Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (3 page)

In 1888 Great-Grandfather returned to China and married Leong
Kum Kew (a.k.a. Leong Shee), but he could not bring her back with
him to the United States because the Chinese Exclusion Act also barred
wives of Chinese laborers. Only family members of U.S. citizens, merchants, and diplomats were exempt. Upon his return, therefore, Chin
Lung invested wisely in the Sing Kee store in order to establish merchant status; he was finally able to send for my great-grandmother in
1893. While he continued to farm in the Sacramento Delta on hundreds
of acres of leased land, amassing a fortune growing potatoes with borrowed credit and hired help, Great-Grandmother stayed in San Francisco Chinatown, where she gave birth to five children, two girls and
three boys. The oldest child was my grandmother Chin Suey Kum, born
in 1894. Even though she had status and the means to live well, GreatGrandmother, who had bound feet, found life in America inconvenient,
alienating, and harried. Her domestic life was quite different from her
husband's public life. With Chin Lung off pursuing exciting activities
such as building a fortune in farming and participating in community
politics, she remained sequestered at home, raising their children with
the help of a mui tsai (domestic slave girl). So unhappy was she in America that in 1904 she packed up and returned to China with all of her
children. Chin Lung chose to remain in the United States and make periodic trips home to visit.

Although their five children were all American-born citizens and had
the right to return, only the boys were encouraged to do so. Traditional
gender roles and the lack of economic and political power on the part
of Chinese women denied both daughters that option. It was considered proper that all of the sons return and establish families in the United
States while both daughters be married into wealthy families in China.
Grandmother was wed to Jew Hing Gwin, a prominent herb doctor. They
had seven children, my mother, Jew Law Ying, being the eldest. Unfortunately, the family hit hard times when Grandfather succumbed to
opium and lost the entire family fortune. Grandaunt Chin Suey Ngon's
situation was equally tragic, for her husband died only a few months after their wedding. Once married, by U.S. law both Grandmother and Grandaunt forfeited the right to return to the United States. Only with
the support of her brother and by lying about her marital status was
Grandaunt able to return to America in 192o.2

Great-Grandfather Chin Lung and family in San Francisco, 1903. From left to
right: Suey Kum, Suey Ngon, Wing, Leong Shee, Chin Lung, Foo, Wah, and
mui tsai Ah Kum. (Judy Yung collection)

Meanwhile, on the paternal side of my family, Grandfather Tom Fat
Kwong had managed to be smuggled across the U.S. border sometime
before 19 1r . He farmed in Redwood City, California, for a few years
and served in World War I. This military duty could have allowed him
to legalize his status and send for the wife, daughter, and two sons who
he had left behind in China. Before he had a chance to do so, though,
he was killed by a car while bicycling home one dark night. His sudden
death cut off the only viable source of income for his family in China.
So my father, being the eldest son, found another way to immigrate to
the United States: in 19zi, with money borrowed from relatives, he purchased the necessary documents and passage to come as Yung Hin Sen,
the "paper son" of Yung Ung, an established merchant in Stockton, California.' For the next fifteen years he worked hard as a houseboy, gardener, and cook, finally saving enough money to repay his debts and re turn to China to marry. He was by then thirty-three years old. The marriage to my mother was arranged by Chin Lung himself, at the suggestion of his eldest daughter-in-law, Wong Shee Chan, who had befriended
nw father in San Francisco.

My mother told me, "Everyone said coming to Gold Mountain would
be like going to heaven."4 But although she was a daughter of a U.S.
citizen, immigration as a derivative citizen through the mother was not
legally permissible. And so she agreed to marry my father. After they
married, my father returned to the United States alone because Chinese
laborers still did not have the right to bring their wives into the country. Only after five more years of hard work and saving was he able to
buy a few nominal shares in a Chinatown business, establish merchant
status, and send for my mother and my eldest sister, Bak Heong, born
after he had returned to America.

Just as Great-Grandmother had warned her, however, the promise of
Gold Mountain proved elusive for my mother as well. My father remained
a laborer all his life, working as a janitor while my mother sewed into
the night for garment sweatshops. They had to really struggle to eke out
a living and raise us six children. Later, when I compared my mother's
life with that of Chin Lung's other grandchildren, who were fortunate
to have been born and raised in America, I saw how much harsher her
life turned out to be because of the racist and sexist restrictions that were
placed on Chinese immigrant women. And I wondered how many other
Chinese women suffered similar consequences for no fault of their own?

It was in the quest for answers to my own identity as a Chinese American woman-answers that I could not find in any history textbookthat I felt a need to study Chinese American women's history. How and
why did Chinese women come to America? What was their life like in
America? How did their experiences compare and contrast to those of
Chinese men, European women, and other women of color, and what
accounted for the differences? If life in America was as harsh for them
as it was for my great-grandmother and mother, how did they cope? What
cultural strengths did they draw from, and what strategies did they devise to adapt themselves to this new and often hostile land? Were things
easier for their American-born daughters? What difference did their lives
make to their families, community, and the larger society?

As I attempted to write a social history of Chinese American women
and provide a viable framework by which to understand how gender perceptions, roles, and relationships changed because of these women's
work, family, and political lives in America, it became evident to me that current race and feminist theories were inadequate for this purpose, since
they generally fail to integrate race, gender, and class as equally important categories of historical analysis. Race theorists tend to explain the
Asian American experience in light of race and class oppression, but overlook gender; feminist scholars tend to examine women's subordination
in terms of gender and, at times, class, but ignore differences among
women based on race.' The growing scholarship on women of color is
beginning to correct these incomplete approaches by looking simultaneously at race, class, and gender in explaining women's oppression and
diverse life histories, but these studies often focus strictly on black-white
race relations, ignoring other racial groups such as Asian American
women.' Only Evelyn Nakano Glenn includes Asian American women
in any significant way in her analysis of the triple oppression faced by
women of color in the labor force.

Nevertheless, the questions that these studies on women of color raise
are applicable to my study of Chinese American women: Did immigration, work, and family life in America oppress Chinese women or liberate them? How were Chinese women affected by the racial and sexual
division of labor under capitalism? Did the segregation of their paid and
unpaid labor to the private (domestic) sphere reinforce their economic
dependency on men and consequently their subordinate role within the
family? And, in keeping with current scholarship that challenges the
notion of homogeneous womanhood,8 how did women respond differently to their allotted role in life? What was the extent of gender conflict within the Chinese American community, and of class and generational differences among Chinese women themselves? By addressing
these same questions, I explore the intersection of race, class, and gender in the lives of Chinese American women, but only within a socioeconomic context. As a historian, I need to also ask: What sociohistorical forces were at play that can explain social change for Chinese
American women in the first half of the twentieth century?

Analyzing the life stories of Chinese women has led me to conclude
that their experiences have been as much a response to economic, social, and political developments in China as in the United States. Faced
with discriminatory exclusion from American life throughout most of
their history, Chinese Americans remained attached to homeland politics and highly influenced by developments there-including women's
emancipation-until the 1194os, when Chinese exclusion ended and
diplomatic relations between the United States and China broke off.
Without doubt, economic opportunities outside the home, albeit lim ited, during the period under study did give Chinese women, both immigrant and American-born, some economic leverage as well as broadening their social and political consciousness. As they took on jobs in
garment factories, sales and clerical work, and defense industries during
World War II, they gained a degree of economic independence and social mobility. But of equal importance-and this was particularly true
for a significant number of educated, middle-class women-their views
on gender roles and relations changed owing to the influences of Chinese nationalism, Christianity, and acculturation into American life. The
former two factors had a greater impact on immigrant women. Chinese
nationalists who saw modernization as the answer to resisting Western
imperialism advocated women's emancipation from footbinding, ignorance, and confinement within the domestic sphere. Protestant missionary women, intent on reforming urban society and "rescuing" female victims of male abuse, advocated the same in Chinatown. The third
factor, acculturation, had more of a bearing on American-born women.
Through church, school, and the popular media, the second generation
was encouraged to challenge traditional gender roles at home and discrimination outside, to shape a new cultural identity and lifestyle for
themselves. As will be shown, all three factors, to some degree, influenced Chinese American women to reevaluate their gender roles and
relationships, to move into the public sphere and become more involved
in labor, social, and political issues in their community. But it was not
until World War II, with its labor shortages and China's changing relationship to the United States as an ally, that racial and gender barriers
were lowered to allow Chinese American women a degree of socioeconomic and political mobility.

To lend symbolic significance to this study, I have chosen to organize
it around the theme of footbinding. Widely practiced in China from the
twelfth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, footbinding
involved tightly wrapping the feet of young girls with bandages until
the arches were broken, the toes permanently bent under toward the
heel, and the whole foot compressed to a few inches in length. Despite
the excruciating pain that it caused, parents continued to subject their
daughters to this crippling custom because bound feet were considered
an asset in the marriage market, a sign of gentility and beauty. So difficult was it to walk far unassisted that it also kept women from "wandering," thus reinforcing their cloistered existence and ensuring their
chastity.' Although footbinding was not widely practiced in America
(only merchant wives who immigrated before 1911, when the new gov ernment in China outlawed footbinding, had bound feet), it is still applicable to this study as a symbol of women's subjugation and subordination. io

Thus, as applied in Chapter 1, "Bound Feet: Chinese Women in the
Nineteenth Century," footbinding represents the cloistered lives of most
Chinese women in nineteenth-century San Francisco. Whether prostitute, mui tsai, or wife, they were doubly bound by patriarchal control
in Chinatown and racism outside. Confined to the domestic sphere and
kept subordinate to men, these women led lives in America that were
more inhibiting than liberating. In Chapter z, "Unbound Feet: Chinese
Immigrant Women, r9oz-192.9," the metaphor is further extended as
a measure of social change for Chinese American women. Here we look
at Chinese immigrant women's efforts to take advantage of their new
circumstances in America to reshape gender roles and relationships-in
essence, to unbind their socially restricted lives with the support of Chinese nationalist reformers and Protestant missionary women. Chapter
3, "First Steps: The Second Generation, 19zos," explores attempts by
American-born Chinese women to take the first steps toward challenging traditional gender roles at home and racial discrimination in the larger
society. While some openly rebelled as flappers, most accommodated the
limitations imposed on them by creating their own bicultural identity
and lifestyle, although within the parameters of a segregated social existence, and waited for better opportunities. In Chapter 4, "Long
Strides: The Great Depression, 1930s," we see how both generations of
Chinese women in San Francisco stood more to gain than lose by the
depressed economy. Ironically, because of past discrimination, they were
able to take long strides toward improving their socioeconomic status,
contributing to the sustenance of their families, tackling community issues, and joining the labor movement. Finally, Chapter 5, "In Step: The
War Years, 1931-1945," delineates how Chinese women-by joining
the armed services, working alongside other Americans in the defense
factories, and giving generously of their time, money, and energies to
the war effort in both China and the United States-came to fall in step
with the rest of their community as well as the larger society.