Chinese in the United States / Development of Societies

Until the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 Chinese living abroad were forced to wear a queue, as an expression of their loyalty to the Manchu Qing emperor. Photo in San Francisco Chinatown from 1910.[20]

The Chinese emigrants booked their passages on ships with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (founded 1848) and the Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company (founded 1874). The money needed to fund their journey was mostly borrowed from relatives, district associations or from commercial lenders. Also, American employers of Chinese laborers also sent hiring agencies to China to pay for the Pacific voyage of those who were unable to borrow money. This "credit-ticket system" meant that the money advanced by the agencies to cover the cost of the passage was to be paid back by wages earned by the laborers later during their time in the U.S. The credit-ticket system had long been used by indentured migrants from South China who left to work in what Chinese called Nanyang (South Seas), the region to the south of China that included the Philippines, the former Dutch East Indies, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo, Thailand, Indochina, and Burma. The Chinese who left for Australia also used the credit-ticket system.[21]

The entry of the Chinese into the U.S. was, to begin with, legal and uncomplicated and even had a formal judicial basis in 1868 with the signing of the Burlingame Treaty between the United States and China. But there were differences compared with the policy for European immigrants, in that if the Chinese migrants had children that were born in the USA, those children would automatically acquire American citizenship, but the immigrants themselves would remain as foreigners indefinitely. Unlike that with European immigrants the possibility of naturalization was withheld from them.[22]

Although the newcomers arrived in America after an already established small community of their fellow compatriots, they experienced many culture shocks in what to them was a strange country. The Chinese immigrants neither spoke and understood English nor were familiar with western culture and life; they often came from the rural lands in China and therefore had difficulty in adjusting to and finding their way around big towns like San Francisco. The racism which they had met from the European Americans from the outset of their arrival increased continuously to the turn of the century and prevented with lasting effect their assimilation into mainstream American society; this in turn led to the creation, cohesion and cooperation of many Chinese benevolent associations and societies whose existence in the U.S. remained far into the 20th century as a necessity both for support and survival for the Chinese in America. There were also many other reasons that laid within the Chinese themselves that had obstructed and hindered their assimilation, notably their appearance. Under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, Han Chinese men were forced under the threat of beheading to follow the Manchu custom of dressing including shaving the front of their heads and combing the remaining hair into a queue. Historically, to the Manchus, the policy was both an act of submission and, in practical terms, an identification aid of friend from foe. Because Chinnese immigrants returned as often as they could to China to see their family, they could not when in America cut off their often hated braids and then legally enter China again.[23

The first Chinese immigrants usually remained faithful to traditional Chinese beliefs, which were either Confucianism, ancestral worship, Buddhism or Daoism, while some others adhered to any of the various ecclesiastical religious doctrines. The number of the Chinese migrants who converted to Christianity remained at first low. They were mainly Protestants who had already been converted in China where foreign Christian missionaries (who had first come en mass in the 19th century) had strived for centuries to wholly Christianize the nation with relatively minor success. Christian missionaries had also worked in the Chinese communities and settlements in America, but nevertheless their religious message found few who were receptive. It was estimated that during the first wave until the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, less than 20 percent of Chinese immigrants had accepted Christian teachings. Their difficulty in being integrated was also exemplified by the end of the first wave in the mid-20th century when only a minority of Chinese living in the U.S. could speak English.[25]

Of the first wave of Chinese who came to America, few were women. In 1850, the Chinese community of San Francisco consisted of 4018 men and only 7 women. In 1855, women made up only two percent of the Chinese population in the U.S., and even in 1890 it had increased to only 4.8 percent. The lack of visibility of Chinese women in the general public was due partially to factors such as the cost of making the voyage when there was a lack of work opportunities for Chinese women in America, harsh working conditions and having the traditional female responsibility of looking after the children and extended family back in China. The only women who did go to America were usually the wives of merchants. Other factors were cultural in nature, such as having bound feet and not leaving the home. Another important consideration was that most Chinese men were worried that by bringing their wives and raising families in America they too would have been subjected to the same racial violence and discrimination which they themselves had faced. With the heavily uneven gender ratio, prostitution grew rapidly and the Chinese sex trade and trafficking became a lucrative business. From the documents of the 1870 U.S. Census, 61 percent of 3536 Chinese women in California had been classified as prostitutes as an occupation. The existence of Chinese prostitution was detected early, after which the police, legislature and popular press singled out Chinese prostitutes for criticism and were seen as further evidence of the depravity of the Chinese and the repression of their women by their patriarchal cultural values.[26]

Laws passed by the California state legislature in 1866 that sought to curb the brothels and missionary activity by the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches helped reduce the number of Chinese prostitutes and in the 1880 U.S. Census documents only 24 percent of 3171 Chinese women in California were classified as prostitutes. Many of these women married Chinese Christians and formed some of the earliest Chinese-American families in mainland America. Nevertheless, American legislation used the prostitution issue to make the immigration of Chinese women far more difficult. On March 3, 1875, in Washington, D.C., the United States Congress enacted the Page Act that forbade all Oriental women who were considered "obnoxious" by representatives of U.S. consulates at their origins of departure. In effect, this lead to American officials to class many women as prostitutes, who actually were not, which greatly reduced the opportunities for all Oriental women to enter the United States.[26]

Formation of Chinese American associations

Societies in pre-1911 revolutionary China were distinctively collectivist – they were composed of close networks of extended families, unions, clan associations and guilds, where people had a duty to protect and help one another. Soon after the first Chinese had settled in San Francisco respectable Chinese merchants – the most prominent members of the Chinese community of the time – made the first assiduous effort to form social and welfare organizations (Chinese: "Kongsi") in order to help immigrants to locate others from their native towns, socialize, receive monetary aid and raise voices in community affairs.[28] At first, these organizations only provided interpretation, lodgings and job finding services for newcomers. In 1849, the first Chinese merchants’ association was formed, but it did not last long. In less than a few years it petered out as its role was gradually replaced by a network of Chinese district and clan associations when more immigrants came in greater numbers.[28] Eventually some of the more prominent district associations merged to become the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (more commonly known as the "Chinese Six Companies" because of the original six founding associations).[29] It quickly became the most powerful and politically vocal organization to represent the Chinese not only in San Francisco but for the whole of California. In other large cities and regions in America similar associations were formed.[28]

The Chinese associations mediated disputes and soon began participating in the hospitality industry, lending, health, and education and funeral services. The last being especially significant for the Chinese community because many of the immigrants for religious reasons laid value to burial or cremation (including the scattering of ashes) in China. In the 1880s many of the city and regional associations united to form a national Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), an umbrella organization, which defended the political rights and legal interests of the Chinese American community, particularly during times of anti-Chinese repression. By resisting overt discrimination enacted against them, the local chapters of the national CCBA helped to bring a number of cases to the courts from the municipal level to the Supreme Court to fight discriminatory legislation and treatment. The associations also took their cases to the press and worked with governmental institutions and the Chinese diplomatic missions to protect their rights. In the San Francisco Chinatown, birth site of the CCBA, formed in 1882, the CCBA had effectively assumed the function of an unofficial local governing body, which even used privately-hired police or guards for protection of inhabitants at the height of the anti-Chinese excesses.[30]
Officers of the Six Companies in San Francisco.[31]

Following a law enacted in New York, in 1933, in an attempt to evict Chinese from the laundry business, the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance was founded, rivalizing, on the left, to the CCBA.

A minority of the Chinese immigrants did not join the CCBA as they were outcasts or lacked the clan or family ties to join more prestigious Chinese surname associations, business guilds, or legitimate enterprises. As a result, they organized themselves into their own secret societies - called Tongs - for mutual support and protection of their members. These first tongs modeled themselves upon the triads, underground organizations dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, and adopted their codes of brotherhood, loyalty, and patriotism.[32]

Marginalized, poor, low educational levels and lacking opportunities than the wealthier Chinese, the tongs (unlike the triads) had formed without any clear political motives and soon found themselves involved in lucrative criminal activities, including extortion, gambling, people smuggling, and prostitution. Prostitution proved to be an extremely profitable business for the tongs, due to the high male-to-female ratio among the early immigrants. The tongs would kidnap or purchase females (including babies) from China and smuggle them over the Pacific Ocean to work in brothels and similar establishments. The tongs constantly battled over territory, profits, and women in feuds known as the tong wars, occurring between the 1850s to the 1920s, notably in San Francisco, Cleveland and Los Angeles.[32

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_immigration_to_the_United_States