From “John Chinaman” to “Sui

Sin Far”

ASIAN AMERICANS AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF US MODERNITY IN

POPULAR CULTURE (PART 2)

 Consequences of racialization
1. Missed opportunity of
US class consciousness
 All comparisons between Irish and
German immigration and that of the
Chinese are unjust. The former make
their homes here, buy farms and
homesteads, are of the same general
race…. The Chinese come for a season
only… They do not come to settle or
make homes, and not one in fifty of
them is married. Their women are all
suffering slaves and prostitutes…. To
compare the Chinese with even the
lowest white laborers is, therefore,
absurd (SF Real Estate Circular,
September 1874).
2. The hypocrisy of the
“assimilation” thesis
 In the 1930s, University of Chicago
sociologist Robert E. Park developed the
best twentieth-century definition of
assimilation. According to Park,
assimilation was “the name given to the
process or processes by which peoples of
diverse racial origins and different
cultural heritages, occupying a common
territory, achieve a cultural solidarity
sufficient at least to sustain a national
existence.”
 But his theory flew in the face of anti-
Asian immigration policy and narrowing
definitions of citizenship, which
effectively banned the very “assimilation”
Park theorized!
 Between ethnic “assimilation” and the fear of racial
hybridity / miscegenation

 “Our country must cease to be regarded as a dumping ground. Which

does not mean that it must deny the value of rich accretions drawn
from the right kind of immigration…. Biological laws tell us that certain
divergent people will not mix or blend well…. Quality of mind and body
suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation
as immigrant law (Calvin Coolidge, cit. in Palumbo-Liu, 26-27).
 1922 Cable Act declared that any woman citizen of the US would be
stripped of citizenship if she married an alien ineligible for
naturalization
 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act excludes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian
Indian, and Filipino immigration.
The racial hybrid was, to
be precise, the sign of
America’s malleability. To
manage that disruption of
the American peace of
mind, the hybrid had to be
disavowed. Any such
product was graphically
depicted as monstrous
and dangerous at worst,
pathological and pathetic
at best. In these fears, the
biological and the
psychological, the somatic
and the psychic, became
inextricably linked. The
actual hybrid was only the
most concrete form of the
fear of difference.

-- Palumbo-Liu, 34
3. The
gender(ed)
expression of
race
Hypervisibility of
Chinese as bachelors
situates white women as
needing protection from
Asians-as-predators or
as dangerous conduits of
miscegenation

Singularity of Chinese
women in the US prior
to the opening of
restrictions to
immigration makes
them a prized
commodity for either
enhancing male prestige
or as employed
prostitutes
From the “John Chinaman” stereotype to the “Sui
Sin Far” persona

 1865 Edith Maude Eaton is born in England. Mother was born in China, adopted by Scottish
missionaries, and educated in London
 1875 Page Act Law prohibits immigration of contract laborers, convicts, and women
“intending to be prostitutes” from China. By 1897, ratio of Chinese men to women in the US is
27 to 1.
 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibits immigration of Chinese laborers to the US,
denies US citizenship to Chinese already living in the US, and imposes restrictions on Chinese
returning to the US after leaving the country. This law was not repealed until 1943.
 1894 Eaton joins a Chinatown mission society in Montreal with her mother and teaches
English in Sunday School
 1898 Moves to San Francisco
 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroys much of Chinatown: Chinese quickly
rebuild it with their own carpenters and masons, resulting in an “oriental” style of
architecture. The earthquake destroys immigration records, leading to the “birth” of “paper
sons”
 1910 Opening of Angel Island by US Bureau of Immigration
 1912 Mrs. Spring Fragrance, a collection of short stories by Eaton under the pseudonym
Sui Sin Far, is published
 1914 Eaton dies
 “Its Wavering Image”

 “You do not belong here. You are white – white…. [T]hey do

not understand you,” he went on. “Your real self is alien to
them” (82).
 “Pan, don’t you see that you have got to decide what you
will be – Chinese or white? You cannot be both” (83).
 “Why should a white woman care about such things?” (84)
 “A white woman!” echoed Pan…. “I would not be a white
woman for all the world. You are a white man. And what is
a promise to a white man!” (85).
 “The Americanization of Pau Tsu”

 “I wish you to dress like an American woman when we go out or receive,” said
her husband. “It is the proper thing in America to do as the Americans do. You
will notice, light of my eyes, that it is only on New Year and our national
holidays that I wear the costume of our country and attach a queue. The wife
should follow the husband in all things.” (115).
 “You wanted your wife to be an American woman while you remained a
Chinaman. For all your clever adaptation of our American ways you are a
thorough Chinaman. Do you think an American would dare treat his wife as you
have treated yours?” (119).
 “But this is no tale. Miss Adah, you have inspired in me a love—“Adah
Raymond started. Wan Lin Fo spoke slowly. “For the little girl in China to
whom I am betrothed.” (111)
 “[I (Pau Tsu)] have left you…so that you may be happy with the Beautiful One,
who is so much your Pau Tsu’s superior. This, she acknowledges, for she sees
with your eyes in which, like a star, the Beautiful One shineth. Else, why should
you have your Pau Tsu follow in her footsteps?” (118).
 From excluded alien to WWII ally and
“naturalized” citizen

1943 Magnuson Act (or Chinese Exclusion Repeal

Act) repeals bans on Chinese immigration and
permits limited naturalization of US residents of
Chinese descent. China becomes official ally of the
US in the Pacific War.
“Eat a Bowl of Tea” portrays the effect of World War
II and the Magnuson Act on the aging bachelor society
of Manhattan’s Chinatown and the difficulty of
translating the unfulfilled legacies of a racialized
“underclass” (the Chinese) to / for the postwar
generation
 “Eat a Bowl of Tea”

Louis Chu (1961) Wayne Wang, dir. (1989)