The Chinese in CA and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone

lecture 2paper sons/paper daughters

“wah gung” = migrating laborer or sojourner1840s-1850s Chinese immigration influenced by:

First Opium WarDepressed agricultural outputPeasant rebellionsInterethnic strifeContract labor system

The cycle of center and periphery:centers of commerce and manufacturing penetrate

into less industrialized nations (periphery) in search of new markets & raw materials causing instability of local economies

Inhabitants of periphery migrate to further develop center’s economy as laborers

“wah gung”

1840s-50s – beginning of recruitment of Chinese labor; 46,000 to HI and 380,000 to mainlandTan Heung Shan = Fragrant Sandalwood

Hills (HI)Gam Saan = Gold Mountain (CA)

Key to sugar plantation explosion = cheap labor

1870 – 1910 – “Sugar is king”; US business interests develop rapid and large amount of plantations

1875 – Reciprocity Treaty between Kingdom of HI and US; no duties on HI sugar to US

1898 – annexation of HI and colonization of PI

“Tan Heung Shan” & “Gam Saan”

Immigrants = mostly young, peasant class men primarily from Guangdong provinceConfucian values enforce strict gender hierarchy“hostage theory”CA nativist and racist sentiment + need for mobile labor

forcePage Law of 1875 – prohibition of entry of Chinese “prostitutes”

essentially closes mainland to womenEncouragement of Chinese settlement in HI:

Small native population and only 6% of total island population was white

Control of plantation social life Importation of successive waves of ethnic Asian labor

(Japanese, Korean, Filipino) seen as key to managing labor costs

CA Bachelor Societies

1849 – CA gold rush; 325 Chinese immigrants initially with exponential increases every year 1852 – Foreign Miner’s Tax 1855 – tax on all ship captains

transporting Chinese 1862 – tax on Chinese living in state

(except licensed miners) 1865 – Chinese begin to leave gold fields

for railroads Central Pacific RR constructed by 90%

Chinese labor 1870 – 63,000 in US; 77% in CA; 25% of

CA workforce Move from RR to manufacturing &

agriculture 1870s – labor competition begins to force

Chinese into service industry & self-employment, primarily laundries

History of Chinese Labor in CA

By 1900 – 1 out of every 4 working Chinese males was a “laundryman”

Changing conditions of capital and labor as well as racialization force Chinese into laundry industry, performing what has been traditionally defined as “women’s work”“The Chinese laundryman does not learn his trade in China;

there are no laundries in China… The women there do the washing in tubs and have no washboards and flat irons. All the Chinese laundrymen here [in America] were taught in the first place by American women just as I was taught” (Lee Chew quoted in Strangers from a Different Shore)

Historical conditions force a gendered racialization – that to be Chinese is associated with emasculation as well as perpetual foreignness

“The Chinese Laundryman”:Gender, Race, Labor

By 1870, there are 2 whites and 1 Chinese for every available job in SF causing white laborers to target Chinese as both economic & social threats

Idea of “heathen Chinee” pulls on racialist stereotypes of blacks and native Americans: “red man” versus “yellow horde” of the

frontier Comparison of “coolie labor” to slave

labor – assumed moral inferiority and savagery but Chinese threat of inscrutability and craftiness

Bret Harte’s poem: “Which is why I remark, /And my language is plain, / That for ways that are dark / And for tricks that are vain, / The heathen Chinee is peculiar, / Which the same I am free to maintain.”

“The Heathen Chinee”

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act late 1870’s to 1880s – after rapid economic expansion,

US experiences cyclical downturnChinese targeted as cause of unrest between white

capital and labor – further cementing Chinese racialization as perpetual foreigners while reconciling class conflict among white majority

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of

Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, … until the expiration of ten years next…, [that] 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 [to] the United States.

Population declines from 105, 465 in 1880 to 61,639 by 1920

By 1850s – San Francisco Chinatown had already begun to emergeEthnic enclaves shaped by racist housing practices, anti-

miscegenation acts & prohibition of immigration of Chinese women

Offered space of community and support:Business associations, ex. Chinese Hand Laundry

AssociationTongs – initially secret societies of mutual self-helpFongs – village associationsHuiguan – district associations; ex. Chinese Six

Companies

Early Chinatowns

April 18, 1906 – San Francisco earthquake destroys almost all municipal records

making it possible to claim that one was born in US & automatically a citizen

Further loophole – a child of a US citizen even if he/she is born abroad is automatically US citizen

“paper sons” – Chinese immigrants enter US claiming to be children of American citizens

1907 – 1924 – 10,000 Chinese female immigrants arrive

1910-1940 – all immigrants to CA (mostly Chinese) must pass through Angel Island for inspection

By 1943 – 50,000 Chinese had entered through Angel Island 10% of all Chinese immigrants were

deported

paper sons/paper daughters

By 1920, 58% of Chinese population primarily work in urbanized service sector – laundries & restaurants “woi” – collective loan fund between

families and clans By 1940 – 91% of Chinese lived in

metropolitan areas, primarily SF, NY, LA

Chinatown begins to function as tourist site – “gilded ghettos” Ex: in wake of SF earthquake,

Chinatown is purposely rebuilt in more Orientalist fashion; during 1930s, SF Chamber of Commerce advertises Chinatown as tourist attraction

Influx of “paper sons/daughters” allows for sizable second generation to emerge finally in 20th century

20th Century Chinatown

Main Characters of Ng’s Bone

Mah

Lyman Fu

Leila(Narrator)

Leon LeongTommie Hom

MasonOna (suicide) Nina

(lives in NY)

Why is the novel’s title Bone? What do bones come to symbolize?

What is the reason for Ona’s suicide? Why does each family member attribute her death to different reasons?

Why do you think the novel lacks a linear narrative? Why does it begin and end when it does?

How does Leon’s life as a “paper son” define the life of his daughters?

Questions to consider: