The “Chinese Question” – A Call for a New Direction

 

Construction of a Chinese camp on the Canadian Pacific Railway, Kamloops, British Columbia, circa 1885

http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-283FF15/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_121/d_04712.txt

 OAH 2012 

In late April, the historian Mae M. Ngai delivered a paper at the Organization of American Historians (OAH) 2012 conference entitled “Chinese gold miners, the coolie question, and the propaganda of history.” The paper can be found here:

http://annualmeeting.oah.org/pdf/ngai.pdf

I want to highlight this paper because I think it provides not only an excellent overview of the historiographical issues, but persuasively argues for a new direction in our understanding of the “Chinese Question.”

In this blog post, I want to explore some of the key points that Mae M. Ngai makes about the historiography as well as examine her argument further in regards to my own research on Chinese railway labourers.

Historiography

First the historiography. Mae M. Ngai makes a salient point about the disjuncture between Chinese American social history and American labour history. She notes that there is little contact between the two fields because they have focused on different questions. According to Ngai, Chinese American social historians have mostly been concerned with “community formation, transnational social and cultural practices, and politics; and less so with labor, especially in the nineteenth century.” Labour historians on the other hand, Ngai notes, “do not understand the social organization of Chinese American communities and have done neither primary research nor read the secondary literature to learn more about it.” The exception to the rule is Moon-Ho Jung, whose work on Chinese labourers in the South after the civil War, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation, is arguably an essential study in both fields.

Argument

Reviewing the historiography, Ngai argues that our understanding of Chinese labour “must be tackled empirically as well as discursively.” She does so in her paper by studying Chinese gold miners. While Ngai agrees that the introduction of Chinese gang labour in the 1860s “reinforced the view that Chinese labor was unfree,” her research on Chinese gold miners reveals that were neither “unfree or coerced.”

My own studies on Chinese labour support Ngai’s argument. A particular incident involving Chinese railway labourers working on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), I believe demonstrates that Chinese labour was neither “unfree or coerced.”

Yale, BC – May 14, 1881

On May 14, 1881, around one o’clock about two hundred Chinese labourers working on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) entered the town of Yale, British Columbia.  They headed toward the “China Department in the Warehouse,” a store for goods that were supplied to the railway labourers.  Approximately a dozen of the men tried to enter the warehouse and confront G.P. White, an overseer stationed at the warehouse. Flanked by two assistants, White resisted attempts by one “riotious character” to “force an entrance.”  In the ensuing tumult the Chinese labourers began “breaking the windows” and “chopping down the doors” to the warehouse.  White responded to the threat, firing two or three shots from his pistol into the crowd.  Soon the police “interferred and quieted them [the Chinese] down, marching several of the ringleaders to gaol.”*

* Daily Colonist, May 17, 1881.

On May 16, 1881, two defendants were brought to trial at the Yale court of assizes.  Ah Loom “the ringleader of the mob of the attack” and Ah King who assaulted a police officer when trying to rescue Ah Loom confronted the prosecution.  Faced with a barrage of evidence against them, both men were held for further trial at a higher court.  On May 17, 1881, G.P. White, the overseer at the warehouse who fired into the crowd of Chinese labourers, faced prosecution.  During the trial several Chinese labourers who were at the warehouse on the day of the violence were called to testify.  Their testimony, translated into English for the court, was reproduced in the Inland Sentinel on May 19, 1881.

The following passages have been extracted from the testimony.  Ah See was the first sworn in.  He testified:

I was there in the afternoon, there were lots of Chinamen there; I saw several Chinamen go in the store; I did not go in; I saw Mr. White shove one Chinaman out of the door, down the steps; I saw White shut the door; I saw one or two Chinamen pushing the door; there were lots of other Chinaman there, who, did nothing. I saw White at the window, a few Chinamen were then standing beside me-15 or 16-I was then on the opposite side of the road, about 17 or 18 yds; I heard three shots fired, it was the first shot that passed my head; there were about two minutes time between each shot; the shots all came from the same window.

Implying that G.P. White as the person who shot into the crowd, Ah See was cross-examined by the defense on the time of the incident and why he was at the warehouse in the first place. Ah See replied:

This happened about 1 p.m.; I came down to see about the two per cent commission, I saw some parties pushing at the door with their hands; I saw no stones thrown at the door or building; did not see anyone attempting to break the door with an axe or crowbar; I stood directly in front of the window, about 18 yds. off; I saw White shut the door before I heard the shooting; I saw three other persons at that time in the store with White; I saw stones thrown at the window; I did not know the names of any of the men I saw about me; I did not know if White intended to shoot me or some one else; I did not see anyone throwing stones at the window, until White fired the shot; the window was closed. I saw the window raised, a shot fired, and then shut down again.

Ah See lay the blame for the violence on the actions of G.P. White (White fired the first shot and incited the crowd to throw stones at the warehouse).

The next Chinese labourer to testify was Ping Sing.  Answering the question why he was at the warehouse, Sing stated:

I came here last Saturday. I came down to the China store to collect some money. I on first going in saw White. I saw the contractor, Lee Lum, and Ah Soon. I was one of the first who entered the store followed by several others, I saw White pushing some of them out; the door was then shut and some Chinamen outside were pushing against it. I was then inside; there were 5 whitemen and 5 Chinamen in the store; White was one of the whitemen. I saw White raise up the window and shoot off a pistol; he fired 3 shots; could not say in what direction he fired. I know there were lots of Chinamen outside; as soon as the first shot was fired, lots of rocks came in; I distinctly swear that the shot was fired before the rocks were thrown into the building, and that there were 3 shots fired. I saw a pistol in White’s hand, an ordinary one.

Sing’s closeness to the action meant he could identify White as the shooter. The defense cross-examined further, trying to pick holes in Sing’s original testimony.  Sing replied:

I went in the store for my 2 per cent. I cannot tell how long I remained in the store; I was there during the whole of the disturbance; cannot tell how long it was from the time the stones were thrown until the crowd left; there were some goods in the room; I stood in the room on the left hand side; White was walking around the room; when White shut the door I was standing at the side of it. I did not arrange to give any evidence at this court to-day. White told me to go out of the store into the next room, but not till after the shooting and rocks had been thrown.

Clearly frustrated by the questioning, Sing stated that he did not “arrange to give any evidence.“  The final Chinese labourer to testify was Ah Lin.  Like Ping Sing, Ah Lin identified G.P. White as the shooter of the pistol.  Ah Lin testified:

I was at the Chinese store on Saturday; I came down to see about my wages. I came to see Ah Soon, the agent; White asked us to go in; lots of Chinamen followed; someone stopped them from coming in; I saw the door shut; someone outside tried to push open the door; I saw White raise the window, and look out; then raise the pistol and fire, I am positive that White did not order us out until all the trouble was over.

After further cross-examination, Ah Lin stated:

I was in the front part of the room when the shooting was going on. I was about 6 feet from White when he fired; cannot say what kind of a pistol he used; heard 3 shots, could not see into the street. I saw nothing but White shooting, and then I left that part of the building. There were 5 whitemen and 8 Chinese in the room at the time. I knew 2 of the Chinamen within the store. I can see 2 whitemen in the court room whom I recognize as 2 I saw in the store. White ordered 3 of us out after the trouble was over, the axe I had in my hand on Saturday at the store I left there, inside the store.

Conclusion

The testimony from these Chinese labourers clearly demonstrates that they were not held in servitude, that they acted in self-interest (e.g. they were by definition “free labor”). Yet, as Ngai concludes in her paper, “our analysis remains limited if our aim is to establish simply that Chinese had ‘agency’.” Something else is going on in regards to Chinese labour. As Ngai notes, Chinese miners “need to be understood in their specificity and on their own terms, and not forced into the Orientalist binary of free and unfree labor; for they are not comprehensible as either.”

This is a useful starting point from which to explore the meaning of the “Chinese Question.”