Ghosts of Angel Island

Angel Island Detention Center, 1910

Many early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco and beyond were processed at Angel Island, now a state park in San Francisco Bay; more than 97 percent of the immigrants processed on Angel Island were Chinese. Unlike Ellis Island in the East where prospective European immigrants might be held for up to a week, Angel Island typically detained Chinese immigrants for months--sometimes up to two years--while they were interrogated to validate their papers. Some detainees expressed their feelings in poetry carved into the wooden walls of the detention center; some of these poems may still be seen by visitors today.
In 1940, a fire that destroyed the administration building caused the government to decide to abandon the Immigration Station on Angel Island. The "Chinese Exclusion Acts," which were adopted in the early 1880's were repealed by Federal action in 1943 (by that time, China was an ally of the US in World War II); in conjunction passage of the War Brides Act, Chinese-American veterans began to bring their families to American outside of national quotas, leading to a major population boom during the 1950s.

Tongs in Chinatown

Unlike Shaketown's English-speaking Wo Sam, most Chinese immigrants arriving in the United States knew only various dialects of Cantonese, one of the major branches of Chinese spoken in the Zhujiang delta. In the late nineteenth century, most Chinese immigrants saw no future in the United States; assimilation was impossible. Legally discriminated against and politically disenfranchised, Chinese Americans established their roots in Chinatowns. They developed a high degree of tolerance for hardship and racial discrimination and maintained a lifestyle similar to that formerly enjoyed in China. This included living modestly, observing Chinese customs and festivals through social or political organizations (tongs) and family associations that represented the collective interests of persons with the same family names. These organizations acted to arbitrate disputes, help find jobs and housing, establish schools and temples, and sponsor social and cultural events. Some organizations (such as the fictional Chee Kong tong that Wo Sam and Wo Li join) became powerful and oppressive, growing rich through smuggling, the opium trade, gambling and prostitution; by the early 1880s, the population had adopted the term "Tong War" to describe periods of violence in Chinatown.

80 Years of Exclusion

Chinese emigres aboard ship, from Harper's Weekly, 1876

From 1882 to 1965, only diplomats, merchants, and students and their dependents (such as Shaketown's Wo Sam and Wo Li) were allowed to travel to the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act greatly reduced the numbers of Chinese allowed into the country and the city, and in theory limited Chinese immigration to single males only. Exceptions were in fact granted to the families of wealthy merchants (hence the inflow of "wives" and "sisters", brought in for the purpose of prostitution), but the law was still effective enough to reduce the population. All Chinese were confined to rigidly defined areas ("Chinatowns") in major cities across the country. Chinese were deprived of their democratic rights: By congressional and judicial decisions, Chinese immigrants were made ineligible for naturalization. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, particularly the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought in a new period in Chinese American immigration. In 2009, the California Legislature passed a Bill, apologizing to Chinese Americans for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and other unjust discriminatory laws that resulted in the persecution of Chinese living in California.

Mark Twain in Virginia City

A big hunk of silver ore

Boomtowns of the west held quite a fascination for American readers, and Virginia City, home of the Comstock Lode, was first among them. In February 1863, 20 years before the mines were played out, Samuel Clemens, a reporter on the local newspaper Territorial Enterprise, first used his famous pen name: Mark Twain. In Shaketown, Wo Sam and his cousin are sent to Virginia City after the boom is well over. Economic development defined patterns of settlement for the earliest Chinese immigrants. Before the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigrants followed work in the western states: because mining and railway construction dominated the west, Chinese immigrants settled mostly in California and states west of the Rockies. The earliest immigrants were able to bring their wives and family members from China prior to the Exclusion Acts (at the time, the Chinese population in the United States was about 110,000). As railway construction and mining declined and anti-Chinese sentiment increased, the Chinese fled into small import-export businesses, service businesses and small manufacturing in such cities as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Others moved into abandoned towns and took over mining claims, such as those in Shaketown's Virginia City, forming their own tightly knit, well-functioning societies. In spite of the distance, a number of Chinese businesses (especially gambling) were controlled by San Francisco tongs.

Who is the Enemy?

A run on the Stock Exchange

  The Panic of 1873 was a severe worldwide financial depression caused by a fall in demand for silver (Germany's decision to abandon silver as the basis for monetary worth set off the panic). The plummeting value of silver was one of the reasons for closing the Comstock Lode in Virgina City in Shaketown. Economic fears on the west coast caused racial tensions in San Francisco to boil over into full-blown race riots focusing on Chinese Americans, who were thought to be stealing jobs from whites. The Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Association (known as The Six Companies) evolved out of labor recruiting organizations that brought immigrants from different areas of Guangdong since the gold rush; the organization attempted to quell the violence. The heads of the Six Companies were leading Chinese merchants; they sought to represent the Chinese community in front of the business community as a whole and San Francisco city government. The organization proved powerless to stop the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and further restrictive immigration laws such as the Geary Act, which required all Chinese residents of the United States to carry a "US Resident Card", a sort of internal passport. Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation back to China or a year of hard labor. In addition, Chinese were not allowed to bear witness in court (which is why Wo Sam couldn't testify for Cayley). From 1882 on, Chinese Americans were confined to segregated ghettos and suffered the worst forms of racial oppression.

Building the Hard Road

Promontory Summit, Utah

  Chinese immigration began shortly after the California Gold Rush in 1849 and ended abruptly with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The earliest migration in 1849 consisted mostly of young male peasants who were recruited from their homeland to extract metals and minerals, reclaim swamplands, build irrigation systems, work as migrant agricultural laborers and fishermen, and construct a vast railroad network (like Wo Sam's and Wo Li's elderly companion on the train in Shaketown). Chinese immigrants were the unsung heroes in the success of the Transcontinental Railroad: in spite of major racist opposition, the Central Pacific Railroad Company under Charles Crocker employed about 15,000 Chinese to construct the eastward-bound leg by early 1867; the Chinese laborers were determined and tireless, toiling under extreme working conditions in the Sierra Nevada (workers of the west-building Union Pacific were mainly Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans). To blast through the mountains, the Central Pacific built huge wooden trestles on the western slopes and used gunpowder and nitroglycerine to move tons of rock, hollowing out tunnels through the granite--often with loss of life and limb. The two railroads met at Promontory Summit in Utah in 1869.