Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (11 page)

The most encouraging features in visiting from house to house in Chinatown are, first, the great love the mothers have for their children, their
anxiety to have them learn English, and their pride in the progress made
in reading, writing, spelling and singing, and the desire to help the teacher
in her work, evidenced by collecting the children to be taught, and scolding them when inattentive or sulky.'Os

These visits won few converts, but some mothers were persuaded to
educate their daughters and discontinue the practice of binding their
feet, and a small number of women also began to venture out of the
home to attend church functions. Abused wives also found their way to
the mission homes. Records of the Presbyterian Mission Home indicate
that a number of "runaway wives" came asking for help when they were
threatened with being sold, subjected to beatings, or just unhappy with
their husbands. In one case, Lan Lee, who had continually been beaten
by her husband and threatened with murder, was assisted by the Presbyterian mission in winning a divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty in 1893.106 Slowly, Chinese women were becoming aware of legal
rights in America, rights that European women already knew how to
take advantage of.

UNBOUND LIVES OF EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN

There were exceptional Chinese women in nineteenthcentury San Francisco who did not live oppressive lives under the control of men or other women. The unbound lives of Maria Seise, Mary
Tape, and Lai Yuri Oi, for instance, provide important insight into the possibilities for social change among Chinese immigrant women. All
three immigrated as single women on their own, and, in contrast to the
restrictive lives of their peers, all three were self-sufficient, exercised freedom of choice, and were to a large extent in control of their own lives.

Maria Seise was probably the first Chinese woman to immigrate to
California (preceding Ah Toy by one year), and she remained selfsupporting throughout her life. She arrived in San Francisco aboard the
Eagle with the Charles V. Gillespie household in 1848. Gillespie, an enterprising New York trader, was returning from a stay in Hong Kong
with three Chinese servants, two men and Maria Seise. According to the
records of Bishop Ingraham of the Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco, who baptized her in 1854, Maria Seise ran away from her home
in Canton at an early age to avoid being sold into slavery by her parents.
Upon arrival in Macao she worked for a Portuguese family, adopting their
dress and Roman Catholic faith. She later married a Portuguese sailor,
who left on a voyage and never returned. Destitute, she then worked as
a servant for an American family and in 1837 went with them to the
Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). Upon her return to China six years later
she found employment with the Gillespies, accompanying them to San
Francisco in 1848. She became, according to the church records,

a companion [to Mrs. Gillespie,] enjoying her fullest confidence. She has
acquired a sufficient knowledge of the English language to enable Mr.
Wyatt to instruct and examine her for confirmation and no shadow of
doubt as to her preparation and fitness for assuming these responsibilities existed in his mind, or in that of the lady with whom she lived, who
knelt at her side to receive the rite at the same time.107

The two Chinese male servants soon left for the gold fields, but, according to one source, Maria Seise stayed with the Gillespies, who settled on a large tract of land in the vicinity of Chinatown.'08

Although Chinese men did not hesitate to speak up and use the courts
and diplomatic channels to fight discrimination whenever possible, there
were not many Chinese women like Ah Toy who had the resourcesEnglish language facility, finances, and adeptness-to do the same on
their own behalf. Mary Tape was one of the few. Brought up in an orphanage in Shanghai, she immigrated to America with missionaries at
the age of eleven and lived for five years at the Ladies' Relief Society
outside Chinatown. She later married Joseph Tape, a Chinese American expressman and interpreter for the Chinese consulate. Mary Tape
spoke English and was thoroughly Westernized in dress and lifestyle. Ac cording to a newspaper reporter, she was also a self-taught photographer, artist, and telegrapher, as well as the mother of four musically accomplished children.109 In 18 8 4, when their daughter Mamie Tape was
denied entry into the neighborhood school outside Chinatown because
"the association of Chinese and white children would be very demoralizing mentally and morally to the latter,"' 10 Mary and Joseph Tape took
the Board of Education to court (Tape v. Hurley). The lower court ruled
that all children, regardless of race, had the right to a public school education-a ruling that was upheld by the California Supreme Court;
but the school district circumvented the ruling by establishing a separate school for Chinese children in Chinatown. Enraged, Mary Tape
wrote the board a scathing letter of protest, which read in part:

I see that you are going to make all sorts of excuses to keep my child out
off the Public Schools. Dear sirs, Will you please to tell me! Is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn't God make us all!!! What right! have
you to bar my children out of the school because she is a chinese Descend.... You have expended a lot of the Public money foolishly, all because of a one poor little Child. Her playmates is all Caucasians ever since
she could toddle around. If she is good enough to play with them! Then
is she not good enough to be in the same room and studie with them? ...
It seems no matter how a Chinese may live and dress so long as you know
they Chinese. Then they are hated as one. There is not any right or justice for them.... May you Mr. Moulder, never be persecuted like the
way you have persecuted little Mamie Tape. Mamie Tape will never attend any of the Chinese schools of your making! Never!!! I will let the
world see sir What justice there is When it is govern by the Race prejudice men! 111

As an outspoken woman able to stand up for her rights, Mary Tape was
a rarity among Chinese women in nineteenth-century San Francisco. Fortunate to have had an education, a liberal upbringing, financial resources,
and a supportive husband, she was an early example of an emancipated
Chinese American woman.

Like Maria Seise, Ah Toy, and Mary Tape, Lai Yun Oi immigrated as
a single woman on her own. Her story is unusual in that she came as a
widow in the late r 87os or early 18 8os and was able independently to
make her fortune in America even though she spoke no English and had
few marketable skills. As her grand-nephew the historian Him Mark Lai
recalled her story, Lai Yun Oi was originally from the Nanhai district,
where women who were employed in the sericulture industry were more
independent than most other women in China. They did not practice footbinding and often followed the shu qi custom of refusing to marry. 112
It was therefore not surprising that Lai Yun Oi chose not to stay at her
husband's home and village after he died, which would have been the
"proper" thing to do. Instead she went to seek work in Canton and then
followed a fellow clansman on his way to New York. She finally decided
to settle alone in San Francisco, where she worked as a dai kum (a woman
who escorts young brides in the traditional Chinese wedding ceremony),
supplementing her income by doing needlework at home and providing hairdressing services to women in Chinatown. Living frugally and
investing wisely in businesses in New York and San Francisco, Lai Yun
Oi was able to return to Canton, invest in a tailor shop and a few buildings there, and retire comfortably while still in her mid-fifties.113

My great-grandmother Leong Shee did not come from the same liberal background as Lai Yun Oi; nor was she as educated and influenced
by missionary women as Maria Seise or Mary Tape. For Chinese women
like her, immigration to America was not a liberating experience; their
lives were doubly bound by American and Chinese ideologies that emphasized the inferiority of the Chinese race and the subordination of
women, on one hand, and economic conditions that nurtured prostitution and the exploitation of female labor, on the other. But Great-Grandmother, because of her class background, an understanding husband,
and a domineering personality, was able to do something about her unhappy circumstances: she chose to leave America and return home with
all her children. It was back in China that Great-Grandmother, encouraged by the liberal ideology of the 19 11 Revolution, became an emancipated woman. She unbound her feet, converted to Christianity, and
became educated and active in the local Church of Christ. Moreover,
she invested her husband's money wisely in property and business ventures, had a two-story house with indoor plumbing built for herself in
Macao, purchased four mui tsai to serve her and her family, and lived to
the ripe age of ninety-four.

Even at this early stage of their history, Chinese women were adapting
to life in Gold Mountain with mixed results. Although most of them
lived bound lives, remaining confined to the domestic sphere and subordinate to men, their important roles as producers (wage earners) and
reproducers (childbearers as well as homemakers) in a predominantly
male and pervasively racist land elevated their value as scarce commodities and essential helpmates to their men. Others, most notably prostitutes and mui tsai, suffered considerable abuse in America but found new options opened to them, through the assistance of missionary
women and what legal rights were available to them at the time. Nonetheless, as in the case of my great-grandmother, it took the additional
influence of Chinese nationalism and its inherent feminist ideology, combined with increased economic opportunities and the continued support
of Protestant women, before Chinese immigrant women could become
"new women" in the modern era of the twentieth century.