Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee (CINARC)
CHINESE WOMEN IN THE NORTHWEST
西北角的红粉佳人
Women from China began to arrive in California in the 1850s, and reached the Pacific Northwest a decade or two after that 

These early Chinese-American women have traditionally been seen as helpless victims, brought from China without skills or consent and forced to become prostitutes or low-status wives.   However, we think that view must be reexamined.  Many female Chinese immigrants were not at all helpless.  In the Pacific Northwest, as in other parts of the Americas, they overcame enormous personal obstacles, built bridges to the larger American society, and contributed greatly to their gender-skewed Chinese communities.  
"Retarded Mental Development" 脑袋瓜不发达?

The editors couldn't resist this one as an example of sheer outrageousness.  The picture is from a 1906 article in the shortlived Washington Magazine.  The text reads in part, "The women are usually more superstitious than the men, for generations of ignorance has retarded their mental development."
The two ladies in the picture, who do not look noticeably retarded, may have been Californians.  In spite of the magazine's name, the author of this article was not writing specifically about Washington Chinese.
版权 Copyright is free for non-profit use: : click here for more information
When 12-year old Maggie (Margaret) Chin arrived from Hong Kong to Seattle on April 2, 1909, she wasn’t sure she would be admitted, although an American citizen.  The Immigration Bureau's inspectors, probably instigated by their boss, the virulently anti-Chinese labor leader Terence Powderly, were especially harsh toward Chinese women immigrants at that time.  The fact that Maggie was with her mother, Dong Oy, native-born and thus a U.S. citizen, should have helped.  But Dong Oy too expected problems, and not all were political.  
Dong Oy had been born in San Francisco and gone back to China with her parents as a teenager.  At the age of 17, while still in China, she married a young Seattle-born man named Chin Lem (陳霖; pinyin: Chén Lín, also called Chin Tue Dong).  He too was a U.S. citizen and, even better, the son of Chin Gee Hee (陈宜禧, pinyin Chén Yíxǐ), the richest and best-connected Chinese businessman in the Northwest.  Maggie was born in 1896.  Her father left for Seattle soon afterward and was followed by Dong Oy and Maggie when the girl was five.  They stayed in Seattle until she was ten, after which the whole family went back to China again.  They may have gone because Chin Gee Hee wanted them to.  He had already been in China for several years, completing construction on his Sun Ning Railroad (新寧鐵路; pinyin: Xīnníng Tiělù).  Conceived, financed, and built by Chin, it was the first all-Chinese railroad in the history of China.
Good looks, plenty of money, privileged political status, and talent in the family--the Chins seemed to have it all.  But their marriage was not happy.  Because Dong Oy had not produced a son, Chin Lem decided (in spite of a written agreement with Dong Oy, signed before they left the U.S. for China) to take another wife.  The apparently perfect marriage became a sad arena for domestic strife.

When Chin Lem breached the agreement and began looking for a second wife, Dong Oy refused to stay in Hong Kong.  She found the money for steamship tickets for her daughter and herself.  However, her husband took the money and disappeared.  She was forced to go instead to her father-in-law's home town, Sunning (modern Toisan or Taishan).  There she found herself a virtual prisoner.  Both wife and daughter suffered in Sunning, physically as well as mentally.  Moreover, Chin Gee Hee tried to discredit Dong Oy with the American authorities by accusing her of prostitution:  As Amos Wilder, Consul-General in Hong Kong, informed John Sargent,Immigration Inspector in Charge at Seattle, "The father in law seems to be prejudiced against his son's wife Dong Oy with charges that she was formerly in a house of ill fame." [Note 1]

Dong Oy and Maggie escaped from Sun Ning.  Doug Chin writes that Chin Gee Hee ordered  a watch to be kept for her at Chinese ports and railroad stations, but in spite of this she managed to get back to Hong Kong [Note 2].   Her flight was seen as rank desertion by her husband and his family.  They not only withheld her passport and other identification papers but tried to bar her from entering the U.S.   Three days after Dong Oy and Maggie were admitted at Seattle, the acting inspector in charge, Henry Monroe, received this telegram from Hong Kong:
Luckily for Dong Oy and Maggie, they had the support of the U.S. Consul in Hong Kong as well as of two strong-minded missionary ladies there, Miss Pitman and Miss E May Law.  But even this might not have been enough to get them back into the U.S. without papers to prove their citizenship.  What seems to have turned the tide was Maggie.  Although Dong Oy was illiterate and spoke only broken English, Maggie was different.  At the age of twelve, with only five years of schooling in America, she drafted this petition while she and her mother were waiting in Vancouver for admission to the United States [Note 4]:
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General Note: The Maggie Chin story was first discovered by Seattle historian Doug Chin.  We owe him thanks for calling our attention to it.

Note 1. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Pacific- Alaska Region, Chinese Exclusion Files: RS 17824-5, Wilder to Sargent, 1908-10-09. Charges of prostitution were normally enough for Immigration to bar Chinese women from landing in the U.S. (See Ted Stevens, "Tender Ties," Law & Social Inquiry, 2002, vol 27, 2: pp 271-305).
Note 2.  Doug Chin, Seattle's International District, the Makinhg of a Pan-Asian American Community (2nd Edition), 2009 .  Seattle: International Examiner Press, p 44.  Doug tells us that his main source for Dong Oy's troubles in Hong Kong and Sunning was an article by Gudrun Anderson in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,1917-09-23.  We have not seen the article yet but believe it to have been based on interviews with Dong Oy herself.
Note 3. NARA Chinese Exclusion File RS 17824-5, Monroe to Edsel, 1909-04-07
Note 4. ibid., Maggie Chin to Immigration Service, 1909-04-02
Note 5: ibid., Sargent to Bigelow, 1908-06-25
Note 6: Doug Chin 2002, p 44.
Note 7. Daniel J Keefe to Secretary, Bureau of Immigration, 1912-02-14.  NARA Chinese Exclusion Files RS 28678.
"Wife and daughter deserted in March 1909. Heard they arrived at Seattle.  Deport at once.  If more information required inquire Quong Tuck firm [Chin Gee Hee's company-eds.]  [signed] Chin Teu Dong (Chin Teu Dong is commonly nown as Chin Lem)" [Note 3]
Maggie's ability to write nearly grown-up English and her fluency in the spoken language when answering officials' questions seems to have impressed the Immigration officials.  Their favorable decision was at least partly due to her verbal skill as well as to Dong Oy’s persuasive story, pleasant personality, and foresight in acquiring such valuable American allies while in Hong Kong. 
Vancouver BC
April 2, 1909

Dear Sirs
We have received your most welcome telegram to us last year, and we thought to take the Kago Maru to come back at then, and at then our tickets were all fixed.  And then Mr. Chin Lem (papa) went to the Register General and he tell them that he don't like ma to come back and he wouldn't give any money for mamma and I to spend when I'm sick at Hong Kong.  And then took us home back to Sun Ning and went away. He put mamma and I in a house and no-body there.  When the water ruin and it nearly drowned us.  And he would come back to see the matter.  And so ma
take me out to Hong Kong.  And we went to the American Consil and told them and they said my (mother) Dong Oy is born in San Francisco and said she is an American but not Chinese she could go back.  And we are at Vancouver now.

Yours truly

Maggie Chin
and mother
The rest of what is known of Maggie Chin's story is well told by Doug Chin (not a relative, incidentally).  Dong Oy took care of babies and sewed for a living.  After Maggie had entered the University of Washington, she and her mother opened a Chinese tea room in the University District.  Long-time Seattle Chinese who remember Dong Oy say that she remained fiercely independent for the rest of her life.  Maggie later married architect Sam Chin, the designer of the Chong Wa Benevolent Association building in Seattle's Chinatown [Note 6].  She and Sam had no children.
Women Who Were Not Down-Trodden: the Saga of Dong Oy and Maggie Chin.不倔不挠话曾爱
Dong Oy had had a rough time.  Yet she did not act like a helpless victim.  Indeed, as Chin Gee Hee and his son must eventually have realized, in Dong Oy they faced a truly formidable opponent.  Ten months before returning to Seattle, she persuaded the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong to make sure that Chin Lem's new wife would not enter the U.S.  As this image shows, the Seattle Immigration office followed the Consulate's instructions by borrowing a photograph of Dong Oy, her husband, and Maggie, then copying and distributing that to border inspectors for use in case "this man [Chin Tue Dong/ Chin Lem] applies for admission accompanied by a woman and child other than his wife and daughter:" [Note 5]
Left to right: Maggie Chin, Chin Lem, and Dong Oy
A footnote to Dong Oy's pro-female attitude and her ability to manoeuver wthin the American system: in 1912 she managed to bring her deceased brother's 12 year-old daughter, Bo Yue Dong, over from China.  Although the girl's father, Fook Cheung, had been an American citizen (he died in the wreck of the steamship Ohio off the Alaskan coast in 1909), bringing a young Chinese woman into this country was exceedingly difficult in those days.  However, Dong Oy was equal to the task.  She seems to have enlisted the support of Senator Jones and Congressman Humphrey, as well as of her acquaintances in the Immigration Bureau.  The girl came in easily, with only a brief delay in Vancouver [Note 7].

It is a bit surprising that Dong Oy chose to assist a niece rather than a nephew in entering the United States.  Most Chinese women of that period would have given a much higher priority to male kinsmen.  But then most women would also have submitted tamely to their father-in-law's decision for their husband to take a second wife, particularly when their father-in-law was as dominatingly important as Chin Gee Hee.  Clearly, Dong Oy was nobody's pushover.  She may well have felt that she had had it with men.
Immigration photo of Bo Yue Dong, 1911-12
Photo circulated by the Immigraton Bureau to deny entry to Chin Lem's 2nd wife
The Courtesan Que Qui Flees to Portland
Not all American Chinese sex workers  were common prostitutes, and not all were looked down upon by their Chinese clients or, for that matter, by other residents of the wide-open 19th century West Coast.  Just as white courtesans like Lola Montez were accepted and even lionized by public opinion, so too were high-status Chinese courtesans treated with surprising respect by almost everyone.  One famous case is that of Ah Toy, who became famous in 1850s San Francisco for her beauty and her business sense, eventually owning a whole chain of profitable brothels.   For more, see the relevant Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ah Toy.

Another, less famous, case is that of Que Qui in the 1890s.  A reporter for the San Francisco Call, one Sarah Comstock, wrote a long, amusing article (click here) sketching Que Qui's colorful history, which included fame and fortune in San Francisco and a hasty flight to Portland in early January, 1902.  According to Comstock, Que Qui wished to escape the attentions of influential admirers in California, one of whom was Jim Wong who later would be the chief concessionaire for the China Village exhibit at the Panama-:Pacific Exposition of 1915.
Photo of Que Qui from 1902 Call
Another note on Ah Toy.  She has become a favorite of modern writers on ethnicity and women's issues.  Although much of what they write about her is partly fictional, she -- like Que Qui -- did in fact exist.  However she may not have been the joyful liberated woman that her fans describe.  A brief note in the Sacramento Daily Union (1855-11-19) shows that the life of a Chinese American courtesan, celebrated or otherwise, was not necessarily a happy one.
MISS AH TOY.  This celebrated Chinese courtezan [sic] tried to destroy herself on Thursday night in San Francisco by swallowing poison.  She still lives.
Suicide by Opium  吞烟自杀

Chinese women in California and the Pacific Northwest were particularly susceptible to it.  Click here for more details
Choy Susan

William Henry Bishop's short story with this title, first published in 1884 and said to have been translated later into both French and German, was one of the first fictional works in any non-Asian language to depict a Chinese woman as being a strong, independent person.  Gruff, commanding, and tender-hearted, Choy Susan is the leader of a fishing village located about 100 miles south of San Francisco.   Bishop seems to have been describing a real place -- probably the long-lasting Chinese fishing "camp" at the north end of what is now Cannery Row in Monterey.
"The village consisted of a main thoroughfare of wooden cabins, silvered gray by the weather, with a motley cluster nearer the shore of fish houses, strangely fashioned boats and tackles, and tall frames of poles along which were strung rows of fish drying in the sun.  All was set down amid rugged bowlders as silvery gray as the houses.  Bright little patches of color -- red and yellow papers inscribed with hieroglyphics, a gay pennant, a tasseled glass lantern, a carved and gilded sign scattered here and there through the whole -- might serve from a distance as a reminiscence of the once vivid spring wild flowers of the section now vanished from the brown dry pastures of midsummer."
"plainly a person much in the habit of being deferred to; and this, together with her need of defending herself against scoffers, of whom she had met with not a few among the Melican men in a long experience, had given her a manner bluff, masculine, and even surly.  But she was amenable to kindness, and there were even moments when under her unsmiling exterior she almost seemed to appreciate the humor of herself "
Choy Susan herself is
Her foil in the story is a beautiful but somewhat silly Caucasian girl named Marcella who, though in love with a handsome young railroad surveyor named Easterby, is being forced by her Mormon father to marry an older fellow Mormon who, among his other shortcomings, is likely to take other wives.  Marcella, in despair, confides her problem to Choy Susan.  The latter comments,
"No good for woman to mally man with plenty otha wife," said Choy Susan with a philosophic air after a pause. "My makee big mistake myself."
"Ah?" The listener turned an attentive ear to sympathetic wisdom even from so rude a source as this.
"Yes You heap good lookee but heap good lookee can catchee alle same plenty bad time."  Choy Susan meant, no doubt, that even great beauty may be coupled with a hapless fate, which we all know is true enough.
"My know how it was myself," she continued. "My tellee you My husbin name Hop Lee.  My mally Hop Lee when my Jesus girl down Stocktin Stleet Mission.  He Jesus boy too."
"Oh you were Christians, then?"
"One time.  Not now.  Hop Lee he say "You mally me I got heap big store, heap money. You no work sewin' m'chine.  You catchee plenty good time.  Plenty loafee.  I no takee no more wife."
"He promised you not to marry again, then?"
"He plomise." The speaker closed one eye shrewdly then reopened it.
"Bimeby plitty click I get sick.  Small pock.  He say 'You no good.  Shut up.  I goin bling otha wife.'
He bling two more wife. They beatee me.  Makee work sewin' m'chine alle time, alle time, alle samee likee slave."
"Poor Choy Susan"
"Yes. So one day I lun way.  Catchee money and man clothes.  Catchee railroad and goee Salt Lake City... then come here, get pardner, go fish, and kleep store."
"And what has become of Hop Lee?"
"He dead," said Choy Susan contemptuously.  "I pray Jesus 'ligion first time makee Hop Lee die but it no makee him die.  Then I pray China 'ligion makee die and China 'ligion makee die and both wife too, light away plitty click.  China joss much more good. Jesus 'ligion no good"
The rest of the plot is as one would expect: after assorted vicissitudes, plus a convincing ethnographic description of a Chinese fishing village, Choy Susan contrives to bring the two young lovers in secret to her cabin just before the Mormon marriage ceremony is due to occur.  In the cabin they find a Christian preacher who, in spite of her pagan sentiments, seems to be a friend of Choy Susan.  The preacher marries them just before the Mormon father and would-be Mormon husband arrive.  They are discomfited, the fishing village is astounded, and the newlyweds are joyful. 
" 'It's all Choy Susan's doing,' said Easterby, extending a friendly hand to the interpreter.  'And we hope Choy Susan will come and live with us when we settle down,' added Marcella sweetly."
We have no idea whether any of this is true.  The romsnce of Marcella and her lover, not to mention the absurdly caricatured Mormons, are clearly fictional.  But the details of Choy Susan's life and community ring true.  Could Bishop have heard about someone like her while he was traveling in California during the early 1880s?  Readers who wish to check the story for themselves should look at  William Henry Bishop, Choy Susan and Other Stories, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886.  The full text is available for free on Google Books.
Chinese fishing boats in California, 1880s.  From an article by W. H. Bishop, the author of "Choy Susan", in Harper's Monthly, 1883
Chinese Fishing Village in Monterey, from a California Historical Society photograph on the Library of Congress' American Memory website
The Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association in 1903-4: real or public relations fantasy?   加拿大保皇女会 : 域多利, 温哥华/二埠
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Baohuanghui (Chinese Empire Reform Association, CERA) in British Columbia produced two photo montages which, if they reflect reality, constitute the earliest visual evidence that Chinese women in North America had begun to form organizations of their own.  Considering that in China, and overseas communities as well, women of the middle and upper classes had traditionally stayed in the background of public life and, indeed, rarely left their homes, the Women's Empire Reform Association would seem to have been a breakthrough -- evidence that the forces of progressive thought and western values had begun to change the way that Chinese Canadian (and, presumably, Chinese American) women related to the world.
Victoria 1903
Vancouver & New Westminster 1904
Now, these pictures are not intrinsically implausible.  Both Victoria and Vancouver (with nearby New Westminster) held a good many wealthy and sometimes progressive Chinese men.  The ladies in the photos, who all are identified in captions underneath (see the next article), were the wives and daughters of those men.  If such well-to-do ladies had been white or, if white, not married to Chinese men, they would have appeared often in newspapers as attendees at fashionable receptions and as organizers of charitable events.  Moreover, we know that in San Francisco in 1902, the Baohuanghui had already sponsored a lecture by a patriotic Chinese girl, Sieh King King 薛锦琴, that was attended by many Chinese women in the company of their husbands and fathers [Note 1].
So then, what is wrong with these pictures?  Several things.  For one, other Chinese women's organizations did not appear in California, where most North American Chinese trends began, until the 1910s and early 1920s [Note 2].  The Victoria and Vancouver branches of the Women's Baohuanghui would thus have been surprisingly early.  Another point.  There is not a single mention of women at any Baohuanghui meeting or public event in any issue of the region's leading newspaper, the British Colonist of Victoria [Note 3].  This shows that the Ladies' Reform group cannot have been too active or long-lasting.  And a third point.  A similar picture commissioned by the Baohuanghui showing (male) members in another town looks as though it was partly faked, misrepresenting the size and economic status of local membership [Note 4].
  A          B        C         D         E

0


1


2


3


4
The Ladies of the Empire Ladies Reform Association - who were they?
保皇女会成员 -  温哥华/二埠分会
Who belonged to the Association?  About half of the Vancouver members seem to have been ladies related to the wealthy merchant Yip Sang (Pinyin: Ye Sen or Ye Chuntian 葉生 or 葉春田, also called  by the name of his store, Wing Sang 永生.   On the above photo montage, those identified thus far are: 
Hence, it seems possible that the Victoria and Vancouver photos are of women's groups that existed more on paper than in reality.  There is no evidence that the groups met frequently or for more than a year or two.  And yet the photos are of great importance.  They show that Chinese North Americans were  already thinking about changes in the role of women.  Further, because they depict real individuals [see below], they offer to historians a uniquely comprehensive view of elite Chinese women in two important cities where immigration restrictions were less severe than in the United States.   The Canadian head tax did not restrict the immigration of wealthy Chinese women as greatly as did the American exclusion laws.  Also -- as shown by the presence on one photo of three of Yip Sang's wives, all of whom lived in Vancouver at the same time -- Canadian immigration authorities were much more tolerant of polygamy than were their American counterparts.
The Victoria montage comes from Ray Lum, courtesy of the of the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University.  The Vancouver montage was rephotographed by the editors at the Vancouver City Archives.
  Note 1: San Francisco Chronicle 1902-11-03
  Note 2: See Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in  San Francisco.  Berkeley: U.of California Press,
              2005.
  Note 3: See http://www.britishcolonist.ca/; search for "Empire Reform," etc.
  Note 4: The town was Rossland, a mining center in southeastern British  Columbia. with a small and poor Chinese population
              that is shown in a Baohuanghui photo as being large and prosperous, with all the men  having pigtails but  wearing the
              same Western suit and the same two  neckties.  See the Associations page of this website.








We do not know that the Baohuanghui was deliberately misrepresenting the character of its membership.  But it could have had several reasons for doing so: to seem larger and richer than it really was; to look more progressive than it actually could be in view of persisting traditional attitudes in Canadian and American Chinatowns; and/or to enourage social changes in China by exaggerating the spreed of similar changes among Chinese on the east side of the Pacific.
0A.  Ye Meirong 葉美蓉 [Yip May Young].  Leader.  A 16-year old daughter of
   Charley Yip Yen 叶恩, President of the national Baohuanghui of Canada.
0E.  Kang Tongbi [Kang Tung Pih] 康同壁.  Leader.  Daughter of Kang Youwei
   康有为, president of the Chinese Empire Reform Association.  Kang Tongbi also
   appears directly under the emperor's image on the Victoria photo.

1C.  Li Jihuan 李姬欢, Vice President.   The 1st wife of Charley Yip Yen, aka Huibo
   惠伯, who was a nephew of Yip Sang.
1E.  Nellie Yip Quong, English Secretary.  Wife of Ye [Yip] Quong, a son of Yip Sang.
   A Bostonian English teacher who married Yip Quong in New York in 1900 and moved to
   Vancouver in 1904 to be with his family, Nellie was very new to Vancouver's Chinatown
   community when recruited by the Association there.   She spoke good Chinese. 

2B.  Li Caiyue 李彩月, Board Member.   Wife of Ye [Yip] Tingsan, aka Yip On,
   葉庭三, a nephew of Yip Sang and brother of Charlie Yip Yen.
2C.  Zhang Jinman 张金满 ,  Board Member.   The 2nd wife of Charley Yip Yen.
2D.  Huang Hongyun 黄红雲, Board Member.   The 3rd wife of Yip Sang.
2E.  Deng Yunkai 鄧雲開, Chinese Secretary.   The 2nd wife of Yip Sang.

3E.  Chen Qing 陈青, Board Member.  The 4th wife of Yip Sang.

4B.  Li Lianzhu 李連珠, Board Member.   The wife of Ye Qiu Yao [Yip Kew Yow]
   葉求耀, the 1st son of Yip Sang.
4E.  Ye Jinwei [Yip Gum Mei] 葉金薇 , Board Member.   The 2nd daughter of Yip
   Sang and Huang Hongyun (3rd wife).  In 1904 Jinwei was only 11 years old.
Jane Leung Larson, the leading American authority on the Baohuanghui, has just (2011-03-10) informed us that Kang Tongbi, the daughter of Kang Youwei and designated leader of the Ladies Baohuang-hui (she appears near the top of both of these pictures), did organize a "New-York Ladies' branch of the Chinese Reform Association" with "All the prominent women of Chinatown enrolling themselves as members," according to the New York Daily Tribune, 1903-11-01.  This makes it seem more likely that the Victoria and Vancouver branches did actually exist. 
In 1900 Chinese Women in BC Had Already Begun to Organize -- for Charity
1900年卑斯省教会妇女关心社会
A member of the Chinese Methodist Church, the wife of that church's pastor in Vancouver and New Westminster, and then in Victoria, Mrs. Chan Sing Kai, or Chow Kate? Shee, was in an exceptional position to begin organizing women for charity.  She started in 1900, three years before Kang Tongbi arrived in Victoria and became president of the newly formed Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association. 

In essence, Mrs. Chan was replicating within the Chinese community what white women were already doing among European-Americans -- using fund-raising for charitable causes to promote women's roles in society as a whole.  Like many contemporary white female Christians, Mrs. Chan focused her efforts on raising funds for famine and disaster relief.  On two occasions, she collected money not for China but for India.  In  October, 1900, for instance, when she and her husband were based in Victoria, she collected $64 from "the Chinese women and children of Victoria"  for Indian famine relief.  More than half of the 61 donors were women.  A month later she was in Vancouver fund-raising for the same cause.  This time she collected $46.50 from the Chinese women and children of Vancouver and New Westminster.  39 of the 56 donors were women.
Kang Tongbi in the Pacific Northwest -- A Teenager Leads the Ladies' Baohuanghui 保皇女会领袖 - 康同壁在西北角的活动
The Ladies chapters of the Chinese Empire Reform Associations in Vancouver and Victoria accepted Kang Tongbi, the daughter of Kang Youwei, as their leader.  As shown in the two photo montages above, she is seen in, surprisingly, a traditional cloud-pattern cape befitting an upper class woman of the imperial era.  A pioneering advocate of the women's movement in China, much of Tongbi's life history can be gotten from books and websites. Here we will just include a few relevant events in the history of the Northwest. 
The Guangxu emperor's image appears in the top center position on both montages.  It was he whom the Baohuanghui (literally, the "Protect-the-Emperor Association") proposed to defend against anti-reform forces led by Cixi, the Empress Dowager.  The two other men on the upper part of the Victoria montage are Kang Youwei 康有为, president of the Association (and father of Kang Tongbi), and Liang Qichao 梁启超, vice president.


References:
His Dominion and the Yellow Peril, Protestant Missions to the Chinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859-1967, p.51. 
British Colonist, October 9;  November 14, 1900. 
The right-hand photo is from ther Chinese Exclusion files at NARA, Seattle
Five other donors were wives of men who were prominent later in the Vancouver CERA:
 
- Mrs. Ling Dang.  Wife of Ruan [Goon] Lindeng.  Vice President of the CERA, #2D on the men's CERA montage.
- Mrs. Charlie Yip Yun.  Wife of the president of the CERA of Canada, #2E on the men's montage. 
- Mrs. Ho Chans, maiden name Ling Foy.  Wife of He Can, a board member of the CERA, #5H on the men's montage. 
- Mrs. Seid Sing Gaw.  Wife of Xue Singjiao, a board member of the CERA, #2A on the men's montage. 
- Mrs. Won Alexander Cumyow, maiden name Yea [Eva] Chan, wife of  the official interpeter of the CERA, #1J on the
         men's montage.   Eva Chan was a daughter of Rev. Chan Sing Kai and Chow Kate Shee.  
Significantly, there was overlap between Mrs. Chan's donors and those who, three years later, joined the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association.  It is hard not to conclude that her efforts helped prepare local women for taking a less passive stance within the community.  Was this due to the influence of Christians, including Mrs. Chan and her husband?  Quite possibly.    By the beginning of the 20th century, women's rights had become part of the teaching of many Protestant missionaries within China and among overseas Chinese. 

However, we should not discount the influence of progressive Chinese thinkers like the statesman Duan Fang  端方  and the entrepreneur Zheng Guanying 郑观应.  The Canadian and American English-language media must have played a role too.  It would have been hard for a Chinese wife in Vancouver or San Francisco not to notice that upper-class white women appeared freely in public places, conversed with men as equals, belonged to prestigious ladies'  clubs, and contributed publicly to ladies' charities.  Old-fashioned Chinese husbands may have tried to convince their wives that such white women were only expensive courtesans and not at all respectable.  Yet some of those wives would surely have been aware that the "courtesans" in question included the Governor-general's wife, the President's daughters, and the Queen of England.
Was she in Vancouver or Victoria when the Ladies chapters of the CERA were formed?   She evidently was present in person for the founding of the Victoria branch (see above) but probably not when the Vancouver was founded in 1904.   The Victoria CELRA first appeared in 1903, the date of the montage.  18-year old Tongbi was definitely in Victoria in May that year, giving many speeches on China reform subjects that were much admired by the local Chinese audience, according to the British Colonist.  She toured around the area a little, went to Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland, stopped in Chicago for three weeks, and then proceeded to New York City where she entered Barnard College. 
In 1910 Tongbi was still in America.  She gave a speech about her life in America and her career plans in China after she returned.  She talked positively about the importance of women's suffrage and wanted to organize a women's club for educational purposes.  In that speech, she made no reference to the various branches of CELRA of which she had been the nominal head.  Why?  Was it because her father and his reformist Baohuanghui seemed to have lost favor with the Chinese public in its rivalry with Sun Yat-sen's more revolutionary Tongmenghui 同盟会?



References:
British Colonist, May 23, 1903.  "A Reformer's Daughter". 
Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1910. "My Experiences in America in Studying for Reform Work". 
#3E.  Chen Qing in later years .Photo:Vancouver City Museum
Among Mrs. Chan's donors was Miss Yip May Young 叶美蓉, who became one of the two leaders of the Ladies chapter of the Chinese Empire Reform Association (#0A on the women's picture above).  She was 16 in 1904, when both of these pictures were taken.  Right: NARA, Seattle. 
Another BHH specialist, Zhongping Chen of the University of Victoria, points out (2011-03-13) that Kang Tongbi, daughter of Kang Youwei and first president of the Ladies' BHH, was indeed in Victoria in 1903 and that she was credited by one English-language newspaper with founding the ladies' organization.  Chen quotes the newspaper as saying: "The Chinese women resident in this city last night formed a women's branch of the association, elected officers and went through regular organization business...Miss Kang, daughter of Kang You wei, a reformer, presided at the meeting and directed the organization work." (May 29, 1903)
#1E.  Nellie Yip Quong
References: 
Hoover Institution, Survey of Race Relations, 24-11. 
National Archives & Records Administration, Seattle.  Files Sumas 3-61, RS2391, RS2399.
Yip Family Tree, Burton Library, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. 
Yip Sang, incidentally, had an unusually large number of children, daughters as well as at least 18 sons.  However, in 1904 most of Yip's own daughters were too young to belong, and his sons were much too young to have fathered grandaughters.  This may explain why so many wives and daughters of nephews were included along with Yip's eldest daughter, Jinwei or Gum Mei (4E above).  That an 11 year-old girl had to be shown as a full member could mean that the Vancouver branch of the Ladies' Baohuanghui was not overwhelmed with applications for membership.
Yip Gum Mei (4E) with father, Yip Sang, and three brothers in 1909.  She was 16 when this photo was taken.  Photo from NARA Chinese Exckusion Files,
Li Caiyu (2B)i with husband, Yip On, and son in 1909.  Photo from NARA Chinese Exckusion Files,
Amoing the nephews of Yip Sang was Yip On 叶敦, Secretary of the (men's) Baohuanghui in Vancouver and a successful businessman in his own right.  We do not know how the name of his wife, Li Caiyue, was pronounced by Vancouver Chinese.  In this pictrure, taken oin 1909, she appears to be heavier than in the above Ladies' Baouanghui montage.
Chinese Women on the Idaho Frontier  早期挨达荷州的华人妇女

A few must have arrived in the 1860s, and there were never many -- so few that it might be possible to find the name of every Chinese woman who ever came to Idaho.  We will not attempt anything so ambitious here.  But we have found details of the lives of a number of women who came to the state in its early days, in the 1870s through 1920s.  Most of them were illiterate and few came to Idaho or America by choice.  Some chose to give up, like Cheng Moy Lan whereas women like Pon Toy Gock managed to adapt.  Their America-born daughters often went through a childhood of being shuttled back and forth between the two sides of the Pacific.   
Idaho Women, photos from 1890-1920.  Credit: NARA in Seattle & Idaho Statesman. 
Soo Po Lin, b.1878
1911   Applied for re-entry permit before trip to
China.  Denied. 
1909   Stayed in Salt Lake City (Utah), Boise,
Pocatello, and Butter Bar (all Idaho) 
before settling in Pocatello. 
1908   Separated.  Moved to Portland, Oregon. 
1903   Married Charley Wong in White Eagle,
California
1902   Lived in Sacramento
1898   Landed in San Francisco

Illiterate and a prostitute by profession, Soo Po Lin appears here as a self-possessed woman able to wear Western clothes with style and confidence.  Soo Po Lin is one of the few Chinese prostitutes we have been able to
In spite of their difference in age, the marriage of Yuk Sim and Ah Fong may well have been a happy one.  Yuk Sim was an intelligent, competent woman and her physician husband, well-to-do and respected in both the white and Chinese communities, is said to have been a kind man.   Whether she was literate in any language is unclear, but she could at least write her name in Chinese and English.
Lee Yuk Sim, b.1888
1920  Now a mother of 4 girls and 2
          sons, back in Boise.
1910-3  Became a mother, moved
          to Seattle with family.  
1909  Landed in the U.S and lived in
          Boise.  
1908  Married in China to 38 year-
          old Fong Yow 邝耀 of Boise.
1891  Born in Siyap area, Guang-
          dong Province, China
Lee Sap Ng, b.1891
Like most Chinese women in early Idaho (and unlike Lee Yuk Sim), Lee Sap Ng was China-born.  The clumsiness of her signature shows that she could not write much Chinese but she came to Boise at a young enough age to have learned a fair amount of English.   One should not read too much into her serious, slightly unhappy expression. Women were supposed to look that way in formal portraits -- the kind that usually included a central table with a clock, vase, teacup, and (often) a tobacco pipe.
Pon Toy Gock,  b.1892
That Toy Gock married at the advanced age of 22 may help to account for her cultural adaptability.  The Red Cross event she attended was organized by European-American ladies in aid of American soldiers being sent to World War I battlefields.  As the Red Cross was an upper-class charity in those days, we may presume that the organizers, and many of the participants too, belonged to Boise's elite.  Toy Gock had only been in the U.S. for three years at that point.  There is no sign that she knew any English when she arrived or that, as far as the Immigration Service knew, she had received any formal education back in China.  And yet already she was capable of associating with ladies belonging to the white elite.  It was an astonishing feat.
Moy Fong, b.1890
identify in premodern Idaho.   Apparently they were not common there, contrary to assertions by anti-Chinese propagandists.  As was the case in most other parts of the U.S. and Canada, Chinese men in Idaho consorted with white, not Chinese, prostitutes.
At least  Moy Fong had parental support when she arrived in this country and had three years in which to learn about her new environment before being married off.   And even after marrying, for several years she was still only forty miles from her parents.  The average married female Chinese in Idaho was hundreds or thousands of miles from her nearest relative.
Cheng Moy Lan, b.1869

1912  Family returned to China
   for good.
1908   Family moved to Hope,
           Idaho.
1907   Had another daughter. 
1906   Landed in Port Townsend
    with 3 children.
1888   Married 17-year old Moy
    Dot in China.
1869   Born in Guangdong, China
The immigration records do not.say why Moy Dot  梅达 decided to take the whole family (except Moy Fong, who was already married--see below) back to China.  It could have been because his parents demanded it, because he and Moy Lan wished to give their children Chinese educations, or because he wanted to take another wife.









An important question:  in the 19th and early 20th centuries, did Chinese women have more opportunities in North America than back in China?  Did they think so?  Did they make use of those opportunities?  The answer depends on individual personality and experience, and on the nature of support systems.

In general, Chinese women were subject to the same gender prejudice, regardless of being in China or America.  However, Chinese women in America at least had more options available.  They could partially free themselves from the grip of ethnic tradition by choosing non-Chinese or progressive Chinese partners, or by seeking shelter and social outlets at Christian churches.  Over time, Chinese men in America would change as well.  They eventually came to respect their woman folks more as they assimilated Western values and models.

Equally important, in numerical as well as social terms, were non-Chinese women married to Chinese men.  They too played a central role in early Chinese-American society.  While the obstacles they faced were different,  those were equally daunting.
Chinese women in early Idaho.  For data and credits, click here.
This page was last updated: January 18, 2012
金山西北角 - 华裔研究中心