Chinese American History - Chinatown: Slumming, Gambling, Prostitution and Opium

Chinatown: Slumming, Gambling, Prostitution and Opium

In his book published in 1890, How The Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis characterized the Chinese of New York as "a constant and terrible menace to society", who "are in no sense a desirable element of the population" Riis was referring to the reputation of New York's Chinatown as a place full of illicit activity, including gambling, prostitution and opium smoking. To some extent, Riis' characterization was true, though quite often the sensational press exploited the great differences between Chinese and Anglo-American language and culture to sell newspapers, exploit Chinese labor and promote Americans of European birth. Especially in the press, opium smoking and prostitution in New York's Chinatown were greatly exaggerated, while many reports of indecency and immorality were simply fictitious. Casual observers of Chinatown believed that opium use was rampant since they constantly witnessed Chinese smoking through water pipes. In fact, local Chinatown residents often smoked tobacco through such pipes. In the late-19th century, many European-Americans experienced Chinatown through the phenomenon known as "slumming", wherein affluent New Yorkers formed groups, accompanied by a guide, to explore vast immigrant districts such as the Lower East Side. Slummers often frequented the brothels and opium dens of Chinatown in the late 1880s and early 1890s. However, by the mid-1890s, slummers rarely participated in Chinese brothels or opium smoking, but instead were shown fake opium joints where Chinese actors and their white wives staged illicit scenes for the benefit of their audiences. Quite often, such staged shows, which included gunfights that mimicked those of local tongs, were the doings of the professional guides or "lobbygows" - often Irish-Americans - who paid the actors. Especially in New York, the Chinese community was unique among immigrant communities in so far as its illicit activity was turned into a cultural commodity.

Perhaps the most pervasive illicit activity that took place in Chinatowns of the late-19th century was gambling. In 1868, one of the earliest Chinese residents in New York, Wah Kee, opened a fruit and vegetable store on Pell Street while keeping rooms upstairs available for gambling and opium smoking. A few decades later, local tongs, which originated in the California goldfields around 1860, controlled most gambling (fan-tan, faro, lotteries) in New York's Chinatown. One of the most popular games of chance was fan-tan where players guessed the exact coins or cards left under a cup after a pile of cards had been counted off for at a time. Most popular, however, was the lottery. Players purchased randomly assigned sweepstakes numbers from gambling-houses, with drawings held at least once a day in lottery saloons. According to Henry Tsai, there were ten such saloons found in San Francisco in 1876, which received protection from corrupt policemen in exchange for weekly payoffs of around five dollars per week. Such gambling-houses were frequented by as many whites as Chinamen, though whites sat at separate tables.

Between 1850 and 1875, the most popular complaint against Chinese residents was their involvement in prostitution. During this time, Hip Yee Tong, a secret society, imported over six-thousand Chinese women to serve as prostitutes. Most of these women came from southeastern China and were either kidnapped, purchased from poor families or lured to ports like San Francisco with the promise of marriage. Prostitutes fell into three categories, namely, those sold to wealthy Chinese merchants as concubines, those purchased for high-class Chinese brothels catering exclusively to Chinese men or those purchased for prostitution in lower-class establishments frequented by a mixed clientele. In late-19th century San Francisco, most notably Jackson Street, prostitutes were often housed in rooms 10x10 or 12x12 feet and were often beaten or tortured for not attracting enough business or refusing to work for any reason. In San Francisco, "highbinders" (various Chinese gangs) protected brothel owners, extorted weekly tributes from prostitutes and caused general mayhem in Chinatown. However, many of San Francisco's Chinatown whorehouses were located on property owned by high ranking European-Americans city officials, who took a percentage of the proceeds in exchange for protection from prosecution. From the 1850s to the 1870s, California passed numerous acts to limit prostitution by all races, yet only Chinese were ever prosecuted under these laws. After the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865, Chinese women brought to the United States for prostitution signed a contract so that their employers would avoid accusations of slavery. Many Americans believed that Chinese prostitutes were corrupting traditional morality and thus the Page Act was passed in 1875, which placed restrictions on female Chinese immigration. Those who supported the Page Act were attempting to protect American family values, while those who opposed the Act were concerned that it might hinder the efficiency of the cheap-labor provided by Chinese males - no one was concerned about the exploitation of Chinese women.

Another major concern of European-Americans in relation to Chinatowns was the smoking of opium, even though the importation and consumption of opium long predated Chinese immigration to the United States. Tariff acts of 1832 established opium regulation and in 1842 opium was taxed at seventy-five cents per pound. In New York, by 1870, opium dens had opened on Baxter and Mott Streets in Manhattan Chinatown, while in San Francisco, by 1876, Chinatown supported over 200 opium dents, each with a capacity of between five and fifteen people. After the Burlingame Commercial Treaty of 1880, only American citizens could legally import opium into the United States, thus Chinese businessmen had to rely on non-Chinese importers to maintain opium supply. Ultimately, it was Anglo-Americans who were largely responsible for the legal importation and illegal smuggling of opium via the port of San Francisco and the Mexican border, after 1880.

Since the early 19th century, opium was widely used as an ingredient in medicines, cough syrups and child quieters. However, many 19th century doctors and opium experts, such as Dr. H.H. Kane and Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, made a distinction between opium used for smoking and that used for medicinal purposes, though found no difference in addictive potential between them. As part of a larger campaign to rid the United States of Chinese influence, Anglo-American doctors claimed that opium smoking led to increased involvement in prostitution by young white women and to genetic contamination via miscegenation. Anti-Chinese advocates believed America faced a dual dilemma: opium smoking was ruining moral standards and Chinese labor was lowering wages and taking jobs away from European-Americans.