12. Arrival

The arrival and docking of a great steamship in nineteenth century San Francisco at the conclusion of a trans-Pacific crossing was always a dramatic affair. We can imagine that Dong Hin, aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship "City of Peking," observed a spectacle much like that described by Albert Evans in 1869 in the Atlantic Monthly as the ship made her approach for the Pacific Mail Steamship dock located at 1st and Brannan Streets (Figure 1, circa 1875, San Francisco History Center). Evans wrote:

"[The ship rounds] Rincon Point, and is laying in the stream, off the southern end of the wharf, with hawsers out, vainly endeavoring, against the strong ebb tide, to warp into her berth on the western side. The bow hawser parts at last, and she drfits out towards Yerba Buena Island, then swings slowly around under steam, heads toward San Jose, and then, when about half a mile away, turns gracefully, and with her monster wheels beating the bay into foam, comes rushing at full speed directly down toward the wharf... The monster of the deep obeys her helm to perfection, comes swiftly into her berth right alongside the wharf, and before we have ceased wondering at the immense proportions of this magnificent specimen of American marine architecture, her wheels are reversed, and she has ceased to move."

Welcome to San Francisco!

Continuing with Evan's evocative 1869 description:

"Then, for the first time, we observe that her main deck is packed with Chinamen - every foot of space being occupied by them - who are gazing in silent wonder at the new land whose fame had reached them beyond the seas, and whose riches these stalwart representatives of the toiling millions of Asia have come to develop. The great gangway-planks... are run out from the wharf and hoisted into place... [and] the custom-house officers ascend to the decks, the detectives and policemen range themselves at the gangways fore and aft... The forward gangway is reverved for the diembarkation of Chinamen exclusively; the after gangway is for the cabin passengers, mostly Americans and Europeans."

In those early years before the Exclusion Act of 1882 (more on this later), Chinese immigrants could pretty much come and go freely. As immigrant Huie Kin noted "in those days there were no immigration laws or tedious examinations." This relatively unrestricted movement was reflected in the number of Chinese immigrants coming into the US and San Francisco (see figure 2). Between 1860 and 1880, the Chinese population tripled to nearly 100,000. Only later, as enforcement of the Exclusion Act began, would severe immigration restrictions be set in place and would an immigration station be established in an old two-story shed at the Pacific Mail Steamship Company wharf. The more infamous immigration station on Angel Island would not open its doors for another 30 years until 1910.
(2) Cartoon showing the influx of Chinese immigrants into San Francisco from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (on the left) and from Canada (on the right). Note the overalls building in the middle-left (18--, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley).

After the cabin passengers disembarked, Evans wrote that a "living stream of the blue-coated men of Asia, bearing long bamboo poles across their shoulders, from which depend packages of bedding, matting, clothing, and things of which we know neither the names nor the uses, pours down the plank the moment that the word is given, 'All ready!'...

...As they come down upon the wharf, they separate into messes or gangs of ten, twenty, or thirty each, and, being recognized through some (to us) incomprehensible freemasonry system of signs by the agents of the 'Six Companies' as they come, are assigned places on the long, broad-shedded wharf... Each man carries on his shoulders, or in his hands, his entire earthly possessions, and few are overloaded. There are no merchants or business men among them, all being of the coolie or laboring class... There is a babel of uncouth cries and harsh discordant yells, accompanied by whimsically energetic gestures and convulsive facial distortions, as the members of the different gangs recognize each other in the crowd, and search out the places assigned to them."

From the perspective of a Chinese immigrant, Huie Kin recalled,

"[somebody] had brought to the pier large wagons for us. Out of the general babble, someone called out in our local dialect, and, like sheep recognizing the voice only, we blindly followed, and soon were piling into one of the waiting wagons… The wagon made its way heavily over the cobblestones, turned some corners, ascended a steep climb, and stopped at a kind of clubhouse, where we spent the night.”

Who were the agents of the "Six Companies," the people who called out in a local dialect and collected the gangs of men with their "freemasonry signs" and brought them to a "kind of clubhouse?" These were the representatives of the district associations such as the Sam Yup District Association and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Though we really don't know exactly what Dong Hin's arrival in San Francisco was truly like, its certainly likely that these associations played a key role in helping him get settled and secure a job in this new place.

I think Albert Evans displayed amazing insight into the significance of the Chinese immigrants' arrival in San Francisco. He concluded his 1869 article saying:

"We had indeed stood on the farther shore of the New World, and seen the human tides which have surged around the globe from opposite directions meet and commingle... It was a sight worth living long and coming far to look upon - a scene to wonder at, to ponder over and reflect upon - to gaze upon once and remember through all the coming years of life - a scene such as our fathers never beheld nor dreamed of, and of which our children's children only may know the full import and meaning."

Links:
The Chinese in California, 1850-1925, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berekeley
"Steamer from China" in More San Francisco Memoirs, 1852-1899 , Malcolm E. Barker (ed)
A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus, Thomas Chin (ed)
The Chinese American Album by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler

11. San Francisco!

Dong Hin sailed through the narrow Golden Gate into San Francisco Bay for the first time in 1881 aboard the S.S. City of Peking. It surely must have been both a stunning and welcome sight after a long and possibly difficult voyage across the wide Pacific. The San Francisco that greeted Dong Hin in 1881 was in many ways still in its infancy. A little bit of San Francisco history helps to paint a picture of what the emerging metropolis looked like 125 years ago upon Dong Hin's arrival.
(1) The Golden Gate as seen from Telegraph Hill (1873, adapted from the Anchor Steam Beer website). And nope, there's no bridge yet.

There has been a Native American presence in San Francisco for millenia. When considered on that time scale, it was only fairly recently then that, in 1770, San Francisco Bay was "discovered" by Spanish explorer Don Gaspar de Portolà. Six years later in 1776, the Spanish, under the guidance of Franciscan priests Fathers Junipero Serra and Francisco Palou established the Mission San Francisco de Asis, or Mission of St. Francis of Assisi. (The Mission would eventually take its nickname, "Mission Dolores" from the nearby, but now long-gone "Lago de los Dolores" or "Lake of the Sorrows"). Simultaneously the Spanish military established the Presidio as a small fort to defend both the Bay as well as the tiny village of Yerba Buena located on the northeastern tip of the SF peninsula. Yerba Buena was originally a small collection of ramshackle shacks and adobe homes centered around a small plaza facing the Yerba Buena Cove in an area now occupied by Chinatown and San Francisco's financial district. The village of Yerba Buena would eventually become the nucleus for the City of San Francisco. (2a) An illustration of San Francisco from 1846 (adapted from sparkletack.com); (2b) A map of San Francisco police districts from the late 1850's - notice the wharfs projecting into Yerba Buena cove, the reclaimed area that is now the financial district (adapted from the history of the SFPD).

Little changed in the quiet burg even upon Mexican independence from Spain in 1821. Though now nominally in control of the former Spanish territory, the Mexican government was too overtaxed and otherwise occupied to pay too much attention its new northern territorial holdings and San Francisco fell into sleepy isolation. During this time, a variety of countries, seeing the geographical value of San Francisco Bay Area, vied for territorial expansion into the region while under the lackadaisical rule of Mexico. In some ways, this was the start of the multicutural nature of the City.

Of course, things would not remain like this for long. In 1846, after many machinations, a group of Californians (spurred by the US government and led by nutty rabble-rouser John C. Fremont) "seized" Sonoma and declared independence from Mexico, creating the California "Bear Flag Republic." Soon after, the US navy sloop-of-war "Portsmouth" under the command of Captain John B. Montgomery sailed unchallenged into San Francisco Bay and took control of San Francisco for the US. Fortunately, San Francisco's liberation from Mexico was a bloodless affair as the few remaining Mexican soldiers had long since departed.
(3) The US Navy sloop-of-war "Portsmouth" (San Francsico History Center)

If you're a little confused by the apparent interchangability of the names "Yerba Buena" and "San Francisco," you're not alone. To settle the matter once and for all (and to get a jump on rival settlers who were trying to establish a competing city at the site of present day Benicia to be named "Francisca"), the City's first American Alcalde (mayor) Washington Bartlett issued the following proclamation on January 30, 1847:

AN ORDINANCE WHEREAS, the local name of Yerba Buena, as applied to the settlement or town of San Francisco, is unknown beyond the district; and has been applied from the local name of the cove, on which the town is built: Therefore, to prevent confusion and mistakes in public documents, and that the town may have the advantage of the name given on the public map; IT IS HEREBY ORDAINED, that the name of SAN FRANCISCO shall hereafter be used in all official communications and public documents, or records appertaining to the town.

And with this little ordinance in place, the City officially became "San Francisco." You can read more about this story in the San Francisco History Index.

If one could identify a single historical center of San Francisco, it would be that little plaza in the middle of the village of Yerba Buena. With the arrival of the US military, that main plaza of San Francisco was renamed "Portsmouth Square" after the sloop-of-war, and it was here that the stars and stripes were raised for the first time near the old Mexican adobe custom house on July 9, 1846. Now if you look carefully at the maps in figures 2a-b, you'll see how the City was configured around this time and how much has changed since then. The small town was built around a small harbor, and "Portsmouth Square" was just a block or two up from the water line. The road running just along the water front was rechristened "Montgomery Street" in honor of the "liberator." Eventually Yerba Buena cove was reclaimed with landfill (including the abandoned ships of the soon-to-arrive prospectors), creating the terra firma that now consititutes much of present-day downtown San Francisco. And Montgomery street, the street that once ran along the edge of the harbor, now runs smack-dab through the middle of downtown.

Change was beginning to accelerate for this tiny town. On May 11, 1848, the Mormon elder and newspaper publisher Sam Brannan announced Sutter's discovery of gold in historic Portsmouth Square, and the gold rush was on. Simply looking at the population change during these years illustrates clearly the explosive growth that was taking place:

1842: 196 residents
1846: 200
1848: 850
1849: 5,000 (July)
1849: 25,000 (December)
1860: 56,802
1870: 149, 473
1880: 233,959

(4) Portsmouth square, 1858 (San Francsico History Center)

The time period between 1849 and 1881 was a period of intense change for the City. San Francisco suffered six major conflagrations that burned the City to the ground, developed a reputation for lawlessness and vigilantism, and became a major economic, shipping, and military center for the western United States. In September 9, 1850, partially in response to the influx of 49ers seeking to strike it rich in the gold fields, California became the 31st state admitted to the union, and San Francisco became a center of power for the fledgling state. If you compare figure 2a (1846) to the panorama picture of the City in figure 5 (1878), you can see just how much much the City was begining to grow. By 1880, San Francisco had become the ninth largest city in America.

(5) A panorama of San Francisco by Eadward Muybridge (1878, adapted from AmericaHurrah).

The Muybridge panorama is probably very similar to the sight of San Francisco that first greeted Dong Hin in 1881. The young City, really only 30 years old, was still establishing its identity and character. The influx of Chinese immigrants and their culture at this time (along with the arrivals of so many other peoples of the world), played no small part in helping to shape and develop the unique and special characteristics of San Francisco.

Links
[Note: At the end of every post, I try to place links to the sources of information if you're interested in going a little further in depth in a particular topic. This week I'm listing a number of links I consider really amazing, links I think everyone should try to check out.]

Sparkletack.com is the source for incredible, free podcasts about the history of San Francisco, covering everything from the City's birth to ephemera like those identical twins who dress alike and make the rounds downtown. A must-listen!

San Francisco history section of sfgeneology.com is a terrific resource full of stories, pictures, and plain-old San Francisciana. If you ever wondered about the origin of a SF street name, this is the place to go to first.

San Francisco (wikipedia)
City and County of San Francisco official website

10. First Pacific Crossing (1881)

As a gum shan haak, or “traveler to the Golden Mountains,” Dong Hin would have had to raise the $25 to $60 required to pay for the 7,000 mile journey from Hong Kong to San Francisco. This was not an insubstantial amount of money as it was often more than an entire family’s annual income. Dong Hin may have saved money. However, given his young age, he more likely may have borrowed money from his family or money-lending associations known as hui. His family in China would be responsible for repaying the debt to the hui in the event Dong Hin was unable to do so.

Alternatively, by the late 1870’s, Chinese merchants began to sell “credit tickets.” Emigrants who used the credit tickets agreed to repay the cost of the ticket with interest after securing employment in the United States. With the increasing volume of emigrants traveling from China, businesses known as gum shan chong, or “Golden Mountain Firm(s)” began to appear as well. These companies aided the immigrants by taking care of the necessary paperwork and booking the passage. Here is an exerpt from a credit ticket from 1850:

"... From the time of leaving Shanghae, the expenses of provisions and vessel are all to be defrayed by the head of the Tseang Sing Hong. On arrival, it is expected that the foreign merchant will search out and recommend employment for the said labourers, and the money he advances on their account, shall be returned when the employment becomes settled. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars passage money, as agreed by us, are to be paid to the said head of the said Hong, who will make arrangments with the employers of the coolies, that a moiety of their wages shall be deducted monthly until the debt is absorbed, after which they will receive their wages in full every month..."

Today a trip to Hong Kong from San Francisco would take about 12 hours by plane. You might enjoy some airplane food, watch a couple of movies, and sleep a bit. In the late 1800’s the trip was substantially different. Sailing ships and steamers made the trans-Pacific crossing in anywhere from three weeks to two months. Conditions in steerage were often miserable and crowded. The “unusual” Anglo food provided by the ship was often of the poorest quality and unpalatable by Chinese sensibilities. Therefore, the emigrants often brought their own provisions and cooking utensils. Many emigrants had to fight off seasickness as well as loneliness during the long and trying passage to San Francisco.

(1a-c) During the voyage, emmigrants endured poor and overcrowded conditions (adapted from The Chinese American Album).

It was under these conditions in 1881 at fourteen years of age that Dong Hin boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's steam-fitted schooner the "City of Peking" bound for San Francisco and the “Gold Mountain.”(2) The "City of Peking" was built in 1873 and was the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven steamer built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (from the APL website).

Links
The Chinese American Album by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler
"On Gold Mountain" exhibition
Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943 by Yong Chen

9. Gold Mountain Calls

In spite of his older brother's purported advice to remain in China, Dong Hin decided to seek his fortune in the “Land of the Flowery Flag” (the field of stars in the U.S. flag reminded the Chinese of flowers). Once again the circumstances that prompted Dong Hin to leave China and his family are unknown. However, the mid-to-late nineteenth century was a period characterized by large movements of Cantonese to the United States. More than 60,000 Chinese came to the United States between 1850 and 1860 alone. Initially many were enticed by the promise of instant wealth from the 1849 gold rush in the Sierras. Later, many Chinese were recruited as laborers to build the railroads of California and the western United States. Reports and rumors from these early immigrants to America filtered back to China - California became known as the “Gold Mountain” ("Gum Shan") strewn with gold for the taking and offering prosperity to all.
(1a) Chinese prospector panning for gold (1852, adapted from Sacramento Bee); (1b) Chinese workers building the Loma Prieta Lumber Co.'s railroad, California, about 1885 (adapted from America on the Move wesbsite).

For example, numerous circulars, such as this one sent around Guangzhou by Chinese brokers representing foreign shipmasters, were broadly distributed to encourage potential emigrants to seek their fortune:

“Americans are very rich people. They want the Chinaman to come and will make him welcome… There will be big pay, large houses, and food and clothing of the finest description. You can write your friends or send them money at any time, and we will be responsible for the safe delivery. It is a nice country, without mandarins or soldiers. All alike; big man no larger than little man. There are a great many Chinamen there now, and it will not be a strange country. China God is there now, and the agents of his house. Never fear, and you will be lucky…”

Whatever the specific inducement, the opportunity afforded in the United States was probably difficult to ignore considering the meager options available to most people in China.

Links
"On Gold Mountain" exhibition
The Chinese American Album by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler

8. Dong On, Chan Shee, & Dong Hin (1867)

In a sense, our story really begins in Loo Jow on October 13, 1867 with the birth of Dong Hin (鄧 賢; Pinyin, "dèng xián") to our forebears Dong On and his wife Chan Shee. Unfortunately, we know nearly nothing about Dong On, Chan Shee, or life in Loo Jow. Concerning his parents, Dong Hin told an immigration inspector in 1921 that " my father, Dong On died about two years after I arrived in the U.S. [in 1891] and my mother, Chan Shee died about four months before my father."
(1a) Dong Hin's Chinese name from an application for immigration visa (May 22, 1925, NARA); (1b) Dong Hin's English signature from a 1921 immigration application (March 16, 1921, NARA)

A few notes about names. "Dong" (鄧; Mandarin, Pinyin : "dèng"; "deng4"; Cantonese, Yale: "dang6"), as you know, is the family surname. The name "Hin" (賢; Mandarin, Pinyin : "xián"; "xian2"; Cantonese, Yale: "yin4") translates as "virtuous, worthy, good, or able." In several immigration documents, Dong Hin reported that he went by two other names as well: "Dong Gin Chong" and "Dong Wai Lum." It was the common practice of the time to have a family name "Dong," a generational name that all siblings would share ("Gin" or "Wai"), and a personal name ("Chong" or "Lum"). As for Chinese female names, married women were typically referred to by their maiden name ("Chan") and the character ("Shee") to indicate their marital status in the same way "Mrs." is used in English. Hence, Dong Hin's mother was from the Chan family.

Little is known about Dong Hin's childhood, though anecdotally we believe he may have had an older brother and a sister. If so, Dong Hin would certainly have been influenced by the exploits of his older brother, who is thought to have been a sailor. Family stories suggest that Dong Hin’s brother was the first member of the Dong clan to make his way to America. However upon returning to China, he advised his younger brother not to come to the United States. Dong Hin’s brother eventually was lost at sea.

Apocryphal?

Perhaps. But there is no question that China had a very rich maritime tradition and that many Chinese were sailors, not just cooks and stewards, onboard nineteenth century ships. G.R. Worcester, a British authority on junks and sampans wrote in "Sail and Sampan in China" (London, 1966):

"The Chinese sailor appears to fluorish not only in his own country, but abroad. The emigrating portion of the Chinese maritime population comes, strangely enough, from a relatively small area in the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien; but wherever they go, they never fail to adapt themselves to their environment, whatever it may chance to be. Some Chinese were employed very successfully as sailors by the early East India-men; so they were initiated to the foreign style of ships and gear a very long time ago... Their courage and skill in navigating and handling their own junks about the China seas is well known. Such work for generations past amid perilous conditions has evolved a hardy race of seamen, whose skill and resourcefulness is second to none in the world."

(1) Historically, the Chinese have contributed several essential advances to shipbuilding and design including the rudder, sail rigging, bulkhead hulls, and the use of the compass for navigation. The junk Keying (above) travelled from China to the U.S. and to England between 1846 and 1848 (wikipedia).

For more information about Chinese sailors of the nineteenth century, I heartily recommend checking out Robert Schwendinger's article "Chinese Sailors: America's Invisible Merchant Marine 1876-1905" in California History magazine.

Links
NARA (National Archives Pacific Region)
China Connection by Jeanie W.C. Low
"Chinese Sailors: America's Invisible Merchant Marine 1876-1905" by Robert J. Schwendinger in California History 62, no.1 (Spring 1978): 58-69.
Chinese seafarers (Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, UK)

Time out...

... for a little announcement.

恭喜發財
(kung hei fat choy)

Chinese New Year 2006 (or 4703, depending on your calendar), the Year of the Dog is just around the corner!

Check out some of these events:

New Year's Flower Market Fair
Saturday, January 21, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
Sunday, January 22, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
Flowering quince, gladiolas, orchids and blooms and produce of all kinds are for sale in a street fair along with traditional Chinese dance, music, art, and cultural displays. Saturday, on Grant Avenue, from Broadway to Clay Street. Sunday, on Pacific Avenue, from Kearny to Stockton. Free

Chinese New Year Day - Year of the Dog
Sunday, January 29

Miss Chinatown U.S.A. Pageant
Friday, February 4, 7:30 p.m.
Since 1958, Chinese American women from across the country have competed for the title of Miss Chinatown USA.

Chinese New Year Parade
Saturday, February 11, 5:30 p.m.-8 p.m., RAIN or SHINE

And, of course, our own family dinner at Tong Palace on Saturday, February 4th!

新年快樂

Check out the SFGate.com for a full listing of New Year's events.

7. Loo Jow, now

The district of Shunde and the town of Loo Jow (Luzhou, figure 1b) have certainly changed in the 125 years since Dong Hin first left his village for San Francisco. Unquestionably the pace of change has accelerated most dramatically within the last ten years. What was once a relatively quiet and underdeveloped part of China, is now one of the country's largest centers of manufacturing and trade. Near Loo Jow and what we think is our maternal ancestral village, Ping Po (Pingbu, figure 1b) is Lecong City (figure 1a).

(1a) Modern map of the Shunde region, highlighting the location of Lecong City, just south of Foshan (adapted from Lecong International Exhibition Center website); (1b) modern map highlighting the location of Loo Jow (Luzhou), home of Dong Hin, and Ping Po (Pingbu), ancestral village of Mok Shee.

Here is a description of Lecong from a New York Times article from Januray 2004:

"The main street of Lecong is a five-mile Vegas-like stretch of gaudy showrooms and exhibition centers, factories and cavernous warehouses, leather suppliers and timber yards, all dedicated to making and selling furniture.

Until a decade ago, this town, in Guangdong Province in southern China, was mostly rice paddies and sugarcane fields. Now Lecong, which promotes itself as the 'furniture capital of the world,' is a sales hub for the province's booming furniture industry, with 3,500 furniture stores and wholesalers representing many of the 6,000 or so furniture factories in the surrounding Pearl River delta region.

Much of the growth has come from exports. In the last eight years, China's total furniture exports grew about 30 percent annually, to about $7.3 billion last year, and more than half of the exports came from Guangdong."

Another illustration of the pace of change comes first-hand from Ron and Judy. In 1997, Richard, Joe, Diana, Dan, Bernice, Ron, and Janet visited Loo Jow, guided by a distant cousin from Hong Kong. Eight years later in December 2005, Judy visited the area while on an educational exchange mission. Here are some of their thoughts and impressions...

******

Ron (1997):

"It was a Sunday afternoon in 1997 when we arrived at Loo Jow after a 30 minute taxi ride from the ferry terminal. A relative of our Hong Kong cousin who had lived here, when he was younger, was our escort for the day. Low Jow is located just off a main highway.

At the entrance is the town square with a huge gateway. There were twogeneral stores and an area where a farmers market does business in the morning. The streets and alleys in the village are narrow and restricted to pedestrians, bicycles, and motor cycles. The buildings, compounds are mostly of brick and stone construction. They are very old and in disrepair. This village probably [hasn't] changed too much for over a hundred years - it is still quite primitive.

(2) Reading from right to left, the gateway sign reads (in Pinyin, the standardized form of Mandarin transliteration): "Lù Zhōu Cūn Zé Pŭ Dà Dào"; this very roughly translates as the "boulevard (Dà Dào) by the large canal (Zé Pŭ) to the village (Cūn) in the land filled (Zhōu) with egrets (Lù)"; the gate and sign are no longer there, torn down as part of a modernization campaign (photos Ron Dong)

Because it was a Sunday all of the public facilities were closed so we were not able to do any family history research. We wandered around for about an hour and observed a stone staircase leading down to a water inlet and saw a woman doing the laundry by hand. In a small factory there were two young girls working on machinery making metal door hinges.

(photos Ron Dong)

Traffic in the village was minimal except for an occasional cyclist. There were no cars in the village which was nice but one can easily get lost in the maze of narrow paths, alleys, and streets. Of course, we got lost and had to ask two young boys for directions back to the entrance.

We were lucky to have visited Loo Jow before modernization completely takes over as already there are signs of demolition and constructions everywhere. The highway that runs by is heavily used and congested. Will Loo Jow be saved?"

******

Judy (December, 2005):

"LeCong: rapid modernization, busy with vehicles and workers moving at a quick pace in the furniture manufacuring and marketing business.

LooJow: very serene in comparison to Lecong. It was a warm sunny day and walking down the clean lane was a cozy feeling. One house had red banners and double happiness pasted around the doorway indicating a marriage in that house; definitely a good omen.

(photos Judy Dong)

I wanted to sit alone by the creek under the old tree to quietly soak up the surroundings, gentle flow of the creek, warm sun and lack of automobile and factory sounds to try visualizing what life might have been like on a busy wash day at the creek. Whose family was downstream? Whose [family] was across the foot bridge?

[The] Ancestor house opened [my] mind to [imagine] what it would have been like to be with family within the four walls.

(1a) A water well in Loo Jow that may have been used by the Dong clan; (1b) the alleyway leading to the site of the Dong family compound (photos Judy Dong)

I was struck by the contrast of the modern three story homes and the anticipated increase in student enrollment at the new preschool and elementary school rise in number of students. The student id badges that monitor student attendance was something I would love to have at Hoover. Imagine how much easier 1300 student attendance would be compared to our daily scan strips that teachers need to bubble in with #2 pencils."

6. Loo Jow, then

Our family can trace itself back to Loo Jow (Lù Zhōu, 鹭州), a village located in the Shunde district just south of the city of Foshan (Nanhai). Unfortunately, we know very little about the nature of Loo Jow during the nineteenth century. However, there are clues to what Loo Jow may have been like, such as its highly evocative village name: Lù 鹭 meaning "egret" or "heron" and Zhōu 州 meaning "state" or "land." Together they mean something roughly like "land filled with egrets." Given its location in the Pearl River Delta surrounded by waterways and canals, this epithet is not at all surprising.

We might envision Loo Jow as a small farming village made up of about one hundred families. The various families lived in a small collection of family compounds made up of simple brick buildings. There were certainly none of the conveniences we take for granted today like paved roads, indoor plumbing, or electricity. Water was probably collected from canals carrying water from the nearby river and water buffaloes provided the primary means to tend crops. A commonly held view of this period suggests that most residents were probably subsistence farmers scrapping out meager existences. Thus, the general perception of emigrants from 19th century China is that of peasant farmers escaping poverty and hunger.
(1a) AMS map of Shunde district (circa 1944, G7820 s250.U52 Case D nos. 78 & 84, U.C. Berkeley); (1b) highlighted location of Loo Jow (Lu-chou) (U.C. Berkeley).

However, contemporary scholarship now suggests that much of this “perception” derived from anti-Chinese attitudes and propaganda in the United States that sought to cast Chinese immigrants as coming from the lowest social classes. On the contrary, much evidence exists that suggests Chinese emigrants, particularly from Shunde and the other Sam Yup districts, came from regions of relative prosperity. The Shunde district gazetteer estimated that “less than half of the population was engaged in solely producing grain.” Instead of focusing on “mere subsistence crops,” Shunde became a major commodities center, producing silk, fruit (like longans, lichees, and oranges), and fish.

To support their substantial role in domestic and international trade, the people of Shunde developed the commercial infrastructure required of such an expansive market economy. In 1853, the district gazetteer estimated that “60% of the people in Shunde worked in the fields, 20% were artisans, and the remaining 20% were in commerce.” As a consequence of this tradition of commerce and their market driven economy, emigrants from Shunde and the other Sam Yup districts were generally more likely to become merchants when they emigrated to the United States than Chinese from other regions of China. One might say that business was in the blood of people from Shunde.

Links
U.C. Berkeley, Earth Sciences & Map Library
U.S. Army Map Service (AMS, U.C. Berkeley)
Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943 by Yong Chen

5. Sam Yup & Shunde

So far, we've spent a lot of time discussing Chinese history and geography. For the Cantonese immigrants of the late 1800's and early 1900's, where you came from in Guangdong played a significant role in determing what trade you ended up upon your arrival in America. In figure 1a you can see a map of the Pearl River districts as they were organized at the turn of the 20th century. Note that there is a grouping (tan) of three ("Sam") districts ("Yup") around Guangzhou and a grouping (pink) of four ("Sze") districts west of the delta. These two regions are known collectively as the Sam Yup and Sze Yup and many of the early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco were from one of these seven districts.
(1a) The administraive districts of the Pearl River Delta around 1900 (adapted from the Chinese Historical Society of America); (1b) the districts that strongly influenced the early San Francisco Chinese communty either came from the Sam Yup or Sze Yup regions.

The early immigrants established a certain occupational hierarchy based on one's district of origin. For example, the Sze Yup region was highly agrarian, and many immigrants from Sze Yup took up work in America as laborers and domestics. People from Sze Yup went on to control the laundry, small retail shop, and restaurant businesses of San Francisco.

On the other hand, Sam Yup was one of the wealthiest areas in Guangdong, and many of the early wealthy Chinese merchants were from Sam Yup. Sam Yup was made up of the: 1) Nanhai (Namhoi); 2) Panyu (Punyu); and Shunde (Shuntak) districts. In the City, the Namhoi came to monopolize the Chinese tailoring trade as well as running many of the butcher shops. Overall and workers' clothes factories were nearly exclusively owned by immigrants from Shunde.

Our family hails from the Sam Yup district of Shunde (順德) which is located 20 kilometers south of Guangzhou. The district of Shunde (also variously transliterated as Shun-te, Shuntak) was first settled way back in the early years of the Spring and Autumn Period (722-481 BCE). More than two millenia later, life in Shunde was still rather modest. In Yong Chen’s “Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943,” the author cites a Shunde gazetteer’s description of the district from 1853:

“Every locality in Shunde is full of water and can be reached by boat. Rivers flow in different directions. [There are] profitable mulberry-tree fields and fish ponds. Natural silk is produced annually. Men and women live by their own exertion. The poor lease their land from the rich, who collect rent… Others specialize in different kinds of crafts and occupations that are found throughout the townships, [ranging from weaving to making various utensils].”
(2a) The Sam Yup districts of Nanhai, Panyu, and Shunde (adapted from the Chinese Historical Society of America); (2b) present day Shunde near Lecong City (Judy Dong, 2005).

More recently, in March 1992 the Chinese government created Shunde "City" designating the region a special economic zone. The result was the overnight transformation of the area’s rural economy into one based on manufacturing and trade. In a somewhat semantically confusing reorganization in the beginning of 2003, Shunde City was rechristened as the district of Shunde. Hence, no actual city of Shunde now appears on maps.

According to the People's Government of Shunde, here are some statistics to give you a flavor for how much the area has grown: Shunde now comprises 10 towns, 109 administrative villages, a population in excess of 1.1 million people, with a GDP of nearly ¥51 billion RMB ("Renminbi" or "People's currency"), and a worker's annual salary of almost ¥17,000. (For those with a calculator handy, the current exchange rate is approximately $1:¥8). In less than a decade, Shunde is now amongst the most prosperous and rapidly developing areas in all of China, including our family's ancestral village of Loo Jow.

(*Fun fact* Martial arts legend Bruce Lee hails from Shang Village, Jun'an, Shunde!)

Links
People's Government of Shunde
A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus, Thomas Chin (ed)
Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943 by Yong Chen