On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

  The alley disintegrated into chaos. A city councilman picked up a loose plank from the sidewalk and batted a Chinese over the head with it. Another officer helped things along by handing Chinese over to the mob to “take them to the jail.” Most never made it. Among the latter was a Chinese doctor who was robbed, shot in the mouth, then hanged. Men ransacked apartments and businesses for the gold that the Chinese purportedly hoarded in their dens. Others ran through the streets with stolen sacks of rice, bolts of silk, bottles of wine, even roast geese.

  By the end of the night, the bodies of seventeen Chinese men and boys swung from a wooden awning in front of a carriage shop, from the sides of two prairie schooners, and from the crossbeam of a gate in a nearby lumberyard. Within days, another two Chinese died from complications of gunshot wounds. At least five hundred Angelenos—approximately eight percent of the city’s total population—participated in the “night of horrors,” as the popular press dubbed it.

  But the riot became an odd boon to the Chinese. During the troubling later years of the Driving Out and the enactment of the exclusion policy, Angelenos maintained a certain cool distance from the hot tempers of the rest of the country. The city’s racists had a difficult time generating enthusiasm for their anti-Chinese clubs, while across the state such clubs flourished. Boycotts against the Chinese and Chinese-employing businesses customarily failed in Los Angeles. In 1877, when the Labor Organization of Los Angeles called for the “peaceful and legal” removal of the Chinese, local papers reminded residents of the “disgrace” of the riot.

  So Chinatown grew, paralleling the growth of the larger metropolis. Gold may have been what first brought people to California, but it was the golden warmth of the sun that kept them coming in a steady stream. Railroad wars encouraged this influx, with ticket prices reaching an all-time low in March of 1886, when it was possible for a brief time to buy a cross-country fare for one dollar. What had once been acre upon acre of orchards, vineyards, and grazing land was sucked into urbanization by the great flood of immigrants.

  As in other cities around the country, immigrants sought out their own kind. Mexicans, who had been on the scene seemingly forever, had Sonoratown. Italians settled a few blocks away in Little Italy, while the French established another colony nearby. For now the Chinese carved out a small place for themselves bordered on the south by slaughterhouses, on the east by railroad yards and a gas plant, on the north by the fading glory of the old Spanish Plaza, and on the west by the burgeoning Caucasian metropolis.

  By 1897, when Fong See and Letticie moved to Los Angeles, Nigger Alley had passed into history. In its place, Los Angeles Street was extended through to the Plaza. Apablasa and Marchessault streets bisected Los Angeles Street. Where they crossed Alameda Street marked the main entrance to Chinatown. Other unpaved streets and alleyways—named for the children and grandchildren of Juan Apablasa—were jammed chockablock with western-style brick buildings and crumbling Spanish adobes painted in brilliant hues of red, yellow, and green.

  The interiors presented a different sight altogether. More than half of the rooms had no windows; many others were concealed behind false doors. Some white social workers believed that the interiors had evolved according to Chinese custom, based on the belief that evil spirits didn’t like the darkness or to turn corners, but others knew the secret rooms were a Gold Mountain necessity: they provided a means of hiding illegal residents or facilitating escape from gambling dens. Few buildings had heat or electricty. Bachelors lived in boardinghouses, sleeping in bunks with small ovens wedged between them. In these rooms could be found every type of vermin known to man—ants, fleas, cockroaches, rats. Residents trapped the rats in wire cages and killed them with boiling water.

  The city fathers frequently complained about Chinatown’s filth, saying that it created a health hazard for the city at large. The politicians had a point. By 1880, nearly all of the fruits and vegetables consumed by Caucasians were grown by Chinese who had leased small plots of land along Adams, Pico, and West Washington. But the corrals in Chinatown, which housed the vegetable peddlers’ horses, swarmed with insects. A state commission also found seven privies in the corrals. All this wouldn’t have been such a problem if the peddlers didn’t sleep alongside their horses, if the wagons—loaded with the city’s fresh produce—weren’t kept there all night, and if the produce weren’t washed in the horse troughs in the morning. But as easily as city fathers could get upset, they could also calm down—especially at the thought of having to pay for any improvements—and life would go on as usual.

  Upon their arrival in the city, Fong See and Ticie first went to Chinatown, where they saw sights reminiscent of Sacramento’s Chinese quarter. Street vendors offered sugared coconut shavings, rice cakes, and roasted melon seeds. Signboards beckoned customers with tantalizing promises. Men might find a cure at an apothecary with a sign that read BENEVOLENCE AND LONGEVITY HALL, or HALL OF HARMONY AND APRICOT FORESTS. Restaurants along Marchessault Street promised both nourishment and enchantment with their names—Fragrant Tea Chambers, All Fragrance Saloon, Balcony of Joy and Delight. The air itself seemed to beckon with the aromatic odors of roast pork, duck eggs preserved in oil, dried abalone, and cuttlefish.

  By then, Chinatown had a weekly newspaper, three temples, and a theater. The ghetto had district associations, family associations, and tongs—which provided arbitration of disputes, helped residents thread their way through the immigration bureaucracy, and offered protection. Eight missionary groups insistently courted converts. The Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian missionaries were by far the most successful, as they tried to meet the worldly needs of immigrants by teaching English and providing job placement.

  As in Sacramento, Fong See saw that here again the Chinese preferred to look after themselves. They took care of each other when they were dying. And when they died, relatives or the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association would see to their burial at the Evergreen Cemetery, the only graveyard in Los Angeles willing to take “Orientals.” Later they saw to the digging up and sending back of the bones to China, since the Chinese believed that the only pathway to the spirit world was through the soil of China. As in most things, the white press embellished the more gruesome aspects of this custom, reporting on the rotting human flesh, the scraping clean of fleshy remnants, the open and smelly coffins, and queues left lying about the gravesites with bits of scalp still attached.

  Neither Fong See nor Ticie wanted to live in Chinatown. To settle there would have been a step backward. Instead they opened their first store on First Street, between Spring and Broadway, right in the heart of the Caucasian business center near City Hall. Once more they altered the name of the store to the F. Suie One Company, adding the initial F for Fong and an e on the end of On to make the name appear more “American.”

  Although several blocks from Chinatown, the Sees lived above the store like most Chinese merchants. They continued to sell curios purchased from Charles Solomon, began to trade in baskets, and, against Ticie’s frequent objections, continued in the underwear business. The F. Suie One Company still had eight partners, but with a smaller number in the United States. Just before Fong See and Ticie had left Sacramento, Fong Quong had returned to China. Within months of settling in Los Angeles, Fong Lai had also decided to go home. Four of the partners were relatives in China; the other four worked in the store. None of them was a true partner, just employees who paid a price—either in money or in labor—to maintain their merchant status.

  During these early days, Ticie—now pregnant—often felt lonely. She longed for advice and encouragement, but no Caucasian women would speak to her, and in Chinatown, men outnumbered women twenty to one. The majority of Chinese women were prostitutes living sad lives in cribs along Alameda Street. The few others were kept behind locked doors, protected like precious gems by husbands afraid to let their wives risk exposure on the street.

  On May 22, 1898, within five months of moving to Los Angeles an
d less than two years after their marriage, Fong See went out into the night and brought back Anna Mueller, a German midwife who catered to Chinese women. The baby squalled at the indignities of his birth. Ignoring Mrs. Mueller’s protestations, Fong See peeled away the baby’s swaddling and turned him over on his belly. There at the base of his spine was his Mongolian spot. The baby may have been half-Caucasian, but to his father’s mind he was full-blooded Chinese. Fong See wanted to name his son for the great Ming Dynasty, which at its zenith had been responsible for the flowering of China’s great cultural traditions. As a name, Ming would imply brightness and intelligence.

  “But I’d like to name him Milton, for my father,” Ticie said when Mrs. Mueller had rewrapped the infant.

  As the child began to nuzzle at his mother’s breast, Fong See felt proud. His wife had given him a son. He could reward her.

  “Milton,” he said in agreement, then added, “But his Chinese name will be Ming Fook.”

  Shortly after Ming’s birth, the Sees moved to 328 South Spring Street, where the F. Suie One Company still advertised itself as dealers and manufacturers of ladies’ underwear and as a Japanese bazaar. A second son, Ray—or Ming Hong—was born on June 2, 1900. One year later the family moved to 414 North Main Street, another Caucasian neighborhood just a few blocks off what is now called Pershing Square.

  The new store had three rooms. Merchandise was displayed in the front, where Ray, now a toddler, like to rest his head on the cool surface of a ceramic water buffalo that served as a doorstop during the long, hot days of late summer. From here, Ray could look out onto the street, where the scorching light seemed to bleach everything a ghostly, ashen white. In the back, the family shared a room. Across the hall, four men—“partners”—kept up the rhythmic pumping of four sewing machines.

  Although the inspector for the Collector of Customs appraised the stock—Chinese and Japanese goods, as well as undergarments—at $4,000, Fong See estimated the value at closer to $25,000. Obviously the inspector didn’t know what he was looking at. By 1901, the contents of the store had evolved. By now customers could also choose from a large selection of silks and embroideries, screens, bronzes, furniture made from teak and the China nut tree, finer Chinese and Japanese porcelains, and a few high-quality antiques.

  The Sees owed this change to Richard White, a former soldier of fortune, who had retired at the age of forty-five to take a job in the plumbing department of Holbrook, Merrill & Stetson. A dapper man, he carried an ivory-headed cane, and his hair had already turned white. He was more than a little smitten with Ticie. Since he couldn’t give her love, he gave her the gift of business. One day he walked in with some antiques he had bought in China years before, during his soldier-of-fortune days. “This is the kind of merchandise you should carry,” he told her. “This is what will make you different from other merchants.” Against her husband’s objections, Ticie placed the antiques in the window. Within days they were gone, and for good money.

  Mr. White brought in more antiques. Once again, Ticie sold them. Still, Fong See hesitated. Curios were enough, he said. “There’s no risk in curios. We’ve always done well with them.”

  “But our customers seem to want quality,” Ticie insisted. “They’re willing to pay more for something better.”

  As the store’s profits increased, Fong See realized that Ticie was right. Caucasians would buy antiques, often agreeing to pay an outlandish price for something Ticie had purchased from Richard White for very little. Once Fong See and Ticie realized that they couldn’t rely on one source, they began going to auctions. Slowly the farmer’s daughter and the herbalist’s son learned how to recognize good pieces. Within a couple of years they were conducting auctions themselves, sometimes selling thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise in a single afternoon.

  Ticie made herself essential to the business. She kept the books, and researched the limited sources for Chinese antiques in the country. She was in the store every day—first with just her husband, then with Milton and Ray. Fong See was a good businessman, but Ticie had heart. There was a kindness about her that attracted people—both Chinese and American. She listened to the Chinese bachelors who worked in the store when they spoke of their wins or losses at the gaming tables. When they were sick, she sent for the doctor. When they needed someone to help them with English words, they asked her. They sought her advice when it came time to sign rental contracts for their rooms. As they prospered, they came with lease agreements for their new businesses. She helped them write letters in English, and fill out forms for their residency certificates, taxes, or fines. They depended on her judgment, and she was never too busy to help them. Although they never spoke of their loneliness, often it seemed that they just wanted to be near a woman who was both a wife and mother.

  Gradually, Ticie attracted others who would become lifelong friends. Some, like Richard White, helped change the course of her fortunes as well as those of her family’s for generations to come. Besides Richard White, whose affections would always go unrequited, there was Florence Morgan, the wife of a California oyster king. Although they were still rich by Chinese standards, the best of the Morgans’ good times had passed.

  Even though the Sees prospered, even though they brought in merchandise from China and sold it quickly, even though Ticie had given birth to two sons, there was one matter on which Fong See would not budge. “I would like to live in a house,” Ticie begged repeatedly. “I would like to buy property so that we can live as a real family and not just as merchants above the store.” But Fong See was only interested in what was showy, and to him nothing was more showy than an automobile.

  So while Ticie worked in the store, cooked the meals, and changed and washed the diapers, her husband was being driven around town in the first automobile to be owned by a Chinese anywhere in the country. Ever the businessman, he used this car to promote a new herbalist in town. With advertisements hung on the sides and a uniformed chauffeur to drive, Fong See and the herbalist tooled along the streets of Chinatown, inviting a crowd of awestruck citizens to visit the new herb shop. Fong See would never learn how to drive, but he would maintain a consuming interest in automobiles. Cars showed the world how he, an outsider, was more innovative and open to ideas than the insiders of the city.

  In 1901, after the quelling of the anti-foreign uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion, Fong See packed up his young family and took them to China for a year. He hoped to buy antiques and other goods at deeply reduced rates from people still reeling from the upheaval. To Fong See, it seemed far more difficult to leave the Gold Mountain than it had been to come here. As a boy, he had simply boarded a clipper ship and set sail. Now he needed a plethora of documents—stating who he was, who his wife was, and verifying that his children were American-born—to show that he and his family had a right to return to the United States under the merchant-class exemption.

  Fong See hadn’t foreseen how tedious the process would be. He had two American-born sons and an American wife. He was recognized as a merchant by the state. Still, the way the immigration officials examined him made him feel like a coolie. He listened while his friends and associates—his insurance agent, the auctioneer, and Richard White—were questioned on his own truthfulness. None of these queries was as awkward as those surrounding Ticie.

  “Is Fong See a married man?” the inspector asked Mr. Conant, the insurance agent.

  “I understand that he is,” Conant replied, “but I never saw a marriage license.”

  “Is he living with this woman as his wife?” the inspector asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The inspector persisted. How long had Conant known this woman? Had he seen her about the store? The inspector asked, “Have you been introduced to her as his wife?”

  “No,” Conant answered. “But she has told me she is his wife.”

  “Has Suie One told you that she is his wife?”

  “I cannot remember that he has.”

  The inspe
ctor didn’t fare much better with Richard White regarding the status of Ticie, but he painted a convincing picture of Fong See, the merchant. “Is there a laundry, lodging house, restaurant, or pawnshop connected with this place of business?” the inspector asked.

  “No, sir,” White answered.

  “Has this man whom you have recognized as Fong See been engaged as a huckster, peddler, fisherman, laundryman, or servant, or performed manual labor of any kind since you have known him?”

  “No, sir.”

  When the inspector asked how much merchandise was manufactured in the store, White answered gruffly, “Manufacturing cuts very little figure there.”

  “Have you ever seen Fong See engaged in the act of making goods?”

  “He has men to do that work,” White answered.

  On July 23,1901, Fong See and his family received written permission from the U.S. government to travel to—and later return from—China. During their final preparations before departing Los Angeles, Fong See and Ticie had ample opportunity to go over the in-depth interrogations—the first either of them had experienced. For several years now, Ticie had been wanting her husband to get out of the underwear business. “I was right about starting the curios in Sacramento and I was right about going into antiques,” she said. “I think I’m right about this. After our interviews, I think you can see that it’s dangerous for us to continue to manufacture. We—you—would be in real trouble if the government decided you were a laborer and not a merchant.”