The Chinese in CA and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone
 “wah gung” = migrating laborer or sojourner
 1840s-1850s Chinese immigration influenced by:
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First Opium War
Depressed agricultural output
Peasant rebellions
Interethnic strife
Contract labor system
 The cycle of center and periphery:
 centers of commerce and manufacturing penetrate into
less industrialized nations (periphery) in search of new
markets & raw materials causing instability of local
economies
 Inhabitants of periphery migrate to further develop
center’s economy as laborers
 1840s-50s – beginning of recruitment
of Chinese labor; 46,000 to HI and
380,000 to mainland
 Tan Heung Shan = Fragrant Sandalwood
Hills (HI)
 Gam Saan = Gold Mountain (CA)
 Key to sugar plantation explosion =
cheap labor
 1870 – 1910 – “Sugar is king”; US
business interests develop rapid and
large amount of plantations
 1875 – Reciprocity Treaty between
Kingdom of HI and US; no duties on HI
sugar to US
 1898 – annexation of HI and
colonization of PI
 Immigrants = mostly young, peasant class men primarily
from Guangdong province
 Confucian values enforce strict gender hierarchy
 “hostage theory”
 CA nativist and racist sentiment + need for mobile labor force
 Page Law of 1875 – prohibition of entry of Chinese “prostitutes”
essentially closes mainland to women
 Encouragement of Chinese settlement in HI:
 Small native population and only 6% of total island population
was white
 Control of plantation social life
 Importation of successive waves of ethnic Asian labor
(Japanese, Korean, Filipino) seen as key to managing labor
costs
 1849 – CA gold rush; 325 Chinese
immigrants initially with exponential
increases every year
 1852 – Foreign Miner’s Tax
 1855 – tax on all ship captains
transporting Chinese
 1862 – tax on Chinese living in state
(except licensed miners)
 1865 – Chinese begin to leave gold fields for
railroads
 Central Pacific RR constructed by 90%
Chinese labor
 1870 – 63,000 in US; 77% in CA; 25% of CA
workforce
 Move from RR to manufacturing &
agriculture
 1870s – labor competition begins to force
Chinese into service industry & selfemployment, primarily laundries
 By 1900 – 1 out of every 4 working Chinese males was a
“laundryman”
 Changing conditions of capital and labor as well as
racialization force Chinese into laundry industry,
performing what has been traditionally defined as “women’s
work”
 “The Chinese laundryman does not learn his trade in China;
there are no laundries in China… The women there do the
washing in tubs and have no washboards and flat irons. All the
Chinese laundrymen here [in America] were taught in the first
place by American women just as I was taught” (Lee Chew
quoted in Strangers from a Different Shore)
 Historical conditions force a gendered racialization – that to
be Chinese is associated with emasculation as well as
perpetual foreignness
 By 1870, there are 2 whites and 1 Chinese
for every available job in SF causing
white laborers to target Chinese as both
economic & social threats
 Idea of “heathen Chinee” pulls on
racialist stereotypes of blacks and native
Americans:
 “red man” versus “yellow horde” of the
frontier
 Comparison of “coolie labor” to slave
labor – assumed moral inferiority and
savagery but Chinese threat of
inscrutability and craftiness
 Bret Harte’s poem: “Which is why I
remark, /And my language is plain, /
That for ways that are dark / And for
tricks that are vain, / The heathen
Chinee is peculiar, / Which the same I
am free to maintain.”
 late 1870’s to 1880s – after rapid economic expansion, US
experiences cyclical downturn
 Chinese targeted as cause of unrest between white capital and
labor – further cementing Chinese racialization as perpetual
foreigners while reconciling class conflict among white
majority
 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
 “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled, … until
the expiration of ten years next…, [that] the coming of
Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is
hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be
lawful for any Chinese laborer to come [to] the United States.
 Population declines from 105, 465 in 1880 to 61,639 by 1920
 By 1850s – San Francisco Chinatown had already begun to
emerge
 Ethnic enclaves shaped by alien land laws, racist housing
practices, anti-miscegenation acts & prohibition of
immigration of Chinese women
 Offered space of community and support:
 Business associations, ex. Chinese Hand Laundry
Association
 Tongs – initially secret societies of mutual self-help
 Fongs – village associations
 Huiguan – district associations; ex. Chinese Six Companies
 April 18, 1906 – San Francisco earthquake
 destroys almost all municipal records
making it possible to claim that one was
born in US & automatically a citizen
 Further loophole – a child of a US citizen
even if he/she is born abroad is
automatically US citizen
 “paper sons” – Chinese immigrants enter
US claiming to be children of American
citizens
 1907 – 1924 – 10,000 Chinese female
immigrants arrive
 1910-1940 – all immigrants to CA (mostly
Chinese) must pass through Angel Island
for inspection
 By 1943 – 50,000 Chinese had entered
through Angel Island
 10% of all Chinese immigrants were
deported
 By 1920, 58% of Chinese population
primarily work in urbanized service
sector – laundries & restaurants
 “woi” – collective loan fund
between families and clans
 By 1940 – 91% of Chinese lived in
metropolitan areas, primarily SF, NY,
LA
 Chinatown begins to function as
tourist site – “gilded ghettos”
 Ex: in wake of SF earthquake,
Chinatown is purposely rebuilt in
more Orientalist fashion; during
1930s, SF Chamber of Commerce
advertises Chinatown as tourist
attraction
 Influx of “paper sons/daughters”
allows for sizable second generation
to emerge finally in 20th century
Mah
Tommie Hom
Leon Leong
Lyman Fu
Mason
Leila
(Narrator)
Ona
(suicide)
Nina
(lives in NY)
 Why is the novel’s title Bone? What do bones come to
symbolize?
 What is the reason for Ona’s suicide? Why does each
family member attribute her death to different
reasons?
 Why do you think the novel lacks a linear narrative?
Why does it begin and end when it does?
 How does Leon’s life as a “paper son” define the life of
his daughters?