Show,” in Within the Midway Plaisance (Chicago, 1893); “Chinese Beauty,” in Dream City: A Portfolio of Views from the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893); “A Chinese Residence,” in Views of the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), part 10. Although the Chinese American declared that the Wah Mee Company was “learning expensive lessons and they are going to place some pretty Chinese ladies within their various departments shortly,” there is no evidence that they did so before the close of the fair. Editorial, Chinese American. Of the 226 Chinese: “Many Chinese Villagers for Atlanta.” 1898 Omaha fair: “Amusements,” Omaha Daily Bee, August 14, 21, and 28, and September 1, 1898. a successful businessman: Editorial, Chinese American. magician Ching Ling Foo: After his stint at the Omaha fair, Ching Ling Foo challenged the exclusion laws’ application to actors and performers, arguing successfully before a federal judge in Chicago that “actors” were not “laborers” (“Chinese Conjurer to Stay,” New York Times, April 27, 1899). He went on to pursue a successful career, packing houses in New York and London in the early 1900s. He was also known for his rivalry with an impostor/imitator, “Chung Ling Soo,” a EuroAmerican named William Ellsworth Campbell, who performed in “yellow-face” (Harry Houdini, The Miracle Mongers: An Exposé [New York, 1920], chap. 5). Hong Sling bid again: Minutes, Committee on Concessions, January 14, 1902, p. 27, series 5, box 13, Official Records of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, MHS.

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Notes 98 “Silk men”: Minutes, Committee on Concessions, December 1, 1903, pp. 181–84, ibid. 99 Lee Toy’s alignments: “The Chinese in New York: How They Live and Make Money — Good Wages and Brisk Business,” New York Times, March 6, 1880; “Chinatown’s New Year: The Occasion Celebrated with Two Large Banquets of Chinese Viands,” New York Times, February 18, 1902; “Proclamation by Chinamen,” New York Times, July 11, 1900; “Fete of On Leong Tong, the Exclusive Association of Chinese Merchants Enjoys a Banquet and Some Wonderful Fireworks,” New York Times, March 26, 1901. 100 largest world’s fair yet: “The World’s Fair and Exposition Information and Reference Guide: 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition–St. Louis World’s Fair,” Statistics; Facts and Trivia, Earth Station 9, http://www.earthstation9.com/ (last accessed February 15, 2010). One of the most popular: Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 154–83; Paul Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 229–84. 101 notable for hosting: “Asia at St. Louis,” World’s Fair Bulletin 4, no. 9 (July 1903): 10–11. “although a British subject”: Vennman, “Dragons, Dummies, and Royals,” 18. 102 the enterprise included diplomatic: Irene Cortinovus, “China at the St. Louis World’s Fair,” Missouri Historical Review 72 (1977): 63–64; Mark Bennitt, ed., History of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1905), 286, 291. Wong Kai Kah: Thomas LaFargue, China’s First Hundred (Pullman, WA, 1942), 58, 91. Carl installed: “China’s Exhibits at the World’s Fair,” World’s Fair Bulletin 5, no. 4 (February 1904): 42; Inspector General of [China] Customs, China: Catalogue of the Collection of Exhibits at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1902). lectures on cloisonné: Announcement, World’s Fair Bulletin 5, no. 10 (September 1904): 60. save for one portrait: Bennitt, History of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 291– 92; “Unveil the Portrait of China’s Empress at Fair,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 14, 1904. Of course, Carl’s portrait was not Chinese art. official China building: “Dedication of China’s Building Site,” World’s Fair Bulletin 4, no. 12 (October 1903): 2–6. 103 “On the Pike”: Advertisement, n.d., scrapbooks of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, vol. 16, p. 64, SLPL. 104 Herman worked as a clerk: “Chinese Blood Goes into the Bureau,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, April 5, 1905. Dreamland Café: Frank Tape, “Personal Question Sheet,” question 14 (occupation), Frank Tape personnel folder, NARA-PERS. run of the place: Edmund Philibert, “World’s Fair Diary,” in “Indescribably Grand”: Diaries and Letters from the 1904 World’s Fair, ed. Martha Clevenger (St. Louis, 1996), 87; Cortinovus, “China at the St. Louis World’s Fair,” 66.

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107

108

Guidebooks presented her: Photograph, Linda Doler collection. “Everyone thought”: ML-EL, interview. “three or four little”: Philibert, “World’s Fair Diary,” 87. U.S. Bureau of Immigration: Until 1904, the customs bureau, under the U.S. Department of the Treasury, was responsible for enforcing the Chinese exclusion laws. That year, responsibility was transferred to the immigration bureau, under the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor. “many of those admitted”: “In relation to the admission heretofore of Chinese persons to take part in exhibitions authorized by Act of Congress,” memorandum, n.d., file 11047/2, INS. new provisions to admit: Ibid. “flocks of coolies”: Edward S. Bragg to F. S. Stratton, March 28, 1904, file 11047, INS. refused to land: Owyang King to Yung Kwai, February 26, 1904, file 11047/7, INS; Francis Carl to H. E. Chentung Liang-Cheng, March 3, 1904, file 11047/7, INS. “report frequently”: Francis Carl to H. E. Chentung Liang-Cheng, March 21, 1904, file 11047/7, INS. officials vigorously protested: Liang-Cheng to Secretary of State John Hay, March 26, 1904, file 11047/7, INS; “Mr. Wong’s Reply, China’s Vice Commissioner on a Canard Published Abroad,” World’s Fair Bulletin 4, no. 12 (October 1903): 5. a scathing critique: Wong Kai Kah, “A Menace to America’s Oriental Trade,” North American Review 178 (1904): 414. a more liberal manner: F. P. Sargent, “In re regulations regarding Chinese coming to take part in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” memorandum, April 29, 1904, file 11047 /2, INS. “using the fair as a blind”: H. H. North to Commissioner General, June 23, 1904, file 11047 /25, INS. See also Dunn to Commissioner General, May 19, 1904, file 11047/ 25, INS. “coolies” and “bogus merchants”: Frank Sargent to H. H. North, July 7, 1904, box 2, HHN. “Chinese Court of Beauty”: Ibid. “the most daring”: Frank Sargent to F. H. Larned, September 19, 1904, file 11047/31, INS. The first group: “Flight of Chinaman Causes Ring’s Collapse,” St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, November 11, 1904. Tom Lung, the San Francisco merchant who was the major investor in the Hong Tai Company, put up his store as $21,000 collateral for a $105,000 bond from Aetna to cover the group. locked railway cars: “Uncle Sam Guards Chinese at Fair,” St. Louis Republic, August 15, 1904. “village inclosure”: Dunn to Commissioner General, May 19, 1904. They could leave: “Uncle Sam Guards Chinese at Fair.” more than five hundred Europeans: “May Order Geisha Girls Deported,” St. Louis Republic, November 16, 1904.

257

Notes 108 some twenty Africans: “Deputies Search for Twenty Kaffirs,” St. Louis Republic, November 29, 1904. Dunn bolstered his strategy: Dunn to Commissioner General, May 19, 1904; Frank Tape, personnel folder, NARA-PERS. Dunn’s undercover informant: Statement of Chinese interpreter Frank Tape, September 19, 1904, file 11047/31, INS. 109 “spirited away”: Dunn to Commissioner General, May 19, 1904. at least four women: Statement of Chinese interpreter Frank Tape. without doubt prostitutes: Dunn to Commissioner General, September 19, 1904, file 11047/31, INS; Sargent to Larned. Lee Toy returned: “Second Arrest in Chinese Case,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 1904. bought in China: Sworn statements given to immigration inspector W. H. Webber by Yuen Choy Fong, Chan Ho, Lee Kum Kew, and Leong Tuck, August 12, 1904, file 11047/31, INS. Sargent went to St. Louis: Sargent to Larned. 110 “my onliest pretzel”: “. . . Two Girls’ Hearts: Secret Service Men Get the Papers” (partial headline), clipping, file 25, carton 57, HML. “great consternation”: James Dunn to Commissioner General, October 1, 24, and 26, and November 2, 14, and 18, 1904, file 11047/37, INS. working as a “saleslady”: “Chinese Woman Under Arrest,” St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, October 23, 1904. arrested six women: “Arrest Chinese Girls on Government Warrants,” St. Louis Republic, November 5, 1904. raided all the laundries: “Raid ‘Hop Alley’ in Search of Celestial Missing from Fair,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 10, 1904. 111 One of the men caught: “Make Mistake in Arrest of Chinaman,” St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, November 12, 1904. Chinese Village was finished: “Arrest Chinese Girls on Government Warrants.” “an attempt would be made”: “Chinese Village Closely Guarded,” St. Louis Republic, November 17, 1904. filed a petition: “Could Not Secure Service of the Habeas Corpus Writ,” St. Louis Republic, November 18, 1904. 112 Sutang “Anton” Wang: “Both from China, but Unable to Converse,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 1, 1904. quit their positions: “Geisha Girl Fights Men Who Come to Deport Her,” St. Louis Republic, November 18, 1904. “if they stayed”: Ibid. held under house arrest: “Dramatic Scene Attends Departure of Japanese, Hurried Drive Through City Followed by Secret Embarkation at Station, Habeas Corpus Fails to Stop Chinese,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 18, 1904.

258

Notes “skill, cunning”: “Disagree over Word ‘Geisha,’ ” St. Louis Republic, October 21, 1904. prayed, cried, and sang: “Geisha Girl Fights Men Who Come to Deport Her.” “presented by far”: “Dramatic Scene Attends Departure.” 113 women were “exceptional”: “Chinese Give Gray Hair to Guardians,” St. Louis PostDispatch, December 2, 1904. “The building China opened”: Horace Flack, “Chinese Opening Day in St. Louis,” Views of the World at the World’s Fair, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 7, 1904. 114 Nowhere was this confusion: “Mr. Wong Meets Editors at Luncheon at Mercantile Club,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 22, 1903; “Lessons Taught by Chinese Sages, Mr. Wong Gives Address,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 5, 1903; “Chinese Pocket Baffles Burglar,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 11, 1904; “Wong Kai Kah and Family Adopt American Clothes,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 15, 1904; “Mrs. Wong Kai Kah Will Wear American-Style Shoes,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 3, 1904. The official ceremonies: “Prince Sees Much at Fair to Interest Him,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 1, 1904; “Banquet Prince Pu Lun at the West Pavilion,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 9, 1904; “Prince Pu Lun’s Reception Most Gorgeous of Fair Social Events,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1904; “How to Approach Prince Pu Lun,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 1, 1904. meeting Pu Lun: “The Yellow Peril an Empty Term Says Prince Pu Lun,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1904. 115 “sprang from his seat”: “Prince Pu Lun, First Royal Visitor, Returns Call of President Francis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 29, 1904. Fair Japan did very well: “Pike Receipts over Ten Millions,” St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, December 2, 1904. Quietly and under cover: “Chinese Give Gray Hair to Guardians,” St. Louis PostDispatch, December 2, 1904. 116 threw himself into: “Fan Tan Loser Mourns for Bride,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 10, 1904; “Bogus Certificates Are Sold to Chinese,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 1, 1906. 9. Blood and Fire 119 his employment was reported: “Chinese Blood Goes into the Bureau,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, April 5, 1905. “Man Employed”: “North Gives a Chinese a Job,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, 1905. 120 laws sharply curtailed: For the decade 1870 to 1879, Chinese immigration was 123,201; for 1880 to 1889, it dropped to 61,711; for 1890 to 1899, it was 14,799. Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy, 1850–1990 (Stanford, CA, 1993), table 3, p. 48.

259

Notes 120 Inspectors did not trust: W. C. Witherbee to Commissioner General, August 20, 1900, file 1814, INS. Between 1900 and 1907: Rosters of Chinese inspectors, Chinese interpreters, and white Chinese interpreters, May 1907, file 52702 /2, INS (includes name, date of hire, rate of pay, district assigned, exception from civil service). 121 William S. Lee: file 52127/ 1, INS. Seid Gain (Xue Jing): Joseph Caston, Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1911), 347–48. Robert’s younger brother, Edward: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6303–12. 122 were familiar figures: Ira Condit, “Americanized Chinese,” Women’s Work 17 (1902): 219 (using Frank Tape and Robert Park as exemplars). The earthquake was as severe: Schwartz, Earthquake Exodus, chap. 2. wood-framed buildings: William Gardner, statement (about map of Chinatown), c. 1890, file “US commissioner, Chinese,” box 1, HHN. 123 Although the smoke: Schwartz, Earthquake Exodus, 23. “The gases”: Quoted ibid., 51. “in the best condition”: H. H. North to Frank Sargent, April 23, 1906, published as “Buildings Defied the Fire and Quake,” Washington Times, May 1, 1906. 124 “in the heat”: Ibid. The name of the interpreter suggests that the China serviced the Pacific Mail’s coastal route. For several days: Harris Bishop, ed., “Southern Pacific Company,” in Souvenir and Resume of Oakland Relief Work of San Francisco Refugees, 1906 (Oakland, 1906). By midday on April 18: Schwartz, Earthquake Exodus, 62–65, 83. 125 turned into a nursery: Charles Wollenberg, Berkeley: A City in History (Berkeley, 2008), 49. a story passed down: CL, interview. a shipment of rice: Schwartz, Earthquake Exodus, 65. 126 the “most remote”: Philip L. Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself (Berkeley, 2005), 292. “Fire has reclaimed”: Overland Monthly, quoted in Ralph Henn, “Chinatown in Hunters Point?” San Francisco Magazine, 1970, http://www.winternet.com/ ~rwhenn/quake.htm (last accessed February 17, 2010). Argonaut plainly stated: Quoted in Fradkin, The Great Earthquake, 294–95. mayor Eugene Schmitz formed: “Now Fear That the Chinese May Abandon City,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 1906. 127 “America is a free”: “Chinese Make Strong Protest,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 1906. As late as 1904, only 25 out of 316 properties in Chinatown were owned by Chinese. Yip, “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” 118. Rebuilding in Chinatown: Look Tin Eli, “Our New Oriental City — Veritable Fairy Palaces Filled with the Choicest Treasures of the Orient,” in San Francisco, the Metropolis of the West (San Francisco, 1910).

260

Notes “Oriental” streetscape: Yip, “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” 118; Philip Choy, “The Architecture of San Francisco Chinatown,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives (1990): 37–66. Only Julia Morgan, California’s leading modernist architect, who designed the new Methodist mission church and the YWCA, synthesized Eastern and Western styles with subtlety and sophistication. The ubiquitous “pagodas” used at the world’s fairs and in early-twentieth-century Chinatowns were only vaguely similar to the Buddhist stupas found in India and China. They were more similar to garden pavilions in eighteenth-century England, which borrowed the form, emptied of content, as an aesthetic for entertainment. Yan Meng, “Chicago’s Chinatown: Urban Landscape, Recurring Themes and Symbolism” (M.A. thesis, Miami University, 1996), 8–16. 128 immigration bureau turned to: J. E. Gardner to F. P. Sargent, May 29, 1903, file 15041 /1, INS; J. E. Gardner to F. P. Sargent, May 30, 1903, file 7808, INS. agency-wide transfers: “Chinese Interpreters Prefer to Remain Here; Order to Break Up Their Homes Causes Great Consternation,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 4, 1907; “Three Interpreters Are Ordered Transferred,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 7, 1907. “outside business relations”: F. P. Sargent, “To all officers in charge of enforcing the Chinese exclusion laws,” circular, June 10, 1907, file 15058/C-1, INS. “general bearing”: “Suggestions,” May 24, 1907, file 52704 /2, INS. “does he associate”: F. P. Sargent to J. E. Gardner, June 3, 1907, file 53360 /34, INS. “more important to have”: F. P. Sargent to Secretary of Commerce and Labor, October 24, 1907, file 53360 /34, INS. 129 “I find to be merely”: J. E. Gardner to Commissioner General, October 5, 1907, file 53360 /34, INS. “these several interpreters”: F. P. Sargent to Secretary of Commerce and Labor. “educational tour”: Laurence Murray to Commissioner General, October 25, 1907, file 53360 /34, INS. 130 “practically uneducated”: J. E. Gardner to Commissioner General, September 25, 1907, file 52149 /1, INS. “faculty of getting”: Seid Gain to Commissioner General, December 20, 1907, file 53360 /34, INS. “very limited knowledge”: F. H. Larned, memorandum for the Assistant Secretary [of Labor], March 13, 1908, file 53360 /34, INS. Jue Hong Yee: “Local Officials Laugh at Charges Against Chinaman,” St. Louis Star-Chronicle, September 11, 1907. “Chinamen [had] been terrified”: “Personal History of 12 Chinese Interpreters.” Tape was directly accused: Ibid. 131 “exceedingly active”: “Counter Charges in F. H. Tape Case,” St. Louis Times, September 11, 1907. “local government officials”: “Local Officials Laugh at Charges Against Chinaman.”

261

Notes 132 “All our Chinese”: Translation of anonymous letter “From St. Louis” to Charles Nagel, Secretary of Commerce/Labor, December 18, 1909, file 4, carton 21, HML. “the men who work”: Liang Qichao, Xin Da Lu You Ji (Travel Notes on the New Continent) (Hunan, China, 1981), 129–31. “Customs” refers to the U.S. Bureau of Customs. “Linguists” were considered: Feng Kuei-fen, “On the Adoption of Western Knowledge” [c. 1870], in China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923, ed. Ssu-yu Teng (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 51. In 1862, the Qing established a government school to train translators for diplomatic work. The British, understanding the power of translation, refused to use translators hired by the Qing. Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in the Modern World (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 112–13. 133 Two men conducted: For Taylor’s investigation of Frank, see Smuggling of Asiatics, 6253. in Seid’s words, “ridiculous”: Ibid., 6227. 134 The genteel son: John B. Sawyer, diary, April 3, 1904, vol. 1, JBS. arrested Ng On: John Sawyer, “The Arrest of Ng On,” [1908], professional papers, JBS. convinced to withdraw: Frank H. Tape to Commissioner General, March 16, 1908, Frank Tape personnel folder, NARA-PERS; Commissioner General to Secretary of Commerce and Labor, April 16, 1908, ibid. turned down an assignment: postings list, Frank Tape personnel folder, NARAPERS. special three-month assignment: F.  H. Larned to Secretary of Commerce and Labor, June 30, 1908, Frank Tape personnel folder, NARA-PERS. 10.  In Pursuit of Smugglers 135 “much exercised”: “Members of Alvarez’s Gang,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1904. 136 relatively new problem: Erika Lee, “Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion Along the U.S. Borders with Canada and Mexico, 1882–1924,” Journal of American History 89 (June 2002): 54–86. negotiated an agreement: Immigration bureau files 9955 and 11353C, cited in U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Facts Concerning the Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws, May 25, 1906, 59th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 847 (Washington, DC, 1906), 103–6 (hereafter Facts Concerning the Enforcement). “wild districts”: Ibid., 12. Chinese also increasingly: Ibid. paid local ranchers: C. Snyder to Frank Sargent, November 11, 1903, box 2, HHN. sent Chinese interpreters: Facts Concerning the Enforcement, 13; statements of

262

Notes

137 138 139 140

141



Yong Kay and Moy Gop Jung, October 4, 1904, file 10693-C, INS; Richard Taylor to Commissioner General, October 3, 1908, INS microfilm, reel 8, p. 30. “The price for those”: Statement of Yong Kay, 2. wearing Mexican-style clothes: Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 61–62; “Immigration Plot to Let in Chinese,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 28, 1904. “There is a broad”: Marcus Braun, quoted in Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 81. Richard Taylor’s operation: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6248–51. interpreter John Endicott Gardner: Ibid., 6242, 6232. He was instructed: Ibid., 6162. Taylor believed: Ibid., 6234. “squads of Chinese”: Taylor to Commissioner General, October 3, 1908, p. 37. launched small skiffs: Charlton Lawrence Edhold, “Yellow Contraband,” Technical World 17 (1912): 404–12. Over land, smugglers used: Taylor to Commissioner General, October 3, 1908, pp. 19–26. In the first case: Ibid., 2–19. a car accident exposed: Ibid., 19–26. a Chinese merchant in Los Angeles: Ibid., 30–33. other law enforcement officers: William Wheeler to Jeremiah Jenks, August 27, 1908, and Oscar Lawler to C. Hilyer [November 1908], INS microfilm, reel 8. Taylor’s investigations in the Southwest were also complicated by the work of Oscar Greenhalge and his interpreter, Charlie Kee. The pair had investigated Chinese smuggling for the immigration bureau in the East during the late 1890s and early 1900s, but sometime after 1907, they had become rogue agents, extorting money from Chinese merchants and brokers. Charlie Kee, who was a member of the Moy family, was one the first Chinese interpreters hired by the bureau on the East Coast and was probably responsible for placing his relatives as interpreters in cities across the country. He worked with Frank Tape in St. Louis in 1904. On Greenhalge and Kee, see sundry correspondence, F. Sargent file and R. Taylor file, box 2, HHN. On Kee and Tape, see “Fan Tan Loser Mourns Bride,” St. Louis PostDispatch, December 20, 1904. three Mexicans were assisting: Taylor to Commissioner General, October 3, 1908, pp. 27–28; Smuggling of Asiatics, 6257. Tape and Taylor forged: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6257, 6232, 6272. Frank so identified: John Bruce, “Frank Tape,” Skylines of the City, San Francisco Call Bulletin, September 4, 1934; Hal Johnson, “Smuggler’s Nemesis,” So We’re Told, Berkeley Daily Gazette, November 26, 1941. Frank told his future wife Ruby that he was the first Chinese agent in the Secret Service. RT (Chan), interview, 42. There is no record: Taylor’s report on the fourth case he and Frank worked on in California notes that one of the smugglers was killed, but that took place before he and Frank began working on the case. Frank said that he spent “months” in the

263

Notes

142 143

144 145

146 147



hospital afterward, but this would have meant that he spent his entire stay in Los Angeles in the hospital, not working with Taylor. Taylor wrote detailed reports of every case he investigated, and there is no mention of Frank being involved in a shooting. Taylor reports, INS microfilm, reels 8, 21, 27, 29, 30. “Have finished”: Taylor to Immigration Bureau, September 22, 1908, INS microfilm, reel 8. “great reputation”: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6186–87. a conventional posting: Ibid., 6132–33. nine Chinese stowaways: Richard Taylor to Acting Commissioner General, October 5, 1909, file 52270 /21, INS. Quan Foy (Guan Kui): Smuggling of Asiatics, 6132. “doing an inspector’s work”: Ibid., 6133. his superiors gave him: Efficiency report for Frank Tape, June 23, 1909, and May 15, 1910, Frank Tape personnel folder, NARA-PERS. The 1909 report described Frank’s duties: “Acts as Chinese interpreter. Work is not particularly difficult nor is much original thought required, tact being more of a requisite. The work is not of a supervisory nature.” Seid Gain continued to distrust: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6226; D. O’Keefe to Secretary of Commerce and Labor, March 13, 1909, file 52129 /1, INS microfilm, reel 7. Frank made one more: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6258. investigation of Ah King: Taylor to Acting Commissioner General, October 5, 1909. making alliances that were useful: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6122. “simply an unusual”: Ibid., 6188. he was “American born”: Ibid., 6191. He was counted: Population Census of the U.S., 1910, Seattle district 7, series T624, roll 1660, p. 121. Frank also told the census enumerator that his father’s birthplace was “Chinese-Amer citizen” and his mother’s was “China-English”; he gave his occupation as immigration “inspector.” white woman named Lena: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6168, 6191. John Sawyer, the Chinese inspector: John B. Sawyer, diary, vol. 1, pp. 56, 86, JBS. On Sawyer’s career, see Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 234–57. But in 1908: Marie Rose Wong, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon (Seattle, 2004). so-called tong wars: ML-EL, interview. Liuyi: Him Mark Lai, Becoming Chinese American, 43. very few “sing Lo”: ML-EL, interview. in a neighborhood of native-born: Population Census of U.S., 1910, Portland district 8, series T624, roll 1286, p. 275. The census manuscript indicates that Lowe, like most of his neighbors, owned his home. The Lowes’ lifestyle: ML-EL, interview. a marching band: Ibid.

264

Notes 148 the only work: Ibid. 149 wore his status: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6191–92. 11. Modern Life 150 151



152



153

a $99 ticket: Pacific Mail Steamship Company records, vol. 433, HL. These “transit” passengers: Facts Concerning the Enforcement, 79–90. Chinese working at: Ibid., 36–50. actors on tour: Ching Ling Foo, files 53853 /100, 53854 /100F, and 52903 /62, INS. step by step: John Densmore to Secretary of Labor, January 11, 1916, INS microfilm, suppl. reel 4, p. 12. Thornley, who had been immigration commissioner for California, Oregon, and Washington in the 1890s, was also a partner in the insurance firm Gardner and Thornley — his partner being William E. Gardner, brother of the Chinese inspector and interpreter John Gardner. San Francisco city directories, 1889 and 1890. did the paperwork himself: “Continuation of Statement of Watchman David F. Graham,” December 8, 1915, INS microfilm, suppl. reel 4. handled ninety-five percent: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 146. As an agent: Edward White to Commissioner General, May 10, 1922, file 54490 /7, INS microfilm, suppl. reel 7. Exhibits A and B (sample bond forms) list Joseph Tape as the holder of a “bond for temporary landing of a Chinese seaman” in the amount of $500, pledged in U.S. third Liberty bonds, with coupon serial numbers and interest dates. The system developed in San Francisco with Joseph Tape differed from that in other ports, where blanket bonds, also called floating, permanent, or perpetual bonds, were issued by the steamship company through a major surety company to cover their crew members for shore leave on an annual basis. See sundry correspondence and bonds, 1909–1914, for Hamburg-American, Ocean Steamship, Dodwell, United Fruit–Vaccaro, and others, file 52516/5, INS microfilm, reel 14. The new houses: Daniella Thompson, “The Tapes of Russell Street,” part 1, “An Accomplished Family of School Desegregation Pioneers,” April 30, 2004, BAHA, http://berkeleyheritage.com/essays/tape_family.html (last accessed February 15, 2010). the living room: Photograph of the Tape family in their living room in the 1920s, ibid. their tenants: Population Census of the U.S., 1910, Oakland Township (Berkeley), series T624, roll 72, p. 10; Population Census of the U.S., 1920, Berkeley, series T625, roll 92, p. 145. The area was favored: History of Alameda County (Oakland, 1883), 438, HHS. During this era: The Ukiah property has been variously described as “several hundred” acres, six hundred acres, and two thousand acres. The last description, given by Frank Tape in a newspaper interview (Johnson, “Smuggler’s Nemesis”),

265

Notes

153



154







155



156

157

was likely a gross exaggeration. I have not been able to find property deeds for the Haywards, Ukiah, and San Joaquin sites. began to acquire automobiles: “New Owners of E-M-F Cars,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, March 27, 1910; Gertrude Tape album (Buick and Peerless), Jack Kim collection. The 1913 Peerless seven-passenger touring car for women retailed at $5,000. take excursions: Gertrude took photographs at Sunol, Morgan Hill, Pacific Grove, and other locations in the South Bay area. Marsh Creek was a favorite spot both of Gertrude and her friends and of her parents. Gertrude Chan and Ruby Tape albums, Jack Kim collection. painting porcelain: A set of Mary Tape’s gilded china teacups, signed and dated 1911 on the bottom of each piece, is in the possession of Jack Kim. A set of chinaware painted by Emily survives in the possession of Mamie Lowe’s descendants. Gertrude’s blossoming: Immigration interview of Gertrude Chan, March 18, 1940, file 12016 / 8690, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF; Gertrude Chan album (photographs of Gertrude playing the piano at parties), Jack Kim collection. Chinatown merchant, Chin Fook Cheung: Lynch maps of Chinatown, c. 1880, file 4, Chinese partnership files, NARA-SF. On Clay Street, a second-story office of “On Wo Chung Co, contractor,” is shown on the map. Chan Bok Hong: Immigration interviews with Chin [Chan] Bok Hong and Chin Fook Cheung, April 30, 1914, file 13388 /2-2, SF District 12016 case files, RG 85, NARA-SF. Mrs. Martha Page: Population Census of the U.S., 1910, Sacramento district 5, series T624, roll 92, p. 267. The census shows in Page’s household a seventeen-yearold boarder, “Boo Jong Chan,” which is likely Chan Bok Hong (Herman), and a sixteen-year-old, “Bow Kan Chan,” possibly Herman’s cousin Chan Bok Kay (Henry). Chin Fook Cheung returned: Immigration interview of Wong Shee (Wong Fun), November 15, 1920, file 12017/14482, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. he enrolled in: For the pharmacy rosters and curriculum, see “Class Announcements,” California College of Pharmacy, University of California Bulletin, 1911– 1923, UCSF. Chinese American college students: Tamara Venit, “Negotiating Multiple Identities: The Chinese Students Club at Stanford University, 1916–1942,” Sandstone and Tile 29 (2005): 17–31. They exchanged vows: “Occident and Orient Are Wed,” Oakland Tribune, September 7, 1913. Although the Chinese custom is for the groom’s parents to pay for the wedding, it is unclear who paid for this one. Both the Tapes and the Chins could have afforded it.

266

Notes 158 Joseph’s bonding business: “Continuation of Statement of Watchman David F. Graham.” the haute couture: Antonia Finnane, Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation (New York, 2008), 92–94. Gertrude was unable: JK, interview, June 17, 2003. Kim told me that Gertrude could not have children owing to an unspecified “female” problem. 159 After living in Berkeley: Stanford Alumni Directory, 1891–1955 (Stanford, 1956), 336, STAN. The move offered Lee: Gloria Chun, “Go East Young Man,” in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era, ed. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia, 1998), 165–90. 160 Euro-American friends: Photographs of Martha Page and family at Russell Street, c. 1910s, Gertrude Chan album, Jack Kim collection; Immigration interview of Florence Fontecilla, March 29, 1940, file 12016 /8690, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. 12. The Trial 161 162 163





as a “detective”: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6181. “no complaint”: Ibid., 6167–69. involved in “irregular”: Ibid., 6181. “at least 20 attorneys”: Ibid., 6131–34. “a great many Chinamen”: Ibid., 6135. White advised Frank: Ibid., 6130. “interest in canneries”: Ibid., 6268. “insist on statement”: Ibid., 6273. Taylor was now: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6243; sundry correspondence from Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Florida, and Los Angeles, April–June 1914, INS microfilm, reel 28. “in larger numbers”: Taylor to A. W. Parker, May 17, 1914, INS microfilm, reel 28. “general alarm”: Ibid. It irritated him: White to Commissioner General, May 29, 1914, INS microfilm, reel 28; Smuggling of Asiatics, 6126. criticizing inspectors: Taylor to White, May 24, 1914; White to Taylor, May 29, 1914; and Taylor to Commissioner General, June 3, 1914, INS microfilm, reel 28. Taylor’s correspondence to local district inspectors and to the commissioner general reveals that he was generally critical of the bureau’s field service, finding complacency, incompetence, and inadequate equipment and personnel nearly everywhere. Sundry correspondence, INS microfilm, reel 28. “would not detail”: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6128–29, 6243; Taylor to Anthony Cami-

267

Notes

164 165 166

167

168





169



netti, June 4, 1914; Caminetti to White, June 5, 1914; and Caminetti to Secretary of Labor, June 5, 1914, INS microfilm, reel 28. “went to work”: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6130–31. Tape was “all right”: Ibid., 6144, 6268. Bonham considered “preposterous”: Ibid., 6149. “What race is”: Ibid., 6158–66. Taylor stood by: Ibid., 6239, 6270–73. “Interpreter Tape extorted”: R. P. Bonham to Commissioner General, August 22, 1914, file 53000 /910B, INS. authorized Tape’s dismissal: “Tape Arrested on Smuggling Charge,” Seattle Times, September 16, 1914. I thank Peter Ferris for copies of Seattle press clippings on Tape’s trial. Most ominously, Lum Kong: “Important Government Witness Shot Down,” Seattle Times, September 27, 1914; “Chinatown Is Mum in Hunt for Assassin,” Seattle Star, September 28, 1914; Young Pin Chew, letter, Seattle Times, September 28, 1914. According to the press: “Ching Gow Born in Oregon,” Idaho Statesman, October 5, 1914. A police manhunt: “Chinese Wanted for Murder Found Dead,” Idaho Statesman, October 5, 1914; “Ching Gow Suicide, Authorities Think,” Seattle Times, October 6, 1914. The city coroner officially ruled Ching’s death a suicide in December. “Asiatic’s Death Suicidal [sic],” Oregonian, December 6, 1914. plot to silence: “Chinese Wanted for Murder Found Dead”; “Warrants Out for Arrests in Chinese Case,” Seattle Times, October 9, 1914; “Tape and His Attorney Held for Conspiracy,” Seattle Times, October 10, 1914. Another prominent figure in Chinatown, Chin Kim, was later indicted with Tape, Norman, Place, and Eng Dan. “Five Indicted by Tape Case Jury,” Seattle Times, October 21, 1914. grand jury handed down: “Tape Faces Two New Indictments,” Seattle Times, November 2, 1914. The first trial: “Fraud Charged in Conspiracy Trial,” Seattle Times, November 25, 1914. “Because Lum Kong”: “Alleged Death Contract Read at Tape Trial,” Seattle Times, December 2, 1914; “Chinese Writing Strange to Tape, He Says in Court,” Seattle Times, December 4, 1914. The Chinese newspapers: On “Jeu Fook Lo,” see examples in Chung Sai Yat Po, July 10, 1907, and September 13, 1907. the jury withdrew: “Tape Again on Trial in Bribery Charge,” Seattle Times, December 10, 1914; “Witness Says He Gave $150 to Frank Tape,” Seattle Times, December 12, 1914; “Tape Denies He Got Money from Chinese,” Seattle Times, December 18, 1914. Both juries eventually: “Defendants Win in Tape Prosecution,” Seattle Times, December 11, 1914; “Tape Is Acquitted of Second Charge,” Seattle Times, December

268

Notes 18, 1914; “Jury Finds Tape Took No Bribes,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 18, 1914. 170 was immediately rearrested: “Agents Hold Men for Smuggling,” Seattle Times, December 13, 1914. China Dan was indicted along with George Price, proprietor of the Interbay Hotel near Smith’s (now Smith) Cove on Puget Sound, and Price’s son-in-law, an employee of the Great Northern Railway. The men allegedly worked with George Nelson, a fireman also working for the Great Northern, who smuggled Chinese from Canada by hiding them in the tool cabinet of the train’s locomotive. The illegal immigrants were delivered to the hotel and then escorted to Seattle’s Chinatown by China Dan. 171 private detective agency: Peter Ferris to author, e-mail, August 8 and 10, 2009. filed quit-claim deeds: “Contradictory Story Told by White Man,” Seattle Times, December 8, 1914. 13.  “Sailors Should Go Ashore” 173 “no. 1 boatswain”: Quoted in Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 211. 174 Secretary of Labor: The Department of Commerce and Labor was split into two departments in 1913. “most expert investigator”: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 215. 175 some 100,000 Chinese: Ibid., 219. The Pacific Mail had replaced: Perkins, “Coming to San Francisco by Steamship,” 26–33. 176 “incapable of making”: Vernon Brown, president of Maritime Exchange of New York, testifying against the Maguire Act (see below: “Seamen gradually won”), cited in Paul S. Taylor, The Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (New York, 1923), 84. U.S. Supreme Court upheld: Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275 (1897). “Dred Scott II”: Stephen Schwartz, Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (San Francisco, 1986), chap. 2. See also Jonathan Gutoff, “Fugitive Slaves and Ship-Jumping Sailors: The Enforcement and Survival of Coerced Labor,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law 9 (Spring 2006): 87. Seamen gradually won: The Maguire Act (1895) abolished imprisonment for desertion on coastwise vessels and when seamen had reason to fear physical abuse. The White Act (1898) abolished corporal punishment and sanctions for desertion in U.S. ports and reduced the term of imprisonment for desertion in foreign ports to one month. In 1915, the La Follette Seamen’s Act completely abolished arrest and imprisonment for desertion. A federal court ruled: Taylor v. U.S., 151 F. 1 (2nd Cir. 1907). See also U.S. v. Burke, 99 F. 895 (S.D. Ala. 1899). seamen were not “laborers”: In re Ah Kee, 22 F. 519 (S.D. N.Y. 1884). right to shore leave: U.S. v. Jamieson, 185 F. 165 (S.D. N.Y. 1911).

269

Notes 177 bonding as a hedge: U.S. v. Crouch, 185 F. 907 (E.D. N.Y. 1911). “substitution racket”: Richard Taylor to Commissioner General, July 2, 1909, file 5421114 /4, INS; “Say Seamen Smuggled Chinese,” San Francisco Globe, November 13, 1908; “Shifts Blame for Chinese Smuggling,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, November 26, 1908. “Joe Take”: “Chinese Smuggled in by Mail Ships,” clipping, November 24, 1908, file 5421114 /4, INS. he believed was “ridiculous”: Taylor to Commissioner General, July 2, 1909. 178 emphasized in 1911: Samuel Backus to D. E. McKinley, Surveyor of Customs, November 8, 1911, file 54221 /4A, INS. Bonding, of course: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 221. The following discussion on the Mongolia is drawn from ibid., 216–23, except where otherwise noted. 179 “Tape would not accept”: “Continuation of Statement of Watchman David F. Graham,” p. 6. Densmore’s findings disappointed: Densmore to Secretary of Labor, January 11, 1916, INS microfilm, suppl. reel 4, pp. 9, 19, 20–22. 180 “withdrawn for further”: Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 223. too inconveniently located: Densmore to Secretary of Labor, January 11, 1916, p. 31. 181 the detention shed: “Immigrant Depot,” San Francisco Daily Morning Call, November 5, 1903. For a comprehensive history of Angel Island, see Erika Lee and Judy Yung, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (New York, 2010). military prison on Alcatraz: National Park Service, “The Post on Alcatraces,” http:// www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/the-post-on-alcatraces.htm (last accessed February 23, 2010). The Spanish name for Alcatraz Island was Isla de los Alcatraces (island of the pelicans). protest and resist: Chung Sai Yat Po, January 18 and 19, 1910. “cultured class”: “Thorough Angel Isle Probe Asked,” San Francisco Examiner, September 1, 1916. See also sundry reports on Angel Island in Chung Sai Yat Po, March through September 1910, regarding detentions, living conditions, inadequate food, and lack of communication. 182 “heap lot trouble”: Quoted in Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate, 223. He also received tips: Lee T. Yat to Clarkson Dye, May 11, 1917, file 12016 /1976-3, box 4, entry 232, INS-SF (hereafter Densmore files); Jennie H. Garcia to Inspector Strand, n.d., file 12016 /10769, box 3, ibid.; anonymous handwritten letter to Mr. J. B. Densmore, n.d., file 12016 /1076-3, box 4, ibid. “attorneys and brokers”: “Addresses and telephone numbers of attorneys and brokers who practice in Chinese cases,” file 12016 /176-1, folder 2, box 4, Densmore files. William Thornley, Joseph Tape’s bonding partner, was also on the list. Heads rolled: “15 Indicted in Angel Isle Graft Plots,” San Francisco Examiner, Oc-

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183 184 185

tober 20, 1917; “Smuggling of Chinese Bared by Prisoner,” San Francisco Examiner, October 4, 1917. “You have done”: “Afraid to show his right name” to Densmore, October 30, 1917, file 12016 /1076-3, Densmore files. “If you go to Chinatown”: Lee Tin Yat, statement to George Parson, April 20, 1917, file 54184 /138, folder 3, Densmore files. apprehended in Chicago: Guan Lee v. U.S., 198 F. 596 (7th Cir. 1912). “Our past experience”: Smuggling of Asiatics, 6150. after exposure and dismissal: After his dismissal from Angel Island in 1917, Edward Park worked as a salesman for a quarry company and then moved to Los Angeles in the early 1920s. His wife and daughters all found employment at a Hollywood film studio, Florence in the wardrobe department and both daughters as actresses. Population Census of the U.S., 1920, Berkeley, series 625, roll 93, p. 270; 1928 voter registration list for City of Los Angeles, Assembly district 75, precinct 586, microfilm roll 22, “California Voter Registrations, 1900–1968,” AncestryLibrary.com; Population Census of the U.S., 1930, California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles district 63, series T626, roll 146, p. 16. On other immigration interpreters, see Chung Sai Yat Po, February 21, 1916 (Lin Zaoying becoming bank clerk), and October 2, 1919 (Lin Gujin joining the Java Steamship Company). 14. The New Daughter-in-Law

189 only Gertrude’s husband: Herbert Chan, military registration card 455-16, Alameda County, CA, roll 1530662, Draft Board 1, in “World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918,” AncestryLibrary.com. the draft was extended: Frank Tape, military registration card 1365, San Francisco County, CA, roll 1544266, Draft Board 13; Robert Park, military registration card 11753, San Francisco County, CA, roll 1544265, Draft Board 13; Herman Lowe, military registration card 2772, Multnomah County, OR, roll 1852142, Draft Board 5, in ibid. Frank Tape’s registration card shows Robert Park’s signature as the official registrar. Robert listed Emily as his next of kin but gave as his permanent address the criminal courthouse in San Francisco, suggesting that the couple may have separated. Harold was studying dentistry: Harold Lowe, military registration card 3128, Multnomah County, OR, roll 1852142, Draft Board 5, in ibid. 190 a small city: “Marysville’s Golden History,” http://www.marysville.ca.us/city_ council.asp?did=43 (last accessed May 29, 2009). Ruby’s forebears: RT (Lai), interview, 1. Ruby’s father, Joe Kim Wing: “Marysville’s Golden History”; RT (Lai), interview, 2; RT (Chan), interview, 31–32; “Kim Wing and His Pig,” Marysville Daily Democrat, November 24, 1894.

271

Notes 191 he built up: Among other ventures, he laundered clothes for the Marysville Police Department. Marysville City Council, minutes, April 5, 1897; July 6, 1897; and October 4, 1897, YCPL. Woo Que (Hu Jiao): RT (Lai), interview, 1; RT (Chan), interview, 10. There were very few: Mrs. A. L. Miller, “Marysville’s Famous Chinatown,” Marysville Evening Democrat, July 3, 1916. Kim Wing and Woo Que: RT (Chan), interview, passim. called him zhufan: RT (Lai), interview, 1. dubbed him “the Mayor”: “Mayor Kim Wing,” Marysville Appeal, April 2, 1913. 192 When Ruby was nine: RT (Lai), interview, 2; RT (Chan), interview, 8. What a different life: RT (Chan), 14, 23. 193 The public schools: RT (Lai), interview, 1. Kim Wing would send: RT (Chan), interview, 18, 20–21, 39–40. 194 “longtime Californ’”: In the twentieth century, old Chinese sojourners, known as lo wah que (lao huaqiao), called themselves “longtime Californ’.” Victor G. Nee and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ’: A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (Stanford, CA, 1986). an unhappy outsider: “When the Boys Wore Queues,” East West, March 27, 1978; RT (Lai), interview, 1; RT (Chan), interview, 12. she went to San Francisco: RT (Chan), interview, 24. modern aspirations: Yung, Unbound Feet, chap. 3. 195 knew about the Tapes’: RT (Chan), interview, 29. the tong wars: Ibid., 32. There is no record: There is no record of a wedding between Ruby Kim and Frank Tape in San Francisco County records, SFC, or Alameda County records, AC. There is no record of a divorce between Frank and Lena in King County, Washington, records. 196 her mother’s story: “Kim Wing–Lem Juen Nuptials,” Marysville Daily Democrat, December 30, 1893. the couple settled: “First Chinese Called on Jury Here Real American,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 20, 1923. didn’t care for children: JK, interview, August 9, 2000. 197 called Ruby “his pal”: “Former Policeman and US Investigator Takes Up New Post,” clipping, n.d. [1923], HML. He brought out: RT (Chan), interview, 27. his marriage to Emily: The 1920 census lists them living on Russell Street; Population Census of the U.S., 1920, Berkeley, series T625, roll 92, p. 145. In the 1930 census, Emily is living there as the head of household, along with her son, Frank (age twenty-seven), but without Robert. Population Census of the U.S., 1930, Berkeley, roll 110, p. 14A, enumeration district 287. Gertrude’s husband, Herbert: Immigration interview of Herbert Chan, November 15, 1920, file 24563 /9-4, SF District 12016 case files, RG 85, NARA-SF; Herbert

272

Notes

198 199

Chan to H. Railton, March 1, 1922, box 52aE, Pacific Mail Steamship Company records, HL. Suen Kai Lai (Li Qixuan): Biographical sketch of Lai Suen Kai, in A History of the Sam Yup Benevolent Association, 188. “new precedent”: “Former Policeman and US Investigator Takes Up New Post.” “Frank Tape Glad”: “First Chinese Called on Jury Here Real American.” “successful American businessman”: Ibid. “link between Orient”: “Former Policeman and US Investigator Takes Up New Post.” 15. Loss

201 featured Frank twice: John Bruce, Skylines of the City, San Francisco Call Bulletin, September 4, 1934, and February 14, 1935. Ruby went back: JK, interview, August 9, 2000; RT (Chan), interview, 5, 14, 28, 30. 202 her son, Frank: Frank Park is listed in the 1930 census as a student, twenty-seven years old and living at home with his mother, Emily (Population Census of the U.S., 1930, Berkeley, roll 110, p. 14a, enumeration district 287). He studied at the School of Dentistry of the College of Physicians and Surgeons (now the University of the Pacific) in San Francisco and was licensed in 1930 (Frank T. Park, certificate no. 7037, Board of Dental Examiners, Register of Licensed Dentists, F3677:17, CSA, provided by G. Troka to author, e-mail, November 30, 2009). Park’s practice was located at 25 Taylor Street in San Francisco (California Board of Medical Examiners annual directories, 1935 and 1937, F3760:91-167, CSA, provided by ibid.; San Francisco city directory, 1938). Gertrude and Herbert Chan divorced: Immigration interview of Gertrude Chan, March 18, 1940, file 12016 / 8690, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. renovated and enlarged: Thompson, “The Tapes of Russell Street,” part 2. Herbert was arrested: “SF district director to Commissioner, on application of Franklin K. Louis,” Herbert Chan immigration file 12018 /06-179, SF District 12016 case files, RG 85, NARA-SF. 203 Harold and Emily: ML-EL, interview; CL, interview. Emily worked as a salesclerk: The 1920 census lists Emily’s occupation as retail store clerk. Population Census of the U.S., 1920, Portland, series T625, roll 1501, p. 4B, enumeration district 106. a graduate of Reed College: Kenneth Lum, military registration card 5444, Multnomah County, OR, roll 1852137, Draft Board 1, in “World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918,” AncestryLibrary.com. Great Depression of the 1930s: Yung, Unbound Feet, 178–222. 205 Losses much greater: For Emily’s date of death, September 21, 1934, see family history compiled by Diane Tani, June 13, 1995, courtesy Loni Ding. For Mary’s

273

Notes date of death, October 9, 1934, see Affidavit of Frank Tape, March 15, 1940, file 12016 /8690, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. Cause of death of both is unknown. There are no death certificates in Alameda County records, AC. 206 Frank Park moved out: Frank Park is listed in the Berkeley city directory until 1935. For his marriage to Maxine Sun, see CL, interview. The date of their marriage is unknown. He is listed in the San Francisco voter rolls in 1939 living at 626 Pine Street (1939 voter roll 62, San Francisco, image 46, “California Voter Registrations, 1900–1968,” AncestryLibrary.com). Park served as a captain in the U.S. Army in World War II. After the war, he was employed at the Stockton State Hospital and lived in Stanislaus (“California Death Index, 1940–1997,” Ancestry Library.com). bequeathed to Gertrude: Immigration interview of Gertrude Chan, March 18, 1940. Joseph also bequeathed the original family home at 2123 Russell Street to Gertrude. She sold it in 1942 for $3,200 to her siblings, Mamie and Frank, and her nephew Frank Park, probably to raise cash. They in turn sold it in 1946. Donough Realty Records, 1942–1946, BAHA. never held a job: Immigration interview of Frank Tape, March 18, 1940, file 12016 / 8690, SF District 12016 case files, NARA-SF. 16. Service 208 “Never have I heard”: Reverend John MacCallum, quoted in Hua-ling Hu, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin (Carbondale, IL, 2000), 97. 209 relief work in the United States: K. Scott Wong, Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Cambridge, MA, 2005); Yung, Unbound Feet, 231– 48; Renqui Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (Philadelphia, 1992), 100–118. “rice bowl parties”: Him Mark Lai, “Roles Played by Chinese in America During China’s Resistance to Japanese Aggression and During World War II,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives (1997): 75–125; Yung, Unbound Feet, 239–40. Chinese war bonds: The Lowes’ bonds were valued at $10 (about $150 today). Linda Doler collection. 210 drove her old jalopy: RT (Chan), interview, 21. Chinese War Relief Association: Yung, Unbound Feet, 118. Ruby also participated: RT (Chan), interview, 21–22. “wonder-stricken”: Lady P’ing Yu (Alice Fong Yu), “Spirit, You Can’t Explain It,” Chinese Digest, February 1939, reprinted in Yung, Unbound Voices, 429–31. 211 go up north to Portola: RT (Chan), interview, 22. 213 designed and sold: A History of the Sam Yup Benevolent Association; Brian Hue and Joanne Louie, interview with S. K. Lai, March 25, 1977, San Francisco, audiotape recording, CSL.

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Notes Congress passed a repeal act: Chinese Repealer, U.S. Statutes at Large 57 (1943): 600. The Chinese quota applied not just to citizens of China but to all people of Chinese descent (defined by one-half ancestry) in the world. This unusual step aimed to preclude Chinese immigration from Hong Kong, a British colony, and Latin America, which had no numerical quotas. opened up employment opportunities: Wong, Americans First, 45–49. Ruby’s younger brother: RT (Chan), interview, 23. work in the shipyards: Wong, Americans First, 50–51; National Park Service, “World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area: Richmond Shipyard Number Three,” http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wwIIbayarea/ric.htm (last accessed March 15, 2010). 214 began working at Kaiser: Mrs. Gertrude Chan is listed in the 1943 Berkeley city directory as a “clerk,” the only year that gives an occupation. I have surmised that she worked at Kaiser on account of Frank’s position there. natural labor broker: Bill Torbit, “Chinese Help Build Ships, Ex-Detective Is Counselor,” Oakland Tribune, n.d., OPL. 215 decided to enlist: RT (Chan), interview, 5; RT (Lai), interview, 3; Ruby K. Tape, “U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946,” AncestryLibrary.com. some 150,000 American women: Judith A. Bellafaire, The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service, Center for Military History Publication 72-15, http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/wac/wac.htm (last accessed February 23, 2010). “FALL OUT”: RT (Chan), interview, 6. “girls’ college”: Ibid. She was then deployed: RT (Lai), interview, 3. 216 Camp Ritchie, Maryland: “Fort Ritchie Has Storied History,” Hagerstown HeraldMail, June 30, 2008, http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_ id=197555&format=html (last accessed February 23, 2010). Two of her brothers: For Edwin, see RT (Chan), interview, 23. For Jack, see JK, interview, June 17, 2003. captain in the Army: Record of rank and burial in Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, CA, in “U.S. Veterans Gravesites, c. 1775–2006,” AncestryLibrary .com. They were among: Wong, Americans First, 60–71; Him Mark Lai, “Roles Played by Chinese,” 99; Christina M. Lim and Sheldon H. Lim, “In the Shadow of the Tiger: The 407th Air Service Squadron,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives (1993): 25–74. 217 When Ruby arrived in Japan: RT (Chan), interview, 7. “begging for slops”: Herbert Passin, Encounter with Japan (Tokyo, 1982), 110–11. “every problem of Japan”: W. Macmahon Ball of Australia, quoted in John Curtis Perry, Beneath the Eagle’s Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan (New York, 1980), 52.

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Notes 217 MacArthur’s general headquarters: Passin, Encounter with Japan, 113–17. 218 “have control of every”: Dean Rusk, quoted in Walter LaFeber, The Clash: U.S.Japan Relations Throughout History (New York, 1998), 283. tumultuous events: LaFeber, The Clash, chap. 9. went to Shanghai: RT (Chan), interview, 7. “checked three ways”: “When the Boys Wore Queues.” Economic Cooperation Authority: C. X. George Wei, “The Economic Cooperation Administration, the State Department, and the American Presence in China, 1948–1949,” Pacific Historical Review 70 (2001): 21–53. The ECA worked alongside the much larger United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which sent to China some 2.5 million tons of material goods, amounting to more than $518 million, after the war. 219 to the black market: Stella Dong, Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (New York, 2001), 282–84. “rolled up in”: RT (Chan), interview, 3, 7. “Americans treated the Chinese”: Ibid., 4. Ruby located her sister: Ibid., 38. 221 Ukiah hunting lodge: JK, interview, August 9, 2000. Frank’s heart failed: Obituary of Frank H. Tape, Berkeley Daily Gazette, November 27, 1950. Epilogue 226 Ruby continued to live: Gertrude bequeathed the house to Frank and Mamie. Upon Frank’s death, Ruby inherited his share of the house. She bought out Mamie’s share in 1952. Donough Realty Records, 1950–1952, BAHA. She planted a garden: RT (Chan), interview, 43. Ruby’s youngest brother: JK, interview, June 17, 2003. Her sister Edna: Ibid. Ruby went back to work: RT (Chan), interview, 14. 227 her sister-in-law Mamie: RL-LD, interview; CL, interview. 228 “They said all”: ML-EL, interview. 229 One of the most famous: Edward Barnes, “Two-Faced Woman,” Time, July 23, 2000; Patrick Keefe, “The Snakehead,” The New Yorker, April 24, 2006.

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App e n d i x

D o c u m e n t s from the Chinese Ex c l u s io n Era

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In 1876 the California State Senate conducted an investigation of the Chinese question that resulted in a long report with the conclusion that Chinese immigration was an “evil.” This report included a memorial to the U.S. Congress, summarizing the anti-Chinese position and petitioning for federal legislation banning Chinese immigration. Memorial of the Senate of California to the Congress of the United States To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America. Your memorialists respectfully represent unto your honorable bodies as follows: That on the third day of April, eighteen hundred and seventy-six in the Senate of the State of California, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted: Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of California, That a committee of five Senators be appointed, with power to sit at any time or place within the State, and the said committee shall make inquiry: 1. As to the number of Chinese in this State, and the effect their presence has upon the social and political condition of the State. 2. As to the probable result of Chinese immigration upon the country, if such immigration be not discouraged. 3. As to the means of exclusion, if such committee should be of the opinion that the presence of the Chinese element in our midst is detrimental to the interests of the country. 4. As to such other matters as, in the judgment of the committee,

279

appendix

have a bearing upon the question of Chinese immigration. And be it further

Resolved, That said committee shall prepare a memorial to the Congress of the United States, which memorial must set out at length the facts in relation to the subject of this inquiry, and such conclusions as the committee may have arrived at as to the policy and means of excluding Chinese from the country. [. . .] Subsequently, on motion, the Senate increased the number of the committee to seven, and the following Senators were appointed on said committee: Senators Haymond, McCoppin, Pierson, Donovan, Rogers, Lewis, and Evans. That under the authority of the resolutions we have inquired into the subject of Chinese immigration into the United States, and particularly into the State of California, and into the past, present, and probable future results of this immigration upon our people; and from the evidence adduced before us, whereof a report and argument is also herewith presented, we respectfully submit the following considerations: The State of California has a population variously estimated at from seven hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand, of which one hundred and twenty-five thousand are Chinese. The additions to this class have been very rapid since the organization of the State, but have been caused almost entirely by immigration, and scarcely at all by natural increase. The evidence demonstrates beyond cavil that nearly the entire immigration consists of the lowest orders of the Chinese people, and mainly of those having no homes or occupations on the land, but living in boats on the rivers, especially those in the vicinity of Canton. This class of the people, according to the castes into which Chinese society is divided, are virtually pariahs—the dregs of the population. None of them are admitted into any of the privileges of the orders ranking above them. And while rudimentary education is encouraged, and even enforced among the masses of the people, the 280

Documents from the Chinese Exclusion Era

fishermen and those living on the waters and harbors of China are excluded by the rigid and hoary constitutions of caste from all participation in such advantages. It would seem to be a necessary consequence, flowing from this class of immigration, that a large proportion of criminals should be found among it; and this deduction is abundantly sustained by the facts before us, for of five hundred and forty-five of the foreign criminals in our State Prison, one hundred and ninety-eight are Chinese—nearly two-fifths of the whole—while our jails and reformatories swarm with the lower grade of malefactors. [. . .] But the criminal element in the Chinese population is very much greater than the figures above given would indicate, for conviction for crime among this class is extremely difficult. Our ignorance of the Chinese language, the utter want of comprehension by them of the crime of perjury, their systematic bribery, and intimidation of witnesses, and other methods of baffling judicial action, all tend to weaken the authority of our laws and to paralyze the power of our Courts. A graver difficulty still is developed in the existence among the Chinese population of secret tribunals unrecognized by our laws and in open defiance thereof, an imperium in imperio that undertake and actually administer punishment, not infrequently of death. These tribunals exercise the power of levying taxes, commanding masses of men, intimidating interpreters and witnesses, enforcing perjury, punishing the refractory, removing witnesses beyond the reach of process, controlling liberty of action, and preventing the return of Chinese to their homes in China. In fact, there exists amongst us tribunals and laws alien to our form of government, and which practically nullify and supersede both National and State authority. The Chinese females who immigrate to this State are, almost without exception, of the vilest and most degraded class of abandoned women. The effect of this element in our midst upon the health and morals of our youth is exhibited in the testimony. Its disgusting details cannot, for obvious reasons, be enlarged upon this memorial. 281

appendix

These women exist here in a state of servitude, beside which African slavery was a beneficent captivity. [. . .] The male element of this population, where not criminal, comes into a painful competition with the most needy and most deserving of our people—those who are engaged, or entitled to be engaged, in industrial pursuits in our midst. The common laborer, the farm hand, the shoemaker, the cigar maker, the domestic male and female, and workmen of all descriptions, find their various occupations monopolized by Chinese labor, employed at a compensation upon which white labor cannot possibly exist. [. . .] It is a trite saying, however, that competition in labor is healthful. True—but not between free and slave labor; and the Chinese in California are substantially in a condition of servitude. Ninety-nine onehundredths of them are imported here by large companies under contracts to repay to the importers out of their labor the cost of their transportation and large interest upon the outlay, and these contracts frequently hold their subjects for long periods. During the existence of these contracts the Chinese are, to all intents, serfs, and as such are let out to service at a miserable pittance to perform the labor that it ought to be the privilege of our own race to perform. Even were it possible for the white laborer to maintain existence upon the wages paid to the Chinese, his condition nevertheless becomes that of an abject slave, for grinding poverty is absolute slavery. The vaunted “dignity of labor” becomes a biting sarcasm when the laborer becomes a serf. Irrespective, however, of this slavery by contract, the Chinese who inundate our shores are, by the very constitution of their nature, by instinct, by the traditions of their order for thousands of years, serfs. They never rise above that condition in their native land, and by the inexorable decrees of cast, never can rise. Servile labor to them is their natural and inevitable lot. Hewers of wood and drawers of water they have been since they had a country, and servile laborers they will be to the end of time. Departure from that level with them

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is never upward; the only change, apparently, is from servitude to crime. The pious anticipations that the influence of Christianity upon the Chinese would be salutary, have proved unsubstantial and vain. Among one hundred and twenty-five thousand of them, with a residence here beneath the elevating influences of Christian precept and example, and with the zealous labors of earnest Christian teachers, and the liberal expenditure of ecclesiastical revenues, we have no evidence of a single genuine conversion to Christianity, or of a single instance of an assimilation with our manners, or habits of thought or life. [. . .] Neither is there any possibility that in the future education, religion, or the other influences of our civilization can effect any change in this condition of things. The Chinese in California are all adults. They are not men of families. The family relation does not exist here among them. Not one in a thousand is married; and, in addition, their habits of opium eating are practically destructive of the power of procreation. So that whatever improvement might otherwise be anticipated from instilling into the comparatively unformed and respective minds of a young and rising generation the educational and religious maxims that control our own race is thus effectually precluded. Above and beyond these considerations, however, we believe, and the researches of those who have most attentively studied the Chinese character confirm us in the consideration, that the Chinese are incapable of adaptation to our institutions. The national intellect of China has become decrepit from sheer age. It has long since passed its prime and is waning into senility. [. . .] During their entire settlement in California they have never adapted themselves to our habits, modes of dress, or our educational system, have never learned the sanctity of an oath, never desired to become citizens, or to perform the duties of citizenship, never discovered the difference between right and wrong, never ceased the worship of their idol gods, or advanced a step beyond the musty tra-

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ditions of their native hive. Impregnable to all the influences of our Anglo-Saxon life, they remain the same stolid Asiatics that have floated on the rivers and slaved in the fields of China for thirty centuries of time. [. . .] We thus find one-sixth of our entire population composed of Chinese coolies, not involuntarily, but, by the unalterable structure of their intellectual being, voluntary slaves. This alien mass, constantly increasing by immigration, is injected into a republic of freemen, eating of its substance, expelling free white labor, and contributing nothing to the support of the government. All of the physical conditions of California are in the highest degree favorable to their influx. Our climate is essentially Asiatic in all its aspects. And the Federal Government by its legislation and treaties fosters and promotes the immigration. What is to be the result? Does it require any prophetic power to foretell? Can American statesmen project their vision forward for a quarter of a century and convince themselves that this problem will work out for itself a wise solution? In that brief period, with the same ratio of increase, this fair State will contain a Chinese population outnumbering its free men. White labor will be unknown, because unobtainable, and then how long a period will elapse before California will, nay must, become essentially a State with but two orders of society—the master and the serf—a lesser Asia, with all its deathly lethargy? Or, on the other hand, may we not foresee a more dire result? Is it not possible that free white labor, unable to compete with these foreign serfs, and perceiving its condition becoming slowly but inevitably more hopelessly abject, may unite in all the horrors of riot and insurrection, and defying the civil power, extirpate with fire and sword those who rob them of their bread, yet yield no tribute to the State? This is a frightful possibility, but we have within a brief period witnessed its portents, and had it not been for the untiring vigilance of the conservative portion of our people, we might have seen not only the Chinese quarters, but our cities, in ashes, and families home-

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less, and the prosperity and good fame of California shattered and disgraced. [. . .] The duty devolves upon us to suggest a remedy for the suppression of this immigration. The Chinese now here are protected by our treaty obligations and laws, and that they will continue to receive that protection the people and government of this State will be responsible. If further immigration is prevented they will gradually return to their own country, and the occupations in which they are now engaged will be supplied with laborers and immigrants of our own race. The temper of the people of California is such that the employment of Chinese will be, as it has to a considerable extent already been, discouraged, and this will effectually compel their departure. As to future immigration, neither a total nor partial abrogation of the Burlingame treaty will afford relief. The mass of, indeed the entire immigration comes from the port of Hongkong [sic], a British Colony. No alteration in our treaty stipulations with China could have the slightest effect upon the passenger trade of that port. [. . .] We would, therefore, most respectfully suggest as the means of a final solution of this grave and ever increasing difficulty: First—An appeal to the Government of Great Britain to cooperate with our own government in the absolute prohibition of this trade in men and women; and Second—The joint and friendly action of the two countries with the Empire of China in the abrogation of all treaties between the three nations permitting the emigration of Chinese to the United States. And in the meantime we earnestly recommend legislation by Congress limiting the number of Chinese allowed to be landed from any vessel entering the ports of the United States, to, say, not more than ten.

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This policy would in great degree tend to a redress of the grievances that now sorely afflict our State, and threaten to overshadow her prosperity. And your memorialists will ever pray, etc. Adopted at a meeting of the Committee held in the City of San Francisco, August thirteenth, eighteen hundred and seventy-seven. CREED HAYMOND, Chairman *From California State Senate, Chinese Immigration: Its Social, Moral and Political Effects (1878)

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Leaders of the Chinese community responded to the charges made against them, refuting racial allegations and pointing out that trade and migration, which are related dynamics of intercourse between nations, should be conducted on equal terms. The signatories of this document were leaders of the Chinese huiguan, benevolent associations organized according to home districts in China. The Chinese Question from a Chinese Standpoint TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Brothers: Will you listen to a calm, respectful statement of the Chinese question from a Chinese standpoint? Public sentiment is strongly against us. Many rise up to curse us. Few there are who seem willing, or who dare to utter a word in our defense, or in defense of our treaty rights in this country. The daily papers teem with bitter invectives against us. All the evils and miseries of our people are constantly pictured in an exaggerated form to the public, and our presence in this country is held up as an evil, and only evil, and that continually. In California, Oregon and Nevada, laws, designed not to punish guilt and crime, nor yet to protect the lives and property of the innocent, have been enacted and executed discriminating against the Chinese; and the Board of Supervisors of the City of San Francisco, where the largest number of our people reside, has surpassed even these State authorities, in efforts to afflict us, by what seems to us, most unjust, most oppressive, and most barbarous enactments. If 287

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these enactments are the legitimate offspring of the American civilization, and of the Jesus religion, you can hardly wonder if the Chinese people are somewhat slow to embrace the one or to adopt the other. Unfortunately for us, our civilization has not attained to the use of the daily press—that mighty engine for moulding public sentiment in these lands—and we must even now appeal to the generosity of those, who perhaps bear us no good will, to give us a place in their columns to present our cause.

The Policy of China 1. We wish the American people to remember that the policy of the Chinese Government was strictly exclusive. She desired no treaty stipulations, no commercial relations, no interchange whatever with Europe or America. She was not willing that other people should come to reside in her limits, because she knew the antagonism of races. For the same reason she was unwilling that her subjects should go forth to other lands to reside. But the United States and other Christian nations held very different views, and advocated a very different policy. Treaty stipulations, commercial relations, and friendly interchange of commodities and persons were demanded of the Chinese. To secure these with China, pretexts for war were sought and found, and, as the result of defeat on the part of the Chinese, our Government was compelled to give up her traditional, time-honored policy, and to form treaties of friendship and interchange with her conquerors.

The Result of This Policy 2. Under these treaty stipulations dictated to China by Christian governments, the people of Europe and America have freely entered China for the purposes of trade, travel and Christian evangelization. Foreign residents in China are numerous, and many of them have 288

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amassed ample fortunes in that land. Their presence has ever been hateful to a large portion of the Chinese people. It is but fair to state this fact, that as much friction, if not more, is caused in China by the presence of foreigners than the Chinese are creating in this land. The declaimers against us because we supplant white laborers in this country ought to know, what is well known to all intelligent Chinamen, that the introduction of American and English steamers upon the rivers and coasts of China, has thrown out of business a vast fleet of junks, and out of employment a whole army of men, larger in number than all the Chinese now in America. And yet during these few years of commercial and friendly intercourse, a large commerce has sprung up between China and America, creating a community interest between the people of these two countries, and doing much to remove the strong prejudices of the Chinese against foreign intercourse, American merchants, and American enterprise; American missionaries, and Christian doctrine meet with far less opposition and much greater favor in China now than formerly. Great changes are taking place in the popular sentiments of the people, a striking feature of which change is a marked partiality for the American Government and American civilization. The Chinese Government has already sent a score of youths to this country to learn your language, your customs and laws, and proposes to send many more on the same errand. This fact of itself is significant.

The Present Embarrassing Demands of America upon the Chinese Government 3. We wish also to call the attention of the American public to the fact, that at the present time, the American and European Governments are greatly embarrassing the Chinese Government by strenuously insisting upon these two points, namely: First, That Americans and other foreigners shall be permitted to travel, and trade, and preach in all parts of the Chinese Empire with289

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out being subject to Chinese law. The foreign Governments insist upon their right to carry their code of laws with them into all parts of our country, thus humbling and disgracing our Governments in the eyes of our own people. How would that shoe fit the other foot? Or how can this claim be reconciled to the “Golden Rule,” considering the present treatment of Chinese in America? Second, The audience question. Foreign governments insist upon holding audience through their representatives with the Emperor of China, without paying him the homage and respect which the Throne of China has ever received from all who came before it.

Industrious 4. We wish now also to ask the American people to remember that the Chinese in this country have been for the most part peaceable and industrious. We have kept no whisky saloons, and have had no drunken brawls, resulting in manslaughter and murder. We have toiled patiently to build your rail-roads, to aid in harvesting your fruits and grain, and to reclaim your swamp lands. Our presence and labor on this coast we believe have made possible numerous manufacturing interests, which, without us could not exist on these shores. In the mining regions our people have been satisfied with claims deserted by the white men. As a people we have the reputation, even here and now, of paying faithfully our rents, our taxes and our debts. In view of all these facts we are constrained to ask why this bitter hostility against the few thousands of Chinese in America! Why these severe and barbarous enactments, discriminating against us, in favor of other nationalities. From Europe you receive annually an immigration of 400,000 (among whom, judging from what we have observed, there are many—perhaps one-third—who are vagabonds, and scoundrels or plotters against your national and religious institutions. These, with all the evils they bring, you receive with open arms, and at once give 290

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them the right of suffrage, and not seldom elect them to office. Why then this fearful opposition to the immigration of 15,000 or 20,000 Chinamen yearly? But if opposed to our coming still, in the name of our country, in the name of justice and humanity, in the name of Christianity, (as we understand it,) we protest against such severe and discriminating enactments against our people while living in this country under existing treaties. Our Proposition 5. Finally, since our presence here is considered so detrimental to this country and is so offensive to the American people, we make this proposition, and promise on our part, to use all our influence to carry it into effect. We propose a speedy and perfect abrogation and repeal of the present treaty relations between China and America, requiring the retirement of all Chinese people and trade from these United States, and the withdrawing of all American people, and trade, and commercial intercourse whatever from China. This, perhaps, will give to the American people an opportunity of preserving for a longer time their civil and religious institutions, which, it is said, the immigration of the Chinese is calculated to destroy! This arrangement will also, to some extent, relieve the Chinese people and Government, from the serious embarrassments which now disturb them, and enable them by so much, to return to the traditional policy of their sages and statesmen, i.e.: “Stay at house and mind their own business, and let all other people do the same.” This is our proposition. Will the American people accept it? Will the newspapers, which have lately said so many things, against us, and against our residence in this country, will they now aid us in bringing about this, to us, desirable state of affairs? In the meantime, since we are now here under sacred treaty stipulations, we humbly pray that we may be treated according to those stipulations, until 291

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such time as the treaty can be repealed, and all commercial intercourse and friendly relations come to an end. Signed, in behalf of the Chinese in America, by LAI YONG, YANG KAY, A YUP, LAI FOON, CHUNG LEONG [Translated by REV. O. GIBSON, and read by him before the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, in the month of May, 1873, pending the discussion of certain enactments by that body, severely discriminating against the Chinese people.] *From the Asian American Studies Collection at Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley

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Anson Burlingame was an American lawyer appointed by President Lincoln as minister to China in 1861. He was a reformer who favored more equitable relations with China than those imposed upon it by Britain and other Western nations (including the United States) after the Opium Wars. In 1867 the Qing government asked Burlingame to head a Chinese delegation to the United States. He negotiated a treaty based on principles of reciprocity in trade and immigration. Burlingame Treaty of 1861 (Treaty of Peace, Amity, and Commerce) ARTICLE I His Majesty the Emperor of China, being of the opinion that, in making concessions to the citizens or subjects of foreign Powers of the privilege of residing on certain tracts of land, or resorting to certain waters of that empire for purposes of trade, he has by no means relinquished his right of eminent domain or dominion over the said land and water, hereby agrees that no such concession or grant shall be construed to give to any power or party which may be at war with or hostile to the United States the right to attack the citizens of the United States or their property within the said lands or waters. . . . It is further agreed that . . . any right or interest in any tract of land in China . . . granted by the Government of China to the United States or their citizens for purposes of trade or commerce, . . . shall in no event be construed to divest the Chinese authorities of their right of jurisdiction over persons and property within said tract of land, except so far as that right may have been expressly relinquished by treaty. 293

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ARTICLE II The United States of America and his Majesty the Emperor of China, believing that the safety and prosperity of commerce will thereby best be promoted, agree that any privilege or immunity in respect to trade or navigation within the Chinese dominions which may not have been stipulated for by treaty, shall be subject to the discretion of the Chinese Government and may be regulated by it accordingly. . . .

ARTICLE III The Emperor of China shall have the right to appoint consuls at ports of the United States, who shall enjoy the same privileges and immunities as those enjoyed by public law and treaty in the United States by the consuls of Great Britain and Russia, or either of them.

ARTICLE IV The twenty-ninth article of the treaty of the 18th of June, 1858, having stipulated for the exemption of Christian citizens of the United States and Chinese converts from persecution in China on account of their faith, it is further agreed that citizens of the United States in China of every religious persuasion and Chinese subjects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience and shall be exempt from all disability or persecution on account of their religious faith or worship in either country. Cemeteries for sepulture of the dead of whatever nativity or nationality shall be held in respect and free from disturbance or profanation.

ARTICLE V The United States of America and the Emperor of China cordially recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his 294

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home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from the one country to the other, for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents. The high contracting parties, therefore, join in reprobating any other than an entirely voluntary emigration for these purposes. . . .

ARTICLE VI Citizens of the United States visiting or residing in China shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities or exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation, and, reciprocally, Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities and exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation. But nothing herein contained shall be held to confer naturalization upon citizens of the United States in China, nor upon the subjects of China in the United States. 

ARTICLE VII Citizens of the United States shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the government of China, and reciprocally. . . .

ARTICLE VIII The United States, always disclaiming and discouraging all practices of unnecessary dictation and intervention by one nation in the affairs or domestic administration of another, do hereby freely disclaim and disavow any intention or right to intervene in the domestic administration of China in regard to the construction of railroads, telegraphs or other material internal improvements. On the other 295

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hand, his Majesty, the Emperor of China, reserves to himself the right to decide the time and manner and circumstances of introducing such improvements within his dominions. . . . In faith whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed this treaty and thereto affixed the seals of their arms. Done at Washington the twenty-eighth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight. WILLIAM H. SEWARD [SEAL] ANSON BURLINGAME [SEAL] CHIH-KANG [ideographic signature] SUN CHIA-KU [ideographic signature]

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The Burlingame Treaty’s provisions for free immigration were an obstacle for the anti-Chinese movement in the United States. Congress attempted to curtail Chinese immigration in 1875 with the Page Act, which barred from entry Chinese and other Asian contract laborers and prostitutes who, because they were deemed to be unfree, fell outside the scope of the treaty. The act was not successful in stopping Chinese laborers, who were not indentured workers, but it did curtail female immigration.

The Page Act of 1875 An Act Supplementary to the Acts in Relation to Immigration Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in determining whether the immigration of any subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country, to the United States, is free and voluntary, as provided by section two thousand one hundred and sixty-two of the Revised Code, title “Immigration,” it shall be the duty of the consul-general or consul of the United States residing at the port from which it is proposed to convey such subjects . . . to ascertain whether such immigrant has entered into a contract or agreement for a term of service within the United States, for lewd and immoral purposes. . . . SEC. 2. That if any citizen of the United States, or other person amenable to the laws of the United States shall take, or cause to be taken or transported, to or from the United States any subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country, without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service, 297

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such citizen or other person shall be liable to be indicted therefor, and, on conviction of such offense, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars and be imprisoned not exceeding one year; and all contracts and agreements for a term of service of such persons in the United States, whether made in advance or in pursuance of such illegal importation, and whether such importation shall have been in American or other vessels, are hereby declared void. SEC. 3. That the importation into the United States of women for the purposes of prostitution is hereby forbidden; and all contracts and agreements in relation thereto, made in advance or in pursuance of such illegal importation and purposes, are hereby declared void; and whoever shall knowingly and willfully import, or cause any importation of, women into the United States for the purposes of prostitution, or shall knowingly or willfully hold, or attempt to hold, any woman to such purposes, in pursuance of such illegal importation and contract or agreement, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be imprisoned not exceeding five years and pay a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars. SEC. 4. That if any person shall knowingly and willfully contract, or attempt to contract, in advance or in pursuance of such illegal importation, to supply to another the labor of any cooly or other person brought into the United States . . . , such person shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, upon conviction thereof, in any United States court, shall be fined in a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars and imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year. SEC. 5. That it shall be unlawful for aliens of the following classes to immigrate into the United States, namely, persons who are undergoing a sentence for conviction in their own country of felonious crimes other than political or growing out of or the result of such political offenses, or whose sentence has been remitted on condition of their emigration, and women “imported for the purposes of prostitution.” Every vessel arriving in the United States may be inspected under the direction of the collector of the port at which it arrives. . . . 298

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If any person shall feel aggrieved by the certificate of such inspecting officer stating him or her to be within either of the classes whose immigration is forbidden by this section, and shall apply for release or other remedy to any proper court or judge, then it shall be the duty of the collector at said port of entry to detain said vessel until a hearing and determination of the matter are had, to the end that if the said inspector shall be found to be in accordance with this section and sustained, the obnoxious person or persons shall be returned on board of said vessel, and shall not thereafter be permitted to land. . . . And for all violations of this act, the vessel, by the acts, omissions, or connivance of the owners, master, or other custodian, or the consignees of which the same are committed, shall be liable to forfeiture, and may be proceeded against as in cases of frauds against the revenue laws, for which forfeiture is prescribed by existing law. FORTY-THIRD CONGRESS. SESS. II. CH. 141. 1875

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Under relentless pressure from anti-Chinese sentiment in California, President Hayes renegotiated the Burlingame Treaty in 1880 to allow for a temporary suspension of immigration. The revision allowed Congress to pass legislation excluding Chinese laborers in 1882 for a period of ten years. Congress renewed exclusion in 1891 and 1901, and in 1904 made it permanent. Exclusion was repealed in 1943 during World War II. An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to Chinese (Chinese Exclusion Act) Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having so come after the expiration of said ninety days to remain within the United States. SEC. 2. That the master of any vessel who shall knowingly bring within the United States on such vessel, and land or permit to be landed, any Chinese laborer, from any foreign port or place, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars for each 300

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and every such Chinese laborer so brought, and may be also imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year. SEC. 3. That the two foregoing sections shall not apply to Chinese laborers who were in the United States on the seventeenth day of November, eighteen hundred and eighty, or who shall have come into the same before the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act. . . . SEC. 4. That for the purpose of properly identifying Chinese laborers who were in the United States on the seventeenth day of November eighteen hundred and eighty, or who shall have come into the same before the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and in order to furnish them with the proper evidence of their right to go from and come to the United States of their free will and accord . . . the collector of customs . . . make a list of all such Chinese laborers, which shall be entered in registry-books to be kept for that purpose . . . ; and every such Chinese laborer so departing from the United States shall be entitled to, and shall receive, free of any charge or cost upon application therefor, from the collector or his deputy, at the time such list is taken, a certificate, signed by the collector or his deputy and attested by his seal of office. . . . The certificate herein provided for shall entitle the Chinese laborer to whom the same is issued to return to and re-enter the United States. . . . SEC. 6. That in order to the faithful execution of articles one and two of the treaty in this act before mentioned, every Chinese person other than a laborer who may be entitled by said treaty and this act to come within the United States, and who shall be about to come to the United States, shall be identified as so entitled by the Chinese Government in each case, such identity to be evidenced by a certificate issued under the authority of said government, . . . which certificate shall state the name, title or official rank, if any, the age, height, and all physical peculiarities, former and present occupation or profession, and place of residence in China of the person to whom the certificate is issued. . . . Such certificate shall be prima-facie evidence of the fact set forth therein, and shall be produced to the collector of 301

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customs, or his deputy, of the port in the district in the United States at which the person named therein shall arrive. [. . .] SEC. 12. . . . [A]ny Chinese person found unlawfully within the United States shall be caused to be removed therefrom to the country from whence he came, by direction of the President of the United States, and at the cost of the United States, after being brought before some justice, judge, or commissioner of a court of the United States and found to be one not lawfully entitled to be or remain in the United States. SEC.13. That this act shall not apply to diplomatic and other officers of the Chinese Government traveling upon the business of that government, whose credentials shall be taken as equivalent to the certificate in this act mentioned, and shall exempt them and their body and household servants from the provisions of this act as to other Chinese persons. SEC. 14. That hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship; and all laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed. SEC.15. That the words “Chinese laborers,” wherever used in this act shall be construed to mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining. Approved, May 6, 1882

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The exclusion law, while barring new admission of laborers, did not address the status of Chinese already living in the United States other than declaring them ineligible for naturalization. Chinese residents challenged discriminatory laws against them, encouraged by the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War to guarantee equal rights. The Tapes’ lawsuit was one of these. In light of California’s school statute and the Fourteenth Amendment, the state supreme court found it difficult to deny the Tapes’ claims. Tape v. Hurley Supreme Court of California 66 Cal. 473 (1885) Decision MAMIE TAPE, an Infant, by her Guardian ad Litem, JOSEPH TAPE, Respondent, v. JENNIE M. A. HURLEY et al., Appellants SHARPSTEIN, J.—The main question in this case is whether a child “between six and twenty-one years of age, of Chinese parentage, but who was born and has always lived in the city and county of San Francisco,” is entitled to admission in the public school of the district in which she resides. The language of the code is as follows: “Every school, unless otherwise provided by law, must be open for the admission of all children between six and twenty-one years of age

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residing in the district; and the board of trustees, or city board of education, have power to admit adults and children not residing in the district, whenever good reasons exist therefore. Trustees shall have the power to exclude children of filthy or vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or infectious diseases.” (Political Code, § 1667.) That is the latest legislative expression on the subject, and was passed as late as 1880. Prior to that time the first clause of the section read, “Every school, unless otherwise provided by special statute, must be open for the admission of all white children between five and twenty-one years of age, residing in the district.” As amended, the clause is broad enough to include all children who are not precluded from entering a public school by some provision of law; and we are not aware of any law which forbids the entrance of children of any race or nationality. The legislature not only declares who shall be admitted, but also who may be excluded, and it does not authorize the exclusion of any one on the ground upon which alone the exclusion of the respondent here is sought to be justified. The vicious, the filthy, and those having contagious or infectious diseases, may be excluded, without regard to their race, color or nationality. This law must be construed as any other would be construed. . . . “When the law is clear and explicit, and its provisions are susceptible of but one interpretation, its consequences, if evil, can only be avoided by a change of the law itself, to be effected by legislative and not judicial action.” (Bosley v. Mattingly, 14 B. Mon. 73.) This rule is never controverted or doubted, although perhaps sometimes lost sight of. In this case, if effect be given to the intention of the legislature, as indicated by the clear and unambiguous language used by them, respondent here has the same right to enter a public school that any other child has. It is not alleged that she is vicious, or filthy, or that she has a contagious or infectious disease. As the legislature has not denied to the children of any race or nationality the right to

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enter our public schools, the question whether it might have done so does not arise in this case. [. . .] The board of education has power “to make, establish, and enforce all necessary and proper rules and regulations not contrary to law,” and none other. (Stats. 1871–2, p. 846.) Teachers cannot justify a violation of law, on the ground that a resolution of the board of education required them to do so.

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At about the same time as the Tapes’ school case, Chinese laundry owners sued the city of San Francisco (Hopkins was the sheriff) over safety ordinances that were really aimed at putting Chinese laundries out of business. That case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which made the landmark ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all persons, not just citizens, and in matters of property, not just political rights. It also ruled that a law could be deemed discriminatory even if it were written in race-neutral language. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Sheriff Supreme Court of the United States 118 U.S. 356 (1886) MR. JUSTICE MATTHEWS delivered the opinion of the court. In the case of the petitioner, brought here by writ of error to the Supreme Court of California, our jurisdiction is limited to the question, whether the plaintiff in error has been denied a right in violation of the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. . . . That, however, does not preclude this court from putting upon the ordinances of the supervisors of the county and city of San Francisco an independent construction; for the determination of the question whether the proceedings under these ordinances and in enforcement of them are in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States, necessarily involves the meaning of the ordinances, which, for that purpose, we are required to ascertain and adjudge.

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We are consequently constrained, at the outset, to differ from the Supreme Court of California upon the real meaning of the ordinances in question. That court considered these ordinances as vesting in the board of supervisors a not unusual discretion in granting or withholding their assent to the use of wooden buildings as laundries, to be exercised in reference to the circumstances of each case, with a view to the protection of the public against the dangers of fire. We are not able to concur in that interpretation of the power conferred upon the supervisors. There is nothing in the ordinances which points to such a regulation of the business of keeping and conducting laundries. They seem intended to confer, and actually do confer, not a discretion to be exercised upon a consideration of the circumstances of each case, but a naked and arbitrary power to give or withhold consent, not only as to places, but as to persons. . . . The power given to them is not confided to their discretion in the legal sense of that term, but is granted to their mere will. It is purely arbitrary, and acknowledges neither guidance nor restraint. . . . The rights of the petitioners, as affected by the proceedings of which they complain, are not less, because they are aliens and subjects of the Emperor of China. By the third article of the treaty between this Government and that of China, concluded November 17, 1880, 22 Stat. 827, it is stipulated: “If Chinese laborers, or Chinese of any other class, now either permanently or temporarily residing in the territory of the United States, meet with ill treatment at the hands of any other persons, the Government of the United States will exert all its powers to devise measures for their protection, and to secure to them the same rights, privileges, immunities and exemptions as may be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation, and to which they are entitled by treaty.” The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: “Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” These provisions are universal in their application, to all per307

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sons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws. It is accordingly enacted by § 1977 of the Revised Statutes, that “all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.” The questions we have to consider and decide in these cases, therefore, are to be treated as involving the rights of every citizen of the United States equally with those of the strangers and aliens who now invoke the jurisdiction of the court. [. . .] It appears that both petitioners have complied with every requisite, deemed by the law or by the public officers charged with its administration, necessary for the protection of neighboring property from fire, or as a precaution against injury to the public health. No reason whatever, except the will of the supervisors, is assigned why they should not be permitted to carry on, in the accustomed manner, their harmless and useful occupation, on which they depend for a livelihood. And while this consent of the supervisors is withheld from them and from two hundred others who have also petitioned, all of whom happen to be Chinese subjects, eighty others, not Chinese subjects, are permitted to carry on the same business under similar conditions. The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted, that no reason for it exists except hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong, and which in the eye of the law is not justified. The discrimination is, therefore, illegal, and the public administration which enforces it is a denial of the equal protection of the laws and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The imprisonment of the petitioners is, therefore, illegal, and they must be discharged. . . . 308

When Congress passed the first exclusion law in 1882 it included a provision that allowed Chinese laborers already domiciled in the United States to remain and to travel to and from China. It required them to obtain a certificate issued from the Collector of Customs to facilitate their departure and return. Citing abuse and fraud, Congress passed the Scott Act in 1888 declaring these “return certificates” null and void. Considering the validity of the Scott Act in 1889, the Supreme Court articulated the principle that Congress exercised plenary or absolute authority over immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Case (Chae Chan Ping v. United States) Supreme Court of the United States 130 U.S. 581 (1889) While under our Constitution and form of government the great mass of local matters is controlled by local authorities, the United States, in their relation to foreign countries and their subjects or citizens are one nation, invested with powers which belong to independent nations, the exercise of which can be invoked for the maintenance of its absolute independence and security throughout its entire territory. The powers to declare war, make treaties, suppress insurrection, repel invasion, regulate foreign commerce, secure republican governments to the States, and admit subjects of other nations to citizenship, are all sovereign powers. . . It matters not in what form such aggression and encroachment come, whether from the 309

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foreign nation acting in its national character or from vast hordes of its people crowding in upon us. The government, possessing the powers which are to be exercised for protection and security, is clothed with authority to determine the occasion on which the powers shall be called forth; and its determinations, so far as the subjects affected are concerned, are necessarily conclusive upon all its departments and officers. If, therefore, the government of the United States, through its legislative department, considers the presence of foreigners of a different race in this country, who will not assimilate with us, to be dangerous to its peace and security, their exclusion is not to be stayed because at the time there are no actual hostilities with the nation of which the foreigners are subjects. The existence of war would render the necessity of the proceeding only more obvious and pressing. The same necessity, in a less pressing degree, may arise when war does not exist, and the same authority which adjudges the necessity in one case must also determine it in the other. In both cases its determination is conclusive upon the judiciary. If the government of the country of which the foreigners excluded are subjects is dissatisfied with this action it can make complaint to the executive head of our government, or resort to any other measure which, in its judgment, its interests or dignity may demand; and there lies its only remedy. [. . .] The power of exclusion of foreigners being an incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States, as a part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Constitution, the right to its exercise at any time when, in the judgment of the government, the interests of the country require it, cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of any one. The powers of government are delegated in trust to the United States, and are incapable of transfer to any other parties. They cannot be abandoned or surrendered. Nor can their exercise be hampered, when needed for the public good, by any considerations of private interest. The exercise of these public trusts is not the subject of barter or contract. Whatever license, there-

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fore, Chinese laborers may have obtained, previous to the act of October 1, 1888, to return to the United States after their departure, is held at the will of the government, revocable at any time, at its pleasure. . . . Order affirmed.

311

This landmark ruling settled the question of birthright citizenship, established by the Fourteenth Amendment but contested by some who argued that it did not apply to those born of immigrants that the Chinese exclusion laws had deemed undesirable. United States v. Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court of the United States 169 U.S. 649 (1898) MR. JUSTICE GRAY, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court. . . . The question presented by the record is whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” [. . .] To hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries, would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other

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European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States. [. . .] It is true that Chinese persons born in China cannot be naturalized, like other aliens, by proceedings under the naturalization laws. But this is for want of any statute or treaty authorizing or permitting such naturalization, as will appear by tracing the history of the statutes, treaties and decisions upon that subject—always bearing in mind that statutes enacted by Congress, as well as treaties made by the President and Senate, must yield to the paramount and supreme law of the Constitution. [. . .] The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in the declaration that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law. But citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution. Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory; or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts. The power of naturalization, vested in Congress by the Constitution, is a power to confer citizenship, not a power to take it away. “A naturalized citizen,” said Chief Justice Marshall, “becomes a member of the society, possessing all the rights of a native citizen, and stand-

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ing, in the view of the Constitution, on the footing of a native. The Constitution does not authorize Congress to enlarge or abridge those rights. The simple power of the National Legislature is to prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and the exercise of this power exhausts it, so far as respects the individual.” [. . .] The fact, therefore, that acts of Congress or treaties have not permitted Chinese persons born out of this country to become citizens by naturalization, cannot exclude Chinese persons born in this country from the operation of the broad and clear words of the Constitution, “All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” . . . Order affirmed.

314

Index

Agers, Robert, 73 Ah Goon, 239n Ah King, 143–44, 169 Ah Quin, 11, 238n, 239n Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (Seattle), 144 Allen, Clay, 166 America, 17–18 Ames, Martha, 84, 85 Anfenger, Mrs. Joseph, 247–48n Angel Island, 180–84, 238n, 271n anti-Chinese/anti-coolie movement, 31–33, 36–38, 43, 48, 88, 126. See also racism Argonaut, 126 Armstrong, Lucy, 60 Arracan, 6 arson, 36 Arthur, Chester A., 39 assimilation, 35, 39, 40, 45, 48, 53, 81–82, 90–91, 97 Astor, John Jacob, 5

Atkinson and Dallas, 102 Atoy, 16–17 Babcock, William, 34 baggage handling, 28–29 baggage law, 74 Bank of California, 12 Baptist mission schools, 83, 121 Barrett, John, 101 Bartlett Place (San Francisco), 59, 90 Bee, Frederick A., 50–51 Berkeley, California, 68, 71–73, 85, 122–23, 124–25, 249n Commercial High School (Berkeley), 73, 154 First Presbyterian Church (Berkeley), 73 First Presbyterian Church (San Francisco), 24 Bertillon measurement, 105, 107 Bigler, John, 9 Biglin, Bernard “Barney,” 28–29, 242n

315

Index Bishop Scott Academy (Portland), 121 Bissell, William, 72 Blue Mountains (Tape, M.), 31 Bok Kai (Beiyi) Temple (Marysville), 193 bonding, 150–52, 171–72, 174, 177–78, 198, 221 Bonham, Rafael, 164, 165–67, 184 Borthwick, John, 8–9 Boxer Rebellion, 101 Brickmakers Protective Union, 37 brokering/brokers, ix, 30, 74, 144, 204, 223, 224, 226, 229 Brooks Island (Midway Island), 19 brothels, 16, 18, 19, 21, 58, 59, 86, 90. See also prostitution Brothers, John, 72 bubonic plague, 88 Buck, Pearl S., 212 Budd, A., 99 Buluo, see Pineapple Village Burbank, Agnita, 110 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 245n Burlingame Treaty (1868), 38, 39 Burnham, Daniel, 100 Busy Bee (Marysville), 191, 211 California, 5–6, 9, 26, 49. See also Berkeley, California; Chinese immigrants/ immigration; gold rush, California; Oakland, California; San Francisco, California California Café (Portola), 211 California Camera Club, 64 California College of Pharmacy (San Francisco), 155 California Supreme Court, 54 Cameron, Donaldina, 85, 86–87 Campbell, William Ellsworth (Chung Ling Soo), 255n Camp Ritchie (Maryland), 216 Canada, 136, 142, 145, 163, 165 Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), 136

Canton Bank (San Francisco), 127 Cantonese (dialect), 62, 66, 130 Carl, Francis, 102, 106 Carl, Kate, 102 Castle Garden (New York), 27, 28–29 Chan, Florence, 93, 122. See also Park, Florence Chan, Gertrude. See Tape, Gertrude Ella Chan, Herbert (Chan Bok Hong/Chen Buotang), 154–59, 160, 189, 197–98, 202 Chan Ning Tock Yee (San Francisco), 29 Chem Kual Young (Dong Ah Muey), 110 Cheng Chui-Ping (“Big Sister”/Dajie Ping), 229 Chennault, Claire, 216 Chen Yixi, 4 Chew, Reverend Ng Poon (Wu Panzhao), 123 Chiang Kai-shek, 208, 209, 218, 219 China, 5, 38, 39, 95–97, 98, 101–3, 105, 106, 113–15, 181, 207–10, 212, 218–20, 242n, 255n. See also Ming dynasty, Qing government China, 77, 124 Chinatown (Marysville), 193 Chinatown (Oakland), 71–72 Chinatown (Portland), 146–48 Chinatown (Seattle), 144, 162, 167, 269n Chinatown/Chinese quarter (San Francisco), 19–20, 22, 27, 43, 47, 58, 60–61, 64–65, 68, 74, 78, 155, 159, 203–4 Angel Island and, 183 anti-coolie movement and, 36 bubonic plague and, 92 Chan (Herbert) and, 198 Chinese Primary School and, 54 described, 11–12, 58–59 Lowe (Herman/Lo You Huan) and, 83, 85 Lowe (Mamie) in, 87 Park (Robert Leon) and, 89, 90, 92, 125

316

Index raid of, 179 San Francisco earthquake and, 122–23, 126–28 sanitizing of, 89 Tape family members and, 11–12, 25, 29–30, 40, 55, 59, 73, 74, 77, 82, 85, 190, 197, 201, 226 at turn of century, 87–88 World War II and, 212–13 Chin Bow, 140 Chinese American (Huamei xinbao), 91 Chinese American Citizens Alliance, 213. See also Native Sons of the Golden State (San Francisco) Chinese-American Composite Wing, 216 Chinese consulate (San Francisco), 50–51 Chinese Equal Rights League, 91 Chinese exclusion (1882–1943), ix, 39–40, 43, 48, 52, 54, 59, 75–81, 90, 96, 99, 105, 119–20, 146, 150–51, 176–77, 183–84, 213, 220, 223, 224–25, 255n, 257n Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 75–78, 244n, 250n Chinese Hospital (San Francisco), 155, 200 Chinese immigrants/immigration, ix, 6–7, 15–17, 22, 26–30, 33, 43, 75–78, 80, 120, 275n Bigler and, 9 defenders of, 33–35 first nonimmigrant generation and, 160 Gardner (John) and, 78–79 after 1965, 229–30 number of immigrants, 10, 259–60n opposition to, 38 St. Louis World’s Fair and, 105–8, 110–12 tighter immigration procedures in 1890s, 81 U.S. Congress legislation and, 37–38, 39 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and, 44

See also Angel Island; anti-Chinese/ anti-coolie movement; brokering; Chinatown/Chinese quarter (San Francisco); Chinese exclusion (1882– 1943); Chinese immigration interpreters; coolies; education; racism; smuggling of Chinese immigrants Chinese immigration interpreters, viii, 76, 78–79, 94, 108–9, 111, 115–16, 119–21, 128–49, 204, 224, 264n Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, 101–2, 255n Chinese native cases, 80, 81 Chinese Primary School (San Francisco), 54, 55, 56, 59, 61–62, 66–67, 73, 90 Chinese seamen, 175–78 Chinese Six Companies (Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, Zhongguo huiguan), 44, 51, 74, 76, 92, 99, 127–28, 210, 239n Chinese Students Club (Stanford), 156 Chinese Sunday Schools, 46 Chinese Tea Garden (Corvallis), 227 Chinese Village Company. See Hong Tai Company Chinese Villages (at world’s fairs), 95–115, 127–28, 144, 210–11 Chinese War Relief Association, 210 Chinese World (Shejie ribao), 92 Chin Fook Cheung, 154–55 Ching Kow, 167–68 Ching Ling Foo, 98, 255n Chin Kim, 268n Chin Shing Cheang, 61 Choy Chew, 19 Christianity, 21, 45–48, 159–60, 248n. See also missionaries, mission churches, mission homes Chung Sai Yat Po (Zhongxi ribao), 123, 181 Chy Lung, 7 civil rights, 53, 91, 92, 228 Civil Rights Act (1965), 228

317

Index Cixi, see Dowager Empress Cleveland, Charles, 51, 52 Cliff House (Tape, M.), 31 Colorado, 18–19 Columbia, 77 Commercial High School (San Francisco), 66–67 Communists (Chinese), 220 Condit, Reverend Ira, 24, 33, 46, 79, 91–92, 93, 241n, 250n coolies, 17, 18, 132, 164, 177, 192, 237n, 243n. See also anti-Chinese/anticoolie movement Coptic, 116 Cosmopolitan Club (Stanford), 156 Cotton States and International Exposition (Atlanta), 95, 97 Cow Hollow (San Francisco), 25 Crocker, Charles, 9 Cuba, 5, 151, 171 customs house (San Francisco), 78, 123, 151 Daily Alta California, 5, 55, 57, 246n Daily Morning Call, 48, 67, 88, 92–93, 119 Danielwitz, Isidor, 51 da Silva, Hipolite Eca, 81, 109, 110, 115 De Bruler, Ellis, 161 Denman, James, 47, 48–49 Densmore, John, 174–75, 179–80, 182, 183 Depression, Great, 203–5 detention shed (San Francisco), 79–80, 181 diabetes, 66 Dillingham Commission, see U.S. Immigration Commission Dillingham, William, 140 Dong Ah Muey, 112 Dong Moy, 109 Dowager Empress (Cixi), 101, 102 Dowling, Bridget, 60

Downey, Antonio, 140 Dunn, James, 107–8, 110–12, 115, 131, 132, 134, 170 Dyer, Leonidas, 130, 133 Eastman, George, 63 Economic Cooperation Authority (ECA), 218, 276n education, 43–49, 50–57, 62–63, 68, 73, 83–84, 155–56, 193, 194, 245n. See also Chinese Primary School; Hurley, Jennie; Tape v. Hurley (1885) Endicott, John, 76 Eng Chung, 130 Eng Dan, “China Dan,” 168, 169–70, 269n Episcopal Church, 46 Eveleth, Florence, 43, 44, 57, 160 Eveleth, Sarah, 26, 43 Ferris, George, 97 First Baptist Church (Oakland), 85 Fish Alley (San Francisco), 59, 84 Flack, Horace, 113 Flying Tigers (feihu), 216 Folsom, Reverend A., 18–19 Fong, Young L., 106 Fontecilla, Florence Eveleth. See Eveleth, Florence Fook, Frank, 90 Fort Des Moines, 215 Fourteenth Air Service Group, 216 fushi. See Skipping Stone Village Gardner, John Endicott, Jr., 76, 77–79, 81, 83, 120, 128–30, 138, 250–51n Gardner, John Endicott, Sr., 250n Gardner, William E., 265n Gawk Gah (Guojia, Republic) drugstore, 155, 157–58 Geary Act (1892), 91, 254n geishas, 112

318

Index Genthe, Arnold, 64, 65 Gerald, William, 140 Ge Thang, 72, 125 Gibson, Reverend Otis, 21, 35, 36, 51, 60, 61 Gibson, William, 51–52 Goddard, E. B., 46 Goldbaum, Frederico, 140 Golden Gate International Exposition (San Francisco), 210–11 Golden Venture, 229 gold rush, California, 5, 6, 7–9, 10 Gon, Louis, 247n Good Earth, The (Buck), 212 Gospel Temple (Foke Yam Tong), 61 Graham, David, 173, 179 Greenhalge, Oscar, 263n Guangdong Province, 3–4 guilds, 32–33 Guomintang, 208, 220 Harding, Miss, 112 Hardy, Hugo, 112 Hart, Sir Robert, 101–2, 255n Hartford, G. B., 99 Hartwell, Reverend J. B., 85 Havens, Elizabeth Shattuck, 72 Hayes, Rutherford B., 38 Heald College (San Francisco), 194 Higgins, C. C., 90–91 Hip Sing Tong, 167 Hobart, Reverend Charles, 85 Ho Kee, 7 Hong Sling, 97–99 Hong Tai Company, 95, 98–100, 103, 104, 109–110, 111 Hop Wo (Hehe) huiguan, 239n Hotel St. Mark (Oakland), 157 huiguan, 12, 19, 25, 28, 30, 44, 146, 181, 239n Hunter, Anna Rosa. See Vrooman, Anna

Hunter, William, 250n Hunting (Tape, M.), 60 Hurley, Jennie, 44, 45, 49–50, 54–55, 82, 228 immigrants/immigration. See Chinese immigrants/immigration Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 228 interpreter class, 122 interpreters. See Chinese immigration interpreters Jackson, John P., 80 Jamaica, 61, 141 Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), 53 Japan/Japanese, 96, 112–13, 208–10, 211–13, 216–20 Jee Gam, 56 Jefferson Guard, 111 Jenks, Jeremiah, 140 Jesuits, 36–37, 244n Joe Kim Wing (Zhou Zhanyong). See Kim Wing Johnson, Samuel, 175 Jue Hong Yee, 130 jury duty, 198 Kaiser, 213–14 Kearney, Denis, 36 Kee, Charlie, 263n Kennah, Henry, 183 Kim, Edna, 192–93, 217, 218, 219–20, 226 Kim, Edwin, 216 Kim, Jack, 197, 202, 216, 226 Kim, Joe, 194, 201 Kim, Ruby, x, 190–97, 199–202, 216–21, 225–28, 263n, 272n, 276n Kim, Thomas, 213

319

Index Kim Wing (Joe Kim Wing), 190–91, 192, 193, 201 Knox Presbyterian Church (Berkeley), 73 Kulken, Captain, 6 Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society (San Francisco), 14–15, 20–21, 24, 30 La Follette Seamen’s Act, 269n Lai, Seun Kai (Li Qixuan), 198, 205, 212–13 Lanctot, Benjamin, 47 Lau Shee, 83, 252n LeConte School (Berkeley), 73 Lee, Carolyn, 227 Lee, Daisy, 158, 159 Lee, Embert, 183 Lee, Tom, 99, 100 Lee, Wah S., 156, 158, 159 Lee, William S., 121 Lee On Chung, 111 Lee Tong Hay, 56 Lee Toy, 99, 100, 106–7, 109, 110, 115 Leon Tin, 90 Lew Hing, 127 Liang Qichao, 132 Life, 212 Litton, Reverend John, 66 Lo Kwai (Lü Guai), 83 Look Tin Eli, 127 Loomis, Reverend Augustus, 19–20, 24, 61, 93, 241n Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall (San Francisco), 10 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. See St. Louis World’s Fair Lowe, Emily Gertrude, x, 88–89, 104, 147–48, 190, 203, 227 Lowe, Harold, 85, 104, 147–48, 189–90, 203, 204, 206, 252–53n Lowe, Herman (Lo You Huen/Lü Yaoxuan), 83–86, 88–89, 94, 95, 100, 104, 119–23, 125, 128, 145–49, 159, 185, 189, 202–3, 204, 209, 220, 247n, 252n

Lowe, Mamie. See Tape, Mamie Hunter Lowell High School (San Francisco), 90 Lowe Tung, 140 Luce, Henry, 212 Lum, Kenneth, 203, 204 Lum, Kenneth, Jr., 227 Lum Kong, 167, 168–69 Lum Ling, 130 Lung, Tom, 98, 100 MacArthur, Douglas, 217 Magdalen Asylum (San Francisco), 19, 20 Maguire, James, 53 Maguire Act (1895), 269n Maine, Guy, 46 Manchu, see Qing government Manchuria, 192 Mar Look, 140 Marriot, Mabel, 61–62, 247n Marysville, California, 190–91, 193–94, 209–10, 212 McFarland, Presley, 182 McGladery, Mary. See Tape, Mary (née McGladery) McGladery, Miss Mary (of Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society), 20, 24, 226 McKinley, William, 101 Mechanics’ Institute (San Francisco), 31 Merchants Exchange (San Francisco), 34 Methodist/Methodist-Episcopal mission homes/churches, 21, 36, 60–61, 73, 125, 194, 195, 261n Mexican-American War, 71 Mexico, 135–37, 139–41, 142, 151, 165, 171 Middleton, Charles, 60 Mills, D. O., 12 miners/mining, 7, 9, 238n. See also gold rush, California missionaries, 20–21, 35–36, 39, 45–48, 51, 73, 76, 79, 84, 138, 159–60, 223, 248n. See also Christianity; Methodist/ Methodist Episcopal mission church/

320

Index Oregon Agricultural College (Oregon State University), 189, 227, 228 Overland Monthly, 126 Ozawa, Takao, 53

homes; Presbyterian churches/ missions mission churches, 60, 84–86, 90, 94, 121, 122, 125, 160, 194–95, 200, 210, 251n, 261n mission homes, 36, 60–61, 77, 85–86, 93, 109, 125 mission schools, 46, 49, 83, 121, 155 Miwok Indians, 50, 245n Morgan, Julia, 261n Morrow Guard, 54 Moulder, Andrew Jackson, 50, 55 Moy family, 138–39, 263n Moy Gop Jung, 136–37 mui tsai, 15–16, 18, 19, 40, 109 Soohoo, Reverend Nam Art, 60, 247n National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 53 Native Sons of the Golden West, 90–91, 92 Nelson, George, 269n Newcomb, A. E., 147 New York, 27–29, 46 Ng Goon, 90 Ng On, 134 Ning Yeung (Ningyang) huiguan, 12, 239n Nippon Yusen Kaisha, 218 Niu Shee, 90 Norman, Hartvig, 168 North, Hart Hyatt, 109, 123–24, 238n North American Review, 106 Oakland, California, 71, 85, 89, 124–25, 155, 156, 159, 202 Oakland Tribune, 157 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 87–88 On Leong Tong, 99, 100 opium, 6, 27, 83, 91, 98, 99, 121, 193–94 Opium Wars, 3, 38, 101

Pacific Coast Photographer, 64 Pacific Mail Steamship Company, 17, 26–27, 29, 30, 36, 67, 74, 77, 79–80, 81, 98, 100, 124, 125, 150, 151, 181, 189, 199 Page Act (1875), 39 Page, Martha, 155, 157, 160 pagodas, 261n Panama-Pacific International Exposition (San Francisco), 195 “paper-son” immigration, 80 Park, Bernice, 158, 271n Park, Edward (Liang Jin), 93, 121, 122, 158, 182, 184–85, 271n Park, Emily Tape. See Tape, Emily Park, Florence, 154, 158, 271n. See also Chan, Florence Park, Frank, 93, 121, 154, 202, 206, 216, 272n, 273n, 274n Park, Robert Leon (Leon Quai Park/Liang Guibo), 89–90, 92–94, 121–22, 122–23, 125–26, 154, 157, 159, 189, 197, 202, 253n, 271n, 272n Park, Winifred, 158, 271n Parrott & Company, 34 Peralta family, 71 Peralta Volunteer Fire Company, 72, 82 pharmacy education, 155–56 Philibert, Edmund, 104 Philippines, 79, 100–101 photography, 62, 63–65, 82 “pigtail” ordinance, 44 Pineapple (buluo) Village (Kaiping), 190, 192, 217 Place, Victor, 168 Plessy v. Ferguson, 53 Portland, Oregon, 145–48, 202–3

321

Index Powderly, Terence, 120 Presbyterian churches/missions, 19–20, 24, 33, 47, 60, 73, 79, 90, 91, 109, 241n, 250n, 251n Preston, John, 178, 179, 180 Price, George, 269n prostitution, 16–17, 19, 20, 21, 86, 99, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 131, 132, 138, 177, 191, 193. See also brothels, rescuing Pu Lun, Prince, 101, 102, 103, 114–15 Qing government, 44, 50, 96, 101, 132, 262n Qing Ming festival, 30 Quan Foy (Guan Kui), 142–43, 168–69, 185 queues, 44, 52, 56, 90 racism, 7–9, 39–40, 46, 48, 50, 67, 78, 148, 160. See also anti-Chinese/coolie movement, segregation Reconstruction, 38 Republican Party, 38 rescuing, 20–21, 86–87 Richards, “Doc,” 91 Riley, Robert, 183 Rising Sun Parlor No. 1, 90–91 Roberts, George, 34 Roosevelt, Theodore, 114, 137, 138 Rusling, James, 34 Sam Yup Association (Sanyi huiguan), 92, 125, 239n Sanford, Francisco, 140 San Francisco, California, 6, 9–10, 14–15, 26–29, 32, 36, 44–49, 87, 104–7, 110, 115, 119, 122–28, 152, 155, 241n, 245n. See also Chinatown/Chinese quarter (San Francisco); Chinese immigrants/immigration; Daily Alta California; education; Mechanics’ Institute (San Francisco)

San Francisco Board of Education, 44, 49, 51, 54–55, 66–67 San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 48, 88 San Francisco Call Bulletin, 201 San Francisco Chronicle, 119, 198–99 San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 51, 56, 76 Sanyi, 92, 125, 198. See also Sam Yup Association (Sanyi huiguan) Sargent, Frank, 107, 109–10, 128–29 Sawyer, John B., 134, 146 Schmitz, Eugene, 126 schools. See education Scott Act (1888), 250n Scribner’s, 29 Seattle, Washington, 4, 98, 126, 141–46, 148, 161–71, 173, 174, 175, 184, 190 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 170 segregation, 45, 48, 49, 53, 67, 68, 73 Seid Gain (Xue Jing), 121, 129–30, 133–34, 143, 185 Sentinel Rock (Yosemite) (Tape, M.), 31 servants, 10–11, 12, 82, 84 Shay family, 85 shetou (snakeheads), 229 “Shipping Intelligence,” 5 Silva, Hipolite Eca da. See da Silva, Hipolite Eca Sing Mi, 20–21 Sing Yu, 111 Sino-Japanese War (1937), 209 Siyi (Sze Yup), 3–4, 12, 190 Skipping Stone (fushi) Village (Xinning), 1, 228 smuggling of Chinese immigrants, 135–46, 163–65, 177, 183, 229, 263n, 269n Sneath, Richard, 34 Southern Pacific Railroad, 29, 31, 72, 74, 93, 94, 124, 125, 150, 197, 198, 199, 254n Spanish-American War, 79

322

Index Speer, Reverend William, 35, 45–46, 47 Spring Valley Primary School (San Francisco), 44, 50, 54–55 Stanford, Leland, 12 Stanford University, 140, 156, 158, 159 steam travel, 18–19 steerage, 18 Sterling, Anna, 10, 11, 24 Sterling, Matthew, 10–11, 12, 25, 26, 37, 50, 239n, 244n St. Ignatius Church and College (San Francisco), 37, 244n St. Louis Republic, 107 St. Louis World’s Fair, 94, 95, 98, 100–115, 127, 131, 177 Straus, Gaston, 98 substitution, 107, 177 Suey Sing Tong, 191, 201 Sullivan, Peter, 145 Sun, Esther, 203, 206 Sun, Maxine, 206, 274n Sunset magazine, 31 Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), 217, 218 Sutang “Anton” Wang, 112 Sutherland, Lena, 145, 149, 161–62, 164, 167, 170, 171, 196, 202 Sze Yup Association (Siyi huiguan), 239n Taber, Isaiah, 62, 63 Taft, William Howard, 114 Tait, George, 47 Tam Hing, 56 Tang dynasty, 12 Tangren Jie, 12 Tape, Emily, viii, 26, 57, 61, 68, 73, 82, 89, 92–94, 121–22, 148, 153, 154, 157, 197, 202, 204, 205, 227, 266n, 272n, 273n Tape, Frank Harvey, 26, 36, 57, 61, 74–75, 94, 145, 149, 161, 184, 185, 189, 190, 198, 205, 207, 213–15, 263–64n, 271n, 274n, 276n

background of, viii–ix Chinese immigrant smuggling and work of, 138–45 after death of parents, 206 death of, 221 dress of, 62 education of, 43, 56–57, 62–63, 68, 84 at Golden Gate International Exposition, 210–11 Hong Tai Company and, 100 as immigration interpreter, 94, 108–9, 111, 115–16, 120–21, 128–45, 149, 264n investigation and firing of, 161–67 jury duty of, 198 Kee (Charlie) and, 263n Kim (Ruby) and, 195 learning Cantonese/Chinese, 66, 199 marriages/married life of, 145, 149, 161–62, 164, 167, 171, 190, 195–97, 201–2, 272n move to Berkeley and, 73–74 newspaper articles on, 198–99, 201 pattern in career of, 170–71 Peralta Volunteer Fire Company and, 72, 82 St. Louis World’s Fair and, 94, 95, 104, 108–9, 111 trial of, 167–72 at turn of century, 82 Tape, Gertrude Ella, 57, 61–62, 153, 154, 157–59, 160, 202, 204, 205, 226–27, 247n, 266n, 274n, 275n, 276n after death of parents, 206 death of, 220 education of, 68, 73, 154 marriage of, 154, 156–58 Parks (Robert and Emily) and, 93 photographs of, 65, 82 Tape (Ruby) and, 196 Tape’s (Mary) travels and, 148 at turn of century, 82 World War II and, 207, 210–11, 213–15

323

Index Tape, Joseph (Jeu Dip/Zhao Xia), 10–12, 17, 30–31, 40, 43–44, 49, 50–51, 54, 81–82, 85, 122, 139, 153, 159, 160, 171, 197–98, 204–5, 208, 250n, 265n Angel Island and, 182 background of, viii–ix, 3–6, 10–13, 22–23 birth of children of, 25, 26, 36, 57 businesses of, 25, 26–30, 33, 40, 72–75, 77, 79, 81, 150–52, 158, 171–72, 185, 198, 204, 211 courtship/marriage of, 21–22, 24–26, 241n death of, 205 family name/dates of birth and immigration, 236–37n homes of, 57, 58, 59–60, 66, 68, 72–73, 152–53, 157, 274n Hong Tai Company and, 100 implication in scandal, 173–80 joining Peralta Volunteer Fire Company, 72 Kim (Ruby) and, 190 Leon Tin and, 90 Lowe, Herman (Lo You Huen) and, 84 on marriage of daughter Emily, 94 name change for, 24 Park (Robert Leon) and, 89, 93 purchase of house for Lowes (Herman and Mamie), 89 relationship with daughter Mamie, 85, 94 San Francisco earthquake and, 122–23, 125 segregation and, 67–68 St. Louis World’s Fair and, 94, 104, 108 Tape (Ruby) and, 195, 196 travel and, 31, 148 wedding of daughter, Emily, 93 Tape, Mamie Hunter, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88– 89, 122, 204, 205, 209, 220, 225–26, 227–28, 247–48n

background of, viii–ix birth of, 25 birth of children of, 85, 88–89 Chinese name of, 25 dress of, 62, 246n early married life of, 85–86 education of, 43–44, 45, 49, 51–57, 62–63, 68 health of, 248n interviews with, x learning Cantonese, 66 Lowe’s (Herman) work as immigration interpreter (in Portland, Oregon) and, 145–49 marriage/married life of, 85, 87, 202–3, 252–53n meets Lowe (Herman/Lo You Huen), 84 homes of, 61, 73, 85, 89, 122, 147, 227, 274n, 276n relationship with parents, 94 San Francisco earthquake and, 125 St. Louis World’s Fair and, 94, 95, 104 Tape, Mary (née McGladery), 15, 16–21, 24–26, 40, 43–44, 55–56, 60, 65, 67–68, 73, 85, 86, 94, 122, 153, 160, 204–5, 208, 250n assimilation of, 81–82 background of, ix, 240n birth of children of, 25, 26, 57 death of, 205 grandchildren and, 85, 89 health of, 66, 154, 248n Kim (Ruby) and, 190, 196 at Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society, 240–41n life of, in San Francisco, 30–31 marriage of, 241n homes of, 57, 58, 61, 68, 72–73, 152–53, 157 paintings of, 30, 31, 63, 226, 227, 243n, 266n

324

Index photography of, x, 63–65, 82, 227 relationship with daughter Mamie, 85, 94 San Francisco earthquake and, 122–23, 125 Tape (Ruby) and, 196 travels of, 31, 148–49 wedding of daughter Emily, 93 Tape, Ruby Kim. See Kim, Ruby Tape v. Hurley (1885), viii, 51–54, 241n Taylor, Richard H., 133, 134, 135, 137–44, 163–65, 170, 171, 174, 177–78, 179, 263–64n, 267n Tea, Porcelain, and Silk Syndicate, 106 Thayer, Rose, 54, 56 Thind, Bhagat Singh, 53 Thornley, William H., 151, 180, 265n Three Years in California (Borthwick), 8–9 Tidewater Reclamation Company, 34 Time, 212 Toa Yuen (Corvallis), 227 Tong Gin, 56 Toyo Kisen Kaisha Steamship Company, 151, 199 Toy Shee, 97 transcontinental railroad, 6, 10, 31–32, 37 Trans-Mississippi Exposition (Omaha, 95, 98, 99, 103, 105, 255n Treaties of Tianjin (1858), 38, 39 Tung Wah (Donghua) Dispensary, 155 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 276n University of California (Berkeley), 71, 90, 155, 156, 157, 226 University of Oregon, 121, 203 U.S. Bureau of Customs, 75, 78, 80, 81. See also customs house (San Francisco) U.S. Bureau of Immigration, 105, 106, 115– 16, 119–20, 121, 123–24, 125, 128, 130– 31, 135, 136–38, 174, 204, 257n, 263n. See also smuggling of Chinese immi-

grants; U.S. Immigration Service U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 164–66 U.S. Congress, 37–38, 39, 43, 119–20, 213, 228, 250n, 254n U.S. Constitution, 51, 52, 53, 176 U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, 120, 137, 138, 141 U.S. Department of Labor, 174, 180, 182 U.S. Immigration Commission, 140 U.S. Immigration Service, 252n. See also U.S. Bureau of Immigration U.S. Secret Service, 133–34, 137–38, 141 U.S. State Department, 106, 218, 220 U.S. Supreme Court, 44–45, 53, 176, 250n, 254n U.S. Treasury Department, 75–78, 138 U.S. v. Fong Yue Ting, 254n Uyeki, T., 112 violence, 33, 36, 40 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 228 Vrooman, Anna, 83–84, 250n Vrooman, Reverend Daniel, 76 Wah Mee (Hua Mei) Company (Chicago), 97, 255n Wallace, T. W. G., 128 Walsh, Frank P., 164–66 Wang, Sutang “Anton,” 112 Wells, Fargo & Co., 29 Western Canning Company (Emeryville), 159 White, Henry, 161–62, 163–64, 166–67 White Act (1898), 269n Wilkie, John, 138 Wilson, William, 174, 180 Wing Sing Lung/Yokohama Company, 154 Wo Jen, 169 Women’s Army Corps (WAC), 215

325

Index Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast, 21 Women’s Occidental Board of Foreign Missions, 85–86 Women’s Union Mission of San Francisco to Chinese Women and Children, 20–21 Wong Chin Foo (Huang Qingfu), 91, 96 Wong Hai Company (San Francisco), 29–30 Wong Hong Tai, 63–64 Wong Kai Kah (Huang Kaijia), 102, 106, 114 Wong Won, 130 Woo Liu, 60 Woo Que (Hu Jiao), 191, 192–94, 196, 208 Woo Way Kay, 140 Workingmen’s Party, 36, 37 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago), 95, 96, 97–98, 103, 127 world’s fairs, 95–97, 255n, 256n, 261n. See also names of individual fairs World Wars, 189–90, 206–17

Wo See Jock, 169 Wu Teen Fook (Wu Tianfu), 86–87, 123 xinhai style of dress, 158 Xinning (Sunning, Taishan/Toishan), 3–4, 155 Yan Wo (Renhe) huiguan, 239n Yee, Chong, 85 Yee, Martha, 85 Yee Ging Company, 99 Yeong Wo (Yanghe) huiguan, 239n Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), 44–45 Yip Kon, 111 YMCA (San Francisco), 60, 210, 261n Yong Kay, 136–37 Yu, Alice Fong, 210 Zhao Xia. See Tape, Joseph (Jeu Dip/ Zhao Xia) Zhonghua Huiguan (Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association), 239n. See also Chinese Six Companies zishu nu, 17

326

⇓ The Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society home for abandoned children (c. 1860), where Mary Tape was the only Chinese child resident. Photograph by Lawrence & Houseworth. (Society of California Pioneers)

⇑ Mary McGladery, assistant matron, Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society, who raised Mary Tape, 1869–1875. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Reverend Augustus W. Loomis, Presbyterian Chinese mission, San Francisco, in the 1860s and 1870s. (reprinted from Ira Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him, 1900)

⇓ Pacific Mail Steamship Company wharf, San Francisco, c. 1875. (San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)

⇒ Dupont and Sacramento streets, heart of the Chinese quarter, San Francisco, 1895. Joseph Tape’s express office is in the second building on the left, with the horse and wagon in front. (Bancroft Library, 1905.17500v29:56-Alb)

⇐ Chinese garden farm near the Tapes’ home in the Cow Hollow, San Francisco, c. 1885. (California Historical Society, fn12616/ chs2009.110.tif)

⇐ Joseph Tape with his hunting rifle and bird dogs, San Francisco, c. 1880. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ The Tape family, 1884. Left to right: Joseph, Emily, Mamie, Frank, Mary. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Chinese Primary School students, c. 1890. Mamie is in the center of the second row, and Frank is to her right. Photograph by Isaiah Taber. (Bancroft Library, 1905.17500v29:119-Alb)

In the early 1890s, the Tape children’s playmates were either African American or white, rarely Chinese. Photographs by Mary Tape. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Gertrude (right) with Mabel Marriot.

⇐ Little Gertrude with Mamie (back to camera) and an unidentified friend.

⇑ Gertrude Tape (left) and an unidentified girl on Clay Avenue, behind the Chinese Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, 1894.

⇒ Frank Tape as a “modern señorita,” Berkeley, c. 1895. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Sisters Mamie (left), Emily (right), and Gertrude, Berkeley, c. 1895. (Jack Kim collection) ⇓ The Tape home at 2123 Russell Street, Berkeley, c. 1895. Photograph by Mary Tape.

⇐ Tape summer home, Camp Meeker, near the Russian River in Sonoma County, c. 1905. Joseph (in rocker), Gertrude (reading), Robert Park (on rail), Emily Park and son Frank. Photograph by Mary Tape. (Jack Kim collection)

⇒ Emily Tape and her husband, Robert Park, court interpreter and civil rights leader, Berkeley, early 1910s. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Frank at his father’s office at the Pacific Mail Steamship Company wharf, late 1890s. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ John Endicott Gardner Jr., Chinese interpreter and inspector, San Francisco. (courtesy of Susan Briggs)

⇓ The Chinese Village on the midway, St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904, which employed Frank Tape and Mamie Tape’s husband, Herman Lowe. (Special Collections, St. Louis Public Library)

⇐ Children of Chinese American merchants in the Chinese Village, costumed to appear as though they were from China. Mamie’s children: Harold, front row, right; Emily, front row, third from right. (Special Collections, St. Louis Public Library)

⇑ San Francisco burning after the earthquake of 1906, as seen from Berkeley’s Southern Pacific freight yard, one block from the Tapes’ home. (Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association)

⇑ “On the Ruins,” Chinatown, April 1906. Photograph by Arnold Genthe. (California Historical Society, fn-01859/chs2009.109.tif)

⇐ Herman Lowe with daughter, Emily, Portland, c. 1912. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Seid Gain, Chinese interpreter at large, U.S. Bureau of Immigration, c. 1905–1909, and member of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, Portland, 1920s. (Oregon Historical Society)

⇐ Portland immigration staff. Interpreter Herman Lowe is in the third row, far left. (Bancroft Library, banc pic 2007020-ax)

⇒ Posing for a tourist postcard, Mamie (right) with children, Emily and Harold, and sister Emily, Portland, c. 1912. (courtesy of Linda Doler)

⇐ Gertrude and her husband, Herbert Chan, Sunol, California, c. 1913. (Jack Kim collection)

⇓ The Tape ranch at the Haywards, c. 1915. Left to right: Florence Park, Daisy Lee, Bernice Park, Mary Tape, Frank Park, Winifred Park, Gertrude Chan, Joseph Tape. (Jack Kim collection)

⇓ Modern Chinese Americans. From left, Herbert and Gertrude Chan, Daisy and W. S. Lee, c. 1915. (Jack Kim collection)

⇒ Mother and daughter, Mary Tape and Emily Park, c. 1915, Berkeley. (Jack Kim collection)

⇐ Gertrude (left) with Florence and Winifred Park, c. 1915, the Haywards. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Gertrude (second from left) with Florence Park and daughters, Pacific Grove, California, c. 1915. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Family outing to Cypress Point, near Monterey, California, c. 1915. Left to right: Florence, Edward, and Winifred Park; Gertrude Chan; Bernice Park; Mary and Joseph Tape; Daisy Lee; Emily and Frank Park. (Jack Kim collection)

⇐ Frank Tape in his Kissel, Seattle, c. 1911. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Immigration station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, c. 1915. Photograph by J. D. Givens. (Library of Congress)

⇒ Frank Tape married Ruby Kim in 1921. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ After a day of hunting in the country, Frank and Ruby with Joseph and Mary, 1925. (Jack Kim collection)

Frank and Ruby both hunted game at the family’s lodge near Ukiah, California, 1920s. (Jack Kim collection)

⇓ Ruby and her mother, Woo Que, Marysville, 1931. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ Ruby Tape, 1922. (Jack Kim collection)

⇒ Gertrude, Frank, and Ruby at the 1939 World’s Fair, Treasure Island, San Francisco. (Jack Kim collection)

⇑ “Rice bowl party” supporting China’s resistance to Japanese aggression, San Francisco, 1940. Photograph by Harry Jew. (Chinese Historical Society of America)

⇒ Technical Sergeant Ruby Tape of the Women’s Army Corps, World War II. (Jack Kim collection)