Frontier Chinese

CHINESE IMMIGRANTS SOUGHT THEIR FORTUNES AT THE 'GOLD MOUNTAIN' IN THE LATE 1800S

They called America the Gold Mountain. Spurred by news of the Gold Rush that drifted across the ocean to their politically unstable, povertywracked province of Guangdong in southeastern China, the men came ready to hit paydirt when they first docked in San Francisco. Though accustomed to exotic sights, the city would take a long time, along with the rest of the West, to accept these new immigrants. Wearing loose pajamalike outfits and pointed straw hats topping raven-black queues dangling down their backs, the Chinese adventurers made a peculiar sight at their American debut in 1840. Called "sojourners," these men planned to return to their homeland and families with riches. By the late 1860s, enticed by reports of gold veins found in Wickenburg and Prescott, they started to trickle into Arizona. Ten years later, they flooded in when the railroads needed workers to lay tracks for their iron horses. Laboring long and hard for a dollar a day50 cents less than Anglos - many Called "sojourners," these men planned to return to their homeland and families with riches. By the late 1860s, enticed by reports of gold veins found in Wickenburg and Prescott, they started to trickle into Arizona. Ten years later, they flooded in when the railroads needed workers to lay tracks for their iron horses. Laboring long and hard for a dollar a day50 cents less than Anglos - many Single and seeking his fortune, sojourner Quong Kee cooked for railroad crews until they united the nation by rail, then hopscotched boomtowns around the West for about a decade before returning to China a relatively rich man. While in China he married, but before his wife bore their son, he headed back to the Gold Mountain to accumulate even more money in Arizona's boomtowns, including Tombstone. He ultimately planned to return to his family in China to live a life of luxury.

When Kee arrived in Tombstone, the West roiled in anti-Chinese sentiment fueled by the willingness of the Chinese to work for penurious wages, edging Anglos out of jobs. Congress responded to its constituents' complaints by passing the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers, who were "skilled and unskilled and those engaged in mining" from entering the country, and began the deportation process of many who already lived in America.

During its 1879-87 silver boom, Tombstone hosted a large Chinese population that serviced the mining community by cooking, cleaning and doing laundry - the career options open to Chinese workers in this country at the time. Kee, by then an experienced restaurant owner, opened the Can Can Restaurant, where canned foods supposedly appeared on the menu.

EAST MEETS

"The Chinese took the hard jobs no one wanted to do," said Arizona historian Melissa Keane, "and they excelled at them. They found gold where the Anglos gave up, and they took grueling positions on the railroads for little pay. This caused intense resentment against the Chinese.

"While American men were laboring on the more macho jobs on the railroads and the mines," Keane explained, "the Chinese took more domestic jobs, such as gardening, laundering and cooking. And they prospered at them, too."

Kee and others adopted the Southwestern lifestyle within the segregative conditions in Arizona, but most Chinese immigrants tenaciously guarded their culture, retaining the customs, dress and beliefs of their homeland. Some Tombstone citizens raised their eyebrows at the Chinese home-brewed hueng may sear jow, a rattlesnake alcohol. The concoction combined rice wine and medicinal herbs poured into a jar with a live rattlesnake inside. The ritual of burning their dead in order to scrape the bones clean, wrap them in cloth and send them in a zinc box back to China for burial next to their ancestors created a stench. And their alleged indulgence of smoking opium caused scandals. Rumors of opium wafting from fictional tunnels honeycombed under Tombstone's "Hoptown" proliferated. Newspapers stoked the sensationalism by publishing vivid tales of the effects of opium on its users.

Regardless of the cultural differences, Kee's quick smile and friendly manner attracted many colorful diners to the Can Can, including women friends like China Mary and Big Nose Kate, and "nice fellas" like Wyatt Earp, Johnny Ringo and Billy Clanton. His restaurant had a loyal clientele, so instead of heading to the next town that held the promise of prosperity when Tombstone went bust, Kee remained. After he died penniless in 1938, his friends buried him next to his most infamous customers at Boot Hill.

Other sojourners lost their money, some spent it, but many socked away their wages or sent cash to their families in China. Esther Tang, who grew up in Tucson's Chinatown, said the Chinese familes overseas thought they "must be shoveling gold from the streets" because these sons and husbands kept a stream of money running back home that could support a whole village.

"Little did they know," recalled Tang, "the sojourners were starving here. But rather than protest, the Chinese would band together - I call it the first credit union and lend money to whoever would offer the most interest to start a business."

Little, also, did the Chinese know of the rugged and lackluster life awaiting those who traveled to the Gold Mountain. Tang's father, Don Wah, first came to Tucson as a chef with the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1905. Though he was an American citizen, born in San Francisco, he traveled to China a few years later to find a wife (a 1901 Arizona law prohibited people of Chinese descent from marrying Anglos). After he married Fok Yut Ngan (which means "silver moon"), Wah moved to Tucson and started the town's first bakery.

EAST MEETS WEST

"My mother was from a wealthy family," Tang said. "Her dad was a jeweler who had seven concubines. She never had to cook or clean. She had maids to comb her knee-length hair, which she wore pinned up with pure gold barrettes, and she rode in rick-shaws to wherever she wanted to go."

Once she arrived in Tucson with her husband, however, Fok Yut learned to cook, clean and speak English and Spanish. She also ended up running the family business. "I guess my mother thought it was her mission to fit in," Tang said. "You don't just dream about position and goals. You qualify yourself first. It's considered a black mark in your family if you fail. And because the family is the most important unit in the universe, you always thought about what you did in public and how it would affect the family."

"My father was not a good businessman," Tang continued. "He was a happy-go-lucky person who would rather play Fan Tan, which was popular back then. The men would tease my father saying, 'Oh, your wife's got you working at the store? How come you're not playing Fan Tan?' Well, off he would go. When I would go get him for dinner, the bachelors would say, 'Mix up his tiles,' so he couldn't go home."

Tang's mother tended the bakery while her father made deliveries. At three in the morning, Fok Yut would strap 3-month-old Esther to her back and go into the bakery to wrap bread. Her mother scrimped together $2,000 to buy a house so the family could move out of their living quarters in the back of the bakery. But when she put the money down on the home, a message was written on the wall of the house: "No Chinks Wanted."

"Oh, I can remember those prejudices when I was a kid," Tang said. "It took a while for them to pass."

Despite discrimination against them, the Chinese kept coming to America. Not wanting to risk the scrutiny of U.S. immigration authorities, some Chinese entered America by underground railroad, a route that traveled north from Sonora, Mexico, and across the Arizona border over remote trails too rough for ordinary travel. Smugglers' fees ranged from $50 to $200.

In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Jeff Milton to attend to the growing problem of illegal aliens. His title, Chinese Agent for the United States, made him essentially the first border patrolman. He roamed the desert from Tombstone to Yuma but managed to curtail the smuggling problem only slightly.

By the time 10-year-old Chew Ping Fong sailed alone from the Chinese seaport of Chuck Hung to San Francisco around 1920, newly arriving immigrants had to pass through Angel Island, Ellis Island's dreary West Coast counterpart, which was wrapped in barbed wire and guarded by two gun towers. The Bureau of Immigration detained All Chinese nationals for two weeks to 22 months, sometimes interrogating them intensely, hoping to dissuade others from coming here.

But young Fong, who used his sponsor's surname and changed his name to Martin Wahl, uneventfully met his aunt and uncle, Youn Show and Chew She Song, in San Francisco. Youn Show had doted upon her nephew from the time of his birth back in China, and was the impetus for his trip to America. The Songs fol-lowed Martin to his sponsor's home-town of Mesa.

They opened a grocery store in Chandler. It had dirt floors, no running water and a bucket of fire by which to keep warm.

The Songs developed an affinity with the Mexicans who were their customers. Their children went to school together. When they moved the store to Scottsdale, becoming the town's first Chinese family, they dashed their competition's predic-tion that "Nobody will buy from you, Chinaman" by adopting their predecessors' willingness to take on jobs no one wanted. They catered to the population that the other store was loath to serve - Mexicans and Indians.

The Songs would cash their customers' checks, share Chinese cures and trade for almost any farm prod-ucts. The family also survived by lit-erally saving pennies. The Songs paid for Martin's new Ford pick-up, which cost $298, with hundred-pound sacks of pennies.

The prejudices the Chinese painfully endured began to diminish when the Gold Mountain repealed the last of its exclusionary laws against them in 1943. Chew She Song earned recognition as one of Scottsdale's founding fathers and received the town's Outstanding Citizen award. His grocery store, which has evolved into a Mexican import store, is still run by the Song family. Esther Tang has become one of Tucson's most respected citizens, earning awards such as Tucson Woman of the Year and Tucson's Outstanding Citizen. And Quong Kee receives visitors by the thousands who pay momentary respect at Boot Hill. Each one of these Chinese immigrants, in his or her own way, did hit paydirt on the Gold Mountain. AH