From Sojourners to Immigrants - by Zina Abbott

Either to escape poverty or political conditions in their birth nations, or inspired by promises of land and freedom, individuals and families from many countries in the world poured into North America during the nineteenth century. They came to make their homes in the new world; they came to stay. Many endured discrimination and poverty as they sought to become established, but they mostly refused to be deterred.

One large group of people who traveled to the Americas starting in the 1850s did not come with the intent to stay. They saw themselves as sojourners, not immigrants. At first, lured by tales of gold so plentiful a person could pick it up off the ground or pluck it from streambeds, thousands of impoverished and politically oppressed Chinese yielded to the enticements of Caucasian businessmen looking for cheap labor or San Francisco Chinese merchants who had established themselves in what they called Gum Saan (or, I have also seen it spelled Gum Sahn), which is California, and came to mean the United States in general. Translated, Gum Saan means “Gold Mountain.”

 

Canton

These sojourners came mostly from Canton in the southern region of China (now known as Guangzhau). They came with the intent to stay only a year or so to make their fortunes. Afterwards, they planned to return to China with enough wealth to buy land or pay off the taxes owed on land already held by the family. With their abundance, not only would their families have sufficient to eat, but they could also afford some of the better things in life.

This was a venture taken on mostly by young, healthy males. The families, to provide incentive for their departing young men to return and to not leave them destitute while they were away living the single life in Gum Saan, insisted, wherever possible, that the men married before they left. Hopefully, they also sired a child.

Most of the Chinese men who came to the west coast of the Americas, predominately California, quickly learned their dreams would not be fulfilled as planned. They were met with fees owed to wealthy Chinese societies or merchants who had fronted them their boat ticket money. They found gold to not be as plentiful as the stories told at home indicated. They found themselves dealing with discrimination and hostility by other gold miners, particularly Americans who were determined to keep the wealth of the new state of California, which had recently been acquired after the war with Mexico, for Americans.

In spite of these difficulties, the sojourners realized things were better in Gold Mountain than at home in Canton. They stayed. They worked abandoned gold claims. They started shops, grew food, and found many other ways to earn income to pay off their debts and send money home to their families, including the wives their parents had arranged for them to marry--women who, in many cases, were virtual strangers.

The Pearl River in Canton continued to flood, and the economic and political situation in China continued to flounder. When the Central Pacific Railroad decided to hire Chinese workers due to the shortages in the labor pool in California, the availability of work for railroad companies prompted more Chinese sojourners to sail to Gold Mountain. I wrote a post for another blog about the experience of the Chinese constructing the Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. You may read it by CLICKING HERE.

 

Mural in the lobby of Ogden Union Station

It has been estimated that between 1840 and 1900, 2.5 million people emigrated from China. They traveled all around the Pacific Basin, but the largest group traveled to the United States. Between 1852 and 1882, many predominantly male Chinese laborers and a few merchants and labor brokers came. Most of them entered through San Francisco. In Dai Fow, meaning "Big City" or "Number One City," the Chinese name for San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Chinese societies found them work and collected a fee for their services. These Chinese men soon discovered, instead of being here a year or two as sojourners before returning home to China, many of them could never afford to leave. They continued to send letters and money home to family in China, but they stayed. They had not come with the intent of being immigrants, but many became immigrants by default. They died far from their homes in Canton. One of the services the Chinese benevolent societies provided was to send the bones of those who died in Gold Mountain home to their families in China so they could be worshiped along with the other family ancestors. A few wives joined their husbands in Gold Mountain, but most chose to stay home in China.

 

Market Street in old San Francisco Chinatown

In case you may be thinking that this large group of Chinese men living in a country where there were relatively few women, let alone Chinese women, happily accepted living a celibate life for the duration, think again.

When it comes to the history of Chinese prostitutes in America, many point to the famous prostitute and madam, Ah Toy, as an example of a woman who managed to gain her freedom, become wealthy, and achieve a certain degree of autonomy and influence. She was an exception. First of all, she came right about the time the California Gold Rush first started, which was before the power structures in California in general, and Chinatown in particular, were fully established. However, as the demand for Chinese women to service the large Chinese male population grew, the Chinese societies, or tongs, began to import women for that purpose. As the criminal elements in the tongs became stronger, or criminal elements from China came to the United States to form new tongs specifically for the purposes of getting rich off of the vice trades—gambling, prostitution, opium dens, and protection rackets—the situation became more difficult for women who were either lured to the United States with false promises of work or marriage, or who were kidnapped outright in Canton or Hong Kong and brought over to be forced into prostitution.

In addition to the intense discrimination the Chinese people faced as a whole as their numbers increased, the Victorian society that existed among those of European descent found the existence of a large number of prostitutes in the Chinese sections of towns especially offensive. They established procedures and passed laws to make it even more difficult for Chinese women to enter the United States. The overall attitude of most white Americans was, they did not want more Chinese brothels, and they certainly did not want a large number of Chinese families to become established in the United States. They wanted all the Chinese to go back to China. 

Countering the increased difficulties of being able to get Chinese women into this country to meet the growing demand by Chinese males, the criminal tongs with their "hatchet men" enforcers soon held the vice trades in Chinatowns throughout the American West in a stranglehold.

Along with the gold mining regions of the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, this is part of the cultural and social climate in which my novel, Escape from Gold Mountain, is set. My story is inspired by true events. My Chinese heroine is loosely based on a real woman named Ling Loi. In September, 1884, she left the gold mining town of Lundy in order to return to Chinatown with her earnings. She did not get far before she found herself caught in a situation that resulted her name being recorded for posterity. (I did not find her name in any newspaper accounts. I found it in a book written by a local Mono County historian.)

Although there are very few details about this woman’s life, including how her life proceeded after she left the region, this incident prompted me to write my story. It is my longest novel to date. Aside from my belief that it is an exciting, action-filled adventure surrounding a tender romance, I did more research for this book than for any other of my books to date. I hope my book accurately depicts the conditions of that time as they relate to the Chinese people living in the United States, particularly many of the women. I hope this story will help my readers develop a greater understanding and appreciation for the difficulties encountered by the nineteenth century Chinese women whose lives became part of the fabric of the American West.

Escape from Gold Mountain is now on preorder at both Amazon and Barnes&Noble. I know this will throw a curve ball to some of my readers who are accustomed to my shorter works being published exclusively on Amazon and available on Kindle Unlimited. I have decided to start publishing my longer books with vendors other than Amazon, at least for a short time, to make them available to a wider reading audience. Before the end of September, I will make Escape from Gold Mountain available on Kindle Unlimited.

 

Sources:

http://sciencenetlinks.com/blog/snl-educator/apahm-2014-building-transcontinental-railroad/

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/05/07/chinese-transcontinental-railroad-ghosts-of-gold-mountain-gordon-chang

https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2715.html