Anzi Dong

Queer History in Chinatown, San Francisco

There is a long Asian-American queer history in Chinatown, San Francisco. This Chinatown, which began in 1848, is the first and largest in the U.S. San Francisco was shaped by early Chinese immigrants, who came from the Guangdong province of southern China. These immigrants gathered in the Bay Area in order to join in the California Gold Rush and to build railroads in the American West. San Francisco's Chinatown made room for early Chinese immigrants to live, and the area turned into a "bachelor society" where female prostitution was pervasive because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. As a racialized immigration region, SF Chinatown was viewed as an immoral place with the charachteristics of "vice", "sluttery" and "sexual deviance" for a long time. These traits were incompatible with the mainstream culture and dominant norms of American society. Since the mid-19th century the State problematized Chinese female prostitution with the subject of sexual transmission and the government began to go against industrial prostitution in Chinatown as well as Chinese immigration. As the sex industry grew throughout the Bay Area, the government had to stop the anti-prostitution and anti-immigration law in the beginning of the 20th century. Just like Castro district and other areas, Chinatown developed its own sexual industries and provided a variety of sexual entertainment to both immigrants and white visitors.

The most famous nightclub in the beginning of 20 century was Forbidden City, which combines Orientalism and Western pop-culture to attract numerous guests from all over American. The early queer culture of Chinese immigration was generated there. Up until the mid-19c, there were some nightclubs for gay and lesbians that were in Chinatown but were attacked by police raids in the period of the execution of Anti-gay laws.

From the 1970s to the 1980s, a bunch of Asian American gay and lesbian organizations were established in Chinatown. Gay Asian Pacific Alliance is one of organizations that led the movements for queer Asian American to go against racism and sexism. In the following activities, they ran the HIV program for queer people, especially queer of color. In 1994, the most significant event was that Gay Asian Pacific Alliance and Asian Pacific Sister joined the Chinese New Year Parade, which was the first time that queer Asian American communities had attended in a publicly ethnic activity.

19th century 

Official Map of Chinatown in 1880, the Chinese, the green parts locate Chinese prostitution and brothel.

In the first half of 19th century, the first waves of Chinese immigration were Chinese laborers migrating to the United States, not only to work for the gold mines in California, but also to take agricultural jobs, and to build railroads in the American West. A number of them became traders and entrepreneurs later. However, as Chinese immigration grew more and more successful, the United States began to increase the strength of anti-Chinese immigration. Consequently, the Chinatown in San Francisco became a "bachelor society" where some female immigrants were driven to be prostitutes. During the late of Golden Rush, a few Chinese female prostitutes began their sexual business in Chinatown. In addition, the major prostitution enterprises had been raised by criminal gang group "Tong" importing unmarried Chinese women to San Francisco. During 1870s to 1880s, the Chinese prostitution population in Chinatown grew rapidly to more than 1,800 accounting for 70% of the total Chinese female population.

During the mid 19th century, police harassment reshaped the urban geography and the social life of Chinese prostitutes. As early as 1854, the main way to solicit for Chinese prostitutes is streetwalking, which made those prostitutes being visible in public space. Moral reform groups and the police started to singled out some visible Chinese prostitution's habitat on major streets in Chinatown, such as Dupont Street, recording them as "Five to six feet rooms 'cribs' filthy holes". From 1854 to 1865, San Francisco police conducted campaigns to drive cirb prostitutes away from Jackson and Dupont Streets. Consequently, hundreds of Chinese prostitutes had been expelled to side streets and alleys hidden form public traffic. By the 1880s, Chinese prostitutes cribs and brothels were located in the alleys between Jackson and Pacific Streets. In 1885s, the San Francisco supervisors reported on the greatest concentration of Chinese prostitutes in Chinatown, including Sullivan's Alley, Bartlett Alley and Stout Alley. 

Cartoon from The Wasp of May 26, 1882, promoting the then-common racist myth that diseases were rampant in Chinatown.

In terms of legal system, from 1870 to 1874, the California legislature formally criminalized the immigratory Asian women who were transported into California. In 1875, the U.S Congress followed California's statement and passed the Page Law, which was the first major legal restriction to prohibit the immigration of Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian women entry into America. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act declared that there were no more skilled or unskilled immigrants allowed to enter the country, which meant that many Chinese and Chinese Americans could not have families in America because their wives and children were prohibited to immigrate. Simultaneously, the public discourse began to accuse Chinese prostitutes with the guilt of transmitting venereal diseases. In 1876s, Dr. Hugh Huger Toland, a member of the San Francisco Board of Health, reported his examination that white boys contracted diseases when they visited "Chinese houses of prostitution" in Chinatown, in order to warn white citizens to stay away the Chinatown.

By the end of 19 century, the Chinatown as assumed "vice" place became the tourist destination attracting numerous whiteness people from working-class, who aspired the oriental mystery of Chinese culture, to fulfill their exception and fantasy about the filth and depravity. The white customs' patronization in Chinatown prostitution was more extensive than in gambling. After catering for three decades to white people as well as Chinese bachelors, the Chinatown prostitution bad developed into a powerful vested interest favoring the vice industry. As the tourist industry growing up, the visitors had extended to white-middle-class, which pushed the vice businesses to transform into entertainment industry as a more respectable form to serve white customers. 

 20th century

The First Half of the 20th Century

From late of 19 century to the early of 20 century, Female-impersonating performers, as one of entertainments had prevailed in San Francisco, including Chinatown. Chinese female impersonators were common in Chinatown theater. For example, in the early 1890s, Ah Ming, a Chinese female impersonators, had a contract at a theater on Washington Street (near Chinatown) and was making $6,000 a year. Additionally, Me Chung and Yung Lun, at a Chinese theater on Jackson Street, were famous and being paid a high salary.

In 1938s, the new rising nightclub—The Forbidden City, located in Chinatown 363 Sutter street and run by Charlie Low, had become one of the most famous entertainment places in San Francisco. During its business time from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, the Forbidden City had gained an international reputation with its unique showcase—exotic oriental performance from Chinese American performers. It staged a remarkably wide variety of bizarre and motley performances: song-and-dance routines, slapstick, musical duets, solo performance, magic acts, vaudeville and even erotic "bubble" and "feather" dancing. Those shows explored a new representation of Orientalism, which permitted a queer discourse that differs from the normal, decent and dominant white entertainment culture. Meanwhile, it also integrated the Chinese female impersonating performance. Typically, Jackie Mei Ling, a successful dancer and female impersonator, publicly identified himself as a gay man. He is famous for innovative Oriental dance in various performance. For example, once he played the role of harem master in the show "the Girl in the Gilded Cage" with a flexible body contorting in a series of peculiar postures. The sexualized and racialized performance in club became the spot of sex tourism attracting LGBT clients from all over the world.

Another popular club for sex tourism and LGBT clients in Chinatown was Li Po, which like Forbidden City, combined western entertainments with “Oriental” culture. It was advertised in a 1939 tourism guide book Where to sin in San Francisco with the mark of exotic cocktail lounge. Additionally, as a discreet gay bar, it is still in operation at 916 Grant Avenue. 

During World War II, gay night life in San Francisco went through several waves of crackdown and reorganization. From 1942 to 1943, the San Francisco Moral Drive consisting of the military patrols carried out a series of raids targeting the gay bar in San Francisco for protecting servicemen from homosexual. Chinatown as one of places where gay visitors gathered, had been also searched for several times. In 1943, Li-Po served as a shelter for those displaced gay customers. However, as the crowd of gay clients and queer sex workers appearing frequently, the patrols started a second wave of raid. According to one of inspectors Jim Kepner’s record, the management of Li-Po refused to admit the large collection of “swishy ‘girls.’” in bar, and distanced itself from gay customers to prevent a raid.

During the same week, the police raided the gay bar Rickshaw which is near Li-Po, and arrested 24 patrons and two dozen customers, including a couple of lesbians who try to fight back and triggered a small riot.

The Second Half of 20th Century

During the Cold War, the United State strengthened social control on public space to go against  queer visibility and solidify the stability of heterosexual families. In such context, Chinatown revived its social normalization within the heterosexual respectable domesticity to emulate mainstream America culture. A bunch of Chinese-American leaders organized the Chinese New Year Festival parade in the Chinatown, including art shows, street dances, martial arts, music, and fashion show. In 1954, the parade added the beauty queens to this annual ritual. Till 1958, the group of beauty queens had been formally expended to the pageant of 'Miss Chinatown U.S.A," which is a huge attraction in the whole country. By emphasizing traditional Confucian gender norms, the New Year parade used beauty pageant to produce an image of exotic and obedience ethnic womanhood and promote gender hierarchy in Chinatown society in order to reverse their image as threatening figures of "sexual and gendered deviance". Consequently, Asian American Queer community had to keep silence in this social-political environment.