Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (4 page)

This outline of the progression of social changes in the lives of Chinese American women is not to suggest that their status moved only in
a linear direction, because they did experience setbacks along the way;
rather, it suggests that their lives were constantly changing in response
to conditions within a specific sociohistorical context. Moreover, although Chinese nationalism, Christianity, and acculturation encouraged resistance to multiple forms of oppression, they also extracted a heavy
price from Chinese women, calling on them to put aside feminist concerns for the sake of national unity and to go against their cultural heritage in favor of Western values. In response, Chinese women took the
pragmatic course, shifting their behavior as needed to adapt and survive
in America. The well-being of their families, community, and country
always came first, but that did not mean passing up opportunities along
the way to improve their own situation as well. Nor did women easily
give up their traditional modes of thought and behavior. Like other immigrant women, mothers chose to continue or change their traditional
ways according to what suited their new lives in modern America, while
daughters chose to fuse selective aspects of both cultures into a new bicultural identity and lifestyle."

I chose San Francisco, known as Dai Fow (the Big City) to Chinese
Americans, as the focal point of this study because it has served as the
port of entry for most Chinese immigrants throughout their history. As
such, the city has the oldest, and until recently the largest, Chinese population in the United States (now exceeded by New York), as well as the
richest depository of archival materials on Chinese American women.
It also provides a diverse range of women to interview, many of whom
can still recall life for themselves and their mothers in San Francisco during the early i 9oos. Their experiences, of course, are not representative
of all Chinese American women, many of whom led very different lives
in other urban centers and rural communities during this same time period. But because of San Francisco's significance as an economic, political, and cultural center in Chinese American history, it is an important
and logical place to start in documenting the social history of Chinese
American women. I hope, though, that this study will inspire further research on Chinese women in other parts of the country where they have
also settled.

I settled on the years from 1902 to 1945 as the pivotal period of social change for Chinese women in San Francisco for a number of reasons. The year 19oz marks the first time that the issue of women's emancipation was publicly aired in San Francisco Chinatown. This was done
by Sieh King King, an eighteen-year-old student from China and an ardent reformer, who, in a historic speech before a large Chinatown crowd,
denounced footbinding and advocated equality between the sexes. The
year 1945 marks the end of World War II and the turning point for Chinese American women in terms of improved racial and gender relations
and increased socioeconomic opportunities. In between these benchmark years, both immigrant and American-born Chinese women learned to
challenge and accommodate race, class, and gender oppression in their
lives, to make the most of the socioeconomic opportunities and historical circumstances of this time period, and to define their ethnic identity and broaden their gender role as Chinese American women.

Uncovering and piecing together the history of Chinese American
women has not been an easy task. There are few written records to begin with, and what little material does exist on the subject is full of inaccuracies and distortions. Thus, I have had to draw from a unique but
rich variety of primary sources: government documents and census data,
the archives of Christian and Chinese women's organizations, Chineseand English-language newspapers, oral histories, personal memoirs, and
photographs. Taken together, these sources, I believe, provide an alternative and more accurate view of Chinese American women than has
existed before, for they show definitively that these women were not passive victims but active agents in the making of their own history. At the
same time, I am well aware that these sources are biased, telling us more
about the experiences of educated, middle-class women than of illiterate, working-class women; of the American-born than of the immigrant
woman; of the exceptional achiever than of the ordinary homemaker.
Mindful of this skewed representation, I have tried to compensate by
qualifying my descriptions of Chinese women's lives and using oral histories of common, everyday women whenever available.

Government reports and census data, although often biased and inaccurate, provided important quantitative data with which to measure
the socioeconomic progress of Chinese American women throughout
the period under study. For example, the i goo, 1910, and 19 z.o unpublished manuscript censuses for San Francisco-which list Chinese
women as household members, giving their age, marital status, country
of birth, year of immigration, literacy, and occupation-helped to create a comparative picture of family structure, the prostitution trade, Chinese women's ability to read and write, and their occupational concentrations. The published census reports for z 94o and 19 50, together with
local survey reports by the Community Chest of San Francisco and the
California State Relief Administration, provided additional important
socioeconomic data for the 1930s and 1940s. The immigration files at
the National Archives were invaluable in helping me trace the immigration experience of my own family as well as that of Chinese immigrant women in general.

Missionary journals and case files from the Presbyterian and Methodist mission homes told harrowing stories about the plight of prostitutes,
mui tsai, and abused women who sought the help of Protestant missionaries. On the whole, they gave a general, though oftentimes sensationalized, picture of the oppressed lives of these women as recorded
from the perspective of missionaries seeking to rescue and "civilize"
them. But individual cases, such as Wong Ah So's story in Chapter z,
also described the socioeconomic conditions in China and Chinatown
that led to the enslavement and mistreatment of Chinese women, as well
as the process by which they were rescued and then "rehabilitated." These
records also revealed a spirit of resilience, resistance, and autonomy
among those who chose to seek or accept the help and services of the
mission homes. In addition, articles written by American-born Chinese
women in Christian publications provided insights into the cultural
dilemma faced by women of that period.

Digging into the archives of Chinese women's organizations, such as
the Chinese YWCA and Square and Circle Club (both of which are still
active in San Francisco today), yielded written records of social conditions, activities, and perspectives of Chinese immigrant and Americanborn women. Founded in 1916, the Chinese YWCA was created solely
to serve Chinese women in San Francisco. Its records and scrapbooks
offered substantial evidence of the extent to which women benefited
from the organization's educational programs, social clubs, social services, and community projects. The Square and Circle Club was organized in 1924 by seven American-born Chinese women committed to
community service. Its scrapbooks revealed the influence of acculturation on the lives of the second generation. Still another important scrapbook, this one belonging to Sue Ko Lee, a member of the former Chinese Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, provided the workers' view of
the first labor strike in which Chinese women participated in large numbers.

San Francisco newspapers, in English as well as Chinese, were crucial
sources because they chronicled the activities and documented the views
of Chinese American women. From the San Francisco Chronicle and San
Francisco Examiner came numerous articles about the changing role of
Chinese American women, including ones on Sieh King King's famous
speech dealing with women's rights; on Tye Leung Schulze, the first Chinese woman to vote; and on the active participation of women in Chinese nationalist causes. Of the four Chinese daily newspapers in San Francisco during the period under study, the Chung Sai Yat Po (literally,
"Chinese American daily newspaper") provided the best coverage on Chinese immigrant women. Its inclusion of women's issues, activities,
and occasional writings-untapped until now-provided a rare insider's
view of the lives of Chinese American women. In terms of periodicals
that addressed the second generation, both the Chinese Digest and the
Chinese Press were extremely useful in documenting the views and activities of Chinese women during the Depression and World War II years.

Oral histories, despite the drawbacks of faulty or selective memory
and retrospective interpretations, added life and credence to this study,
allowing women from the bottom up to tell their own history. Indeed,
in the absence of writings by Chinese women, life history narratives offer
us the only access to their personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
I was fortunate to have at my disposal over 3 50 interviews of Chinese
American women from the following collections: Chinese Women of
America Research Project, Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco;
History of Chinese Detained on Angel Island Project, Chinese Culture
Foundation of San Francisco; Southern California Chinese American
Oral History Project, Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles; and historian Him Mark Lai's private collection. Another rich source of first-hand accounts was the Survey of Race Relations, an oral history project that includes interviews with over zoo
Chinese Americans conducted in the 19zos. These voices ring with an
immediacy and truth not found in retrospective interviews.

In addition, I personally contacted and interviewed twenty-six elderly
Chinese women and six men, all of whom had lived most of their lives
in San Francisco. I wanted to learn from the women themselves what
life was like for them in San Francisco during the first half of the twentieth century. From the men I wanted to hear their recollections of family and community life, particularly during the Great Depression and
World War II years. Many of the women were related either to me or to
acquaintances of mine. Some I had come to know through my job as a
public librarian, my previous research for the book Chinese Women of
America, and my involvement in the Chinese Historical Society of America. Their ages ranged from sixty to one hundred years old, with the majority in their seventies and eighties at the time of the interviews. Six of
the women were first generation; twenty-one were American-born.
Among them were seamstresses, clerks, waitresses, housewives, and professionals (teachers, nurses, and politicians). My status as an insider (as
a second-generation Chinese American woman born and raised in San
Francisco Chinatown) and local historian and writer with a proven track
record facilitated access to their life stories. I interviewed most of the women alone in their homes, usually for two hours at a stretch. A few
of the interviews required repeated sessions and as much as six hours to
complete; five were conducted in the Cantonese dialect. Once trust and
rapport had been established and the women understood I was trying
to write their history for the next generation as well as to set the historical record straight, I found them quite willing to discuss in detail their
life histories and views on race, class, and gender issues. Regardless of
their educational background, they were articulate, opinionated, and
forthright in their responses to my questions, which I asked in a quasichronological and topological order. In my line of questioning, transcription, translation, editing, and selection of passages to include in this
book, I have tried to stay true to the spirit and content of their stories
as told to me. When necessary, I have corroborated questionable details
in their stories against information from other interviews and whatever
documentary evidence was at my disposal. As used in this book, oral histories served as one important source of evidence, attesting to the hopes,
fears, struggles, and triumphs of women when faced with limitations as
well as opportunities.

Though aware of the illiteracy and silence imposed on most Chinese
women, I had still hoped to find primary writings or personal memoirs
by Chinese American women. For the 1902-45 period, the only such
published work is Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, an autobiography about the cultural conflicts of a second-generation Chinese
woman growing up in San Francisco Chinatown. « In the process of interviewing my subjects, however, I uncovered the following unpublished
writings: two autobiographical essays, one by Lilly King Gee Won about
her family's involvement in Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement,
the other by Tye Leung Schulze about her escape from an arranged marriage and subsequent marriage to a German American immigration inspector; a manuscript by Dr. Margaret Chung about her life as a physician and volunteer in World War II; an unpublished autobiography by
Jane Kwong Lee about her immigration to the United States in 1922
and her subsequent involvement as a community worker in San Francisco Chinatown; and the private letters of Flora Belle Jan, a Chinese
American flapper and writer. Together, they represent a significant contribution to the scarce published writings by Chinese American women
in the pre-World War II period. It is my intention to have a selection of
them published in the near future, along with immigration documents,
journalistic articles, and oral histories conducted in conjunction with this
book.

To further embellish the text, I have included photographs from a
number of public archives and private collections. Photographs add a
rich, visual dimension to this study and provide us with further insight
into the hopes and aspirations, immigration and acculturation patterns,
family and work life, and social activism of Chinese American women.
Moreover, depending on who the photographer was and the circumstances in which the photographs were taken, they also reveal how Chinese American women were viewed by outsiders as opposed to insiders.
As a series of images for comparison and contrast, photographs taken at
different time periods can also serve as effective markers of social
change.