PACIFIC CROSSING
California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong
Pacifi c Crossing
For Paul Cohen
Pacifi c Crossing
California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong
Elizabeth Sinn
Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.org
c Hong Kong University Press 2013
ISBN 978-988-8139-71-2 (Hardback)
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by Liang Yu Printing Factory Ltd., Hong Kong, China
Contents
List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments xi Note on Romanization xv Note on Currencies and Weights xvii Introduction 1
1. Becoming a Useful Settlement: Hong Kong on the Eve of the 11 Gold Rush
2. Leaving for California: The Gold Rush and Hong Kong��s 43 Development as an Emigrant Port
3. Networking the Pacifi c: The Shipping Trade 93
4. The Gold Mountain Trade 137
5. Preparing Opium for America 191
6. Bound for California: The Emigration of Chinese Women 219
7. Returning Bones 265 Conclusion 297 Appendix 1: Hong Kong Exports to San Francisco, 1849 309 Appendix 2: Migration Figures between Hong Kong 312 and San Francisco, 1852�V76, 1858�V78
Appendix 3: Ships Sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco, 1852 314 Notes 321 Glossary 407 Bibliography 411 Index 435
Illustrations
Cover image
US-fl agged Pacific Mail steamer Japan in Hong Kong harbor around 1868
Figures
1. An interior view of Chinam��s house, 1845 23
2. Hong Kong harbor, 1855�V60 25
3. Plaque dedicated by Tam Achoy and other leading merchants 32 and firms to the I-tsz in 1857
4. ��The Heathen Chinee [sic], prospecting. Calif., Year 1852�� 44
5. ��Work on the last mile of the Pacific Railroad�Xmingling of 60 European and Asiatic laborers��
6. Ning Yeung Association in San Francisco 65
7. Founding directors of the Tung Wah Hospital with Governor 86 Macdonnell
8. ��Chinese emigration to America�Xsketch on board Pacifi c 122 Mail steamship Alaska��
9. US-fl agged Pacific Mail steamer City of Peking shown in 125 Hong Kong harbor, c. 1874
10. ��San Francisco Savings Union (Parrott Building), 148 California and Montgomery Streets, San Francisco, before 1906��
11. ��Chinese grocery store, 1898�� 157
12. ��Chinese store, c. 1904�� 158
13. Mr Chiu Yu Tin at 95 years 160
14. ��Dining room, Chinese restaurant�� 162
15. Prepared opium of Lai Yuen 193
16. Chinese opium smokers in Hong Kong 195
17. Interior of a lodging house in San Francisco with opium smokers 197
18. ��Arrival of shipload of Chinese women at San Francisco�� 223
19. ��Declaration of Chinese females who intend to go to California 250 or any other place in the United States of America��
20. Chang How Tong guide to bone gathering 274
21. Coffins and bone boxes stored in the Tung Wah Coffi n Home 293
Tables
I.1 Emigrants departing from Xiamen, Shantou, and Hong Kong, 323 1869�V1939
2.1 Demographic distribution of Chinese in America by native 49 place, 1868
3.1 Ships arriving in San Francisco from Macao, 1852 95
3.2 Ships arriving in San Francisco from Whampoa, 1852 95
3.3 Itinerary of the Land o�� Cakes 98
3.4 Itinerary of the Ann Welsh 98
3.5 Receipts of the PMSSC China Branch ending 1868 124
3.6 Receipts of the PMSSC China Branch ending April 20, 1876 124
3.7 Ships sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1869 126
3.8 Itinerary of the North Carolina 348
3.9 Itinerary of the Aurora 348
4.1 Gold carried by Chinese emigrants arriving in Hong Kong from 176 San Francisco, 1864�V1870
4.2 Treasure exported from San Francisco to Hong Kong, 1856�V90 179
4.3 Export of quicksilver to China 180
4.4 Quicksilver shipment on the Belgic, November 1875 180
4.5 California flour exports to China, 1866�V90 184
5.1 Importation of prepared opium, 1871�V81 (Kane) 215
5.2 Importation of opium, 1880�VApril, 1896 (Masters) 216
6.1 Sex ratio in Hong Kong, 1848�V54 228
6.2 Number of brothels compared with families in Victoria, Hong Kong 228 A2.1 Arrivals and departures between Hong Kong and San Francisco 312 since 1852
A2.2 Chinese emigrants departing from Hong Kong for San Francisco 313 and arriving in Hong Kong from San Francisco
Maps
1.
The Pearl River Delta, 1909, showing the counties that sent 48 most migrants to California
2.
Pacific navigation routes in the mid-nineteenth century 97
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time coming and, in the course of its creation, I have become indebted to many people and institutions.
I am grateful to the Hong Kong Research Grants Council for several grants that enabled me to pursue my research. The grant that contributed most directly to this book was for the project ��The Impact of Chinese Emigration on Hong Kong��s Economic Development, 1842�V1941�� (Grant 7047/99H).
I owe a huge debt to the late Rev. Carl T Smith. Since the 1970s, I have relied on his amazing collection of materials on Hong Kong history, especially the index cards which contained data on thousands of individuals. I visited his home from time to time to read his materials; he not only put up with this impo-sition, but even gave me lunch whenever I hung around long enough! When he heard that I was starting a book on the Chinese in California, he showed me the materials he had collected on the subject from newspapers, census records, land records, customs records, city directories and other California sources. I had not even realized that he had done all that work. Imagine how thrilled I was when he said I could have the whole lot, explaining that since he was now focusing on Macao��s history he would not need them any more. Soon afterwards, he gave me several CD-roms crammed with data. The materials, originally copied by hand meticulously and accurately in the unique Carl Smith style, were eye-opening and saved me years of digging. It was very humbling to realize how someone with not a cent of institutional funding could achieve so much. Carl, always kind, generous, and modest, was a terrific role model for scholars. I cannot thank him enough for being a mentor and friend; my only regret is that he is not here to see this book fi nished.
My intellectual development has profi ted from association with the follow-ing scholars through their works, correspondence, and face-to-face discussions: Takeshi Hamashita, James Hayes, Philip Kuhn, Wang Gungwu, and Edgar Wickberg. Patricia Chiu, Madeline Hsu, Diana Lary, Li Minghuan, Adam McKeown, Christopher Munn, Ng Wing Chung, the late Janet Salaff , Helen Siu, Carl Trocki, James Watson, Rubie Watson, and Henry Yu provided inspi-ration and advice. Stephen Davies at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum read Chapter 3 and offered extremely valuable information on all things related to shipping. It was also he who alerted me to the existence of the print of the steamer Japan in the Hong Kong harbor (which appears on the cover) and the map showing Pacific navigation routes. I treasure the support and friendship of all these scholars and am very much in their debt.
Many institutions gave me access to their valuable holdings. I am grateful to Jardine, Matheson & Co. for the use of its magnificent archives, and to Martin Barrow, director of Matheson & Co., for his promptness in approving all my applications over the years. The Heard Family Business Records are used exten-sively in the book, and I thank the Baker Library of the Harvard Business School for access to this incredibly rich collection.
I was privileged to use a wide range of materials at the University of California, Berkeley, including the Him Mark Lai Research Files, the Fiddletown records and old Chinese newspapers at the Ethnic Studies Library; and the San Francisco Custom House Records, Macondray Papers, and rare books and newspapers at the Bancroft Library. To Wang Ling-chi and Poon Wei-chi who facilitated my research at Berkeley, my sincere appreciation. I am grateful too to the California Historical Society for use of the Macondray Papers; the Huntington Library for the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. records; the Massachusetts Historical Society for the Russell and Company Letter Book; the Houghton Library, Harvard University, for the T. G. Cary Papers, and the University of Oregon Library for the Ainsworth Papers.
Other libraries which have extended their courtesy to me include the Asian Library, University of British Columbia; the British Library; the Cambridge University Library (which houses the Jardine, Matheson and Co. Archives); the San Francisco Public Library; the Widener Library and the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University; and the American Antiquities Society Library in Massachusetts which pleasantly surprised me with its unique holding of several San Francisco Chinese-language newspapers. I am much indebted to them all.
In Hong Kong, I have found exceptionally warm support everywhere. My heartfelt thanks go to the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, which has kindly opened its archival treasures to me since 1980. Ms Stella See, currently head of Records and Heritage Office, has been a long-time supporter and her own enthusiasm for the hospital��s history is most infectious. I thank the Public Records Office where I used many valuable records, including wills, shipping registers, opium bonds and rates books, and Carl Smith��s Cards (now digitized and indexed). The graciousness and efficiency of its staff, in particular, Bernard Hui, are greatly appreciated.
The library to which I owe the greatest debt of all is that of the University of Hong Kong, my ��home library�� for over four decades. Its wonderful Hong Kong Collection I claim as my personal ��Gold Mountain��! I am deeply appreciative of the help from its consistently accommodating staff, especially Y. C. Wan, Iris Chan, and Edith Chan. How fortunate it is to be closely associated with a library that makes such efforts to serve the scholar��s needs!
Like Alice (in Wonderland), I believe that books should have pictures�Xlots of them. I thank all the individuals and institutions that have supplied images, but especially Patricia Chiu, the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, Stephen J. Potash, Jeremy W. Potash, and the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals.
Historical research has changed significantly in the last few years as more and more resources go online. I admire the generosity and foresight of the individ-uals and institutions behind such magical work. Among the online resources I have relied heavily on are the California Digital Newspaper Collection, the MMIS (Multi-Media Information Service) of the Hong Kong Public Library, ��Nineteenth-century US Newspapers,�� the Online Archive of California, TROVE of the National Library of Australia, and the ��US Congressional Serial Set.�� Though I had completed my research when the catalog of the Jardine, Matheson & Co. Archives went online, it is still a handy tool for checking details, and will no doubt be very useful for future research.
Producing a book can be arduous, but I am lucky to be publishing with Hong Kong University Press, where everyone seems so thoughtful and competent. Colin Day (the former publisher), Michael Duckworth (the present publisher), Clara Ho, and Christopher Munn are so great to work with, they make the book production process almost fun.
After I retired from the Centre of Asian Studies, the University of Hong Kong, the director, Wong Siu-lun, kindly allowed me to keep my office and continue using all of the center��s facilities. After the Centre of Asian Studies was incorporated into the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the directors Helen Siu and Angela Leung continued to extend the courtesy. I really appreciate being part of the scholarly community and thank them for their thoughtfulness and generosity.
Pauline Poon did sterling work as my research assistant.
My greatest and fondest thank-you goes to Paul Cohen who has helped me in countless ways. I cannot remember how many times I have bounced ideas off him, and he, being constructive, knowledgeable, honest�Xyes, honest�Xhas been the perfect sounding board. He read through endless drafts of the manu-script, including the most primitive and unreadable versions, and made sugges-tions that greatly improved the work. He did yeoman��s duty reading through the entire final proofs. Above all, his own passion for historical research and writing has been a great source of energy that kept me moving forward, espe-cially during vulnerable moments when I felt I had lost my direction, or was too overwhelmed by the mass of materials�Xor was just feeling plain lazy. Every scholar should have a comrade-in-arms to share the pains and pleasures of what is essentially a lonely endeavor, and I thank my lucky star that mine is Paul.
Note on Romanization
It is impossible to standardize the romanization of Chinese names. Names of persons, institutions, and places are romanized in the way they most frequently appear in contemporary Western-language documents. The pinyin system is applied to the rest.
Note on Currencies and Weights
Currencies
Several currencies circulated in Hong Kong during the nineteenth century. Silver Mexican and Spanish dollars (of roughly equal value) were the most common for the purpose of trade. US gold dollars also circulated, but to a lesser extent, and they were generally less valuable than the Mexican dollar; from 1873, a US silver trade dollar was specially minted for the China market and became extremely popular in the Hong Kong region, but it was withdrawn by the federal government in 1887.
Hong Kong government accounts were kept, and civil servants paid, in ster-ling until 1862 when the Hong Kong silver dollar came into being; the latter was valued on a par with the Mexican dollar. Other currencies included East India Company rupees and Chinese silver taels and copper cash. Western companies kept accounts in dollars while Chinese merchants as a rule kept accounts among themselves in silver taels. Migrants returning from overseas exchanged in Hong Kong whatever currencies they had into silver taels for use in China.
Despite fluctuations, for most of the period under discussion in this book, one Mexican/Hong Kong dollar equaled around 4 shillings and tuppence (2 pennies) and 0.72�V0.75 taels of silver. One pound equaled $4.80 and around
3.45 taels of silver. The standard American dollar, though nominally at par with the Mexican dollar, was often traded at a discount, sometimes at as much as US$1.20 to one Mexican dollar. The American trade dollar, which had a higher silver content, was more likely to have traded at par with the Mexican dollar.
Weights
1 tael = 1.33 oz (37.42 grams) 16 taels = 1 catty (1.3 lbs/600 grams) 100 catties = 1 picul (133. 33 pounds/60 kilograms)
Introduction
The California Gold Rush, one of the most momentous events in nineteenth-century world history, changed Hong Kong��s destiny in many ways.
The discovery of gold at Sutter��s mill, 75 miles from San Francisco, on January 24, 1848�Xalmost seven years to the day after Hong Kong��s occupation by the British in 1841 and five years after it formally became a British colony�X set off a remarkable migration movement: within a relatively short time span, tens of thousands of people flooded into California, coming not only from the East Coast of the United States but from different parts of the world, including Mexico, Chile, Europe, Turkey, China, and Australia. By 1852, the population of San Francisco, which was just 459 in 1847, had grown to 36,154.1 Th e volume of trade rose. Between 1849 and 1851, over 1,000 ships called at San Francisco,2 bringing not only people but also goods to feed and clothe the migrants and to build the rapidly growing city. Half a million tons of cargo were discharged between 1849 and 1856.3 The city was not only a growing import market of free-spending consumers but soon, with the increasing number of entrepreneurs and gold as capital to fuel commercial ventures, it developed into an entrepot on a global scale. The impact was immense. Whereas the world��s major trading zone had hitherto stretched westward from China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Europe, and across the Atlantic to the East Coast of the United States, San Francisco��s thriving maritime trade transformed the Pacific from a peripheral trade zone to a nexus of world trade.4 Th e Pacific century had arrived.5
This major shift in the global economy had far-reaching consequences for Hong Kong. Though the city fronted on to the Pacific, the ocean had hitherto been of only minimal interest to it. Its main raison d��etre, as far as the British were concerned, was to serve as an entrepot for its trade with China. It was pre-sumed that goods from Britain and India would be stored and sold at the new colony and Chinese goods would be exported from it. Hong Kong��s existence was to augment rather than change the old trade pattern; the main routes were still along the coast of the China Sea, down through Southeast Asia, through the Indian Ocean and onward to Europe. One development, probably unforeseen, was the role Hong Kong played in the regional trade�Xboth coastal and river-ine�Xbetween north and south China, which would later extend into Southeast Asia as well. In the 1850s, this south�Vnorth trade (nanbei trade, known locally as Nam Pak trade), increasingly pivoted on Hong Kong, was to grow immensely, and the east�Vwest California trade was to act as an important catalyst for this growth. For the moment, however, as far as being part of the global trading system was concerned, the oceans that were most relevant to Hong Kong were the Indian and the Atlantic, not the Pacifi c.
The gold rush transformed the Pacific into a highway linking North America and Asia, and in the process transformed Hong Kong into Asia��s leading Pacifi c gateway. Both during and aft er the gold rush, California presented a world of new opportunities�Xas a market for goods and shipping, and as a migration destination for tens of thousands of Chinese ��gold seekers.�� Hong Kong seized these opportunities and prospered.
As news of the gold discovery spread, word got around about the shortage of everything in California, and the high prices that people there, fl ush with easy money, were willing to pay. Hong Kong merchants responded by sending shiploads of goods for the consumption of the thousands, and then tens of thou-sands, of Argonauts, as the gold seekers were known. San Francisco appeared for the first time in the Hong Kong government��s Blue Book6 of 1849 as a destina-tion of its exports, an indication of California��s sudden rise to relevance. Th ese exports included everything from building materials, beverages, clothing, hats, and shoes, to huge amounts of tea.7 Some items, such as coffee and gin, cham-pagne and wine, had come a long distance before being re-exported eastward across the Pacifi c.
Hong Kong shippers had a great advantage by being much closer to San Francisco than the Atlantic ports. Ships from the American East Coast, depart-ing from such ports as Boston and New York, and sailing around the Horn, took at least 115 days. The clipper ship Flying Cloud set a record in 1851 by taking 89 days to sail from New York to San Francisco.8 Most voyages from Hong Kong, in contrast, took only between 45 and 50 days, and when the Challenge took a mere 33 days to reach San Francisco in early 1852, the advantage of Hong Kong must have been made very obvious.9 It is little wonder that Hong Kong soon became one of San Francisco��s major trading partners, and the fate of the two relatively young frontier towns, both intoxicated with the dream of gold, became intricately intertwined. With every ship��s arrival, every commercial transaction and every emigrant��s landing, the networks woven between the two cities grew more complex and more deeply embedded.
Ships sailing eastward across the Pacific from Hong Kong grew in number, first with goods and then with passengers, in most cases headed directly for San Francisco, stopping by Honolulu only occasionally. The popularity of the new route taken by both American and non-American ships became apparent in 1850, and caught the attention of the US consul in Hong Kong.10 Moreover, ships increasingly made round-trips between the two ports�Xwith some, it is worth noting, doing so fairly regularly. Before 1867, when the first formal ��line�� was established between Hong Kong and San Francisco, there were only tramp ships, both steam and sail, in operation. They were hired by charterers�Xsome-times for specific voyages, sometimes for fixed terms, but always with a close eye on the market. A number of the chartered ships sailed repeatedly on this route, and some ship captains were engaged on it for long periods of time, an indica-tion of the Hong Kong�VSan Francisco route becoming one of the world��s hot sea-lanes.
The cargo trade with San Francisco grew briskly, but more dramatic changes came when Chinese, also succumbing to gold fever, raced for California. Signifi cantly, almost all of them went through Hong Kong. In 1849, a total of 300 people went, followed by 450 in 1850 and 2,700 in 1851. Many returned with gold, showing that it really existed. Foreign and Chinese shipping mer-chants whipped up business by circulating placards, maps, and pamphlets greatly exaggerating the availability of gold.11 The numbers peaked in 1852. Governor Bonham announced that 30,00012 Chinese had embarked from Hong Kong that year, and calculated that their passage money, at the rate of $50 per head, would give a sum of $1.5 million to shipowners and consignees resident in Hong Kong.13 In 1854, the US consul observed that the only obstacle to a greater fl ood of emigrants was the ��impossibility of finding vessels to transport those who wish to go.��14
Despite the fact that the number of passengers to California leveled off aft er 1852, the stream of people traveling to and fro across the Pacific, embarking and disembarking at Hong Kong, never ceased. Once impressed upon the minds of people in South China, the image of ��Gold Mountain�� (gumsaan to the Cantonese, jinshan in Putonghua) never faded away. Even aft er the gold rush, Chinese continued sailing to the US West Coast to work on the railroads, as well as in lumbering, fisheries and agriculture, and a host of other occupations. Through San Francisco, they went seeking gold and silver in inland states such as Nevada, Idaho, and Utah, and even to plantations in the southern states.15 Even after the Exclusion Act of 1882, the flow continued. Rather than dimin-ishing, connections established between Hong Kong and California during the 1850s grew increasingly dense and complex for another century. At the same time, Hong Kong served Chinese destined for other parts of the world�Xespe-cially new gold countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where gold was also discovered in the 1850s; from the 1870s, hundreds of thousands embarked for Southeast Asia. By 1939, over 6.3 million Chinese emigrants had embarked at Hong Kong for a foreign destination. Equally signifi cantly, over 7.7 million had returned to China through Hong Kong.16 Its status as the leading Chinese emigrant port was undisputed, surpassing both Xiamen and Shantou.17 Historical works on nineteenth-century Chinese emigration oft en mention Hong Kong, but it is usually only in passing. Neither the importance of Hong Kong to Chinese emigration nor the importance of Chinese emigra-tion to Hong Kong��s economic, social, and cultural development has ever been explored adequately. This is what I hope to achieve in this book, using Chinese emigration to California as a case study of a much bigger phenomenon.
The gold rush came at a critical moment for Hong Kong. Until that point, it had depended very much on a single trade�Xopium�Xand had to compete with the newly opened treaty ports, especially Shanghai for cargo trade and Xiamen for passengers.18 Earlier hopes for it to become a ��great emporium�� had not been fulfilled, and some people were beginning to despair. The gold rush saved the day, and in mid-1851 Th e Economist in England commented that ��the fairest hopes of the colony are founded on the new trade which is springing up between it [Hong Kong] and California �K In these circumstances there is some prospect of Hong Kong becoming a useful settlement.��19 Chapter 1 examines Hong Kong on the eve of the gold rush, and points out that despite the apparently slow growth, many things were happening to prepare it for its big moment. Th e infra-structure of a free and open port, with hardware like wharves and warehouses, taverns and brothels, and diverse software like laws and courts and expertise in shipping management and capital accumulation, was steadily taking shape so that when news of gold came, Hong Kong was able to seize the new opportuni-ties and quickly reinvent itself as a port for oceanic trade.
Moreover, it assumed an additional identity when Chinese emigrants began pouring through it bound for Gold Mountain. After some false starts, it grew into a safe embarkation port for free, as opposed to coerced, labor. When it was suggested that Chinese emigration to California was part of the invidious ��coolie trade,�� whereby men were taken forcibly overseas to work under hell-like conditions and commonly identified as slave trade, Governor John Bowring was quick to point out the distinction. Those going to California from Hong Kong, he remonstrated, were ��respectable people,�� and were all free, healthy, and eager to go.20 F. T. Bush, the US consul, likewise stressed their respectability, and argued that these emigrants were definitely not ��coolies.��21
Hong Kong��s reputation as a safe port was such that it ��continued to be the port from which all South China passengers, able to pay their passage, preferred to embark for foreign countries.��22 Being a safe port where emigrants went vol-untarily and without fear of kidnappers and other scoundrels was one of Hong Kong��s greatest assets. Besides the legal structure, other elements in society that brought security and comfort to emigrants included Chinese newspapers and Chinese organizations�Xespecially the Tung Wah Hospital, which was founded in 1869. Hong Kong��s evolution into a popular and thriving embarkation port is discussed in Chapter 2.
Not surprisingly, shipping and other related businesses made giant strides during these years. Shipping earned enormous profits for firms and individu-als, and gave employment to tradesmen, artisans, and many kinds of labor-ers. Chapter 3 looks at the shipping trade, especially the passenger trade, and describes the operation of some of the companies. It shows how chartering was conducted, how shipping provided investment opportunities, and the ways in which shipping activities expanded and thickened networks across the Pacifi c. The saga of how companies in Hong Kong and San Francisco fought for the lucrative shipping trade reveals much about the transpacific business world. Th is chapter fills an important gap in Hong Kong history for, despite its being so vital in Hong Kong��s overall development, the history of shipping has been seriously understudied.
Export and import prospered. Exports to California included goods for the consumption of the general population as well as the Chinese community, with the former including such goods as chinaware, sugar, and tea, and the latter including prepared opium, joss paper, Chinese medicines, and Chinese cloth-ing. At the same time, Chinese goods were sent to San Francisco for redistribu-tion in the region and to the East Coast, nurturing its role as America��s gateway to Asia�Xa role that would be greatly expanded after railroads provided the vital link to the East and to the interior, developments that would be mirrored in Hong Kong��s own growth.
While at first lacking valuable things to export, California soon corrected the imbalance of trade by shipping abalones, metal, flour, ginseng, gold and silver, timber, and other products to Asia. An exceptional export was the savings of emigrants remitted to their families in China; being an unrequited export item, it in fact worked against California��s interests. However, these funds were to have an enormous impact on the economy of the sending counties in South China, and for Hong Kong�Xthe intermediary for all these funds�Xthe benefi ts in terms of cash and capital flow were incalculable.
Merchants of all nationalities took part in the Hong Kong�VSan Francisco trade, and business collaboration assumed many forms. The trade had special significance for Chinese merchants in Hong Kong who worked with their coun-terparts in California as financiers, agents, exporters and importers, partners in associate firms, and much more. Indeed, these transpacific connections were multiple in nature, with personal, family, and native-place interests inextricably mixed with commercial interests. As early as 1852, Chinese merchants trading with California were recognized as a distinctly successful group.23 In fact, one of the most long-lasting consequences of this traffic was the emergence of the so-called California Trade (known in Chinese as jinshan hang or the ��Gold Mountain Trade��), which dealt in import/export, retail and wholesale, remit-tances, foreign exchange, insurance and shipping, and other businesses between Hong Kong and the United States. The California Trade enjoyed an iconic status in Hong Kong as well as South China, its participants becoming some of Hong Kong��s wealthiest and most influential merchants. Moreover, the high-end consumption of California had an impact on other trades, including the south-north trade, and raised the value of trade at Hong Kong across the board.
While Chapter 4 deals with the cargo trade and merchant activities in general, Chapter 5 concentrates on the most lucrative export from Hong Kong: prepared opium for the pleasure of Chinese in California. Th is development might seem surprising at first glance, but it was actually a natural outcome of many factors, including the fact that Hong Kong was the premier distribution center for raw opium on the China coast. Perhaps less expected was the fact that Hong Kong��s opium should be deemed the best quality prepared opium by dis-cerning smokers; indeed, consumers in California, who could aff ord the most expensive money could buy, made a fetish of the top Hong Kong brands. Th is was good news not only to the producers and shippers, but also to the colonial government, which depended on the opium monopoly for a large portion of its annual revenue. Since greater consumption of Hong Kong opium in California (and other Gold Mountain locales) would boost the value of the monopoly, it was in the government��s direct interest to ensure that large numbers of Chinese continued to emigrate and buy Hong Kong products abroad. To this end, it also made great efforts to ensure the Hong Kong brand name would stay on top. Th is story of prepared opium will reveal one of the most remarkable aspects of the relationship between the colonial government and Chinese merchants in the nineteenth century, and of economic development in Hong Kong.
Two very distinct features of Chinese emigration�Xthe emigration of women and the repatriation of bones�Xare addressed in the next chapters. Most of the generalizations made about Chinese emigration in this book�Xand in most books on emigration, for that matter�Xin fact refer to male emigration. Female emigration was of a very different nature. Very few women went to the United States in the nineteenth century, and among those who did, many had been bought and sold for the highly profitable US market. Chapter 6 explores how a British colony, where slavery and human trafficking theoretically were illegal, could have allowed such activities to take place. What role did the largely patri-archal values upheld by the Chinese merchant leaders play in such a context, and how did the social and political dynamics of a British colony play out in this matter?
Hong Kong met the desires of Chinese emigrants in many ways, from sup-plying prepared opium to supplying women. There was yet another desire: to be buried in the home village if one happened to die abroad�Xa desire underlined by deep-seated traditional values. It is well known that in the nineteenth century, most Chinese emigrants, instead of putting down roots in the new country, pre-ferred to return home to grow old and die, and be buried among their ancestors and descendants. To provide comfort to those who had died and were buried overseas, mechanisms were set up to collect their bones for repatriation and fi nal reburial. These were major exercises requiring a number of diff erent resources, including money, organizational skills, goodwill, and transpacifi c connections. Many individuals and associations in Hong Kong were involved in facilitating bone repatriation, and behind activities so imbued with emotional and spiritual meaning were hard-nosed arrangements for the management of enormous sums of money and properties, and delicate political manipulation of mainland offi-cials to promote the emigrants�� interests at home. The story of bone repatriation will reveal other aspects of the complex relationships between Chinese commu-nities in Hong Kong and California, and underline the pivotal role Hong Kong played in the Chinese diaspora.
This book attempts to examine the relationship between Hong Kong and emigration from different vantage points. While nineteenth-century Chinese emigrants traditionally have been studied mainly as laborers, I wish to show that many were not in fact laborers; there were traders, entrepreneurs, and investors, and many who started life as laborers ended up as shopkeepers and business-men. I wish to show how Hong Kong related to them�Xlaborer or otherwise�X in their many facets: as passengers, consumers, remitters of money, victims of abuse, recipients of charity, and, underpinning all of these, as human beings with hopes and fears, diverse interests and many desires. I hope to clarify how deeply embedded Hong Kong was in the lives of individual migrants and the Chinese diaspora as a whole. It was not only the port through which they left China or through which they returned home, but it was a dynamic city that engaged in continuous interaction with them at many levels throughout their sojourn. Th e transpacific corridor, ever shifting in shape, direction and form, was kept busy with the flow of people, capital, emigrants�� savings, consumer goods, letters and commercial intelligence, coffins and bones. These movements energized the city and fueled its development; in turn, the city��s energy affected the shape, color, and texture of the Chinese diaspora.
I also address a lacuna in migration studies by putting forward the concept of an ��in-between place.��24 Migration studies generally focus on the sending and the receiving countries as if assuming that only two places are ever involved. Yet migration is seldom a simple, direct process of moving from Place A to Place B. It involves frequent transits and detours, zigzags and crisscrosses, with migrants often going from locality to locality before finally settling down. In some cases, they settle in different places at different points in time; in others, aft er stopping and going many times, they return to the original locality, marking a circular migration pattern�Xthe stereotype for Chinese migration to California in the nineteenth century. In the process of repeated, even continuous, movement, hubs arise that witness the coming and going of persons and things. Such hubs provide appropriate conditions allowing sojourners to leave and travel far and wide, while also furnishing them with a variety of means to maintain ties with the home village. I believe that by foregrounding Hong Kong��s role in the migra-tion to California, we can discover new and important aspects of migration as process and lived experience. In calling Hong Kong an ��in-between place,�� rather than just a node or hub in order to accentuate the sense of mobility, I draw atten-tion to a hitherto unexamined aspect of Chinese migration, one that may also enrich our understanding of other migration movements across diff erent times and diff erent seas.
If Hong Kong may be described as an ��in-between�� place, there are certainly other locations�Xlike San Francisco and Bangkok, Singapore and Sydney�Xthat may also be described in this way. How different would migration maps look if, instead of simply coloring Country A and Country B, we were to identify all the nodes, the ��in-between�� places, through which migrants pass and in which they reside temporarily or settle for good after they leave home? Would this not result in a more nuanced, albeit messier, picture of migration? Perhaps, the concept of ��in-between places�� can help us rethink the meaning of diaspora�Xliterally, the phenomenon of seeds dispersing from one origin. Perhaps it is time for us to reconceptualize the notion of diaspora as being more multidimensional and capable of assuming many forms and shapes; to understand that, in the process of scattering and re-scattering, returning and re-returning, the idea of one origin, one source, one home can in fact be replaced by a hierarchy of homes�Xeven a hierarchy of ��in-between places.��
I have often mused on this question. What might have happened if the dis-covery of gold in California had occurred in 1838, rather than 1848, when Hong Kong was still a largely unknown island dotted with fishing and farming villages, and a free port under a foreign flag on China��s doorstep did not exist? By being the right place at the right time�Xindeed, by a serendipitous stroke of fortune�X Hong Kong was poised to become a hub for Chinese emigrants for the next century, and the nerve center of the overseas Chinese world. It is hoped that this book will fill an important gap in the history of Hong Kong, the history of modern China, and the history of migration.
1
Becoming a Useful Settlement
Hong Kong on the Eve of the Gold Rush
As news of the gold discovery in California electrified the world, Hong Kong responded with alacrity. A lively export trade emerged to supply all kinds of consumer goods demanded by the tens of thousands of emigrants pouring into California from around the world�Xone of the most dramatic migration move-ments of the nineteenth century. In 1849, for the first time, California featured in the Hong Kong government��s Blue Book as a destination of its exports; at least 85 diverse types of articles were shipped, ranging from rice and sugar to furni-ture and timber planks, along with a huge amount of tea.1 In the first six months of 1850, it was noted, some 10,776 tons of shipping loaded in Hong Kong for the West Coast of the United States. The surge in trade activities delighted everyone. A writer for Th e Economist in England commented that, ��the fairest hopes of the colony are founded on the new trade which is springing up between it [Hong Kong] and California �K In these circumstances there is some prospect of Hong Kong becoming a useful settlement.��2
Goods were followed by people. Individuals of different nationalities left Hong Kong for California. Most spectacular was the Chinese effl ux, which started as a dribble in 1849 and grew into a flood that peaked at 30,000 in 1852.3 The increasing Chinese presence in California further stimulated trade while transforming its organization and content. The California traffic greatly magnified Hong Kong��s capacity as a space of flow�Xnot only the flow of people and the flow of goods, but also the flow of funds, personal communications, and commercial intelligence, social values, cultural practices, and networking activi-ties�Xwith a long-term impact on its evolution into a leading entrepot and emi-gration port.
The fascinating story of Hong Kong��s relationship with California will be told in later chapters. Here we will look at Hong Kong before the gold rush and try to explain the circumstances that enabled it to seize the opportunity so effectively when it came.
On the Eve of the Gold Rush
An Open Port
Hong Kong was formally ceded to Britain in 1843 under the Treaty of Nanjing. Indeed, the treaty ended the ��Canton system,�� including the monopoly of the cohong�Xfirms with permission to trade with foreigners�Xand opened four more ports to foreign trade besides Guangzhou. The abolition of old restrictions held out hope for a new dawn. Many looked forward to Hong Kong, a British settle-ment on the doorstep of China, being the strategic base for foreign merchants poised to exploit the seemingly limitless resources of China under diff erent game rules.
Hong Kong Island had in fact been occupied by the British since January 1841, when fighting was still going on in what became known as the Opium War, and when it was declared an open port. Its potential assets were many. It was blessed by its geography, both in terms of location and topography. Th e island lay at the mouth of the Pearl River and just 80 miles from Guangzhou, the rich and vibrant commercial center where foreign merchants had operated for many centuries.4 It was expected that, as Macao had done since the mid-six-teenth century, the new colony would serve as the social and commercial hub for foreign merchants while they made their seasonal visits to the new treaty ports.5
Its location at the meeting place of riverine and coastal, and later ocean, ship-ping was a great advantage.6 It stood at the mouth of the busy and prosperous Pearl River; it also occupied a strategic position along the route between North and South China, and between China and Southeast Asia, and from there to India and beyond. Later, people would discover with delight that it was the natural terminal for transpacifi c traffic, an asset that greatly enhanced the port��s value during the gold rush and aft er.
Besides, the port possessed a deep, spacious, and sheltered harbor with good holding ground for anchorage. Though in the days before Kowloon and the New Territories were added to the colony7 the harbor was only 5 miles in length, it was enough to provide secure anchorage to 200 vessels, properly berthed, in the face of the heaviest gales.8 The anchorages around Hong Kong were not unknown to foreign sailing ships, having provided refuge for them year aft er year; records of the East India Company show that Hong Kong was visited as early as 1689 by the company��s ship Defence. It was also a place of rendezvous for Lord Amherst��s embassy to China in 1816�V17 and for the East India Company��s ships after 1816. Th e first suggestion that Hong Kong be taken as a trading resi-dence�Xas Macao was under the Portuguese�Xwas made as early as 1781 by James Bradshaw, the East India Company��s chief supercargo. As the restrictions on trade imposed by the Qing government became more unbearable, the clamor for taking possession of a detached island grew, and the search for such an island was underway in earnest in the 1830s. In the meantime, British ships were brought into Hong Kong harbor for their cargoes to be discharged and loaded.
Hong Kong��s free port status was another potential asset. Despite being a British possession, Hong Kong was open to ships and merchants of all nation-alities�Xvery different from Macao where a great deal of discrimination against non-Portuguese (and non-Catholics) prevailed. Being a free port meant not simply freedom from import or export duties�Xwhich was crucial enough�X but equally importantly, it meant relative freedom from undue bureaucratic interference. In particular, ships were spared the cumbersome procedures and meddling of officials, which were notorious in Chinese ports and Macao. Th is is not to imply that corruption and inefficiency did not exist in Hong Kong, but compared with most ports in the world, Hong Kong��s port procedures were rela-tively straightforward, and chances for extortion were proportionately reduced. Indeed, at a time when it was normal for ports to be operated with many encum-brances and expensive to use, Hong Kong must have been welcome as one of the most wide open, and cheap, ports in the world.
Initial Expectations and Disappointments
It is natural that, given these obvious advantages, many people were optimistic about Hong Kong��s future. A reflection of such optimism was the high prices at which land was snapped up in the first land sales.9 Yet the early expectations were not fulfilled. Trade was slow: even the ��Canton trade,�� which did grow gradually after the Opium War, did not show any spectacular increase, partly due to the continuing ill-feelings harbored by Guangzhou��s officials and the general popu-lace toward foreigners.10 Soon, gloom set in.
While British merchants, including the principal firms Jardine, Matheson & Co. and its rival, Dent & Co., moved their headquarters to Hong Kong to enjoy the benefits of living under their own flag, many merchants of other nationali-ties did not. In particular, Americans�XRussell & Co., the leading American firm among them�Xseem to have been happy just to leave Macao and relocate to Guangzhou, to reside and operate there all year round, rather than move to Hong Kong where they might have helped energize Hong Kong��s commercial activities.
Hong Kong��s trade was hindered partly by the serious incidence of piracy in the surrounding waters. At first, in an attempt to maintain good relations with China, the first governor, Henry Pottinger (1843�V44), warned the Royal Navy against infringing Chinese sovereignty by fighting pirates in waters within 3 miles of the Chinese coast. This greatly curtailed the Navy��s eff ectiveness against pirates, and left Hong Kong��s shipping vulnerable.
Compounding the general gloom was the deadly fever that broke out from time to time, killing hundreds and giving Hong Kong the reputation of being a health hazard.11 In the meantime, one of the fi ve treaty ports, Shanghai�Xwith access to the entire Yangzi valley�Xdeveloped quickly, and the competition was keenly felt in the colony.
It is interesting to observe that although Hong Kong was to evolve into a leading emigrant port in the 1850s, it was bypassed a decade earlier when the world first came to tap China��s labor supply on a large scale. The abolition of slavery in the 1830s, along with other circumstances, forced many Western nations to seek alternative sources of cheap, free labor to work the cotton, sugar, and coffee plantations, and other enterprises, in their far-flung empires; naturally enough, they looked to China. In 1845, a French merchant organized the fi rst shipment of coolies under contract with foreigners to be sent from Xiamen, one of the new treaty ports, in French vessels to the Isle of Bourbon in the Indian Ocean.12 Peru, where the importation of African slavery was abolished in 1836, imported its first shipment of Chinese from Macao in 1847, and its fi rst from Xiamen in 1849.13 Besides plantations, Chinese labor was increasingly needed in Peru for the back-breaking work of mining guano, the excrement of seabirds, which was eagerly sought as fertilizer and an ingredient of gunpowder at the time. Cuba too was hungry for Chinese labor, even though slavery was not abol-ished there until later. In May 1847, a ship carrying 800 workers left Xiamen for Havana, to be followed by 150,000 more in the years to come. Britain also looked for ��the services of healthy able-bodied Chinese coolies accustomed to field labor�� for its plantations in the West Indies,14 and aft er almost a century of discussing the possibility of recruiting men from China, permission was fi nally given in 1850 by the home government to Trinidad and British Guiana to import Chinese workers.15 But even the British did not conduct their recruit-ment in Hong Kong; instead, they looked to Xiamen and non-treaty ports. In fact, Hong Kong��s role as an emigrant port did not come about until the California gold rush, and until then the profi ts from sending Chinese laborers abroad went elsewhere.
Things looked so bad at times in these early years that people began to wonder whether acquiring Hong Kong had been a mistake.16 The leading dissenter was Robert Montgomery Martin, the Treasurer, whose 1844 reports to England pre-dicted Hong Kong��s imminent demise, and he continued to uphold that view two years later.17 He was among those who had advocated annexing an island further up the China coast, close to the Yangzi River and the sources of tea and silk. There was no trade in Hong Kong, he argued, because it was so far to the south, and though ships stopped by for instructions from the owners or con-signees, very few ��broke bulk�� at Hong Kong. Despite Hong Kong��s excellent harbor, it was so badly placed in relation to other ports that it failed to attract commerce. Besides, he claimed, the colony was not attracting the right type of Chinese people: those who came were ��depraved, idle and bad characters,�� and there was ��not one respectable Chinese inhabitant on the island.�� Th ese Chinese were quite different from people in the north, who were ��more civilized, more wealthy, and (now that they are becoming acquainted with the English) more disposed to friendly and commercial intercourse.�� Concluding that there was not ��one valuable quality in Hong Kong,�� Martin advised the British govern-ment to slowly withdraw from it, because ��it is worse than folly to persist in a course begun in error, and which, if continued, must eventually end in national loss and general disappointment.��18 Similar despair was expressed in 1847 in a report to the House of Commons from the Select Committee on Commercial Relations with China, which repeated the view that it was unlikely Hong Kong would ever become ��the seat of an extended commerce.��19
Slow but Steady Growth of the Port City
Yet, bad as things seemed, they were not quite as desperate as Martin described. Positive incremental infrastructural developments did take place, and by the late 1840s, although Hong Kong had not become the great emporium so optimisti-cally forecast by Henry Pottinger and others, the foundations of a ��useful settle-ment���Xindeed, a great entrepot�Xhad been laid.
Throughout the 1840s, a government system with executive, legislative, and judicial branches developed. A civil service evolved to take care of revenue, public works, the postal service, medicine, law and order, and other basic aspects of administration. For the administration of the sea and harbor, the Harbor Master��s office was created. Th e first Harbor Master was Lieutenant William Pedder, RN, who was also marine magistrate. Th e office was to expand to cope with the growing shipping and emigration matters that emerged in the 1850s. The presence of the British garrison, composed in 1848 of the 95th Derbyshire Regiment and the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, and defense structures such as batter-ies, gave a sense of security to the foreign settlers.20
Though its hands were initially tied, in time the Navy acted more aggres-sively against pirates. Paradoxically, as pirates became more organized the task of suppressing them became easier; after all, set-piece battles required more naval skill and discipline than sheer audacity. In 1849, the Navy destroyed the entire fleet of Chui Apoo, the most feared pirate in the area, as well as demolished two mini-dockyards on remote islands where his pirate fleet had repaired and replenished; several weeks later, it destroyed the fl eet of another pirate chief.21
Piracy was never completely eliminated despite such deadly blows, but the British Navy�Xthen the mightiest in the world�Xdid make its presence felt and kept Hong Kong��s surrounding waters relatively safe for shipping and trade.22
There was growth in other areas. Professionals gradually found their way to Hong Kong. Doctors, lawyers, auctioneers, appraisers, chemists, bakers, pastry cooks, journalists and even piano tuners all contributed to the working of the port city.23 A very lively press developed, with three newspapers�Xthe China Mail, The Friend of China and Hongkong Register. Together, they collected and distributed local commercial intelligence and society gossip as well as reprinted items from newspapers brought there by ships from all corners of the earth, making the open port a lively information hub.
By 1848, there were 20 British firms and a number of other foreign fi rms headquartered in Hong Kong, including Portuguese and Indian fi rms. Th ere were also three American companies, which will be discussed below.
Opium was indisputably the main trade, but the firms in Hong Kong engaged in other business as well. Mainly agency houses, they acted for manufacturers or wholesalers in Britain, India, and other places, selling consignments on a commis-sion basis, and from time to time trading on their own accounts. Many enjoyed worldwide personal and commercial connections. In particular, the big British firms, with principals and correspondents in many different countries, were kept up to date about political developments, military situations, trade routes, prices, currency movements, and new markets that had a bearing on their transactions. Their ties with London, the world��s leading financial center, greatly enhanced their capacity to trade globally.24 For our purposes, it is useful to mention that during this period Jardine, Matheson & Co. traded with Hawaii, a mid-Pacifi c entrepot facilitating the China trade between Guangzhou and California, a fact that would put the firm at an advantage when gold was discovered in California.
The big firms were also bullion brokers and bullion carriers, and before formal banks became prevalent, they acted as bankers for themselves and others. With their London connections, they accepted bills of exchange, and this soon became a separate operation from the trade in goods. Thus they participated in the trade of goods on two levels: as exporters/importers (or their agents) of goods; and as financiers of traders.25 The presence of these intermediaries of capital expanded Hong Kong��s potential trading capacities. The facilities for currency operations were to prepare Hong Kong��s debut as a regional fi nancial center, a development that would later facilitate emigration to, and trade with, California, and in turn benefit from them.
The foreign firms also provided insurance services, which were no less essen-tial for merchants who faced numerous risks with their ships and cargo. By 1848, insurance was readily available through a number of agencies: Jardine founded and operated the Canton Insurance Office; Dent & Co. alone represented six insurance companies; Lloyd��s London, the marketplace for private insurers that dominated London��s insurance sector, was represented by Blenkin, Rawson & Co.26 The absence of large volumes in import/export trade (apart from opium) therefore did not preclude the gradual evolution in institutional sophistication in credit, insurance, currency exchange, and other activities.
Shipping grew and Hong Kong��s position as a shipping center gradually blos-somed. The opium trade itself was a great stimulus to the shipping trade. Much of the opium was transported to and from Hong Kong in ships owned by major opium merchants such as Jardine and Dent, while other shipowners were lured by the lucrative opium carrying trade. Even though the amount of non-opium cargo trade was small, as the home of a considerable number of shipowners and shipping agents, Hong Kong was frequented by ships of all sizes and descrip-tions for the purpose of receiving orders and instructions. Since this was a time when regular liners were still a relatively new phenomenon, most ships were tramps that sailed to different ports on demand, and instructions were usually sent by mail to captains at the ship��s next destination. True, a captain on a long voyage had immense authority and was expected to make important decisions as the man on the spot�Xdecisions such as which port to call at, what cargo to take on, and where to discharge it�Xbut even then, it was still useful from time to time to return to a hub like Hong Kong to touch base with the shipowner or his agent. Besides receiving instructions, captains went ashore to get paid, renew insurance policies, send sick seamen to hospital, and discharge and recruit men. On occasions, they called at port to deliver the ship to a new owner, or to fi nd a new command, and this would happen with increasing frequency as Hong Kong evolved into a major center for the buying and selling of ships.
Hong Kong had other advantages too. Ships could take on a wider range of provisions than would be possible in smaller ports of call. Th ey could call on a total of 49 ships�� chandlers, 9 run by Europeans and 40 by Chinese. By 1848, there were two so-called ��shipbuilding establishments�� off ering high-quality but relatively cheap repairing services. A shipyard operated in East Point by John Lamont had a patent slip that aimed to handle vessels from 4 to 500 tons�� burden at spring tides. Foreign engineers were complemented by Chinese artisans, with their fine workmanship�Xparticularly in carpentry, caulking, and stitching sails. There was a large ropewalk and a sailmaking shop. Together, these resources enhanced Hong Kong��s attractiveness as a provisioning, repairing, and refitting center�Xone that would increasingly challenge those available at Whampoa, Guangzhou��s outer port, further up the Pearl River.27
The capacity to refit ships was crucial, since it conditioned how quickly ship-owners could respond to changing market conditions. A ship intended for car-rying chests of tea would obviously be fitted very differently from one carrying, say, oil, or ice, or specie. Naturally, the diff erence between carrying goods and carrying passengers would entail a major makeover. Thus the ability to make prompt and efficient conversions would come in handy when both the passen-ger trade and the cargo trade began to thrive in Hong Kong.
Captains and their crews liked going to Hong Kong for other reasons. Officers welcomed the social life and entertainment that a lively port could afford, as described by the naval surgeon Edward Cree,28 who attended spirited parties on shore every time he called at Hong Kong. For the crew, facilities such as taverns, boarding houses, and brothels29 provided rest and recreation. Taverns with names like London Tavern, Crown and Anchor Tavern, and Neptune lined the waterfront. Most were run by Europeans, catering to a European clientele; it is very likely that they were divided into different classes, those for captains and offi cers and those for ordinary seamen. Some establishments catered especially to colored seamen, of whom there were many. Besides serving as watering holes, these taverns were hubs for gossip. Captains, supercargoes, and offi cers would naturally be interested in information about the market�Xprices of goods, the rate for freight and chartering, the availability of seamen to replace sick ship-mates, the reputation of insurance firms. We can imagine men, regardless of rank, discussing and comparing notes about the brothels that operated on land as well as water. Likewise, we can imagine how the news of gold in California would rip through these establishments.
There were other creature comforts too. As soon as vessels arrived in Hong Kong waters, runners from the various sailors�� boarding houses swarmed on board to induce the men to take accommodations with them.30 Some of the men opted to stay on board to save money, but captains preferred in general to take rooms in the boarding houses, and yield to the many pleasures that they had missed for so long at sea. Adding to the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong��s harbor and waterfront were ships that had little to do with trade or treasure, such as American whalers and naval vessels of diff erent countries,31 which were attracted as much by amusement as by business.
A landmark development in shipping occurred in 1845 when P&O chose Hong Kong as the terminal of a line from London via India. Th e Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), a British shipping company founded in 1835, was contracted by the British government in 1844 to convey mail to India, and it later accepted an additional government subsidy to carry mail monthly to Hong Kong via Ceylon, thus linking Hong Kong to Britain and India on a regular and frequent basis. Further extensions of the P&O service, Bombay�VHong Kong and Calcutta�VHong Kong, were made in May 1846. To extend its reach, P&O started sending small steamers from Hong Kong on a freight run to Macao, and then upriver to Guangzhou. Another service was opened along the coast to Shanghai in 1850. These Chinese cities were not part of the British government��s mail contract, but the company was aiming to trade wherever there were cargoes, whether it was to a mail delivery or not.32 From the start, the lucrative opium and treasure carrying trade was the main impetus fueling P&O��s interest in Hong Kong.33 The monthly arrivals enhanced Hong Kong��s mobility and connectivity�Xcharacteristics that advanced its status as a shipping and trading center.
With increased shipping activities came a concentration of expertise in sea-manship around Hong Kong waters�Xcaptains and mates who had knowledge of the seas stretching from the North East Coast of China to Southeast Asia, India, and round the Cape to the Atlantic coast of Europe as well as in the other direction, through the Pacific ocean via the Horn to the Atlantic seaboard of North America. (The crew of whalers knew the Pacific especially well.) Th ese men, with their deep experience and ability, made the passage to and fro in dan-gerous waters, against all weathers and in all seasons. Not surprisingly, Hong Kong was to develop into a leading port for enlisting crews, and in particular (later) for the hiring of Chinese seamen who became essential to ocean-going steamers.
Being a shipping hub, Hong Kong enjoyed the advantage of having an easy flow of information. All governmental, commercial, military, and personal information at the time traveled by ship, as did newspapers from around the world. Quick access to information, and the ease with which information could be circulated within and beyond it, proved a valuable edge. Such fast and free movement of information was complemented by an energetic local press.
In the same year that P&O��s mail steamers arrived in Hong Kong, another landmark was created with the establishment of the first bank. Th e Oriental Bank was a branch of an unchartered joint stock bank that was fi rst estab-lished in Bombay under the designation of the Bank of Western India. By 1848, the bank was headquartered at London with branches in Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Colombo, Singapore, and Guangzhou besides Hong Kong. It operated current and fixed deposit accounts, dealt in bills, drafts, and checks, and pro-vided loans and cash credit on approved securities. By selling drafts that could draw on the Union Bank of London, the National Bank of Scotland, and the Provincial Bank of Ireland as well as on the three Indian presidencies, Colombo, and Singapore, it provided a wide coverage for international transactions. It issued notes, payable on demand in Hong Kong currency. It must have done well, because in 1847 it paid a 10 percent dividend.34 Trading houses might have provided financial facilities to their clients, but the services offered by a bank were more comprehensive and versatile, and accessible to a larger constituency.
There was a lively exchange market in Hong Kong, and the presence of a bank certainly supported its development. The large amount of silver from the sale of opium in China was shipped back to England or exchanged for gold if the price was right. One of Hong Kong��s attractions for P&O was the constantly large cargoes of treasure bound for India and London. Hong Kong did not have its own coinage, and foreign currencies such as Indian rupees, Spanish and Mexican dollars, Chinese cash coins and British currency were used.35 Th e Chinese were greatly enamored of silver; among the foreign coins, the silver Spanish dollar was the most favored for many years until the Mexican dollar overtook it in popularity from the 1850s. The Oriental Bank issued bank notes but they were not accepted by the government, and probably did not have a wide circula-tion. Hong Kong became progressively sophisticated as a center for foreign exchange, a role that would become extremely relevant after the gold rush.36
Th e Chinese
None of these developments would have been possible without the Chinese. A census taken in Hong Kong in May 1841, four months after British occupation, indicated a total population of 7,450, including 2,000 in the boats.37 Th e popu-lation quickly expanded as opportunities offered by the new port city attracted inhabitants from neighboring districts. By 1848, the Chinese population had grown to 15,000�V20,000, with a considerable number still living afl oat. Hong Kong was open to all who wished to come, although the colonial government used very tough�Xindeed, high-handed�Xmeasures toward criminals and others who might disturb the law and order that was imperative to trade.38
R. M. Martin was largely right to claim that, in the early years, established Chinese merchants of Guangzhou did not come to Hong Kong. The Qing gov-ernment had branded people who assisted the British in any way during the war as traitors, and even aft erward officials frowned on those working or trading with foreigners. Attracting official displeasure by association with Hong Kong was too big a risk for respectable merchants to take. Yet those Chinese who did venture to Hong Kong were certainly not limited to depraved criminals. As Martin himself recognized, one rather substantial merchant, Chinam, did come to Hong Kong�Xalthough his residence there was short. An opium mer-chant, Chinam operated with three partners under the firm name of Tun Wo. In 1843, Chinam bought Marine Lot 54 in Hong Kong for $8,000 and built a large hong (firm) on it in the Chinese style. In the meantime, he also freighted a ship. However, before the house was completed he caught a fever and cold and returned to Guangzhou, where he died in July 1844.39 His untimely death from fever might have acted as a further warning against the perils of going to Hong Kong. Still, several points in the city were named after him, including Chinam��s Hong and Chinam��s Wharf, testifying to the impact he made. Besides Chinam, others owning considerable assets, such as Acow, also ventured to Hong Kong.40
Figure 1 An interior view of Chinam��s house, the ��only good Chinese mansion exist-ing at Victoria, Hong Kong, in 1845.�� Chinam was the first wealthy merchant from Guangzhou to set up shop in Hong Kong.
Source: Edward Ashworth, ��Chinese Architecture,�� in Detached Essays and Illustrations (London: Architectural Publication Society, 1853), pp. 1�V18, Plate no. 2.
Ordinary Chinese
The 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese working on land as well as on water provided services for the port city��s economic and social growth on many levels. More than 80 diff erent crafts and trades were practiced by them: they were shopkeep-ers, bakers, butchers, chandlers, market operators, clerks, compositors for the presses, compradors, domestic servants, laborers for transportation, artists, and prostitutes. The fast-growing building industry brought in artisans�Xmasons, bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, painters, and glaziers. The shipping industry required a wide range of skills and labor: pilots to guide ships into the harbor; sail menders, caulkers, carpenters, and cabinet makers to repair and refurbish vessels that had received hard knocks during long voyages. Besides providing a good repair job, there was sufficient know-how and manpower to fit and refi t vessels as the market required. While some artisans worked solely in the ship-ping field, such as sailmakers and caulkers, it would be reasonable to assume that there was considerable flexibility so that painters and carpenters who usually worked on land could switch to working on ships as the market demanded.41 Likewise, tinsmiths who usually made door hinges for houses could, if needed, make rowlocks for boats. Thus, when the demand for passenger vessels exploded in 1849, it was possible for many vessels originally fitted for cargo to be refi tted to carry passengers at very short notice.
A number of Chinese trade guilds had been established by 1848. On the whole, the colonial government and foreigners looked upon these organizations with suspicion, sometimes calling them secret societies due to ignorance of their principles and modus operandi, and opposing them as impediments to free trade in the same way that trade unionism was condemned in contemporary Britain.42 However, we can see guilds in a positive light: they offered a regulatory and peacekeeping mechanism within the occupation or trade, oversaw the welfare of its members, and represented members�� interests when dealing with other trades and occupations. At a time when the government showed little understanding of the management of Chinese and did not see the need to cater to their welfare, guilds played a key role in providing a modicum of stability within the Chinese community.
Hong Kong��s existence depended heavily on efficient logistics. It was not only the hardware of piers and warehouses that was essential, but the soft -ware�Xthe fl exibility, proficiency, and mobility of the Chinese workforce at all levels. Whether they were carrying passengers, goods for local consumption or for transshipping, all ships needed quick and strong hands. Almost all the con-sumables in Hong Kong�Xmeat, poultry, vegetables, fruit, fi rewood, oil�Xwere brought in from the mainland. Other staples came from further afield: rice was imported from Bali and India, for example. Items with which Westerners could not dispense, such as wines, liquors, cheese, flour for making bread, and Western medicines, also came by sea. Even ice had to be imported from America! Many people were required for procuring, handling, transportation, and marketing just to satisfy the daily needs of the population in Hong Kong.
Furthermore, the entrepot��s transshipping activities�Xtea and silk for Europe and America; raw opium, cotton twills, and long cloths for China�Xneeded
Figure 2 Hong Kong harbor, 1855�V60, filled with ships of many different types and
from many diff erent nations. Source: Hong Kong Museum of History, P1976.553. By courtesy of the Hong Kong Museum of History.
handling. Sometimes goods were simply transferred from one ship to another, or warehoused in a hulk in the harbor without ever touching land. Th e harbor was the thoroughfare not only for international or regional traffic, but at a time when roads were few, for local traffic as well. All these activities required an infrastructure supported by boats of different types and sizes carrying people, goods, and livestock between shore and ships, between one vessel and another, between one point on shore and another. Vendor vessels sold food, water, and other goods to vessels moored in the middle of the harbor. This busy network of boats was often operated by a group of boat-dwellers known as the Tanka, who for generations had lived, worked, and died on boats along the China coast and up rivers; they plied Victoria Harbor and moored in the neighboring bays, ready to service vessels from far and near. We will meet the Tanka people again below.
Th e first person a foreign vessel arriving in Hong Kong waters was most likely to encounter was the pilot�Xalways Tanka�Xwho came on board to guide the ship into the harbor. Entering further into the harbor, the ship would be surrounded by sampans that came alongside with artisans, washerwomen, and vendors of all kinds, noisily soliciting their services and goods. One can easily imagine the din as the boat vendors shouted and waved their wares: fruit, veg-etables, chickens, ducks, geese, eggs, fish, meats�Xall consumables that would tickle the fancy of crew members who might have been at sea for weeks surviving on salted food and sea biscuits. However well organized the ship��s provisioning might have been, a newly arrived ship would find it hard to say no to the fresh grub that would keep its crew happy and healthy, and indeed enable it to save the salted beef and pork for the next voyage. Individual crew members would happily buy or barter for some fruit or other goodies.43 The commotion con-tinued as long as the ship was in port, for throughout the vessel��s stay, the crew needed to be fed and the laundry done. The hullabaloo would escalate when the ship was due to sail again, when it must stock up for the coming voyage; the decks would be filled with coops stuffed with chickens and fowl, while pigs and goats filled the pens; there would be water and firewood for cooking, and salted beef and hams, and wines, pickles, and jams for the European crew. Th e goods and transport services would largely be provided by Tanka people.
Most foreign vessels�Xwhether naval or civil�Xhad their own cutters for moving people and goods between ship and shore, but this did not make sampans44 and junks dispensable. Sampans serving as water taxis plied the harbor waiting to be called upon to ferry crew members and passengers carrying myriad goods they would take home as souvenirs�XChinese curios, porcelain tea sets, chests, paintings, silk shawls, bric-a-brac. It should not be forgotten that tourism had been one of Hong Kong��s main money earners since the earliest days. Besides, captains and crewmen often traded on their own accounts, buying amounts of goods that they could carry free of freight charges and sell at a profi t at another port.45 Sampans and junks also participated in the transporting of freight cargo on and off the vessels. The actual stowing of cargo was most likely undertaken by the cargo ship��s own crew, as stowing different types of cargo required specialist knowledge that made it almost a fi ne art,46 but much of the carrying and hoisting between one boat and another involved the crews of the sampans and junks. In addition to freight cargo, these lighters transported the ship��s stores�Xfrom large items such as new rigging, sails and spars, water casks, and anchors to smaller ones such as handles and rings, hooks and hatches, and catches and latches of all kinds. Suffi cient wood and paint had to be taken for maintenance while at sea�Xthese were items that would be especially vital if and when major damage was caused by a storm. Sometimes, instead of taking on store, a ship sold its store, and in that case too lighters and porters were neces-sary to move the items and the thousand and one things that a ship could not do without. When steamers came into vogue, the loading of coal became another huge operation. Since only a few firms had their own quays, discharging and loading often had to take place midstream. Stevedores who oversaw the activities were likely to have been Tanka as well. The shipping center that Hong Kong was steadily becoming depended on these boat people for its basic functioning, and in turn, provided abundant opportunities for them.
Living a water-borne life, the Tanka people possessed many skills required by a port city. Scraping, tarring, painting of boat bottoms, caulking, making and sewing sails, and making and dyeing rope, all being integral parts of their basic existence, made them skilled artisans. Thus they were the indispensable nuts and bolts of the port infrastructure.
The Tanka, who suffered much discrimination in China, comprised the largest part of the Chinese population in Hong Kong in the mid-nineteenth century, and many no doubt arrived as a consequence of the opportunities offered by the new colonial port.47 Forbidden by Chinese law to settle ashore or to take civil service examinations, and prohibited by custom from intermar-rying with the rest of the people, kept them poor, alienated, and despised, and consequently their political affiliation to the Chinese state and Chinese land people was weak. E. J. Eitel, the missionary who turned civil servant and then historian, notes that in fact the Tanka��s relationship with the British had deep roots. Their intimate connection with the social life of the foreign merchants in the Guangzhou factories, he claims, used to ��call forth an annual proclama-tion on the part of the Cantonese Authorities warning foreigners against the demoralizing influences of these people.��48 Indeed, he points out that from the earliest days of the East India Company they had always been the trusted allies of foreigners. They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men-of-war, troopships, and mercantile vessels at times when doing so was declared by the Chinese government to be rank treason, unsparingly visited with capital punishment. They were the ��hangers-on�� of the foreign factories of Guangzhou and of the British shipping at Lintin Island, Kamsingmoon, and Hong Kong Bay. They ��invaded�� Hong Kong the moment the settlement was started, at fi rst living on boats in the harbor with their families, and gradually settling on shore, and ever since had maintained almost a monopoly of the supply of pilots and ships�� crews, of the fish trade and the cattle trade. We will encounter some Tanka ��entrepreneurs�� later. But it was not only Tanka men who contributed to Hong Kong��s growth. Tanka girls and women also undertook much of the physical labor involved in managing the boats and doing laundry for seamen; Eitel also laments that a good number of them worked as prostitutes and became the mis-tresses (or ��protected women��) of foreigners. Thus Tanka women too became an indispensable building block in the colony��s political economy.
The Tanka��s physical, political, and social mobility brought distrust and fear from the Chinese authorities, yet it was exactly these qualities that enabled them to seize the opportunity in the new colony and establish themselves in niches in the new political, economic, and social structure. Their mobility and ��indomi-table energy, perseverance, and industry,�� which so impressed James Lawrence who sailed to Hong Kong with USS Wachusett and USS Hartford in the 1860s, was no doubt what contributed to the special dynamism of Hong Kong.49
Chinese Entrepreneurship
It should be noted that despite the absence of established Chinese businessmen of Chinam��s caliber moving from Guangzhou, there was plenty of entrepreneur-ship around, and the ability to accumulate capital from very humble beginnings through different channels characterized Hong Kong then, as it does now. It is hard to assess the scale of Chinese businesses in the 1840s, but some must have involved considerable capital.
We need only look at the pawn brokers (5), money dealers (3), crude opium dealers (5), and rice dealers (3) who were listed in the 1846 Almanack to get an idea of the scale of the economy among them. In 1848, pawn brokers paid $350 per annum for a license from government and did a large volume of business, charging interest rates that varied from 35 to 50 percent per annum.50
Opium was important not only as a re-export item to China; it was also sig-nificant domestically. The government first regulated the trade as a monopoly and then by license. In 1845, the monopoly was established as a tax on the retail of opium�Xraw or prepared�Xwithin the colony, in quantities of less than a chest. Th e first opium farmers were two minor tradesmen, George Duddell and Alexander Mathieson, who secured the annual lease on the farm at a monthly rental of $710; thereafter, all the opium farmers were Chinese. In 1846, the opium farmer paid over �G4,000�Xapproximately $19,000�Xfor the exclusive right to retail opium. In 1847, the farm was replaced by a licensing system: the right to sell opium was granted by licenses that were divided into three grades: the first, for selling in quantities less than a chest (1.25 cwt), cost $360 per annum; the second, for boiling down and refining opium, cost $240; and the third, for keeping an opium-smoking divan, cost $10.51 The total revenue for these licensees was �G1,867 ($8,961) in 1848.52 Opium not only became a crucial source of income for the colonial government, but also a means for Chinese entrepreneurs to accumulate capital.
Land investment was another key means for capital accumulation, and many fortunes were built�Xor ruined�Xin land investment and speculation. All land on the island was owned by the Crown, and its availability was tightly con-trolled. It was sold only by auction that took place from time to time, and people who ��bought�� land in fact only bought leases, which generally lasted 75 years. The site on which St John��s Cathedral stands is in fact the only piece of land held in freehold in the whole of the colony. Income from land�Xpremiums, Crown rents, stamp duties from transactions, and so on�Xformed a major source of gov-ernment revenue, and it was in the Crown��s interest to keep land prices high. In 1848, the annual value of the lands on lease in Victoria exceeded �G13,000 (approximately $62,400), and formed the largest item of the government��s total income of �G30,000 (approximately $144,000). While Chinese leaseholders paid a little more than �G2,000 (approximately $9,600) of that amount,53 their portion was to grow immensely in the years to come. With the government keeping land prices high and the relative peace that Hong Kong was to enjoy for the rest of the nineteenth century, land became an attractive investment for Chinese living in Hong Kong and overseas.
Social Mobility
Hong Kong, while failing to attract established merchants, was in fact a magnet for socially disadvantaged Chinese aspiring to higher stations in life. Severed from mainstream Chinese society, the new British colony nonetheless off ered an ��alternative space�� free from the domination of the offi cial-gentry elite and established Chinese merchants. Like other frontier towns, where the social structure was still fluid, the young colony allowed marginal people with energy and daring�Xthose adept at seizing opportunities as well as creating them�Xto get ahead. Starting with different activities and emerging from diff erent back-grounds, they oft en gravitated to the main areas of wealth-creation, including land and property, opium, import/export, the operating of markets, pawn-shops and other forms of banking, shipping, provisioning, and construction. From the 1850s, these opportunities were multiplied by trade with, and large-scale emi-gration to, California and other destinations.
There was immense mobility. On the one hand, there was little interference from the Hong Kong government regarding the kinds of activities in which Chinese could participate so long as they were legal. In fact, as Hong Kong was founded for the purpose of making money, there was little social stigma attached to fl agrant profit-making or conspicuous consumption.
At this early stage, when only a few formal guilds had been set up, many of the rigid guild restrictions that governed business activities and behavior in Guangzhou and other old commercial centers in China were either absent or only vaguely observed in Hong Kong. In the generally more relaxed atmosphere, there was freedom to move from one trade to another, allowing one to target one��s energy at the fastest money-making venture at any given time. Th e impulse to diversify into new, lucrative areas was unimpeded except by the availability of capital�Xmoney capital, social capital, and network capital�Xand the right opportunity.
Although we do not know many of these earlier operators by name, a docu-ment dated 1848 throws light on a number of Chinese individuals who had made good. This was a petition submitted by a group of landowners asking the government to remit what they considered excessive Crown rent. Th e signato-ries included Jardine, Matheson & Co., Dent & Co. and other foreign fi rms, as well as 27 principal Chinese landowners. These were the Chinese, the sociolo-gist W. K. Chan points out, ��with whom the Europeans were not ashamed to be identifi ed.��54 This says a lot for the status of the Chinese signatories at a time when the racial divide was very wide and colonial snobbery intense. Who were these Chinese men who had succeeded in climbing so high?
A number of them had prospered from early association with the British�X that is, before the occupation of Hong Kong itself. One was Tam Achoy, arguably the most striking example of making good in Hong Kong. Formerly a foreman in the government dockyard in Singapore, he had arrived in Hong Kong in 1841. It was reported at the time that it was so difficult to engage mechanics and obtain material to build houses that several wooden houses in frame had to be shipped in several ships from Singapore, and it was likely that Tam had arrived on one of these.55 His experience working with foreigners must have been a valuable asset; he might even have had personal connections with British persons that induced him to start up in Hong Kong. He must have foreseen the demand for building and construction in the new settlement, and the one thousand buildings stand-ing there by 1848 were proof of that demand. He built some of Hong Kong��s most prestigious early buildings, including the P&O Building and the Exchange Building, which was later bought by the government and used for many years as the Supreme Court. In addition, he was granted a certificate for the eastern-most of the lots in the Lower Bazaar on the northwestern shore of Hong Kong Island, and soon began to buy up the interests of the adjacent property owners until he had acquired an extensive sea frontage. His property holdings contin-ued to expand. As his capital increased, he broadened his interests and secured permission from the government to build and operate a market, another lucra-tive activity. He was to become, as we will see, deeply involved in diff erent emi-gration-related businesses aft er 1848.56 Given that Tam was a native of Kaiping, the place of origin of many emigrating to North America and Australia, such involvement should not be surprising. Among other things, he became one of the owners of the Hamilton, the first Chinese-owned ship to arrive in San Francisco in June 1853.57
Kwok Acheong also made his fortune by working closely with the British, serving as a pilot and supplier for the British fleet during the war. He reaped the benefits by staying behind in Hong Kong. First, he became provisioner to
Figure 3 Plaque dedicated by Tam Achoy and other leading merchants and firms to the I-tsz in 1857, exalting its inexhaustible charitable spirit. Source: By courtesy of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals.
the Royal Navy, and in 1845 comprador to the P&O company. Th ough his knowledge of English ��never rose above respectable ��pidgin��,�� he was admired by Chinese and Europeans alike for his remarkable intelligence, keenness in busi-ness, and organizational skills.58
Aside from lining his pockets, working for one of the largest shipping com-panies in the world must have opened Acheong��s eyes in many ways, and when P&O disposed of its shipwright and engineering department in 1854, he bought it and built up a shipping business. His aggressive business style is again demon-strated in the way he dealt with the European-controlled Hongkong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company, set up in 1865. While a shareholder and direc-tor of the board, he was operating a fleet of steamers that competed with it. His steamers were so successful that the company paid him $12,000 to withdraw them from the river.59
Kwok was most likely of Tanka origin, and Hong Kong offered him and others like him a space to transform their identity. It was quite common among boat people, once they managed to assume ��land�� status and achieve respect-ability, to readily discard and hide their ethnic origin. Some assumed land status by claiming residence in one of the counties in the Pearl River Delta, and Kwok somehow became a native of Panyu district, a reflection of the fl uidity of the Tanka identity.60
Yet his Tanka background must have been extremely valuable for helping him to move ahead in the water-borne world. The profound contribution of Tanka people to the growth of Hong Kong as an entrepot has yet to be properly researched. It is unclear whether he participated in the emigration-related busi-nesses, but he was a manager and chief donor of the Kai Shin Tong, one of the earliest associations that catered to the needs of Chinese migrants in America by helping to repatriate their bones for burial in their hometown. We will examine the work of this organization in Chapter 7.
Some small traders also came to Hong Kong from Guangzhou and elsewhere, and settled along the Lower Bazaar district dominated by Tam Achoy. Among them were Fujianese and Chaozhou traders who had conducted trade between China and Southeast Asia, where they had enjoyed a commercial foothold for a very long time. They relocated their main operations to Hong Kong when they saw the relative advantages of a free port. In time, they transformed Hong Kong into a key transshipment center for goods from the north destined for South China and Southeast Asia and vice versa, establishing the Nam Pak or south�V north trade. From humble beginnings, the Nam Pak trade was to grow exponen-tially to dominate Hong Kong��s economy for many years, a development that would be closely connected with the California trade.
A less conspicuous group drawn to Hong Kong in the 1840s comprised artists. Guangzhou had become the home of painters such as Guan Qiaochang (known to Westerners as Lamqua), a student of the famous George Chinnery, who catered especially to foreigners by painting portraits of foreign merchants or producing works that appealed to foreign tastes, intended for markets in Europe, India, and America. Some of them soon settled in Hong Kong, Li Leong among them, and paintings were among Hong Kong��s earliest export items.61 According to family tradition, Li made friends with many of the foreigners who admired his art, and through them got to know what was going on overseas. When he realized the immense opportunities out there, he gave up painting and founded what would become a business empire. His firm, Wo Hang, was the prototype of companies called Gold Mountain Traders (jinshan zhuang�Xliter-ally gold mountain firms) that engaged in shipping, export/import, remittance, labor brokering, and other kinds of transactions with the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand�Xall countries that were first known to the Chinese for their gold. Li Leong died fairly young but his enterprise was taken over by his energetic cousin Li Sing, under whom the firm went from strength to strength.62
Nor should we forget a group of young Chinese who received an English-language education, mainly in missionary schools. These people helped to sustain government and commercial administration, and during the gold rush many of them ventured forth to play major roles among the Chinese in California. Whatever the school organizers�� goals were in teaching English to their pupils, most of them�Xand their parents�Xwere interested more in acquir-ing English as a means to establish a livelihood. One young boy at the Morrison Education Society School, writing an essay in 1846 on ��Why do you wish to get an education?�� wrote: ��The object [that] led me to come [to the school] was to learn English, so that I might make money by dealing with the English, and I had no hope of becoming a scholar.��63 English was, after all, the offi cial lan-guage�Xthe language of political and economic power. It was necessary in some situations to acquire a certain level of literacy beyond just pidgin English. Clerks were needed to write or transcribe a wide range of English documents, from gov-ernors�� letters to London, to bills of lading, to draft ordinances. Translators and interpreters were needed in the courts and government departments. In fact, there was a constant shortage of effective interpreters: in the early years, Hong Kong and Shanghai competed for those trained in Singapore and Macao, and within Hong Kong competition was rife between private companies and the government, and among different government departments. The schools were simply not producing interpreters fast enough. Among these English-educated young men were Tong Achick and Lee Kan, students of the Morrison Education Society��s school. In early 1852, Tong went to California with his uncle, and soon became very prominent in the Chinese community there, especially as an intermediary with the Californian administration.64 Besides his command of English, Achick��s knowledge of European manners prepared him to fit into the Western social and political world.65 Lee also left for San Francisco in 1852, and became the Chinese language editor of the missionary-run bilingual newspaper Th e Oriental.66 In 1848, these young men were in the wings, waiting for some-thing big to happen.
American Presence
To understand Hong Kong��s quick response to the gold rush and its future rela-tionship with California, we also need to examine the role of the Americans. In 1848, only three American companies were headquartered in Hong Kong�X Bush & Co., Rawle, Duus & Co., and Drinker, Heyl & Co., yet numbers alone do not reflect their significance. Frederick T. Bush arrived in Hong Kong in 1843 and set up business the following year. In 1845, he was appointed US consul to Hong Kong, and he certainly took advantage of the position to advance his com-mercial interests and made himself an attractive business associate. His fi rm was the Hong Kong agent for many fi rms in Guangzhou, including Russell & Co., Augustine Heard & Co. and their Shanghai branches, and a number of British and European firms. What is more remarkable is that it represented 19 of the 32 ��British Indian�� companies in Guangzhou.67 These three American companies, especially Bush & Co., would quickly seize the opportunity to exploit the Hong Kong�VCalifornia connection once news of gold broke.
However, it is necessary to look further back to understand the pervasive influence of the decades-old presence of Americans in the Pearl River Delta. It is customary to begin the history of American commercial presence in China with the arrival of the Empress of China in 1784. American merchants in Salem, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, now liberated from British dominance by the War of Independence, were free to establish direct contact with Guangzhou. Though initially unfamiliar with the ��Canton trade,�� they soon learned the ropes, and were busy expanding into the China market�X mainly exporting tea and silk to the United States. The risks of long-distance trade were great, and to spread the fi nancial burden and share the risk, trusted friends and family relations would band together, usually on an ad hoc basis, to send a ship to Guangzhou and market the goods it carried. To increase the flexibility and knowledge of the market, US merchants began to post agents to Guangzhou as early as 1803, and the decision by Perkins & Co. of Boston to establish the first agency in Guangzhou shows the port��s rising importance in the estimation of American merchants. By the late 1820s, there were nine American companies operating there, with the import of opium from Turkey being a major means of paying for all the Chinese goods that they were buying for the American market.
Apart from the firms, there was also a continuous stream of American ships sailing in the Pearl River Delta, congregating at Macao and Whampoa, the fur-thest point to which foreign ships could sail, and the presence of American ships captains and their seamen became a common sight.
Russell & Co., founded in 1824, emerged as the premier US company in China. When Perkins & Co. decided to withdraw from China in 1829, John Cushing left the company��s business to Russell & Co., thus strengthening its business standing while perpetuating the influence of Boston merchants in Guangzhou. Russell & Co.��s business expanded and became increasingly pros-perous, partly the result of the concentration of the American opium trade in its hands. As Michael Hunt puts it: ��A list of R. & Co. staff heads reads like a Who��s Who of the early China trade�XPerkins, Heard, Low, Hunter, Forbes, Delano, Sturgis, and King.��68 One partner, Augustine Heard, was to form a separate company, Augustine Heard & Co., and a former employee, Frederick Macondray, founded Macondray & Co.; both would feature strongly in the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade.
Where Hong Kong��s future relations with California are concerned, American merchants played an enormous role by exploiting the transpacifi c and intra-Pacific trade routes at a time when the China trade with the West had tra-ditionally depended on traffic across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. American merchants called at the Pacific Northwest for the furs of sea otters, seals, and beavers to sell to China in return for porcelain, tea, silk, and other commodities. In this intra-Pacific trade, the Sandwich Islands became the natural center where goods from China and for China (and other destinations) were exchanged, giving rise to a circular route linking California, Hawaii, and China. Th e trade expanded considerably after 1822, when California was freed from Spanish rule. With California now under Mexican rule and previous Spanish prohibi-tions lifted, American traders from New England�Xespecially Boston�Xbegan to settle in Monterey and Santa Barbara to engage in the China trade. Many of these traders were ships�� masters and supercargoes, who sailed and traded between Guangzhou, the Sandwich Islands, and California, establishing net-works that stretched between New England and the Pearl River Delta (and through it to Southeast Asia). American business interests within that network were quick to see the potential of integrating California into the China trade ��system��69�Xwhich was, after all, the center of the world economy.
To promote their interests, American merchants persuaded the Washington government of both the overall value of the China trade to the nation and the benefits California would bring. These became major reasons for the American acquisition of California in 1848, after two years of fighting with Mexico. As historian James Delgado claims: ��Without the China trade and the hide-and-tallow trade �K California would not have been a prize worth conquering during the Mexican war.��70 When the New York shipping merchants Howland & Aspinwall set up a line of large ocean steamers in 1848 from the East Coast, round Cape Horn to California, there was no idea of gold in that territory. Rather, the aim was to command a greater share of the China trade.71
One American in Hong Kong who actively exploited California as a poten-tial market for China goods was C. V. Gillespie. Originally from New York, Charles Gillespie began making voyages to Guangzhou from 1831, and when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841, he became the first American resident there. As early as July 15, 1841�Xbarely a month after the very first land sale on Hong Kong Island�Xhe was advertising a godown ��with double-mat roof �� at ��46, Victoria Avenue, Hong Kong;�� this later became 46 Queen��s Road, and the godown became a granite godown, the Albany Godowns, the first solid mer-cantile building completed in Hong Kong.72 He moved continuously between Hong Kong, Macao, and Guangzhou, while also setting up to sell provisions and goods suitable for trade to the Pacific Islands. His interest in California, apart from the general enthusiasm for it by American merchants in China, might have been due to the presence of his brother, a lieutenant in the US Marines. Archibald Hamilton Gillespie first fought against Mexicans and then against the rebels who supported Mexico after California came under American control in August 1846.
In early 1847, Charles was in California to sell a shipment of China goods�Xa curious mixture of merchandise that he must have believed to be sellable there, probably for re-export to Acapulco, Callao, or Valparaiso.73 It included spirits of turpentine in tins, German linseed oil in flasks and hampers, silk handker-chiefs, bandanas, embroidered shawls, vases, and fans. He might be, as one contemporary observed cynically, one of the many American merchants keen to ship off ��any incumbrance�� to California.74 In late 1847, Charles went to California again, arriving in San Francisco on the Eagle on February 2, 1848. The merchandise was similarly mixed�Xsilk handkerchiefs, cords and tassels, velvet slippers, rhubarb, and gunpowder tea. But this time he did not leave. Seeing the rapid expansion of American interests in California, he decided to settle there. He made inquiries into buying a ��ranche,�� and seriously considered embarking on the importation of Chinese laborers to supplement the labor force of the expanding economy. In March he wrote to Thomas Larkin, a leading American trader in California who had been American consul while California was still under Mexican rule, saying:
Any number of [Chinese] mechanics, agriculturists & servants can be obtained. They would be willing to sell their services for a certain period to pay their passage across the Pacifi c. They would be valuable miners. Th e Chinese are a sober & industrious people, and if a large number could be introduced into California, landed property would increase in value fourfold.75
Not surprisingly, after gold was discovered Gillespie became a gold dealer, offering high rates for gold dust coming out of the mines.76
Another American, Samuel J. Hastings, also recognized that Chinese labor was a valuable asset. Though pessimistic about the trade in goods, Hastings told Larkin: ��The only thing that will benefit California from China will be the introduction of emigrants for mining purposes etc, for which some of them are well calculated particularly for the placers.��77 The letter was written on January 14, 1848, ten days before Sutter was to make the first sighting of gold on his mill that heralded the world-shattering gold rush, and it was to Hastings�� credit that he could foresee the benefits that could arise from a marriage between Chinese labor and the vast resources of California so early in the game.
Another American who helped foster early China�VCalifornia connections was Frederick W. Macondray. Born in Massachusetts and trained for seafar-ing at an early age, he sailed as clerk and fourth officer on a two-year voyage to California in 1825 to collect hides and tallow.78 In 1831, he went out to China and operated in Chinese waters for some time before taking charge of Russell and Co.��s opium storeship Lintin from 1836 until 1838. When he returned to America, he first settled in Dorchester outside Boston, but upon hearing of the gold discovery in California, he traveled with James Otis and R. S. Watson across the Panama isthmus and set up a commission house, Macondray & Co., in San Francisco in May 1849. He was the right man in the right place to take advan-tage of California��s new prosperity, and in particular the shipping and cargo business that was to come with the influx of Chinese migrants into California.79 His old China connections were to prove invaluable.
In the course of commercial activities, some long-term and intimate relation-ships were built up between American and Chinese businessmen. Th e friend-ships between John P. Cushing and Howqua, the hong merchant Wu Bingjian, and later between Howqua and Russell & Co., are legendary, but other Chinese merchants worked closely with Americans as well. William Hunter��s account of his own experience in pre-Treaty Guangzhou presents such commercial relation-ships as filled with trust, mutual respect, and good humor.80
A closer look at the picture reveals that the points of contact between Americans and Chinese extended far beyond those between the leading mer-chants. On the American side were the members of firms, from the taipan to the apprentices fresh out from America�Xespecially from Boston or other Massachusetts ports�Xin addition to ships�� captains and offi cers, ships�� doctors and, later, missionaries. On the Chinese side, besides the ��hong merchants,�� who dominated trade with foreigners before the end of the Opium War, a whole range of people came into contact with the foreigners. For example, the ��outside�� merchants who were supposedly prohibited from dealing directly with foreigners were becoming increasingly important in the nineteenth century, and their annual transactions with foreigners were on a large scale. As manufacturers of silks, flooring matting, nankeens, crepes, grass cloth, and other goods, many of them had amassed great wealth. In addition, there were the employees of the foreign hongs, including the comprador, the shroff, domestic servants, interpret-ers, and so forth.81 Furthermore, at Whampoa�Xwhich, as mentioned previously, was as far as foreign ships were allowed to sail on the Pearl River�XAmericans relied on ships�� compradors who helped foreigners maintain their ships in the same way that the compradors at Guangzhou provided for the security and con-venience of the factories.82 It was a mutually beneficial relationship. Th e Chinese made a living out of trading with, servicing, or supplying foreigners while the Americans would not have been able to conduct trade in China without them. The multifaceted contacts enabled the formation of powerful networks for the flow of funds, business transactions, social interaction, commercial intelligence, and gossip of all kinds.
Among Chinese individuals who worked closely with Americans, and were extremely instrumental to them, was Boston Jack. He was familiarly known to the European population as a kind of interpreter and furnisher of provisions for vessels and a commissioner to provide servants, coolies, and pilots; in fact, he seemed ready to do any kind of business with foreigners. He was said to be worth 100,000 dollars, and was much respected by the other Chinese at Whampoa. ��Ever civil and obliging,�� as he was described by William Hunter, Boston Jack was a favorite with the Americans. His name was derived from the fact that he once made a passage to Boston as steward, and returned to Whampoa via Cape Horn and the northwest coast of America. Americans traveling up to Guangzhou in the 1840s and early 1850s invariably seemed to call on him, even when they were not in need of any specifi c service. He would offer his visitors beers and speak proudly of his son who lived in New York.83 He would become one of the first Chinese exporters to San Francisco after the gold rush.
Conclusion
The news of the fabulous gold rush arrived in Hong Kong some time in late 1848. It is not clear exactly when or how the news arrived. Could Charles Gillespie have been the first to report it in letters to his friends in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, or Macao? Was it one of Jardine, Matheson��s correspondents in Honolulu who broke the news? Could it have been circulated in their own circles by captains, seamen, and passengers arriving from California? Or was it when the US ship Preble arrived in Hong Kong and Macao in September 1848, bringing several issues of the Honolulu newspaper Th e Polynesian that reported on the gold discovery and the rush for California, noting that ��thousands are resorting to it from all quarters, suddenly seized with fever as our contemporary expressed it?��84 We may never know the answer, but we can be sure that once the news arrived it would have rippled quickly through offices, homes, taverns, and the waterfront. It spread like wildfire from the cities to the countryside up the Pearl River, creating excitement and disbelief at each stop. ��Everyone is engaged in talking of California,�� noted Dr Benjamin Ball, an American physician visit-ing Hong Kong and the treaty ports in late 1848 and 1849. He was impressed by the overwhelming zeal he encountered everywhere he went. The Chinese were no less informed or enthusiastic for, as he observed, ��often one may hear among the Chinese ��Kaly-porny��, beginning or ending their sentences.��85
The arrival of the news coincided with almost a decade of infrastructure con-struction in Hong Kong. Even though the volume of international trade was still relatively small, the port city had grown in sophistication and expertise in many areas of activities, from credit to currency exchange, from cargo handling to ship repairs, from courts to warehouses. It was developing as a space of fl ow that facilitated the movement of people as much as the rapid dissemination of information and the transshipment of goods. There were varied means of capital formation among people from different countries, and for some, access to global fi nance. Though never a level playing field, Hong Kong as a British colony pro-vided enough flexibility and openness for people of different backgrounds to exert their entrepreneurial vitality and not be ashamed of growing rich. It was just waiting for the big break.
For Hong Kong, the news about the gold rush an ocean away was not just another piece of market information but a call for action. The place was ready to take off .
2
Leaving for California
The Gold Rush and Hong Kong��s Development as an Emigrant Port
It may be impossible to pin down exactly when and how news about the California gold discovery first reached Hong Kong, but, we do know that when the Julia arrived in January 1849 with a considerable amount of gold dust, the excitement around town was barely containable.1 All the rumors about the fabu-lous treasures were now confirmed. News circulated that California had become an enormous consumer market created by the large numbers of gold rushers pouring in from all quarters; in response, Hong Kong��s merchants plunged into the trade by exporting to California a wide range of goods in the hope of quick profits. Hong Kong not only fulfilled its potential as an entrepot for goods as a result of the gold rush but, as tens of thousands of Chinese lured by the promise of gold and other opportunities in the new frontier, embarked there for California in the decades to come, it also evolved into an entrepot for people�Xa development that no one would have foreseen when the British first made it a free port. Th e efflux turned the colony into a leading emigration port�Xfi rst for California, later for other ��gold mountain�� countries, and eventually for all parts of the world.
The gold rush triggered one of the most dramatic migration movements in the nineteenth century. Though the number of Chinese going to California was small compared with either the number of non-Chinese migrants or the number of Chinese emigrants destined for Southeast Asia, Chinese migration to California in the nineteenth century was significant for many reasons.2 It had an enormous impact on both the political and social history of the United States (particularly California) and the social and economic development of the sending counties in South China.
Figure 4 ��The Heathen Chinee [sic], prospecting. Calif., Year 1852.�� Source: FN-04470. Photographer: Eadweard Muybridge, 1830�V1904. Martin Behrman copyprint. California Historical Society. By courtesy of the California Historical Society.
Moreover, it reshaped Hong Kong��s destiny. Given that our focus is on Hong Kong, we will examine in this chapter the process by which it developed into a major emigrant port as a result of the gold rush passenger trade. We will examine the political, legal, and social framework that evolved to facilitate the emergence of a new mode of Chinese migration�Xa free, transoceanic migration dominated by Cantonese�Xthat had enormous and long-term consequences for Hong Kong and the region, and stands out as a striking phenomenon in modern Chinese history.
The First Forty-niners from Hong Kong
Hong Kong��s first Forty-niners were not Chinese. On January 9, 1849, four American passengers took the English brig Richard and William and arrived in San Francisco on March 20. They were Captain Marvin, formerly commander of the Russell & Co.��s opium-smuggling ship the Anglona, William Heyl of the firm Drinker, Heyl and Co., George Winslow, a livery stable-keeper, and W.
H. McConnell, a tavern keeper.3 Others followed, civil servants among them. One was A. L. Inglis, the Registrar General, who took off on the Rhone in June, allegedly having resigned to take his chances in California.4 A few months later, Charles Gordon Holdforth, an assistant magistrate of police, applied for ten months�� leave of absence and left on the Kelso with two Chinese servants. Once in California, he got into all kinds of scrapes, and presumably never returned to Hong Kong.5
Th e effect of the California trade was keenly felt. By April 1850, the Hong Kong government reported that as a result of the stimulation ��afforded to com-merce and industrial pursuit by the accession of trade with California,�� the Chinese population had increased by 7,993 that year.6 Some came to Hong Kong in order to produce for the California market. A number of carpenters, for instance, arrived in Hong Kong to engage in building house-frames that were in great demand. Indeed, The Friend of China predicted that making house frames for California would become Hong Kong��s main industry.7
Needless to say, many of the Chinese coming to Hong Kong during this time simply used the port city as a stepping stone to California. Foreign ship-ping merchants in Hong Kong and Guangzhou actively seduced people in the region by circulating placards, maps, and pamphlets, presenting highly colored accounts of the ��Gold Mountain,�� as California was soon to be known among the Chinese. Numerous ships sent out native agents to obtain passengers.8 Fascination with the Gold Mountain was boosted when three or four Chinese passengers returned to Hong Kong on the Race Hound in early 1851, each bringing $3,000 to $4,000 with them. As they showed the dust they had found and told glowing tales of the golden regions,9 they fanned the desire of other men to venture forth.
Ships Bound for San Francisco
The number of ships and passengers bound for San Francisco increased dramat-ically. In 1851, 44 ships left Hong Kong for California.10 The following year, 1852, was a boom year. The harbor was busy with ships constantly loading pas-sengers and goods for California and Australia, and the town was abuzz with the extraordinary level of activities. One might imagine the excitement when people discovered that, on February 20 alone, no fewer than three vessels�Xthe Ann Welsh, Ternate, and Nicolay Nicolayson�Xhad sailed for San Francisco, taking with them a total of 522 passengers. This remarkable phenomenon was repeated on April 16 when the Gellert, Sir George Pollock and Iowa took 868 passengers among them. Multiple departures on a single day became almost commonplace, and on May 2, another three vessels�XPera, Augusta and Duke of Northumbria�X took off. Just ten days later, on May 12, it was the Golden Gate, Essex, and Baron Renfr ew that formed another threesome. The number of passengers on board each vessel varied, but it was often quite phenomenal. A new record was set by the Challenge on March 18 when it sailed with 550 passengers. An American clipper that most likely had been built for the tea trade, the Challenge, was on this occasion enlisted to take passengers instead. The record did not last long, for it was superseded by the Baron Renfr ew, which carried 580 passengers on May 12 and then by the Sobraon with 630 on May 19. By the end of the year, according to the governor, 30,000 Chinese had left for California through Hong Kong, but as we have noted, this number was probably exaggerated. (For the number of migrants, see Appendix 2.)
To meet the incredible demand for transportation to San Francisco, ships began arriving in Hong Kong in large numbers, but there never seemed to be enough. By 1854, it should be noted, there was also a flood of Chinese traveling to Australia where gold had been discovered in 1851�Xthus Australia became known to the Chinese as ��New Gold Mountain���Xand the crunch on ships intensifi ed. Though the departures for Australia started modestly, with only 268 passengers in 1853,11 the numbers rose dramatically in the following year. During the first three months of 1854, a total of 2,100 people departed for Melbourne and between November 1854 and September 1855, another 10,467 sailed for Australia.12 Consequently, the demand for ships in Hong Kong was so intense that European ships that had been condemned as unfit to carry cargo years before were bought at ridiculously high prices and fitted out for passen-gers. Some of them were reported to be old, filthy, rotten craft that had gone through their term of ordinary service, been used as whalers and later aban-doned.13 In and around the China Sea, companies competed for ships not only to convey passengers to North America and Australia, but no less to Cuba, Peru, and the West Indies�Xplaces desperately seeking cheap Chinese labor. Globally, the shortage of shipping was aggravated as Australia��s gold mines were attracting large numbers of emigrants from Britain and continental Europe. Th e American consul in Hong Kong observed in 1854 that so many people were eager to go to California that ��the impossibility of finding vessels to transport those who wish to go is the only obstacle in the way.��14 Moreover, goods were competing with passengers for space on board. As the Alta California wrote in 1854: ��Freights from China to this port are ruling exceedingly high, twenty six dollars per ton, for ordinary vessels, is freely given, but the number of passengers coming excludes a large amount of goods which otherwise might be sent to this port.��15
The Who and How of Emigration to California
Places of Origin
The gold rush, giving rise to a Chinese emigration movement which was Cantonese, transoceanic, and free and voluntary, had long-term consequences for the nature of the passenger trade that centered on Hong Kong, transforming it into one of the world��s leading emigrant ports.
The history of Chinese migration to California, dealt with in many books, does not need to be repeated here. A shortage of agricultural land to feed the large population, the economic dislocation of the Opium War, local disruption and violence, famines caused by natural disasters and unemployment are the reasons usually given to explain why so many left their homes in South China.16 However, it would seem that the promise of gold and the enormous investment and employment opportunities in the prosperous new market were powerful attractions luring people away�Xeven those whose conditions at home were not quite desperate. In other words, the pull factors in this case were much stronger than the push factors in driving this particular migration movement; many of the Chinese who went to California were far from destitute, as will be shown below. For our purposes, it is important to clarify who the emigrants were in terms of their place of origin and how their passage was organized.
Th e vast majority of those bound for California originated from the Cantonese-speaking counties of Guangdong province, marking a departure in Chinese emigration history. Despite an imperial ban on emigration since the eighteenth century�Xthe punishment being decapitation of returnees�X Chinese had traveled to and resided overseas for centuries. Previously, the major emigrant-sending regions had been certain counties of Fujian province and the Chaozhou-speaking counties of eastern Guangdong, whose people had gone mainly to localities in Southeast Asia�Xuntil the 1850s, mainly in junks sailing along the coast.17 To the Cantonese, California across the Pacifi c became the brave, new world no less than for those hailing from the other side of the American continent, Europe, South America, and Australia.
Among the first Chinese arrivals in California were natives of the three coun-ties closest to Guangzhou city: Panyu, Shunde, and Nanhai, known collectively as the ��three counties,�� or ��Sam Yup�� in Cantonese (Putonghua, sanyi); they were also the most affluent and commercialized counties in the province. Other migrants came from Xinhui, Enping, Kaiping, and Xinning (later renamed Taishan), known collectively as the ��four counties�� or ��Sze Yup�� (Putonghua, siyi). A large number went from Xiangshan county (later renamed Zhongshan),
Map 1 The Pearl River Delta, 1909, showing the counties that sent most migrants to California. Xiangshan was later renamed Zhongshan, Xinning was renamed Taishan, and Xin��an was renamed Bao��an.
Source: Based on Guangdong yudi quantu, vols. 1 and 2.
the county to which Macao belonged, which had had centuries of experience dealing with foreigners and foreign trade. People had emigrated from these counties before, largely to Southeast Asia; in the 1840s, many Xiangshan natives went to work in the new treaty ports, especially Shanghai, or traveled further afield to work on foreign ships. In addition, Hakka (Putonghua, kejia) people from the eastern part of the Pearl River Delta, and also in the above counties, who were linguistically and culturally distinct from the Cantonese, formed a small portion of those heading for California. Only very few Chinese in California originated from elsewhere.
The demographic distribution of Chinese in America is reflected in data col-lected by the Rev A. W. Loomis from the several Chinese companies, or huiguan (native-place organizations) in 1868 (Table 2.1).18
Table 2.1 Demographic distribution of Chinese in America by native place, 1868
Company Arrivals Departures Deaths
Sam Yup (mainly natives of 15,000 4,200 800
Nanhai, Punyu, and Shunde
counties)
Kong Chau (mainly natives 16,000 7,000 700
of Xinhui, Enping, and
Heshan counties)
Yeung Wo (Zhongshan, 26,000 13,200 1,000
Dongguan, and Zengcheng
counties)
Ning Yeung (Taishan 27,000 7,800 1,000
county)
Hop Wo (certain sections 17,000 8,200 300
of Taishan and Kaiping
counties)
Hip Kay (Yan Wo) (Hakka) 5,800 2,400 100
Total 106,800 32,800 3,900
It was fortuitous that Hong Kong was geographically so close to Sam Yup, Sze Yup, and Xiangshan counties, which not only had dense populations but also people with the propensity to move. Due to the effects of chain migration, once Cantonese made an early start migrating to California and had a foot in the door, they quickly dominated this emigration route and made the West Coast of the United States their ��sphere of activity,�� much as Chaozhou people domi-nated emigration to Siam (later renamed Thailand) or the Fujianese did so to the Dutch Indies (later Indonesia). The predominance of Cantonese emigrants partly ensured that Hong Kong too would monopolize the transpacifi c shipping routes, and as the infrastructure of a sophisticated, safe, and effi cient embarka-tion port for free emigration strengthened, Hong Kong not only sustained that status but also became the main port of exit and return for Chinese migrating to other Gold Mountain countries�XAustralia, Canada, and New Zealand�Xas well as other regions such as Southeast Asia, Oceania, South America, and the Caribbean.
Free or Bonded?
While there can be little dispute that emigration to California was Cantonese and transoceanic, its being fr ee and voluntary requires more explaining. In essence, it is vital to underline the distinction between this emigration move-ment and what came to be known as the ��coolie trade.��
The mid-nineteenth century demand for cheap labor to work in the colonies of France, Britain, and Spain, along with those of other European powers, led to large-scale Chinese emigration, as mentioned in Chapter 1. Working conditions in some of the receiving countries�Xparticularly Cuba, Demarera (in British Guiana), and Peru�Xwere so brutal that recruiting agents were able to obtain the men only through kidnapping, decoying, and other forms of deception. According to one gory contemporary account, when Chinese laborers working on the guano islands of Peru died, they were simply left to rot amid the bird droppings, and when the guano was sold, their rotten remains were sold along with it.19 Due to sickness, suicide and death from deprivation and overwork, and above all the non-provision of a return passage in their contracts, many of these reluctant exiles never returned to China.
Because the majority of these forced emigrants were hard manual laborers, and very possibly also because they were Chinese, they were called by the derog-atory term ��coolies,�� and the traffic in them became known as the ��coolie trade.�� Furthermore, because the contracts could be traded and men could therefore be transferred from owner to owner, humanitarians and anti-slavery politicians were quick to condemn the ��coolie trade�� as a covert form of slavery. At a time when anti-slavery groups in Europe and America were ferociously pushing their case, the ��coolie trade�� became more grist for their mill, and anti-coolie trade rhetoric found its way into government debates and the press.20 Manipulated to serve diff erent ends, and sometimes deliberately to confuse issues, the term ��coolie trade�� was indiscriminately applied to very different strands of Chinese emigration, and emigration to California was lumped together with others as part of the ��coolie trade.�� Eventually, it was used to feed the anti-Chinese move-ment that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the 1880s.21
Even in the 1850s, the discerning few�Xthose able to tell that Chinese who migrated to California were not ��coolies���Xhad to shout loudly to be heard. Th e American consul in Hong Kong, F. T. Bush, objected strongly to the suggestion that Chinese leaving for the United States were ��coolies�� (i.e. slaves). Reporting on the large numbers of Chinese leaving Hong Kong for the United States in 1851, he commented: ��The emigrants are of different classes�Xmerchants, small tradesmen, agriculturists, and artisans, all of them respectable people.��22
Like the US consul, the governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring (1854�V 59), was keen to point out that not only were emigrants for California ��respect-able people,�� they were in fact ��a superior class.��23 What was more, they were fr ee. He reported:
There is a large class of emigrants proceeding to Australia and California, voluntary and self-supporting, paying their own passages and making all the necessary provisions from their own or their family resources for their departure. These persons are not collected by crimps, or kidnapped, nor would their liberty of action appear to be interfered with by fraud or misrepresentation. They are usually hale men, in the prime of their life, adventurous and laborious. The mortality on board the Emigrant Ships to Australia and California presents a most favourable contrast to that of coolies sent to the Colonies under labor contracts, who are so frequently in a low state of wretchedness and exhaustion, either suffering from or subject to latent diseases undermining their constitutions and to some extent accounting for the lamentable statistics of death which have natu-rally excited the attention of Her Majesty��s government.24
With some exceptions, Bush was correct: in the earliest stage, some Chinese did go as indentured laborers under contract to American companies. Atu, Ahine, and Awye, for example, were contracted in 1849 to work for Jacob P. Leese of Monterey as cook, coolie, and tailor respectively, for three years; their contracts were countersigned by the US consul in Hong Kong. They were given free passage and an advance equivalent to two months�� wages at the princely sum of $12 a month for ��the coolie�� and $15 for the other two.25 But the number of contract workers was very small, and the working conditions were much less harsh than in Cuba or Peru, and this begs the question of whether all indentured laborers were forced emigrants, or ��coolies,�� and therefore slaves.
It is true that some poor Chinese too managed to make their way to America without labor contracts. Some who had the right skills worked as cooks or car-penters on board the ships. Some borrowed money for the trip from friends and relatives at little or no interest; others borrowed from money lenders at high interest because of the high risk.26 Still others were furnished with money as a form of investment, which had to be returned out of the profits of the venture�Xwith the emigrants typically paying back three-tenths of the profi ts to the lender.27 Judging from the large number of early Chinese migrants to California who did return to China with savings�Xand, more importantly, the many laborers who ended up as shopkeepers and small businessmen�Xwe may surmise that a majority of borrowers managed to repay the debt in good time, and were free to go their own way once having done so. Indeed, the Chinese in California prided themselves on the sense of honor, honesty, charity, and many other virtues observed by their countrymen; without these virtues, the credit mechanism would not have worked so successfully.28
The main distinction that both Bush and Bowring wished to highlight was that emigrants leaving for California�Xunlike those bound for other coun-tries�Xemigrated voluntarily. The free and voluntary character of the emigrants, which shaped this passenger trade and in turn determined the nature of Hong Kong as an emigrant port, cannot be emphasized enough.
However, anti-Chinese polemicists refused to listen. They decried the coolie trade, arguing that Chinese were not entitled to US citizenship because they were neither free nor white. They ��proved�� that Chinese migrants were unfree because most of them had their passages financed by Chinese capitalists who held their wife and children hostage until the debt was paid. Not only were Chinese migrants not free because they were in debt, they argued, but Chinese back in China were also not free persons because they were ��the depressed and servile coolies of the land.�� This argument, illogical as it already was, was quickly applied to all Chinese, for even though there were obviously well-to-do Chinese, these critics insisted that the Chinese had to be taken ��as a class,�� and ��in the absence of direct proof to the contrary, we are to take the whole for what we know the most of them to be.��29 Th at is, all Chinese were, by extension, unfree and coolies and therefore slaves. As Adam McKeown perceptively observes, the category of a ��free migrant�� had in fact been created by the American state in order to shut out Chinese immigrants, given that most Chinese in the nine-teenth century were closely bonded to family and kinship, and freedom and individuality were concepts alien to Chinese culture.30 His thesis will no doubt inform future discourse in migration studies.
My task here, however, is to disentangle the different strands of Chinese migration in the mid-nineteenth century, and to rescue the free passengers to California from the other strands in order to present a more accurate historical picture. Historians like Gunther Barth, for instance, repeat the old assertion that Chinese migrants who were obliged to repay borrowed passage money were ��no better than serfs.��31 This comparison, I submit, is not justifiable. An evocative idea like bondage can be applied to such a wide range of human conditions and practices that it is vital for historians to distinguish between its literal and fi gura-tive usage, between rhetoric and reality, and be specific about the type and degree of bondage to which they are referring at any time. Taking out a loan is hardly comparable to being a serf, typically a person in whose labor the landowner held property rights, one born into the situation. Clearly, the migrant��s debt, if ��bondage�� at all, was a very different kettle of fish from serfdom or slavery.
I define a free migrant as one who, exercising his agency, leaves his home vol-untarily for a destination of his choice. Yes, a migrant who had borrowed money was ��bonded�� by his debt. Yes, he often faced immense hardship in laboring to repay it. And yes, it was possible that he would never fulfill his dream of gold at all but die destitute and broken in a foreign land. But the fact remains that he went into debt eagerly, with his eyes open. Is not the capacity to take calculated risks a defining characteristic of agency?
A New Breed of Emigrants and a New Passenger Trade
The discovery of gold in California, Australia, and later New Zealand and British Columbia attracted Chinese adventurers�Xlaborers as well as entrepre-neurs. Many of the California-bound Chinese were fairly well-off, as Bush and Bowring so eagerly emphasized. Besides paying for their own passage, they oft en brought with them a good quantity of clothing and other personal eff ects, as well as cash to spend after their arrival in the United States. The San Francisco Customs House records show that some of them also brought along merchan-dise to sell.32 A report in the California press in 1852 gives us a vivid impression of the chaos that occurred when a shipload of heavily laden passengers arrived:
Yesterday evening about five hundred Chinamen who have lately arrived here, landed at Long Wharf with all their baggage. The wharf was covered for a long distance with a perfect forest of basket hats and long tails, rolls of matting and boxes were turned over in all directions, long poles were flourished extensively, and each one appeared to be talking in a self defence, making a noise resembling a flock of crows discussing the merits of a corn-field. A large number of persons were collected around, attracted thither by the noise and confusion incidental to the disembarkation of these fol-lowers of Confucius. Matters were at last apparently satisfactorily arranged, when each on shouldering a load that would test the strength of a dray horse, started up into the city in single file, to such places as were provided them by their brethren.33
Such people could not have emigrated out of poverty. Migration of Chinese, whether inside or outside China, was a centuries-old phenomenon where men took calculated risks as they invested their fortunes in a journey to supposedly greener pastures, leaving their families and the familiar for the unknown. In their frenzy to share in the fabulous profits of the California discovery, Chinese gold rushers in the 1850s were continuing this tradition, keen to try their luck�Xwhether as artisans, traders or gold diggers, or by taking jobs as cooks, house-builders and domestic servants: jobs forsaken by white men seduced to the goldfields, or jobs created by the new prosperity. Far from being helpless pawns or captives, as we are often led to believe, the Chinese migrants bound for California and Australia were active agents, making decisions about their move-ments on many levels and strategizing their economic futures.
One of the first Chinese to arrive in San Francisco was Norman Assing, who left Hong Kong on the Swallow on May 6, 1849; he was the fi rst named Chinese passenger among all the thousands who made that journey but who were merely referred to anonymously as ��passengers�� or ��servants.�� A native of Xiangshan county and probably raised in Macao, Assing, according to one account, had traveled to New York some time around 1820 and stayed.34 He might have become a naturalized citizen of North Carolina during his time on the East Coast.35 At some point, he returned to China only to leave again, this time for California. There, while running the Macao Wosung Restaurant on Commercial and Kearny, he also operated a trading company, styling it the Yuan Sheng Hao�XYuan Sheng being his Chinese name.36 His entrepreneurial energy is especially manifest in his arranging for the first Cantonese opera troupe to perform in California in 1852.37
He kept such a high profile that by early 1852 he was described by the Alta California as a ��well-known merchant of our city.��38 His knowledge of English and Western ways enabled him to assume leadership in the Chinese commu-nity by playing a bridging role between Chinese emigrants and the Californian authorities. He made a special contribution to his tongxiang (fellow regionals) by founding the Yeung Wo huiguan, an association for natives of Xiangshan county. In 1852, when Governor Bigler of California proposed legislation against Chinese emigration, Assing was outraged. In a long, angry letter to Bigler that appeared in the Alta California, he argued forcibly against the governor��s racist attitude, and reminded him of the cultural superiority of the Chinese people. His letter displayed not only self-assured and skilful use of the English language and an intimate knowledge of the American constitution, but also refl ected the growing confidence and sophistication of the Chinese merchant community in California.
Another early passenger was Chan Lock, who was to establish the Chy Lung firm in San Francisco in 1850 with several partners; it ran a retail store selling fancy Chinese goods to foreigners while operating a thriving import and export business. It was to become the largest Chinese business in the city, with branches and associate firms in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama.39 Besides these two, there were at least 300 other Chinese who had arrived in San Francisco by the end of 1849 who could not in any way be described as ��coolies.�� Th ey were gathered at a public meeting at the Canton Restaurant on Jackson Street to pass a resolution to appoint an American, Selim Woodworth, as counselor of the Chinese. As ��strangers �K in a strange land,�� they felt they needed someone to give them instructions and advice in the event of unforeseen diffi culties, and to act as their arbitrator and adviser. It was a solemn occasion, and one can safely speculate that only ��respectable�� and reasonably socially sophisticated members of the community would have been invited to attend and pass the resolution40�X and, presumably, to contribute to the cost of the service. It is hard to imagine downtrodden and enslaved individuals taking part. By the end of 1850, there were so many Chinese businesses clustered there that Sacramento Street became known as ��Little China.��41
The social background of the emigrants, needless to say, shaped the nature of the passenger trade. This is clearly demonstrated by the attitude and behavior of shipping operators of passenger ships, to whom the satisfaction of these paying customers was a major concern. Naturally, satisfied customers on one voyage would most likely choose ships managed by the same operators on their future travels, and they would certainly spread the word among friends. We can get an idea of how much this weighed on the minds of shipping operators by referring to the instructions that W..M. Robinet, who had recently arrived in China from San Francisco to take advantage of the booming transpacifi c business, gave the captain of his ship, the Conroy, bound for California in early 1852.42
Robinet urged Captain Meyer to treat the passengers with great care. Be gen-erous with the water, he instructed, give them the full gallon each per day. Be generous with provisions too. If unfamiliar with Chinese habits, Captain Meyer could consult ��the Chinaman Voong,�� who would show him how to serve provi-sions, and what the passengers ought to have each day. To ensure order on board, Robinet advised him to ��apoint [sic] heads among the Chinamen with whom you will always understand and so they will control the rest of the passengers.�� Robinet was keen to avoid any unwanted incident on board that might lead to passengers bringing lawsuits against the company when they arrived in America. If they arrived ��contented,�� he reasoned, Meyer might get ��certificate from them of having been well treated so as to be able to get a good name to carry passen-gers in future.�� What we call today ��customer relations�� was of high priority to Robinet and other operators of ships carrying free emigrants.
Th e certification of appreciation that Robinet was so eager to obtain from passengers was in great demand at the time. When the Euphroayne arrived in San Francisco in July 1851, its Chinese passengers, through a notice in the Alta California, thanked the captain for his ��kind treatment�� and ��gentlemanly conduct.�� They acknowledged him as a great sailor and gentleman, and recom-mended him to all their countrymen while pointing out that the ship was well supplied with every comfort and convenience.43 In the same month, Captain Drew of the Lebanon was thanked in a newspaper notice by a committee of 250 of his Chinese passengers.44 To grant such acknowledgment�Xor not to grant it�Xwas surely a sign of the agency of the free emigrant.
Acknowledgment of the captain��s good service took many forms. Arriving at San Francisco from Whampoa in June 1852, the Balmoral��s Chinese passengers honored Captain Robertson with a ��splendid ring, made of California gold,�� while the masthead of the vessel fl ew a ��magnificent silk flag�� with the inscrip-tion in Chinese characters: ��Presented to J. B. Robertson by 464 of his Chinese passengers who have experienced much kindness and attention from him during the voyage from Kwangtung to the Golden Hill.�� The Chinese aboard the American ship Persia expressed their gratitude with a flag, reading ��Gratifi cation to our race�XPresented to Captain M..M. Cook, by Leong, Assing and others.�� The same appreciation was shown by Cantonese travelers on the British ship Australia with an inscription on their pennant assuring the captain that every one of them had ��found a friend in you.�� At Hong Kong in 1856, Captain E. Scudder of the clipper Ellen Foster received a handsome Canton crepe fl ag from his Chinese passengers for his kindness. The Chinese merchants of San Francisco complimented Captain Slate of the clipper Wizard for transporting seven hundred Chinese emigrants without a single case of sickness or death in the summer of 1857.45
The picture of passengers being treated graciously and humanely on board is a far cry from the hellish conditions characteristic of ships taking forced emigrants. On these latter ships, great effort�Xand brutality�Xwent into con-straining the passengers to prevent them from escaping, and violence between passengers and crew frequently broke out. In extreme cases, mutinies by furious passengers led to the death of many crew members and passengers.46 It was no wonder that, despite being paid more for taking forced emigrants to Peru and Havana, captains and crews frequently preferred sailing the Hong Kong�V California and Hong Kong�VAustralia routes with free emigrants, since they would be much safer. As the nineteenth-century Hong Kong historian E. J. Eitel observes, mutinies occurring repeatedly on the ��coolie�� ships caused British skippers to eschew the Peruvian route.47 In some cases, violence broke out even while the ship was still in port and the police had to be called.48
The situation is confirmed by the British consul in San Francisco in 1858. Comparing conditions between ships bound for California and those destined for ��the Tropics,�� he emphasized that on the former, captains and crews found the Chinese passengers well behaved�X��the easiest managed of any���Xand the cooperative atmosphere on board enabled the crew to keep the decks clean and disease free. Occasionally, one or two passengers might die from sickness or other causes, but these deaths were isolated incidents and not the result of poor sanitary conditions on board. On the other hand, migrants destined for the West Indies�Xbeing generally put on board against their wishes, or thieves out of jail�Xposed a constant threat to the crew, who were convinced that they would ��combine and try to take every vessel.�� With the crews too afraid to venture down between the decks to enforce sanitary regulations by keeping the vessel clean, the deck became like ��a common sewer,�� causing a high incidence of sickness and disease.49 Clearly the passenger trade on the different routes consti-tuted signifi cantly different types of work for the crew, and represented diff erent risks for everyone.
Another distinguishing feature of the California traffic was that it was two-way traffic right from the start. As soon as ships had unloaded their cargo of goods and passengers at San Francisco, many of them turned around for Hong Kong to repeat the voyage. We noted earlier the return of a few Chinese as early as 1851 who, with their fabulous earnings, caused great sensation.50 Other returnees followed later that year�X30 returned on the Kelso in October, 17 on the North Carolina in November and in December, 24 and 3 sailed on the Regina and the Flying Cloud respectively.51 In October 1853, the clipper Gazelle left San Francisco with 350 Chinese bound for Hong Kong.52 Of the early returnees, some had made enough money to return home for good while others returned to California after having spent New Year with their family, or having completed a useful business visit.
The Chinese migrants�� desire in the nineteenth century to return to China with their savings after working abroad for a certain period of time is well doc-umented. Historian Philip Kuhn claims that when Chinese emigrants went abroad in this period, they did not ��leave home,�� but were simply extending the corridor between their workplace and their native home. This is an inspiring idea that helps us better understand, on many levels, the migrants�� state of mind and behavior. Through these corridors flowed letters, money, goods, news, and even emigrants�� bones, which kept alive migrants�� contacts with family and friends as well as their dreams and aspirations for a comfortable life when they eventually went home for good.53 That there was generally little desire among Chinese emi-grants for permanent settlement in the United States was well known. Ironically, this disinclination to remain in the United States was criticized by Americans�X it is ironical because these were often the same Americans who resented Chinese presence in their midst and wanted them to leave.54
This desire determined that the trajectory of the migration was largely a cyclical rather than a linear one. The urge to return was so strong that emi-grants wished to have their bones sent home for reburial even if they happened to die overseas. In the decades to follow, tens of thousands of boxes containing the bones of deceased Chinese emigrants would be shipped back to China via Hong Kong. It is not known who first thought of organizing such large-scale shipments of bones/bodies. From an emotional point of view, it was very com-forting for emigrants to know that even if they died abroad, their remains would be returned home for a burial with all the correct rituals, but certainly from a business point of view, it was a most enterprising idea. Shipping bones became a welcome source of income for ships returning to China, and the impact on the freight business must have been considerable.
On July 7, 1855, the American ship Sunny South arrived in Hong Kong from San Francisco carrying the remains of 70 Chinese.55 This was the first of count-less such shipments, as the remains of tens of thousands of deceased Chinese from around the world continued to be returned to China via Hong Kong for almost another century. In 1870, by which time Chinese laborers were recruited in huge numbers to work on the railways, 9,000 kg of bones, the remains of 1,200 Chinese railway workers ��blasting their way through the Sierra��s granite�� were shipped home.56 At $10 each, that would have represented US$12,000 in freight. The repatriation of bones from Australia, Canada, and later New Zealand57 was also on a considerable scale, and it seems that this traffi c, under-taken for Chinese gold rushers who had the wealth, became a model for Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and Peru later in the nineteenth century.
Bone repatriation will be discussed in Chapter 7. Here, I am most concerned to demonstrate how the shipping business responded to the constant, repetitive, and circular movement of people, dead or alive, back and forth across the Pacifi c. Voyages linking Hong Kong and California became fairly regular even years before the first formal scheduled passenger line was established by the Pacifi c Mail Steamship Company (PMSSC) in 1867.58 The regularity and frequency of the to-and-fro traffic helped to consolidate Hong Kong��s position as a major Pacific port so that when the PMSSC��s line was formed, it was Hong Kong that was chosen as the China terminal. As Eitel observes, Hong Kong was to become the port from which all South China emigrants able to pay their passage pre-ferred to embark for foreign countries.59
Figure 5 ��Work on the last mile of the Pacific Railroad�Xmingling of European and Asiatic laborers.�� Source: Harper��s Weekly, vol. 13 (May 29, 1869), p. 348. By courtesy of HarpWeek.
The Passenger Trade in Action
The Sultana Case
In the early days of the gold rush, it was common for a passage broker in Hong Kong to send out his agents to the mainland to solicit business by broadcast-ing the wonders of the gold mines. A prospective passenger paid about $5 as ��bargain money�� as a deposit to obtain a ��bargain ticket,�� to which the broker added his seal to confirm the transaction. He then proceeded to Hong Kong�X most probably by junk�Xand by showing the ��bargain ticket�� to the relevant shipping operators and paying the balance of the passage money, he secured a passage to California.60 However, it was not usually possible for prospective pas-sengers to board immediately�Xjust as air travelers today are not allowed on the plane until ��boarding time.�� In the meantime, ticket holders were put up by the brokers or other agents in various kinds of accommodation. From the ��ship��s�� point of view, it was crucial to make it clear that passengers were not entitled to board before a specified time. Once they boarded, the ��ship�� became responsible for their safety and for providing them with food, water, and fuel; where ships were also carrying cargo, passengers were also potential hazards to the cargo. As a result, the time of boarding and the time between boarding and sailing had to be controlled strictly.61 On the other hand, the broker or charterer, responsible for accommodating and feeding the prospective passengers on shore, naturally wished to get them on board�Xand out of their hands�Xsooner rather than later. Passengers too, needless to say, were keen to board and depart as soon as pos-sible. The inherent tension among the different parties may well be imagined.
The dynamics of the passenger trade are reflected clearly in the Sultana case.62 In the summer of 1852, Hong Kong was rocked by a sensational scandal when 570 Chinese passengers due to sail for San Francisco on the Sultana were forced off the ship by a gang of armed men and denied their passage. Th e passengers suffered huge losses and a series of complicated law suits ensued, lasting into the following year. ��Thus the peace of our town,�� reported The Friend of China rather melodramatically, ��and the lives of our citizens, have been jeopardized by what we have no hesitation in terming the most lawless, unprincipled, business transaction that has ever been known in this colony.��63
The case, though atypical, offers an unusual look at the who and the how of the trade. We see many players in action: the shipowners and charterer; the ship��s agents and its captain; insurers and cargo shippers; passengers and the person who fi nanced them. All were caught in a complex web of diff erent and oft en conflicting interests, and the strategies they used to advance their respec-tive agenda. While demonstrating the potency of human agency, the case also shows the limitations imposed on individuals by circumstances. It is, moreover, a rare occasion when we get to see passengers at close range, not as a faceless mass but as people with different resources and differing degrees of resourceful-ness. Indeed, an examination of their resources in general confirms the observa-tions of the US Consul Bush and Governor Bowring that the men migrating to America were men of means rather than destitute paupers or persons gang-pressed into bondage.
Eager to reach Gold Mountain and yet stranded in Hong Kong as a result of an absconding charterer, some passengers were quick to fend for themselves by seeking help from a local financier. Even though all were victims, some were totally broken by the experience while others persisted and fought to the end. Emigrants to California might largely be spared the extreme violence, abuses, and fraud suffered by those forced into migration to other places, but even they were not spared other perils and uncertainties that could plague travelers any-where, at any time.
The experience of passengers in Hong Kong en route to America, so seldom revealed, may partially be reconstructed from detailed reporting in the news-papers over several months. Since emigration studies focus primarily on the sending and receiving countries, little attention has been paid to passengers in transit. Th e Sultana case, in demonstrating the significance of the ��transit experi-ence,�� illustrates how Hong Kong, as a transshipping center, and an ��in-between place�� in the Chinese diaspora, played a vital role in the process of migration.
The drama began in April, when a British ship, the Sultana of Bombay, owned by a Parsee merchant, Kamesa H. Ahmed, and others, was contracted to take passengers to California for a sum of $25,000. The charterer, Yung Hee of the Yee Kee firm in Guangzhou, paid $18,500 in that city to Kamesa, leaving $5,500 outstanding. The charter party carried a clause for demurrage at the rate of $200 per diem, and a penalty of $8,000 if the charter was violated.
The passages went on sale in Guangzhou, and business was brisk as a result of high demand. By early July, 570 passengers had bought passage at around $60 each�Xa relatively high rate considering that other ships had carried passengers for as low as $28 per head for the same route, and no doubt a reflection of the high demand for passage. Full of anticipation for Gold Mountain, the 570 men arrived in Hong Kong for embarkation. In the meantime, the charterer�Xaft er a dispute with Kamesa about the amounts to be paid�Xabsconded, and as a result the owners refused to let the ship sail. On July 7, eight of the ��chief pas-sengers���Xpresumably the most vocal and assertive among them�Xwent to see Easa, a part-owner of the Sultana, and the clerk of the ship��s agent, the American firm Rawle, Drinker & Co., to see what could be done to get the ship to sail. The passengers, when told that they had to cover the balance due from Yee Kee by raising the money among themselves, made a counter-offer of $5 per head extra. But this would only come to $2,850, far short of the $5,500 owed. Easa was not happy and insisted that unless they could offer more, he would put 30 extra passengers on board to make up another $1,200. Thirty additional passen-gers would mean the ship might be overloaded and endanger the safety of the vessel. Certainly it would mean discomfort for the original passengers. But in their eagerness to set sail, they did not let these considerations deter them, and they agreed to the condition.
In the meantime, it was discovered that Rawle, Drinker & Co. had in its pos-session some assets of Yee Kee��s that could go toward covering the outstanding amount. They were $686.49 in cash and opium worth $1,500. Opium, it should be noted, was frequently used at the time as currency for all kinds of transac-tions. With these two sums plus the additional money the passengers agreed to put up, the outstanding amount owed by the charterer would now more or less be covered, and the several parties were finally able to come to an agreement. The passengers, it was agreed, would pay the additional fare of $5 each within three and a half days�Xcommencing July 10 and ending at 12:00 p.m. on July 13�Xand if they failed to meet the deadline, there would be a daily penalty of $200.
To raise the necessary money, the ��chief passengers�� sought help from Tam Achoy�Xwho, as we noted in Chapter 1, was one of the most successful Chinese entrepreneurs in early colonial Hong Kong. It must have been fairly well known among the prospective passengers that Tam was the one to go to when in need of quick cash. Thus, even though largely strangers in Hong Kong, they could resort to certain resources, including access to loans. That Tam (and others) would be willing to underwrite men who were about to sail thousands of miles away is noteworthy. He had the wealth, of course, and as he was also posturing as a com-munity leader among the Chinese in Hong Kong, offering assistance to compa-triots in trouble would be an opportunity to display his largesse and leadership status. Yet there were more material considerations. Lending to people bound for Gold Mountain was an extremely lucrative business, so long as there was an effective mechanism for debt collecting. His lending activities suggested that he must have had connections with firms or individuals on the other side of the Pacific who would be ready to oversee his interests. Indeed, very soon aft er 1849, multiple transpacific ties�Xcommercial, financial, and social�Xemerged and became ever more dense and complex. Tam himself had trading connections in California. In 1852, he sent goods to San Francisco worth over $4,000�Xhardly a paltry sum64�Xconsigned to Tam Ahnee, clearly a relative or clansman who not only imported goods shipped by Achoy but could also, presumably, supervise the collection of his debts.
One powerful mechanism for debt-collecting was provided by the native- place associations, called ��companies,�� which we will discuss further in Chapter
7. In addition, various firms based in California but working closely with fi rms and individuals in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, such as Tam Achoy, accepted accounts from China for the collection of debts. Th e native-place huiguan, for instance, set up regulations so that emigrants in California who tried to renege on their debts were punished severely�Xthe most severe punishment of all being prevention from returning to China. Th e huiguan kept track of debtors among its members, and anyone planning to return to China had to obtain a certifi cate from his own huiguan stating that he had cleared all his debts. Arrangement was made between the huiguan (and the collective Six Companies) by which no ticket would be sold to anyone without such a certifi cate.65 Th is extremely powerful debt-collecting mechanism significantly reduced the risk of lenders in Hong Kong or China who made loans to prospective passengers. Th e system of reduced risk had to be based on mutual trust, close collaboration and rigor-ous supervision. The system served many purposes, but primarily it expanded
Figure 6 Ning Yeung Association in San Francisco, formed by natives of Xinning (later,
Taishan) county. Source: BANC PIC 19xx.258-PIC, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. By courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
investment opportunities for entrepreneurs while enabling those who would otherwise not have had the resource to travel abroad to do so.
Luckily for the Sultana passengers, Tam agreed to underwrite them. Aft er meeting them, Tam went to inform Drinker of their agreement, but since he did not have the cash on hand, he told Drinker that he would pay everything that was due when the Sultana was ready to sail. According to Tam��s subsequent testimony in court, Drinker said: ��Achoy, if you will be the security I will wait a month for the money. If you will secure it, that will do.�� Given Tam��s stature, it is entirely plausible that Drinker actually made such a remark.
On July 12, the ��chief passengers�� went to Rawle, Drinker & Co.��s offi ce to pay $300 in cash and opium worth $300 which they must have raised from other sources; with this payment, they now only owed the ship $2,250, the amount that Tam Achoy would be covering.
On the morning of July 13, Tam summoned the ��chief passengers�� and got them to give him their securities for the loan. However, things started to go wrong from there. At 9:30, Tam went to Drinker��s office and found that he had gone off to the ship, but when Tam went to the ship he was not allowed to go alongside. He called out to Drinker. As soon as Drinker saw him, he asked Tam why he had not come sooner. Then Drinker dropped the bombshell. It was too late, he said, as he had already sent half the passengers ashore. It turned out that Drinker had earlier sent 50 armed men on board to force the passengers off the boat while those who had gone ashore were prevented from returning.
Tam Achoy was shocked. By allowing the passengers on board, the ship had recognized their right to sail, and it would be a gross breach of contract to force them off now; such action was most extraordinary. Tam was also dismayed that despite his having promised his security, and having in fact told Drinker��s employee he would bring all the money in a couple of hours, Drinker could have taken such drastic action. Later in the day, Drinker tried to explain his strange behavior, saying that news had arrived in the meantime that the California authorities were demanding $5 head money for each passenger, and he asked if Tam would be prepared to secure that too; if he would, the ship would go. Tam replied that he had first to get the passengers�� security before he could commit himself to this further sum. The passengers, obviously quite desperate by now, had little choice but to accept the situation, and agreed to pay the money in California. However, when he returned to Drinker to confirm that he would become security, again Drinker gave Tam a nasty surprise by telling him that it was no use�Xthe owners would no longer send the ship.
In Search of Justice
Such unexpected turns of events put the passengers in a dire situation, besides causing no end of embarrassment for Tam. Some of the passengers had lost all their belongings amid the chaos when they were forced off the ship. Bedding, clothes, provisions, and boxes with cash and other valuables were all gone. They had lost their passage money, and their dream to reach Gold Mountain was dashed. They found themselves stranded in Hong Kong, dispossessed. In despair, some returned to Guangzhou, and it was even said that several commit-ted suicide.
Other passengers managed to stay in Hong Kong, mostly with the help of local people�Xno doubt Tam Achoy among them�Xand tried to claim damages through the colony��s courts. It is unclear how these people from Guangdong province could have known that they could resort to the British courts, but Tam Achoy or other individuals might have put them up to it, and might even have helped to find lawyers to represent them, for by now Chinese in Hong Kong had learned to use the courts to protect their interests when seeking damage from foreigners. Not all the Sultana victims got compensated, and the oft en-unexpected results in court rulings were to cause a great deal of frustration. By this time, cases related to the passenger trade were appearing frequently in court, and those who benefited most from the situation were undoubtedly members of the legal profession, who made a great deal of money out of it.
The passengers began by bringing a suit against Rawle, Drinker & Co., the shipowner��s agent, and the ship��s captain, Rice. Th e first to do so was Kwang tye-loi,66 one of the ��chief passengers�� who, on August 6, summoned Rice for a return of the $62.50 that he claimed to have paid Rice. He lost the case due to being unable to prove ��privity of contract.��
Another passenger, Chun Ayee, had better luck when on August 19 he sum-moned Drinker and Rice for value of the things he had lost. He argued that since the offi cers of the Sultana, by accepting him as a passenger on June 28 and granting him a ticket of leave to go on shore on July 12, and then refusing to allow him to go back on board, had cut him off from the care and custody of his baggage, which was lost to him as a consequence. The court ordered Rice and Drinker to pay Chun the sum of $24 plus $2 costs. However, when another passenger tried to claim the same damage from Rice, it was too late. The case did not come before the court until September 6, by which time the Sultana had been gone from the port for two days. The magistrate dismissed the case.
On the same day, Kwang tye-loi, who had earlier failed to claim against Captain Rice, made another attempt, this time to claim against the shipowner, Kamesa H. Ahmed. This was a significant move. While his own claim was only $57.50 (the passage money) and $5 (the later subscription), his case had a bearing on the whole of the $18,000, for if he were to win, it would clear the way for the other passengers to press their claims against Kamesa too. Th e judge ruled in favor of Kwang tye-loi with costs, but unfortunately it turned out to be an empty victory. By staying away in Macao beyond Hong Kong��s jurisdiction, Kamesa made it impossible for Kwang tye-loi to obtain the awarded amounts.
In any case, Kamesa insisted that the passage money never passed into his hands. The passengers, now assuming that their money had to be in Rawle, Drinker��s custody, changed their tactics and made claims against the American firm instead. Th e firm tried at first to settle the matter by offering the passengers $10 each; however, keen to retrieve the full amount of the passage money�X which was closer to $60�Xthey turned the offer down. In addition, many of them were aggrieved that they had lost all their belongings on board. As Koo Ahee later testifi ed:
I had a box containing clothing, money, and bedding contained in it, were worth $25 [sic], and I had also in money $25 to pay my expenses on landing in California. As the ship was about to sail that day I had all my bedding spread out, and when I went to take it and the other things away, the sailors pushed me about and I could not get them.67
The misery and anguish of the passengers can well be imagined. Aft er several months of battling in court with the shipowners, the agents and the ship captain, many were still no better off . They might have been overwhelmed by the com-plexities of British legal procedures and baffled by the seeming vagary of the judgments. Desperate and exhausted, they turned to the Hong Kong governor for help. In November, they submitted a petition:
[Y]our humble petitioners can but hope that in consideration of their unfortunate condition, having to raise the money to proceed to California, made many shifts and put themselves to great deprivation, but now with all their prospects of prosperity blighted, in a state of starvation and misery, and unable to get back to their native homes, that all these hard circum-stances will have weight with Your Excellency, and that in your gracious benevolence, you will be pleased to comply with their request and order justice to be done to them �K68
The petitioners were seeking more than justice in the abstract. They were quite willing to continue taking the matter to court, but the legal cost was high. To begin with, it cost $1.75 just to enter a plaint at the Supreme Court. Th e peti-tion ended with a plea for the governor to waive the court fees.
The passengers submitted the petition to the Colonial Secretary��s offi ce, but were told that nothing could be done for them and that they should go to the courts instead. A number of them did continue to pursue the matter, and their cases were heard from November to January the following year. While some of the plaintiffs managed to recover part of their losses with regard to their prop-erty left on board, none was awarded the passage money on the grounds that they had paid the charterer directly, and there was no evidence that any of that money had ever been paid either to Kamesa or Rawle, Drinker & Co. Th is might seem to contradict the judgment in the case Kwang tye-loi brought against Kamesa, but such inconsistencies were not uncommon, as so much depended on the fine points of each case.
The passengers suffered great losses, but they were by no means the only losers. The shipowners and the agents were themselves in an unenviable posi-tion. Rawle, Drinker & Co. were only asked to take on the agency of the Sultana on June.26 after the charterer had already absconded and the ship had already been detained 42 days over the period when she should have left, thus incurring a forfeit of $8,000 and another $8,000 for breach of contract. What made it worse was that the ship was not only chartered to carry passengers to California but was engaged also to send cargo, and the delay involving passengers was detri-mental to the cargo owners. One of the shippers, Messrs Murrow, Stephenson & Co., sued Captain Rice for losses as it was he who had signed the Bill of Lading on the cargo for California. The shippers complained bitterly about the fi lth the passengers were causing to their cargo to the extent that, in the end, Kamesa had to purchase the cargo out and out. Another shipper, Turner & Co., brought a case against Rice for non-performance of contract.
Turner & Co., which had bought insurance for the shipment of grain on board the Sultana from the Canton Insurance Office, also asked for a return of the premium when the voyage was finally given up. However, the insur-ance company refused to consider the claim on the grounds that, though the voyage as such was not affected, the risk had been in existence for nearly two months, during which period the harbor risk on receiving vessels was 0.5 percent premium per month. Besides, the number of Chinese passengers on board during the time increased the risk of fire and other casualties. ��Had we been aware that the said passengers were living on board for such a length of time, we certainly would have protested against their doing so,�� the insurance company wrote. On top of that, there was the risk of boats conveying the goods from shore to ship. Altogether, these risks were considered to be fully equal to the sea risk from Hong Kong to San Francisco; thus, under such circumstances, the insurance company could not consider Turner��s claim.69
Rawle, Drinker & Co. had its share of grief too. Litigation costs and other expenses eventually amounted to $3,000. According to Drinker, during the time when the passengers were still on board waiting for the ship to sail, some of the crew claimed that they felt threatened by them, and the captain himself refused to sleep on board, claiming that his life was in jeopardy. In addition, during all the months that the ship was in port, the crew had to be paid and fed.
Perils and Problems
Th e Sultana case makes manifest only some of the perils faced by passengers; there were many others. Even when shipowners/charterers did not intention-ally mistreat their passengers�Xand some charterers like Robinet could be most solicitous of passengers�� needs�Xthey had other concerns, and there were plenty of unscrupulous men around. There were instances where the broker received a shipload of passengers before having chartered or bought a ship to take them.70 Or brokers and charterers absconded with the passage money, as in the Sultana case. Sometimes, delays were caused by arguments between charterer and ship-owner/agent/captain, leaving passengers in limbo. In other situations, pas-sengers were put on leaky ships, or were provided with rotten provisions and insuffi cient water.71
Until 1855, in the absence of any British legislation that limited the number of passengers a vessel could carry, overloading�Xsometimes severe�Xwas common. As shipowners and charterers were paid by the number of passengers they trans-ported, it was clearly in their interest to cram as many on board as possible. For example, the Libertad, which was only 490 tons, was contracted in 1854 to take 526 passengers�Xthat is, not even one passenger to a ton. When the ship was ready to sail, the Harbor Master found 390 passengers on board and refused to let it go. After much wrangling and re-measuring, he finally set the maximum number of passengers at 297.72 Even more shocking was the case of the Time, a small schooner of only 96 tons, which sailed for Australia with 135 passengers. Th e Hongkong Register was outraged by the fact that a ��proper British offi cer���X the Harbor Master�Xcould allow 135 men, or one and a half men to a ton, ��to pack themselves into such a cockle shell.��73 From the shipowner/charterer��s point of view, the risk was well worth taking. In the absence of regulations, it was basically up to the Harbor Master to decide on the spot whether or not a vessel might clear the harbor, and the decision was oft en arbitrary.
Until Britain passed the Chinese Passengers�� Act in 1855, the only constraints on ships carrying Chinese passengers was the American Passengers�� Act of 1848, which mainly aimed at regulating ventilation, cleanliness, and the number of passengers.74 It provided for fines on ships carrying excessive numbers of passengers, or confiscated them. Yet it was not successful in preventing overloading. It certainly did not deter the most reckless shippers, who calculated that if the ship was confiscated on its arrival in California, the loss would have been insured against by the extra passage money paid before departing Hong Kong, and if the owner wanted the vessel back, he could easily buy it when it was put up for sale by the US government.75 The Act was rarely enforced�Xand there were shocking cases of violation that got dismissed by the court, as historians Gunther Barth and Robert Schwendinger point out76�Xyet ships�� captains and owners were not unmindful of the law��s existence and the less unscrupulous tried to comply with it, however half-heartedly. At least most of the time, they tried not to break it too brazenly. For instance, Robinet, who had ten passengers on the Conroy exceeding the legal limit, took care to remind Captain Meyer that these men should be reported as crew members. Characteristically meticulous, he instructed the captain to make sure that when surveyors came on board in San Francisco, they not only measured the between decks but also the orlop deck�Xa floor-like platform added to the ship in order to accommodate more passengers�Xso as to maximize the deck area for calculation. Meyer was moreover instructed to persuade the inspectors of the ��light and good ventilation of the area.�� As a fall-back, Robinet added that if Meyer judged it necessary ��to give small sum to pass,�� then he was authorized to go ahead and pay the bribe.77 It may be added here that later in the 1850s, the Act was more rigorously enforced; however, the objective was not to improve passenger conditions but rather to limit Chinese immigration.
In addition to fraud, passengers faced avoidable and unavoidable delays, and the dangers and discomfort resulting from overloading; high winds, stormy seas, shipwrecks, piracy and sickness, and a small number of deaths on any voyage were accepted as a fact of life. Sometimes serious losses of life occurred. Disaster could happen before the prospective passengers even set sail. A severe thunder-storm in March 1852 wreaked havoc for over 60 men waiting to embark for California. They had been housed in a wooden building (on ground belonging to Tam Achoy), which was overhanging the sea and was blown into the water during one of the heaving gusts, carrying the occupants with it. Twenty or thirty of them managed to swim to shore while the remainder would certainly have died had it not been for the master and crew of a French whaler who helped them out. Six men were reported dead and several went missing.78
Disaster abounded at sea. Sickness was ever present. In 1854, fever on board the ill-fated Libertad resulted in 90 deaths during the voyage, with the captain among them, and 29 more died after arriving in San Francisco. It was reported that the passengers were without water for the last six days of the voyage.79 Freak accidents could not be ruled out either. On May 12, 1852, the Baron Renfr ew left for California with almost 600 Chinese emigrants when the captain, Curran, accidentally shot himself while trying out a revolver. When he returned to Hong Kong the next day for surgical assistance, the passengers�Xleft detained at anchor about 10 miles outside the Lye-moon (east of Hong Kong island)�X became contentious and demanded that the vessel immediately proceed under the command of the mate. When the mate refused to do so without orders from the captain, the passengers tried to sail the vessel themselves. In the end, the vessel was taken back to Hong Kong by Captain Charles Shadwell of the Royal Navy and commander of HMS Sphynx. Two policemen went on board and a police boat rowed guard around the vessel to prevent any ��breach of the peace.�� The newspaper commented that: ��It can hardly be a matter of surprise that 600 anxious gold seekers should show discontent at the detention,�� considering it fortunate that they had not taken more extreme measures.80
Piracy posed no less threat. In 1854, pirates took the Chilean barque the Caldera while it was en route to San Francisco, not only capturing the captain and removing everything from the ship, but even carrying off a French lady and a Chinese passenger on board. Th e Caldera��s agent immediately chartered a steamer, put 80 men from the navy on her and proceeded to the scene of the dis-aster to retrieve what it could of the cargo and also to rescue the captives. What sounded like a full-scale military expedition ensued.81
Regulating the Passenger Trade
In Praise of Free Trade
The emigration trade was fraught with abuses and hazards for many parties, but no party was more vulnerable than the passengers themselves. In 1855, the Chinese Passengers�� Act was passed by the British government to give a modicum of protection to them, and though the worst problems that prompted this Act were not associated with the California passage, the Act�Xonce passed�Xwas to have long-term consequences for Hong Kong��s shipping activities in general, including trade to California.
Anti-��coolie trade�� debates had intensified in Britain since the 1840s, and various parties urged the government to check abuses. British consuls on the China coast were ordered to report on the conditions of the trade, especially the notoriously barbarous traffic from Xiamen to Havana. Pressure on the London government to introduce regulations mounted, but in Hong Kong, support for ��free trade���Xwhich basically meant no government interference�Xremained strong.
In 1853, the London government finally decided to apply the Imperial Passengers�� Act, originally enacted to protect British emigrants to Australia, to all the colonies as a means to suppress abuses against Chinese passengers. In broad brush, this Act regulated the fitness of ships leaving Hong Kong (and other British possessions), the number of passengers, and the quantity of provi-sions, and required the inclusion of a surgeon, medicines, and medical instru-ments on a voyage. As expected, the Act was strongly resisted by merchants in Hong Kong, who saw it as an infringement of their freedom and a constraint on their profits. In particular, they resented the restriction on the number of passengers. The Act imposed a ratio between the number of passengers and both tonnage and space: one person to every 2.tons and 15 clear superfi cial feet, a ratio that might seriously reduce the number of passengers on each voyage. Merchants also objected to regulations governing the use of deck space that in effect made it illegal to carry passengers in the orlop deck. Well aware of mer-cantile sentiments, Governor Bonham (1848�V54) pointed out to the Colonial Office that although he had proclaimed the Act in compliance with London��s orders, he could not strictly enforce it; if he did, he claimed, all the ships would avoid Hong Kong and resort to other ports. He warned that this would mean the worst of both worlds�Xthe ships would be beyond any interference by British authorities and Hong Kong��s business would suff er.82
In the meantime, the Act was welcomed by the government of Victoria in Australia, where Chinese�Xonce valued for their labor�Xwere now seen as a ��calamity.��83 It was enforced with great fervor, and by 1855 a number of captains whose ships carried more Chinese passengers from Hong Kong than was allowed had been fi ned.84 In one extreme case, the Alfr ed, according to Melbourne��s Acting Immigration Offi cer, left Hong Kong carrying 192.5 persons over the legal limit according to the passenger-to-tonnage ratio, and his scathing charges against the incompetence of Hong Kong��s Emigration Officer for allowing this to happen led to a good deal of acrimonious correspondence between the two colonial governments.85
Amid the general opposition to the Act, one man in the Hong Kong gov-ernment supported it�Xat least at fi rst. He was William Caine, the Lieutenant Governor. As soon as Governor Bonham left Hong Kong at the expiration of his term in April 1854, Caine wrote to the Colonial Offi ce in May to criticize Bonham��s inaction, exposing the many abuses of the trade that needed immedi-ate action. Seeing the Act as the only way to put the emigration trade under at least a modicum of control, he appointed the Chief Police Magistrate, J. W. Hillier, to act as Emigration Offi cer to enforce the Imperial Passengers�� Act. 86 But Caine himself soon came to realize that the Act was ��unnecessarily strin-gent,�� and he later wrote to the Colonial Office to explain why certain stipula-tions could not be strictly observed.87 In doing so, he was in fact inadvertently reflecting the most determined objections among Hong Kong��s merchants.
In a letter to the Colonial Secretary in January 1855, several of the leading firms aired their grievances against the Act. While they conceded that specifi ed and proper regulations for the protection of the emigrants were necessary, in classic style they dismissed the Act as ��proverbially inapplicable�� to Hong Kong. They were pleased that, in the past, the Emigration Officer had exercised ��a wise discretion,�� but made it clear that they objected to more rigorous enforcement of the provisions in the future. In particular, they objected to rating a ship��s pas-senger capacity according to her tonnage. Since different countries used diff er-ent ways to measure tonnage, and the difference in tonnage arrived at could amount to as much as 40 or 50 percent, using tonnage as a basis for rating was unreliable. In view of this, the merchants suggested, the clear deck room forming the apartment for passenger accommodation should be the only basis for calcu-lating passenger capacity. To the authors of the letter, the crux of the matter was this: if such strict limitations on numbers were imposed, Hong Kong would be unable to compete with adjacent ports that were not subject to the Passengers�� Act. They were in fact more or less echoing Bonham��s earlier warning.
Another anomaly in the Act, they pointed out, was the medicine chest it specified: a European medicine chest was perfectly superfluous in a Chinese emigrant ship, as the Chinese much preferred their own. Besides, the surgical instruments specified by the Imperial Act were also useless unless a surgeon accompanied them, and a surgeon was difficult to procure. They claimed that the ships they had sent to California and Australia had delivered their emigrants with so few casualties that they had no hesitation in stating that, out of many thousands of emigrants, the deaths had not amounted to 0.5 percent.88
The Governor forwarded these and other criticisms of the Act to the Colonial Offi ce, which after much deliberation decided that ��an ordinance framed on the spot would work far better in Hong Kong than an Imperial Law which has been gradually molded into its present shape by experience derived from English ports.��89 Accordingly, the Chinese Passengers�� Act�Xsupposedly more relevant to the Chinese situation�Xwas enacted in December 1855, and proclaimed in Hong Kong in early 1856.90
The Chinese Passengers�� Act
This Act made a number of concessions to the merchants. Now measurement to determine the number of passengers was to be based entirely on deck area and not tonnage.91 Each Chinese passenger was allowed only 12 superfi cial feet rather than 15.feet, as allowed in the Imperial Act, thus increasing signifi cantly the carrying capacity of any vessel. The orlop deck issue, which they had com-plained about on many occasions, was resolved by its omission, leaving shipown-ers free to build such decks and carry passengers on them as they pleased.
There was one notable addition in this Act, which was to require the Emigration Officer to interview each passenger before sailing to ensure that the passenger understood the terms of the contract, if any, and knew what the ship��s destination was. This measure was obviously aimed at the worst abuses of the contract labor trade, such as kidnapping and decoying, and however apathetic the Emigration Officer might be when administrating it, it did add to Hong Kong��s general safety as an embarkation port. The Act applied to all ships car-rying more than twenty Chinese passengers on voyages longer than seven days; they were subject to inspection by the Harbor Master before clearing the harbor, and only when he was satisfied that every provision had been fulfilled could they leave Hong Kong.
The Chinese Passengers�� Act was a balancing act, one that took into consider-ation the interests of many parties. On the one hand, it provided for the British government��s need to be seen to be upholding humanitarian principles by safe-guarding the emigrants�� wellbeing; on the other, it allowed British ships to operate the trade competitively, ensured that British colonies would continue to receive the cheap labor required for their economies, and assured Hong Kong��s prosperity as an emigrant port.
Before they had time to digest the implications of the new Act and the con-cessions made, some shippers in Hong Kong panicked and took their ships out of the harbor so that their profitable business would not be threatened by the new restrictions. Th e Levant, a Hawaiian ship chartered by Cheong Ahoy for Australia, was one of them. When Cheong realized that new rules would apply, he quickly dispatched his ship with its load of passengers temporarily to Macao, which was under seven days�� voyage away and therefore not subject to the new rules, to avoid the scrutiny of the Harbor Master. When the Hong Kong Governor heard of Cheong��s intention to send the ship to Australia, which was over seven days�� voyage away, orders went out to have the ship seized, taken back to Hong Kong and impounded.
The Friend of China was appalled by the whole episode. It expressed sym-pathy for the Levant��s passengers who were left high and dry in Hong Kong while the ship was impounded, unable to do anything but loiter about on shore waiting for the ship to sail again. The passage money they lost represented more than half a year��s earning and the newspaper observed in May, three months aft er the seizure, that even if the vessel was allowed to sail ��tomorrow,�� it would be unable to make the voyage against the changed monsoon. It also lamented the charterer��s plight. Besides seizing the vessel, the Governor had high-handedly imposed a fi ne of �G100 (approximately $480) for the ship��s ��apparent intended evasion of the law.�� Furthermore, the paper estimated that other court charges faced by Cheong would amount to �G300 or �G400 (approximately $1,440 to $1,920) at the least, while the crew��s wages during the three months�� detention could not be less than $2,000. There were, moreover, $3,000 worth of provi-sions eaten by detained passengers or spoilt and the loss of the vessel��s services. Altogether, the ��total infliction�� would be about $10,000�Xclose to the value of the vessel itself.92
Not surprisingly, ships also evaded the new Act by under-reporting the number of passengers. Though many ships managed to clear the port ��legally,�� unbelievable deceptions were revealed later. One stark example was the John Calvin, which was certified leaving Hong Kong in 1856 with 81 passengers on board; yet when it arrived in Havana, 110 emigrants were reported to have died! Another offender in the same year was the Duke of Portland, which left with 332 emigrants and arrived in Havana 150 days later with 128 passengers fewer, these having died of fever or suicide. It should be noted that when John Calvin��s captain was judged guilty and fined �G1,000, the major fi rms�Xincluding Jardine, Matheson & Co., Dent & Co., Gibb, Livingston and Gilman, but not Lyall, Still & Co., the charterer�Xjointly petitioned the Secretary of States for the Colonies in London to remit the penalty, and it was reduced dramatically to �G50 as a result.93 It is clear that when its vital interests were threatened, big busi-ness would combine to defend them, and the state too often had to yield.
Embarrassed by the international outcry caused by the John Calvin and Duke of Portland scandals, and worried that such tragedies would further discour-age badly needed Chinese laborers from going to the West Indies, the British government put pressure on Hong Kong to enforce the Act more fi rmly. When barracoons�Xaccommodations ostensibly designed to house passengers waiting to sail but often used like prisons to detain kidnapped and decoyed victims�X were discovered in Hong Kong in March 1857, the government quickly put them down.94 As a consequence of these reforms, the emigrant trade to Peru and Havana disappeared from Hong Kong almost completely, and was relocated to concentrate in Macao instead.
Things also improved with the regulation of brokers. One of the worst problems in the trade�Xdishonest passage brokers�Xwas not addressed by the Chinese Passengers�� Act, but two years later a local ordinance was passed stipu-lating that no person was to act as a passage broker without having entered into a bond and obtained a license. In 1857, the bond was fixed at $5,000.95 Th is might have dismayed passage brokers, but it represented much-needed protection for passengers, and in the long run helped to further enhance Hong Kong��s reputa-tion as a safe emigrant port.
The tussle between the British government and the Hong Kong government continued, with the Colonial Office from time to time introducing new stric-tures which the Hong Kong Legislative Council, whose unoffi cial members were all merchants�Xmany with shipping interests�Xfought hard to resist. For example, in 1858 the Colonial Office introduced a provision for hospital accom-modations on board; while the Legislative Council accepted the provision, it quickly passed a local ordinance that allowed the space appropriated for the hos-pital to be factored into the measurement of the capacity for passengers.96 In other words, the Council accepted the inclusion of a hospital as long as it did not reduce the number of passengers that could be carried.
Another point that the Hong Kong merchants were keen to revise was the provision for a surgeon on board. In view of local realities, they felt it would make more sense to employ a Chinese medical practitioner and carry a diff erent scale of medicines and surgical instruments.97 They argued that English or American surgeons were hard to find, but their main concern, it seems, was that Chinese doctors were cheaper. In any case, a Chinese doctor was perfectly adequate, claimed George Lyall, of Lyall, Still & Co.�Xthe firm that had sent the John Calvin on its tragic voyage�Xat a Legislative Council meeting in 1858. ��Where a Chinese medical practitioner only had been in charge on a Free Passengers Ship to and from California and Australia,�� he explained, ��the average number of deaths has been but one in a thousand.��98 It was also likely that the Chinese, who generally had greater faith in Chinese doctors and Chinese medicine, preferred this arrangement too.99 The provision for a Chinese doctor (as a substitute when an English one could not be employed) was finally made in Ordinance 12 of 1868. In 1871, an ordinance prohibited emigration under contract of service unless emigrants were proceeding to British colonies, the rationale being that only in British territories would contracts be properly honored and workers�� rights protected.100 Subsequently, further ordinances were passed to suppress kidnapping and the selling of women as prostitutes abroad.
Given the general apathy and inefficiency of Hong Kong��s emigration offi c-ers in the nineteenth century, and the many vested interests in the business, the Chinese Passengers�� Act, along with its later amendments, fell far short of perfect enforcement. However, on the whole�Xapart from some outrageous cases of violation�Xit did provide a modicum of protection and safety. Th ere were captains who kept scrupulously to the letter of the law, such as Captain Winchester whom we will meet in the following chapter. Moreover, prospective emigrants�Xat least the literate ones�Xwere able to read for themselves in the newspapers and Government Gazette the provisions of the ordinances. Justice in Hong Kong might have appeared arbitrary,101 but emigrants could at least be comforted to know that such laws existed and that they had recourse to them. It must have provided some sense of certainty for those facing a long journey filled with uncertainties, and persuaded them to make Hong Kong the embarka-tion/disembarkation port of their choice. Despite its many loopholes, the legal framework was sufficient to draw brokerage and chartering business away from other ports such as Guangzhou and Whampoa, where there was no protection at all, to concentrate in Hong Kong.
Caine was right, after all, in predicting that legal strictures might drive some of the business away: ��Yet it may well be doubted whether the additional protec-tion and comfort afforded to the passenger by an effective surveillance will not render the colony more attractive to emigrants.��102 Both because and in spite of the law, the gold rush passenger trade remained rooted in Hong Kong and became the basis for the development of other routes and a range of auxiliary activities.103 On balance, it is fair to say that legislation rescued the passenger business from its worst excesses, and ended up enabling it to function more effectively and vibrantly.
Th e Press
In Hong Kong, where many people��s investment and employment were linked to emigration, it was only natural that emigration should be a leading topic of the press, both English-language and Chinese. Besides shipping and market information, newspapers were filled with reports on other aspects of emigration, ranging from titillating tales of quick fortunes to horror stories of disasters at sea and traumas of sickness, suicides and other deaths, as well as unspeakable hard-ship after passengers reached their destinations.
Chinese newspapers, however, in identifying with readers who included potential migrants of different classes and Chinese living abroad, necessar-ily approached the subject from a different angle from their English counter-parts. We can see this even in the Xia��er guanzhen, a monthly journal started by the London Missionary Society in 1853 and edited by the Reverend Walter
H. Medhurst, which was the first Chinese-language news-periodical published in China and Hong Kong.104 It provided information of a practical nature that would facilitate emigrants, such as wages paid for different jobs in Australia and the regulations governing Chinese gold miners in California.105 To let readers know what to expect and what they were entitled to when traveling, it also pub-lished the American and British Passengers�� Acts.106 More importantly, abuses were reported in order to alert readers to the many perils surrounding the entire migration process, warning them against crooks and advising them to deal only with captains and brokers of good repute.107 This was a function that no English newspaper ever performed.
Th e Zhongwai xinwen qiribao, another Chinese paper, went even further. Deeply committed to improving the plight of Chinese sojourners, it made con-siderable efforts to push for their wellbeing. Th e Qiribao appeared in 1871 as a weekly Chinese-language page of the China Mail, and while it covered news of the whole world, it paid special attention to the Chinese overseas. Its editor, Chan Ayin or Chen Aiting,108 had been educated in Hong Kong at St. Paul��s College, an Anglican school; his language abilities, especially his translation skills, were admired widely. Before joining the China Mail as assistant editor, he had worked for seven years at the Police Magistrate��s court, first as fourth inter-preter and later as third clerk. Though owned by the China Mail, the Qiribao had a clear and independent editorial position on emigration issues right from the start. By identifying itself with Chinese emigrants and consciously promot-ing their interests, the Qiribao emphasized the personal and emotional dimen-sion of the migration experience. Chan��s work in the law courts might account for the paper��s keen interest in legal issues, including its recurrent argument that the legal protection of Chinese overseas was sorely needed, and that such pro-tection could only be provided by Chinese consuls, a most sensitive issue at the time.
On June 3, 1871, an article appeared in the Qiribao with the opening salvo:
Th e first priority of sagacious kingship is to protect the people. Yet, however skilful and efficient the protection is, it is not enough that the pro-tection is confined to those within our national borders. Protection should be extended to our people beyond the borders.
It continued with a long exposition on the phenomenon of massive Chinese emigration overseas, but its main objective was to exhort the Chinese govern-ment to appoint consuls�Xeven ministers�Xto look after its people abroad. Th e article ended on an equally bold note: ��We should consider that people are the foundation of the nation. Even those who have gone outside the national terri-tory should still be treated the same as those within [as siblings from the same womb]. We must not think that just because they live in foreign territories, they should be treated as unrelated strangers.��109
This sympathetic attitude toward migrants departed radically from China��s long-standing policy. The current imperial ban against Chinese emigration made any Chinese leaving China without a license subject to capital punish-ment. Though by the 1860s the Chinese government, under foreign pressure, was forced to admit grudgingly the right of Chinese to emigrate, it avoided addressing the issue of protection for those who did. When foreign envoys suggested from time to time that the Chinese government should send consuls to look after the interests of its subjects abroad, the matter was largely met with apathy and scorn,110 which reflected a deep-rooted disdain for those who had turned their backs on the benevolence of the Chinese emperor. Th e Qiribao��s proposal was also radical because establishing embassies and consulates would imply equal status between China and other nations, a notion that contradicted the fundamental worldview that China was a superior civilization, the Middle Kingdom. Above all, for a commoner�Xeven a journalist�Xto directly address the Emperor and to criticize state policy would have been totally unthinkable on the mainland, yet the Qiribao was unafraid to press its views exactly because it was aware that mainland officials were paying attention to what it said.
Throughout its pages, it emphasized the hardship Chinese overseas faced in the absence of consular protection. It revealed the shocking fact that Chinese in America were not allowed to give testimony in court.111 It was not only infu-riated at the injustice in the abstract but, on more practical grounds, it feared that this lack of rights would encourage bad people to bully the Chinese and take advantage of them in limitless ways. With the California government and people becoming increasingly anti-Chinese by the late 1860s, Chinese were subject to more and more incidents of mob violence, such as the bloody Los Angeles ��massacre�� of October 1871, which was described in a chilling article in the Qiribao.112
Th e paper��s concern for Chinese abroad might not be entirely altruistic. As a commercial enterprise, it was necessary to cater to the needs and interests of its readers, who were mainly merchants in Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta and overseas�Xincluding, of course, California. The safety of Chinese abroad was a key issue for the owners and employees of the many emigration-related busi-nesses in Hong Kong, as well as ordinary residents�Xmany of whom had family and personal connections with those abroad. Indeed, some of Hong Kong��s mer-chants traveled frequently, and could easily have found themselves in a foreign country, exposed to similar discrimination, injustice and violence. Thus the call for a Chinese consul coincided with the material and emotional interests of the Qiribao��s readers.
Th e Qiribao ceased publication on April 6, 1872 after 14 months of opera-tion; it was succeeded by a separate paper, the Huazi ribao, still with Chan Ayin as editor and still published by the China Mail. That was followed two years later by the more famous Xunhuan ribao, edited by Wang Tao, who was to be recognized as a major reform thinker of the late Qing. These papers contin-ued to champion the welfare of emigrants, and in particular closely monitored the development of the establishment of consulates by China.113 When China finally made the landmark decision to dispatch its first minister to the United States, Cuba, and Peru in 1878, Chan Ayin�Xperhaps not surprisingly�Xwas appointed as Chinese Consul-General in Havana, where he ��did excellent work for his countrymen�� for about ten years before returning to China.114
Operating in Hong Kong�Xa Chinese society beyond Chinese jurisdiction�X the Chinese press was a voice from the margin demanding to be diff erent and demanding to be heard. In addition to being a valuable element in the social infrastructure of an emigrant port by acting as a crucial channel of information and opinions, its special contribution was in influencing the policy-making of the Qing court. Hong Kong was clearly the ideal vantage point from which to look intimately and critically at China and Chinese policies, while at the same time monitoring the conditions of Chinese abroad and the wider world beyond. It was the in-between place par excellence.
Emigration and Charity: The Tung Wah Hospital
In the meantime, an unforeseen event happened that would have a long-term and far-reaching impact on Hong Kong as an emigrant port and on the global Chinese diaspora.
This was the creation of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1869 at the suggestion of the Hong Kong Governor, Sir Richard Graves Macdonnell (1865�V72). Until then, the only hospital in Hong Kong had been the government Civil Hospital, which was operated by British doctors practicing Western medicine�Xa medical tradition that was strange to the Chinese who, having much greater faith in their own medical systems, had little need for the Civil Hospital. In particular, they feared its practices of amputation and post-mortem examination, which were barbaric and cruel to a people who firmly believed that the body should be intact at burial. When sick, they resorted to Chinese doctors and stayed home; those who had no home in Hong Kong, such as prospective emigrants waiting to embark for a foreign country, were taken to the I-tsz to be treated by doctors who visited them there, or to await death.
The I-tsz (Putonghua, yici), meaning literally a public ancestral hall, had been built in 1851 to house the spirit tablets of those who had died in Hong Kong, so that their friends could make offerings to them until the tablets could be returned to the village. Building the I-tsz was a charitable act: its organizers, all successful merchants�XTam Achoy among them�Xhad petitioned the govern-ment for, and received, a grant of land for that specific purpose. However, as the number of transient people in Hong Kong increased, demand for somewhere to accommodate the homeless sick grew so great that the I-tsz was resorted to. Conditions there deteriorated; there was no supervision and sometimes the sick lay beside the dead. In 1868, uproar broke out when a colonial offi cial discovered the filthy mess there; it was a scandal that was splashed across the newspapers in London as well as Hong Kong. When Macdonnell realized why the Chinese went to the I-tsz rather than the Civil Hospital�Xand was also, of course, eager to show London that he was doing something to remedy the situation�Xhe suggested that a Chinese hospital for Chinese, operated according to Chinese customs, be built. Since the Chinese merchants were so wealthy, he reasoned, they should be asked to pay for it. They readily complied, raised an enormous fund, and organized themselves into a Hospital Foundation Committee to plan a Chinese hospital.
In the following year, the Chinese Hospital Ordinance was passed to legiti-mize its existence and define its scope of operation, and a committee was set up to manage it. According to its constitution, the hospital would hire Chinese doctors, provide Chinese medicine, and observe Chinese medical princi-ples. Among other things, this meant that Chinese patients could receive the kind of medical care they trusted, and patients who died at the Tung Wah Hospital would be spared the much-feared autopsy that invariably was con-ducted in Western hospitals. Within the cultural context of a British colony, where Westerners generally held Chinese medicine in contempt and considered Chinese practitioners no more than quacks, founding a Chinese hospital on such principles was no small political and social achievement.
The hospital��s history has been told elsewhere; suffice to say here that its founding provided an opportunity for Hong Kong��s successful Chinese busi-nessmen, whose wealth had grown greatly since the 1850s, to come together and, through serving the many needs of the Chinese population, establish them-selves as its cultural champions, moral leaders, and spokesmen vis-a-vis the Hong Kong government. Never before had a Chinese body in Hong Kong received the blessing of the colonial government to serve its community and, almost by defi -nition, been given license to wield social�Xeven political�Xpower.115
For the rest of the nineteenth century, the Tung Wah Hospital was governed by a committee, headed by a board of twelve to fourteen directors who were nominated annually by the guilds of the leading trades, which included the guilds of the compradors, bankers, opium dealers, and international traders�Xthe Gold Mountain traders (who traded with California, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) and the Nam Pak traders (who traded with North China and Japan and South China and Southeast Asia). This mechanism ensured that the most powerful businessmen sat at the helm; in turn, appointment to the hospital enhanced the elite status of the individual directors. The Gold Mountain trade, whose members were to provide a strong link between the hospital and Chinese communities in California and all the other Gold Mountain countries, will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4.
Soon after its inception, the hospital��s work expanded beyond the purely medical. In the absence of a Chinese consul in Hong Kong, it assumed many functions that a consul might have performed.116 As a charitable organization, it protected migrants in transit by providing medicine for the sick, shelter for the homeless, and coffins and burials for the deceased�Xincluding those who had died at sea. Working with numerous organizations in all parts of the world and in China, it facilitated the repatriation of thousands of disabled emigrants�Xthe blind, the sick, the lame, victims of shipwrecks and mutinies�Xas well as Chinese women who had been sold into prostitution abroad. As passengers died on the long voyages from time to time, and knowing how much Chinese feared being thrown overboard if they died en route and how much they yearned for burial by interment, the hospital provided coffins on ocean-going vessels so that deceased passengers could be taken back to China for burial. On its own and in collabo-ration with native-place associations and other agents overseas, the hospital
Figure 7 Founding directors of the Tung Wah Hospital with Governor Macdonnell. Li Sing, head of the Wo Hang fi rm, is third from left , top row. Source: By courtesy of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals.
facilitated the repatriation of tens of thousands of coffins and bone boxes from all directions. Discussion of this part of its work will be found in Chapter 7. It is little wonder that one of the main sources of the hospital��s income was crew members and passengers, who must have been grateful for the hospital��s work, and any overseas fundraising event the hospital organized�Xusually to pay for disaster relief in China�Xwas inevitably met with great enthusiasm from Chinese communities everywhere.
The hospital��s earliest activities were related to emigration. In October 1870, mutiny broke out on the Nouvelle Penelope, which left Macao with 310 emigrants destined for Callao, Peru. One of the mutineers, Kwok Asing (Guo Yasheng), was arrested in Hong Kong and charged with murder and piracy. Th e Chief Justice, John Smale, widely known for his liberal views, discharged him on the grounds that, since he had been kidnapped for emigration, he had a right to regain his liberty�Xeven by killing the officers on board the kidnapping ship.117 When Kwok was released, alone and friendless in Hong Kong, the hospital com-mittee gave him shelter.
Another disaster soon followed. Th e Dolores Ugarte, which left Macao with 690 passengers for Peru, was set on fire. Some 600 people on board were killed. The survivors were returned to Hong Kong, again to the care of the hospital committee. A subscription was raised to repatriate them, and the hospital sent the men��s names, places of origin, and other personal details to another chari-table organization in Guangzhou, the Hall of Sustaining Love, to trace their relatives. A steamship company was persuaded to charge only half-fare to carry them back and the remainder of the donation was distributed among them. Th e Qiribao, moved by this act of compassion, declared on behalf of the sur-vivors: ��My father and mother have given me life; the Tung Wah has given me my second life.��118 This must have been an accurate reflection of the gratitude of the rescued men and the admiration felt by the Chinese community as a whole. These incidents led to a new mode of activity for the hospital, and subsequent emigrants in distress, wherever they were, looked to it for shelter, relief, repatria-tion, and other forms of protection.
Moreover, the hospital directors, seeing themselves as patriarchal leaders morally obliged to right wrongs in society, took it upon themselves to eradi-cate abuse and fraud. While emigration to America gave rise to fewer abuses, it was not without problems. In early 1871, an American labor recruiter arrived in Hong Kong to enlist workers for plantations in the American South. Th rough Chinese agents, 350 men were found, not from the Sam Yup (Th ree Counties) or Sze Yup (Four Counties) but from the Hakka-speaking districts in the Eastern Pearl River Delta. The men were made to sign contracts and taken on board; later, when some of the men changed their minds and wanted to leave the ship, they were barred from doing so. In desperation, they sent for help from the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, which immediately alerted the Registrar General�X the government official charged with ��protecting�� the Chinese�Xand with his intervention, those found to be unwilling to sail were allowed to go ashore; the rest, however, were as eager as ever to proceed to Gold Mountain.119 Th e govern-ment considered charging the American agent for having broken Hong Kong��s new emigration law by which contract emigration to places outside the British Empire had been banned.
At some point in 1871, Governor Macdonnell, in an effort to stave off the constant pressure from London and the British Minister to China, Rutherford Alcock, for action against emigration abuses, even appointed the Tung Wah directors�Xwhom he described as ��men perfectly independent���Xto examine prospective emigrants and make sure that they were going voluntarily. Only when the directors were convinced of ��their perfectly unfettered consent,�� he stressed, would they be allowed to embark.120
This was an extraordinary way to incorporate ��natives�� into the colonial administration structure, however marginal the role! The hospital committee, becoming increasingly confident, pressed the government to take firmer steps to enforce laws and make new ones that would give greater protection to Chinese emigrants, especially against evils such as kidnapping. With the approval of the new Governor, Arthur Kennedy (1872�V77), the committee went even further by paying detectives to look out for kidnappers and gave shelter to rescued victims.121 Chinese consuls as well as Chinese voluntary organizations in San Francisco and other cities sought the hospital��s assistance on a wide range of matters.122 Even the US consul in Hong Kong, when tasked with preventing Chinese women from emigrating to America to become prostitutes, asked the Tung Wah directors to help with the vetting process. We will discuss the emi-gration of women in Chapter 6. Gambling on ships returning from California was another major problem that the hospital made an effort to stamp out. One can imagine how on the long, boring voyage passengers would turn to gam-bling for relief and entertainment. Many of them, carrying enormous amounts of gold and silver that represented their own savings as well as those of their friends, became easy prey to swindlers who organized games on board, and many people ended up losing everything by the time they reached Hong Kong. This resulted in many broken men and suicides. The hospital directors proposed a number of measures to stop gambling on ships�Xfor example, requiring pas-sengers to deposit their funds with the captain, keeping no more than $20 on their person�Xand enlisted the collaboration of the Hong Kong government to suppress the vice.
The hospital��s work was naturally well known in California, given the easy flow of information through the powerful commercial and personal networks that extended across the Pacific. San Francisco��s Chinese newspaper, Th e Oriental, expressed deep admiration for the hospital��s splendid accomplish-ments. It marveled at the amount of charitable work that had been implemented in Hong Kong in recent years, commenting that its merchant elite had achieved more than the officials and gentry of Guangdong. In particular, it paid tribute to Tung Wah��s efforts regarding the suppression of prostitution and gambling. Th e paper even suggested that San Francisco should establish a Chinese hospital to serve the Chinese community there, and added that since the Tung Wah��s rules and regulations were so perfect (��), it would be a good idea to adopt them in California. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we can only conclude that admiration for Tung Wah among Chinese in San Francisco was truly heartfelt.
We may speculate that what Th e Oriental had in mind was not just a hospi-tal but a hospital operating on Chinese medical principles�Xand perhaps even more than that, an institution performing many different social functions and enjoying semi-official status like the Tung Wah. Indeed, the Tung Wah Hospital became the model for many overseas Chinese communities in the decades to come.123
Conclusion
The California gold rush transformed Hong Kong from a small-scale entrepot of goods into a large-scale entrepot of people, and launched the process by which it grew into a center for global migration serving not only Cantonese-speaking California-bound passengers, but Chinese from other dialect groups bound for all parts of the world.
Despite the fact that the number of passengers to California leveled off aft er the peak year of 1852 with some 30,000, the stream of people�Xas well as goods, funds, information, and other matters�Xtraveling to and fro across the Pacifi c, embarking and disembarking at Hong Kong, never ceased. By the time Chinese began to make their way to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where gold was also found in the 1850s, and other parts of the United States, Hong Kong had virtually the only port through which Chinese passengers left for all these countries. In the early 1870s, when many ports in Southeast Asia were deemed to be within seven days�� voyage from Hong Kong and therefore no longer covered by the Chinese Passengers�� Act, it also became a major embarkation port for Southeast Asia.
Chinese traffic to California declined in the late 1850s when gold mining was no longer easy, but it did not cease. Chinese continued to cross the Pacifi c in search of other employment and business opportunities, and to seek gold and silver in Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia. A second and larger wave of Chinese migration began in 1868, this time in response to railroad con-struction. The demand for railroad workers had first induced a shift within the early emigrant population, drawing men from the mines to construction sites. In 1868, the immigration figures jumped to over 11,000. After falling off for a few years, it climbed again, with over 17,000 in 1873, 16,000 in 1874, and 18,000 in 1875.124 Like the pioneers of the gold rush, these latecomers continued to depart for San Francisco and other West Coast ports from Hong Kong, and returned through Hong Kong on their way home. By the first quarter of 1876, a total of 214,226 Chinese had landed in California, and 90,000 had returned to China. Thus, as the ��rugged mountains�� of America ��swarmed with Celestials,��125 the harbor of Hong Kong teemed with ships of all descriptions to transport them there and back.
Clearly, it was more than the fine harbor, piers and wharfs, shipping offices, and chartering firms that defined Hong Kong as an emigrant port. Signifi cantly, legal and social ingredients were indispensable in the infrastructure. Laws enacted to provide protection for emigrants ensured that Hong Kong was a (relatively) safe port for free emigrants. No doubt there were loopholes, yet the laws and the judicial system made it more diffi cult for offenders to get away. The press played a big part in publicizing all aspects of Chinese emigration, a subject so deeply rooted in Hong Kong��s economic and social life. In particular, the Chinese newspapers pushed the interests of emigrants on many levels, fully demonstrating Hong Kong��s identification with them. Above all, the work of the Tung Wah Hospital shows the multiple ways in which Hong Kong could help emigrants, for even the strongest and wealthiest of them could not avoid succumbing to sickness, discrimination, violence, loneliness, death, trickery, and other misfortunes.
In a sense, there was not much emigration fr om Hong Kong, only emigra-tion through it. Neither the sending country nor the receiving country, Hong Kong has been neglected in migration studies. Yet its importance in the migra-tion process is undeniable, and its ��in-betweenness�� was key. For many of the emigrants leaving China, Hong Kong was their fi rst stop outside China�Xand, paradoxically, also their first stop in China on their return home. The nature of Hong Kong society itself, by providing emigrants with a special level of comfort, intimacy, and security, enhanced the position of the port. The California emigra-tion, which everyone at the time recognized as ��the mainstay of the colony,��126 was indisputably a hard-nosed, calculating, money-making enterprise, yet at the same time institutions that treated emigrants with compassion and cultural sen-sitivity enabled the British colony to occupy a special place in the consciousness of countless emigrants, and to succeed as an embarkation port and play a crucial role in the history of modern China and the world.
3
Networking the Pacifi c
The Shipping Trade
The Leading Port for America
The gold rush led to the rise of a thriving trade zone on the Pacifi c, centered on San Francisco and its bay. Being difficult to access by land, especially from the big markets on the East Coast and Europe, and before being connected to the rest of the continent by railroad, San Francisco relied on the sea to provide the only easy and economic link with the world. Thousands of ships carrying argonauts�Xtogether with goods to feed and clothe them, and materials to build the city�Xsailed in from all directions, carving out new sea lanes and establish-ing new trade patterns. As James Delgado claims: ��Thanks to ships and ship-ping, San Francisco tied into a web of international relationships and trade to become America��s principal seaport on the Pacific and a participant in the global economy.��1
The excitement of the new shipping market was keenly felt in Hong Kong. Though perched on the Pacific, Hong Kong previously had served mainly ships that sailed west, north, and south, paying scant attention to the vast ocean to its east. But things would change dramatically, as cargo and passenger shipping began moving back and forth across the new ��happening�� ocean, linking it fi rst with San Francisco and then with other ports along the US coast. Not only would Hong Kong become a leading Pacific port, but it would also grow into a powerful shipping, trading, and migration hub that would, along with San Francisco, propel the Pacific on to the center stage of the global economy.
In his recent book, Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island, Robert Barde observes that despite the large
number of Asians migrating to the New World in the early twentieth century, little has been written about how they were transported.2 However, his book, which is focused on the post-exclusion era, does not address the question of how Chinese migrants were carried from China to North America through Hong Kong before the exclusion. Indeed, most works on transpacific shipping have looked mainly at steam liners, thus neglecting sailing ships, which were mainly tramp ships, which carried large numbers of Chinese passengers on the Pacifi c in the nineteenth century.3 This chapter looks at the shipping activities that evolved in the migration process up to the 1890s, and the individuals and fi rms that kept the ships moving. It will show how migrants were transported, how shipping provided investment opportunities at different levels, and how ship-ping activities expanded and thickened the networks across the Pacific. In addi-tion, it seeks to fill an important gap in Hong Kong history, for despite being so vital in Hong Kong��s overall development, the development of shipping has been largely, and sadly, neglected by scholars.
Th e propensity for Chinese passengers to embark at Hong Kong for California, and later to other destinations, transformed it into a major emigrant port, generating enormous shipping business for the British colony. Hong Kong did not, however, monopolize the China�VCalifornia passenger trade from the beginning. At the height of the gold rush, some ships took passengers from other ports, though Hong Kong��s domination in the field was never in doubt. In 1852, at least 86 ships from Hong Kong took 17,246 passengers, while seven from Macao took 1,335, three from Whampoa took 944 and one from Shanghai took
46.4 See Appendix 3 (pp. 314�V320), and Tables 3.1 and 3.2 (see p. 95).
Hong Kong��s lead continued. In 1856, of the 41 vessels sailing for San Francisco from China, only one did not originate from Hong Kong.5 Likewise, in 1859, of the 32 ships arriving from China, 28 were from Hong Kong (total tonnage 27,105 tons) while two were from Shanghai and one each from Macao and Shantou;6 none of the vessels except those from Hong Kong seems to have carried passengers.
Hong Kong��s success in monopolizing the passenger trade resulted not only from its many advantages noted in earlier chapters�Xsuch as its fi ne harbor and open and free port policy. As far as emigration of Chinese was concerned, Hong Kong also benefi ted from the Chinese government��s ban on emigration.
Table 3.1 Ships arriving in San Francisco from Macao, 1852
Arrival in San Francisco Ship Master No. of passengers
May 1 Sophia Rozario 164 May 2 Conroy Meyer 109 July 4 Anna Cranmer 178 July 5 Viceroy Morrison 358 July 20 Linda Howards 54 July 21 Ohio Renpach 220 July 28 Ocean Queen Rees 252
Total 1,335
Source: Alta California.
Table 3.2 Ships arriving in San Francisco from Whampoa, 1852
Arrival in San Francisco Ship Master No. of passengers
June 3 Amity Parsons 278 June 3 Balmoral Robinson 454 June 10 Daniel Ross Kettels 212
Total 944
Source: Alta California.
Though it was not strictly enforced, and legally only those who returned were punished, the ban nevertheless made it more difficult for ships to openly take on large numbers of emigrants from Chinese ports. In addition, Hong Kong benefited from the decline of its chief competitors in the region. Whampoa, at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta just 12 miles from Guangzhou city and once a hub for foreign ships, lost ground as a consequence of the chaos from inter-nal unrest, rebellion, foreign war, and local hostility toward foreigners that grew increasingly out of hand in the mid-1850s, forcing foreign ships to stay away and foreign companies to move their head offices from Guangzhou to Hong Kong.7 Macao, on the other hand, unable to compete with Hong Kong in free emigra-tion trade, concentrated on the notorious trade to Havana and Peru, and its rep-utation suffered as a result. The high concentration of emigrants from the Pearl River Delta region further confined emigrants to embarking at Hong Kong.
New Developments
As mentioned in Chapter 1, the majority of ocean-going ships in the mid-nine-teenth century were tramps, which had no fixed schedule and sailed wherever there was demand. A ship could be sent to a destination by its owner on his own account, but by far the more common practice in those days was for it to be chartered�Xeither on a time charter or a voyage charter�Xwith the charterer deciding the destination and bearing the risks of the venture. Th e enormous demand for transportation by exporters and passengers from Hong Kong to San Francisco meant that many ships, large and small, congregated there to capital-ize on the market.
At fi rst, most of the ships on this route were chartered for single (one-way) voyages only; after arriving in San Francisco, they would receive new com-missions and head for other destinations where there was a need for them. As demand on this route increased, however, it became more common for vessels to be chartered for the round-trip. With the gradual increase in the volume of export cargo at San Francisco�Xincluding, of course, treasure�Xand of passen-gers returning to China (not forgetting the bones of dead emigrants) the San Francisco�VHong Kong leg became profitable in its own right. Some vessels even made repeated round trips, a new pattern of operation showing a modicum of regularity that reflected both the continual demand for transportation and the high premium paying passengers placed on experienced captains and crews familiar with the route.
Beating time was everyone��s objective. On average, ships took 50 to 60 days to complete a one-way voyage between Hong Kong and California in the 1850s. Much was made of the American clipper Challenge when it took only 33 days to cross the Pacifi c in early 1852. It landed all 553 passengers in San Francisco�X and in good health to boot! Moreover, when it returned to Hong Kong in June, it had completed the entire round-trip in 85 days, a new record.8 Th ough not quite matching the Challenge��s record, the itinerary of the Land o�� Cakes, which completed two return trips within some nine months, gives an idea of how fast things were moving (see Table 3.3).9
Map 2 Pacifi c navigation routes in the mid-nineteenth century. Th is passage chart of the North Pacifi c Ocean belonged to Captain Griffi ths of the Liverpool-based, 76.1 m long, three-masted sailing ship Hospodar, 1,625 tons. Th e ship��s track of a voyage from Tianjin, China to North America in 1884 is still visible. Th e Hospodar followed the northern, shorter of the two standard routes from China to North America printed on the chart. Th e chosen route depended on vessel type, destination, and season. Usually emigrant steamers from Hong Kong followed the longer, southern route, which had calmer seas and warmer weather. Th e charts were known as ��Bluebacks�� because they were made of several pieces stuck together on stout blue paper. (Information provided by Dr Stephen Davies.)
Source:Th e Hong Kong Maritime Museum. By courtesy of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
Table 3.3 Itinerary of the Land o�� Cakes
Departure from Days Arrival at Departure from Days Arrival at
San Francisco Hong Kong Hong Kong San Francisco
February 2, 1852 52 March 26, 1852
March 31, 1852 48 May 18, 1852 June 28, 1852 48 August 14, 1852
August 23, 1852 51 October 13,
1852
Source: Hongkong Register, China Mail, Alta California.
The American barque Ann Welsh put up a no less impressive performance, taking only 49 days to reach San Francisco during February/March 1852 (see Table 3.4). It was one of the ships that made consecutive and repeated voyages on this route. Completing five round-trips within 32 months, this ship��s sched-ule demonstrates the frenzied atmosphere of the time, the density of the traffic and the repeatedness of ships�� voyages on the Hong Kong�VCalifornia route.
Other ships that made these multiple transpacific voyages in the early 1850s included the Aurora and the North Carolina.10
Table 3.4 Itinerary of the Ann Welsh
Departure from San Francisco June 5, 1850 Arrival at Hong Kong July 23, 1850 Departure from Hong Kong August 17, 1850 Arrival at San Francisco October 13, 1850
December 8, 1850 January 28, 1851 February 20, 1851 April 25, 1851
June 12, 1851 August 8, 1851 September 12, 1851 November 7, 1851
December 1, 1851 January 22, 1852 February 20, 1852 April 9, 1852
May 12, 1852 July 19, 1852 October 23, 1852 February 7, 1853
Source: Hongkong Register, China Mail, Alta California, 1950�V1852.
Passenger Trade as Business
The passenger trade to California was quickly recognized by firms and individu-als as a great commercial opportunity. In July 1852, the Hong Kong newspaper The Friend of China marveled at the amount of business it generated:
We find that the trade between China and California during the present year that it has given employment to eighty two vessels, averaging fi ve hundred tons each�Xtotal tonnage say 43,000; and supposing that the number of passengers will have been at the rate of one man to two tons (a low estimate on the whole) we have an aggregate of 21,500. Th is again multiplied by $50 the average amount of passage money, shows a sum of $1,075,000 or, in colonial currency, �G 234,000 for the half year. Th e net estimated ship earnings out of this is four fi fths �G 187,200, or say for a fi ve months voyage all around, four guineas per ton�Xfast ships, of course, doing better than slow ones.
Noting that six ships were still on the berth, the newspaper predicted that the total number of emigrants for the first half-year ending June 30 could be ��safely stated at 25,000.��11 Writing some years later, the historian E. J. Eitel�Xproba-bly taking his cue from Governor Bonham�Xwrote that if each of the 30,000 Chinese who went in 1852 paid $50 each, the total revenue in passage money would have been $1.5 million.12 As mentioned, 30,000 passengers is an over-estimate; the number was much closer to 20,000, but even then the revenue in passage money would have been around a million dollars. We get an idea of the significance of the amount when we compare it with the colonial govern-ment��s total revenue for the same year, which was only �G43,331 (approximately $208,003).13
The ships engaged in the trade also flew the flags of many diff erent nations. Only two ships flying the Chinese flag are on record as ever having attempted to sail for California in the nineteenth century. Th e first was the barque Kam Ty Lee, which sailed from Hong Kong on January 4, 1852 under Captain Knudsen; unfortunately it was put back on the same day on account of headwinds, and never seems to have made another attempt.14 The other was the Ann Welsh, which made all those repeated sailings. Other Chinese ships might have sailed into Monterey Bay in junks, as historian Sandy Lydon claims, but there is no documentation to support the claim.15 In fact, it would be safe to say that routes across the northern Pacific were dominated by Western ships commanded by Western captains sailing under Western maritime protocol. Chinese crews had sailed on westbound voyages to Europe since the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth century the number of Chinese seamen working in diff erent capaci-ties on Western ships increased tremendously.16 Th e Pacific Mail Steam Ship Co.��s preference for them is discussed below.
Cashing in on the Passenger Trade
Many firms, large and small, Chinese, British, American, and others, engaged in the shipping business in a variety of roles. There were shipowners and their agents, charterers and their agents, passage brokers, cargo brokers, and insurers. On another level, there were shipyards and slipways, timber merchants, sailmak-ers and rope walks, and foundries for anchors, chains, and other heavy metal-works. There were provisioners of food and water and coal, chandlers providing nautical supplies, ship surveyors, ship-repairing contractors, and a spectrum of smaller service providers such as pilots, lighter operators, tavern keepers, and innkeepers. There was also the special system of boarding houses for seamen that demonstrates the essence of the whole infrastructure of Chinese crewing.17 In other words, many people��s livelihood�Xand fortunes�Xdepended on shipping.
By the late 1840s and early 1850s, there was no dearth of firms in Hong Kong with deep local knowledge and wide international connections as well as the expertise to handle the sudden surge of passenger demand for California. Companies long experienced in handling ships in Chinese waters, such as the powerful houses Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Russell & Co., and smaller com-panies such as John Burd & Co. and Rawle, Drinker & Co. (which we met as agent for the Sultana in the last chapter), were natural choices for shipowners looking for agents. Younger companies like Bush & Co. and Williams, Anthon & Co. also took on many agencies. In addition, Augustine Heard & Co., a medium-sized Boston company that had been in China since 1840, also became active in the agency business after it moved its head office to Hong Kong from Guangzhou in 1856�V57, capitalizing on its close connections with California.
During the first few years of the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade, a large number of ships were handled by John Burd & Co. A Scottish sea captain, John Burd had sailed a Danish ship to the East and later started a business in Guangzhou in 1839. In 1842, the firm moved to Hong Kong, where it traded in ��goods and merchandise of all descriptions,�� including rice, coconut oil, and coffee, and had obviously built up good connections in the seafaring world. Burd was appointed Danish consul for Hong Kong in 1847.18 Ship��s agency seems to have been a considerable part of his activities, and despite the arrival of new competitors, his firms�Xin various incarnations�Xwere agents for at least 10 percent of the vessels that sailed for California in 1852.
Another firm that handled many San Francisco-bound vessels, though a relatively newcomer to China, was Bush & Co. Frederick Bush had come out to Hong Kong in 1843 and set up business the following year. In 1845, he was appointed US consul, and when the number of ships to the United States increased in the late 1840s, Bush & Co. was busy acting as ships�� agent. Th is seems natural enough. Although it offered no power, no salary, and no perqui-sites�Xand the consul had to finance the running of the consulate by collect-ing fees that were chargeable�Xthe post conferred the prestige of the offi ce.19 It was, in a way, a badge of honor, a form of recognition of a man��s trustworthiness and therefore elevated his rating in the commercial world. On a more practical level, given that the papers of any American ship in port were deposited with the consul, who also certified invoices on cargoes bound for the United States and signed any debenture on duty certificates, it is no surprise that shipowners would be happy to appoint the consul as the agent of their ships, and that shippers, charterers, and exporters would find it expedient to employ vessels whose agent was the consul himself. Certainly, having privileged access to intelligence regard-ing market conditions and customs and immigration regulations in the United States would have made him an even more valuable collaborator. However, Bush seems to have suff ered some reverses so that the firm��s godown had to be auc-tioned in 1850, and in September the following year the firm ceased to operate in Hong Kong.20 H. Anthon, who was appointed Vice-Consul in 1847, likewise handled a large number of America-bound vessels. In 1852, his fi rms, Anthon & Co. and Williams, Anthon & Co., handled 19 of the 86 ships that left for the United States that year. Other firms that were conspicuous in the trade that year were Meyers, Schaeffer & Co. and Murrow, Stephenson & Co.�Xwhich, like John Burd & Co., handled 14 vessels each.
Agent��s Work
A brief look at the agent��s multifaceted duties will reveal not only the importance of agency work but also how shipping activities touched upon many aspects of economic life; it will also highlight the finer details of Hong Kong as a port. Indeed, agency work�Xwhether agents for ships or for import and export�Xwas a key component of commercial activities in which Western merchants engaged in China in the mid-nineteenth century.
Even before the ship��s arrival, the agent went to work advertising the ship��s availability for chartering, passage and freight, and informed consignees of incoming cargoes to take delivery of their goods.21 In some cases, the ship��s agent was also tasked with fi nding buyers for the inward cargo. It arranged for pilot-age, berthing, and warehousing. It settled accounts with the captain, paying him his wages and reimbursing him for expenses incurred on the voyage. With the ship frequently in bad shape after a long sea journey, a large part of the agent��s work consisted of organizing the necessary repairs and maintenance. Rigging, sail-mending, repairing bottoms, and caulking were routine jobs. New water casks had to be made and new planks ordered. For steamers, which appeared more and more frequently in the China Seas, the boilers had to be checked and serviced. Owners/charterers sometimes preferred to have as many of the repair jobs done in Hong Kong as possible, even when they were not urgent, because it was cheaper there than in San Francisco.22 One practical reason for maintaining the vessel in good condition was that otherwise it would not get insured; even though at this point, insurance was not mandatory and many ships sailed unin-sured, an increasing number of shipowners bought insurance voluntarily, partly because they realized that a ship��s insurability was itself a selling point. Moreover, after the Chinese Passengers�� Act was passed in 1855, the vessel had to be sur-veyed and satisfy the Harbor Master of its seaworthiness�Xthough ��seaworthi-ness�� was rather hard to define�Xbefore he would issue a certificate of clearance. This meant that although old, decrepit ships might be bought and sold because the market was hungry for them�Xand Hong Kong was an active market for the trading of ships�Xthere were constraints on how bad their conditions could be; at least by the time they set sail again, enough improvements must have been made for them to meet certain safety requirements. The agent arranged for the ship to be measured by the Harbor Master to determine the number of passen-gers it could legally carry. Besides knowing the limits on passengers imposed by the British and US governments, it was necessary for an agent to be updated on the latest policies, laws, and regulations at diff erent ports.23
To get the vessel ready for the next voyage, it was the job of the agent, with the help of the captain, to assemble the crew�Xdischarging some and bringing on new members�Xand to have new crew members certified by the relevant consuls. On occasions, the agent accepted the resignation of one captain and signed on a new one. In case of sickness, the firm saw to seamen��s medical needs, and when men were left behind in hospital after the vessel sailed off ,24 it was also the agent��s duty to pay the medical charges. Captains and agents routinely pro-tected themselves against undue aggravation by disclaiming any liability for the debts incurred by the crew.25
The agent provided food and other consumables for the crew while they were in port, and also for the forthcoming voyage. Provisioning ships was to develop into big business in Hong Kong. Besides food, water was essential, and with it water casks. A nonstop transpacifi c voyage with passengers required an enormous amount of fresh water. Water was carried in casks, and making sure the casks did not leak was a major task;26 failure to do so could lead to dire consequences. Th e Lord Western, which left for San Francisco on April 21, 1852, returned to harbor 15 days later to replenish water wasted by leakage. Provisioning a vessel laid out for passengers was even more complicated: besides meeting the requirements laid down by the Passengers�� Act regarding amounts of food, the special tastes of Chinese passengers had to be taken into considera-tion. For steamers, coaling was essential.
An agent��s key task, however, was to find a charterer for the onward voyage, negotiate the terms of the charter party (contract), and complete all necessary documentation. In times of short supply, being in a position to decide who could charter a ship made the agent very powerful; at such times, it paid to be on the good side of the agency firm. If the vessel was not to be chartered at all, it was the agent��s duty to load it with passengers, or procure freight or load cargo on the owner��s account. Alternatively, the agent itself could charter the ship.
We get a glimpse of the chartering process and the relationship between agent and charterer from the case of the 550-ton Cornwall. The ship arrived in Hong Kong in early 1856 consigned to Jardine, Matheson & Co. Finding the market rather quiet, Captain William Dawson, who had been sailing the Hong Kong�VSan Francisco route since at least early 1850,27 asked Y. J. Murrow whether he would make an offer for the charter. Murrow was interested and they made a tentative, verbal agreement: he could have the entire between decks and about 12 feet of the poop for passengers, and the privilege of extending the poop for some 22 feet, thus expanding the carrying capacity. In addition, he was to have the use of all fittings and spare casks, but he had to provide everything else. The charter would be to Adelaide only. Remuneration was to be .3,000 or $12,000, with one-third payable on signing the charter and the remainder before sailing. The ship was to be dispatched in two weeks, but just to be on the safe side, Murrow asked for four weeks of lay-days on the charter party. He would be responsible for paying the necessary head money for passengers and for conforming to all Passengers�� Act regulations.
In the meantime, Jardine received an offer from another fi rm to charter the ship for Adelaide and Port Phillip for $15,000, to carry both passengers and cargo. Before closing this deal, Jardine told Murrow that he could still have the ship if he was ready to raise his offer to $12,800. Murrow was naturally very upset. He wrote back to withdraw his offer, admitting that: ��Having two ships on the berth at present wanting more than half their capacity in the shape of freight, I cannot compete with an offer that combines the advantage of cargo.�� In other words, while he could find enough passengers for the ship, he was not willing to pay more for the cargo space when there was already a glut of freight tonnage at port. He therefore had no choice but to turn down Jardine��s counter-proposal. Th e Cornwall eventually sailed for Adelaide with 316 passengers, pre-sumably under charter to another fi rm.28
Yorick J. Murrow was one of the most active charterers for California and Australia in the 1850s. He had arrived at Guangzhou from Liverpool in 1838, and the following year joined Jamieson, How & Co. His own company, Murrow & Co., founded in Guangzhou, was fi rst registered in Hong Kong in 1846. As early as June 1849, it was advertising itself as a ��passage broker to California�� under its Chinese firm name, Kwang Lee Hong.29 In 1851, he was joined by James Stephenson, a British merchant who had operated a one-man fi rm in Hong Kong in 1848 and who had crossed the Pacific on the Rhone in June 1849, no doubt in pursuit of gold. It is not known when he returned to Hong Kong, but on January 13, 1851, he and Y..J..Murrow announced their co-part-nership in a new company: Murrow, Stephenson & Co. Stephenson��s stay in San Francisco must have proven very useful for their ventures; he made another trip there in March 1853, obviously to study the market and to reinforce their connections there.30
In October 1853, the firm announced the establishment of a scheduled line of vessels between Hong Kong and San Francisco, to begin with the Stephen Baldwin, which would sail on December 1, followed by the Lord Warriston the following month.31 Th e firm declared that only large, substantial ships, which were unexceptional risks for insurers and whose sailing qualities had been thoroughly tested, would be selected for the line. As an incentive to ship-pers, it even promised that any cargo that might damage would be exempt from freight, and that goods from Guangzhou would be conveyed to Hong Kong free of river freight.
It was quite an innovation to suggest a scheduled and regular service between Hong Kong and San Francisco. So far, despite the dense traffic, ships had been chartered only on an irregular basis, and voyages were launched in response to demand. When demand was great, whatever vessels were available would be enlisted and all different types of vessels�Xbrigs, schooners, barques, clip-pers and ��ships���Xwere used. Vessels ranged greatly in size. At one end of the spectrum was the 297-ton British barque the John Mayo, which sailed for San Francisco in December 1851, while at the other was the American clipper the Challenge, weighing 2006 tons.
While it was theoretically an attractive proposition, there was good reason why no one had attempted fixed-schedule sailings across the Pacifi c before. The critical point was that a genuine ��liner�� service was simply not possible with sailing ships. The transatlantic packet trade worked because the trip was relatively short at about three weeks; the basic weather patterns were also well enough understood so that passage times were calculable and could be planned for as not being much greater than 22 days from New York to Liverpool and 40 days from Liverpool to New York. Neither of these aspects applied to the Pacifi c. Here, the shortest route from A to B�Xthe so-called Great Circle Route�Xcould not be followed by sailing ships except approximately, and only when the winds allowed. For a steamship, the passage from Hong Kong to San Francisco by the Great Circle was 6,270�V6,830 miles depending on the season. Basically, to avoid the severest winter storms, one traveled a longer course and that would take 27 days. A sailing ship, however, could hope for 40 days but might take 60 or more, and the timing was therefore too unpredictable to keep a fi xed schedule. Until companies were ready to use steamships on the transpacific route, a ��liner�� was not feasible.32 Thus it is not surprising that Murrow, Stephenson & Co. failed to deliver the goods: the scheduled sailings never materialized.33 Th e Stephen Baldwin, for which the company was agent and also charterer, did leave Hong Kong in early December as announced, though on December 3 rather than December 1. However, the Lord Warriston, for which Jardine, Matheson & Co. was agent, did not leave on January 1 as it should have. In fact, it left almost two months later, on February 20. No explanation is given as to why the sailing was so long delayed.
In 1854, the partnership between Murrow and Stephenson came to an end.34 Murrow continued to handle ships for Australia, California, and Peru, and offi-cially set himself up as a ��ship, produce, and insurance broker and adjuster of averages�� in July 1857.35 Then he went off and did something very diff erent. He founded the newspaper Hongkong Daily Press, and though he left for England in the mid-1860s, he continued to retain ownership of it until he died in 1884. As a journalist, he became a most colorful figure in Hong Kong history.36 James Stephenson continued on his own for some more years as James Stephenson & Co, and remained active in the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade. Th e Stephen Baldwin, along with a few other vessels such as the Janet Willis under his agency continued to be deployed on this route throughout the 1850s.37
Chinese Players
Chinese responded to the gold rush not only as emigrants, or even traders; they were also quick to seize upon the wide range of opportunities off ered by
different aspects of shipping, including ship owning, ship agency, chartering, and passage broking, and some became very big players indeed.
Th e first Chinese person we can identify as being directly engaged in the California passenger trade was none other than Tam Achoy, when he acted as agent twice for the Ann Welsh in Hong Kong in 1852.38 It is likely that he had also chartered the ship for a San Francisco-bound voyage later in the year. He was, in addition, inward agent of the Hamilton on both the occasions that it sailed to Hong Kong in 1853, and he became its owner�Xprobably soon aft erward.39
Th e Hamilton was the first Chinese-owned ship to sail into San Francisco. It created quite a stir when it arrived on June 1, 1853 with an ��Anglo-Saxon crew and commander,�� but owned by ��Chinamen�� and sailing under ��the Chinese flag.�� (In fact, on this voyage it was registered as American despite Chinese own-ership, and it might have physically flown a Chinese flag.) A large party visited it and the visitors were given a 12-gun salute and handsomely entertained.40 No doubt the ship��s owners were keen to celebrate their ownership and promote business. Ships owned by Chinese changed hands often, and each voyage could be made under a diff erent owner or group of owners; agents likewise changed frequently. On this voyage in mid-1853, the Hamilton was owned by Ton Kee, and its agent was the Wo Kee firm operated by A. Hing.41
Th e Hamilton sailed into San Francisco again on March 9, 1854 after an unu-sually long voyage. This time, its agent in San Francisco was the Yu Yuen fi rm, operated by Tam Ahnee,42 while the ship was referred to as belonging to the ���O fi rm (Putonghua, Chang Ji; probably romanized as Chong Kee from the Cantonese). After Tam Achoy purchased it, the Hamilton did not sail this route again for two years until 1856, and by then, it seems, the ship had passed into foreign ownership.
Th e Potomac, another Chinese-owned ship, illustrates wonderfully how Chinese merchants played the shipping market. Th e Potomac was purchased by ��Mr. Mou Kee�� in San Francisco in 1853 in very poor condition for about $5,000. He then spent about 10,000 dollars on repairs and alterations to refi t it ��purposely for the Chinese trade,�� and transformed ��an old hulk into a good ship.��43 Th e Alta California reported that the new layout was entirely diff erent from those of American or European vessels, but the captain thought the plans for refurbishment, though strange to him, ��very cunningly devised.�� One result was that space could be utilized better to accommodate more passengers.44 Th e ship sailed for Hong Kong on October.12, 1853 under Captain E. L. Stone and an American crew, and with Wo Kee as agent.45 In Hong Kong, it was sold to a Chinese buyer for some $25,000. Nor was that the end of the story. Th e new owner added an extra deck to the vessel to expand its carrying capacity, and in the next sailing to San Francisco it took 500 emigrants, charging the extraordinary amount of $75 each, pocketing some $37,000 in passage money. Th is amount, significantly, was clear profit as freight more than paid for all the expenses.46
Such enterprise among Chinese businessmen was not lost upon the Americans. Referring to both the Hamilton and Potomac, the Alta California, commented that since the beginning of the trade between California and China, the Chinese people ��have imbibed some of our commercial ideas, and enter into maritime transactions with considerable alacrity�� and ��charter and freight vessels with the same spirit as the foreign merchant houses at Hong Kong.��47 The paper had a point, though it was not necessarily true that Chinese entrepreneurs were entering the shipping and cargo trades only by imitat-ing foreign merchants, since such businesses had been around in China itself for a long time.48 However, to the extent that�Xwith the development of the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade from the 1850s�XChinese were being initiated into owning and chartering Western-built ships commanded by European or American captains, and operating within a Western legal framework (especially with regard to contracts) and observing Western commercial conventions, the comment was pertinent. The statement is also true in the sense that the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade became the fi rst arena for Chinese (and Cantonese) to be engaged in long-distance transoceanic shipping, which in itself was a signifi-cant landmark in modern Chinese history.
Shipping offered more than just another means for Chinese capitalists to prosper. As they bought, sold, and chartered each other��s ships and acted as each other��s agents and passage brokers, shipping represented one more sphere of contact that deepened the growing networks between Hong Kong and California. Men like Tam Achoy, A. Hing, Mou Kee and Ahnee could not have operated their shipping business so successfully without widespread and trusted connections on the other side of the ocean. We might even speculate that Tam Achoy was a partner in Wo Kee.49 In later chapters we will discuss groups of firms�Xthat is, firms with their branches and associate firms�Xengaged in ship-ping and trading between Hong Kong and California that energized the fl ow of capital across the Pacifi c.
In the shipping arena, too, Hong Kong��s Chinese entrepreneurs showed how skillfully they had learned to exploit the British legal system. Another foreign ship bought by a Chinese merchant for this route was the Libertad, a Chilean barque that Chook Sing (of the shop Sia Loong) bought in 1854 for $30,000. Captain Lund, who sold the ship on behalf of the owner, reassured Chook Sing that the ship could carry 536 passengers. In fact, it loaded 200 passengers at the rate of $52 and another 200, at shorter notice, at $62, making a total of $23,800�Xnot much less than the purchase price. Even considering the many outgoings that the new owner would eventually have to pay toward the voyage�X provisions, water, crew wages, port facility charges, and so on�Xit would still mean a very good return on the investment. However, the deal was broken off when Lund claimed that Chook Sing had not paid the balance of the purchasing amount as agreed, and as far as he [Lund] was concerned, Chook Sing had for-feited the first payment of $2,000. Considering the deal aborted, Lund took the ship out of Hong Kong harbor with 400 passengers on board, and their passage money as well. However, Chook Sing refused to concede defeat and brought a lawsuit against Lund, and as a result the British Vice-Admiral��s man-of-war arrested the ship and took it back to port.50 The court ruled in Chook Sing��s favor, and the Libertad, now in the possession of Chook Sing and his three part-ners, eventually sailed away with a new captain and 297 passengers, with some passengers having transferred to other ships during the long legal battle.51
Besides buying and selling ships outright, Chinese capitalists also partici-pated in the shipping business by financing others. By its very nature, informa-tion about such behind-the-scenes activity is hard to come by, but occasionally it does surface. We know, for instance, that one such financier was Cheong Ahoy. He lent a certain Captain McCormick a total of $6,000 to refurbish the Emma, which had been towed from the Pratas Shoal in 1855; it must have been in an extremely poor condition as McCormick was to able to buy it at auction for only $3,000.52 Once restored, the ship was chartered to take Chinese passengers from Hong Kong to Melbourne, and one may assume that without Cheong��s help, McCormick would not have been able to get the ship into good enough condition to sail again. At about the same time, Cheong made another loan to McCormick so that he could charter the Danish vessel Frederick.VI for a passage to California.53 Many levels of financial relationship between Chinese and foreign merchants had developed since the old ��Canton days,�� by which they made loans to each other�Xsometimes at usurious rates�Xand deposited funds with each other,54 and the California passenger trade became an additional ��arena�� for such collaboration.
��A considerable amount of vessels [that] have lately sailed are now under dis-patch for Chinese,�� observed a San Francisco firm as early as 1854,55 showing that the Chinese were also expanding into the shipping business as charterers; by the early 1860s, there were a number of big players. Among the leading Chinese charterers were Wo Hang (Wohang) and Cum Cheong Tai.
The Wo Hang firm, as we have seen, was founded by Li Leong and his cousin, Li Sing.56 Natives of Xinhui county, one of the counties in Guangdong that sent large numbers of emigrants to North America, the Li ��brothers�� were among the earliest Chinese to have arrived in the new British colony; in fact, Li Sing was even described as ��one of the first men in the colony��!57 The Hong Kong histo-rian Carl Smith, working from land records, discovered that the two, starting in a modest way, made their first fortunes through buying and selling land. In 1857, they established the Wo Hang firm, which engaged in a wide range of businesses. Smith��s analysis provides a clear picture of how the company grew, and demon-strates that then, as now, land in Hong Kong was an almost magical source of capital for many other areas of activity. Land remained one of the mainstays of the Li family, whose members were among the largest property owners in Hong Kong well into the twentieth century.58
Wo Hang entered the chartering business by concentrating first on sending vessels to California and Australia. In 1858, through its agent Russell & Co., it chartered the Caribbean from Jardine, the ship��s agent. It seems that the ��foreign merchant�� who admired Li Liang��s art (see Chapter 1) could have been one of the partners of Russell & Co., and a deep bond between these two fi rms becomes apparent through their close collaboration into the 1880s. In the same year, 1858, Wo Hang also chartered the Boston Light and Mastiff from the ships�� agent Jardine for Sydney and Melbourne. Later, its carrying trade extended to Southeast Asia as well. By the early 1860s, Wo Hang had become deeply involved with the emigration business as ships�� charterer, labor broker, and exporter/importer.59 It participated in the lucrative opium business on a large scale, winning the monopoly to retail opium in Hong Kong in 1862 and 1863 and, combined with other partners, from 1873 to 1879; it bought the gambling license from government when gambling was legalized in 1868; at the same time, it invested in the rice trade, importing rice from Annam and exporting it to China and to the Chinese communities in the gold-rush countries.60 We will see the close connection between the export of prepared opium, rice, shipping, and emigration in the following chapters.
When Li Leong died in 1864, he left the management of Wo Hang to Li Sing, whose name then became synonymous with Wo Hang. Li Sing and his brother, Li Chit, had formed their own company trading with California, the Lai Hing.61 To expand their operations in California, Li Chit went over to set up an associate fi rm (lianhao),62 the Lai Hing Lung there; this was obviously a good move as Lai Hing Lung became a major Chinese firm in San Francisco. With the founding of another lianhao, the Wo Hang Lung, in San Francisco, the Li family��s position in Hong Kong�VCalifornia businesses was further consoli-dated. Merchants in California, Chinese and American, recognized their vast assets and vied for their business and association.63
Wo Hang��s chartering of the Caribbean reveals interesting aspects of the trade in the 1860s. In particular, it shows how Wo Hang, a Chinese fi rm, aligned with two American firms, was able to hold its own against Jardine, Matheson & Co., the premier British firm in the ��Far East.��
In April 1858, the Caribbean sailed from Hong Kong for San Francisco, carrying 380 passengers. Wo Hang had chartered the vessel from Captain Winchester, with Jardine, Matheson & Co. as agent for the shipowner and for the captain; Russell & Co. was Wo Hang��s agent in Hong Kong and Macondray & Co. its agent in San Francisco. When the ship arrived, the balance of the charter money, $7,000, was due to be paid to Captain Winchester. According to him, it had been agreed by Wo Hang that another $1,400 should be paid�X that is, 20 percent of $7,000, the difference in exchange between the Mexican dollar (which was legal tender in Hong Kong) and the US dollar. However, Macondray & Co., acting on Wo Hang��s behalf, refused to pay the captain the extra $1,400, claiming that according to Wo Hang, Winchester had consented to waive the exchange premium on account of the fact that the ship had carried fewer passengers than Wo Hang had originally expected.
The root of the dispute was this: Th e Caribbean had previously been eligi-ble to carry 426 passengers, but as a result of the constraints imposed by the Chinese Passengers�� Act, it could now only carry a maximum of 380, and Wo Hang claimed that Winchester had agreed, on this account, to waive the extra payment to compensate Wo Hang for its loss in passage money.
Despite Captain Winchester��s vehement denial that the question of giving up his right had ever been mooted with him, Macondray & Co. refused to settle the charter money on any terms other than its own. Still, their disagree-ment notwithstanding, both sides were eager to avoid expensive litigation in San Francisco, and instead of going to court there, Jardine suggested that the amount in dispute should be remitted from San Francisco to the manager of the Oriental Bank Co. in Hong Kong and held in the names of Jardine and Russell & Co. until the matter could be settled. In the meantime, quicksilver was bought with the disputed amount and shipped to Hong Kong in lieu of cash. Such a form of remittance, we will see in the next chapter, was common in the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade.
Th e conflict had arisen partly over the number of passengers�Xthe discrep-ancy between the number that Captain Winchester originally told Wo Hang the ship could carry and the number that he eventually allowed to be put on board. Jardine admitted that in the past, before the Chinese Passengers�� Act was enacted, the Caribbean had been able to carry 426 passengers, because then the Emigration Officer in Hong Kong had allowed passengers to be accommodated in the deckhouse. By the time the voyage was to be made, the new legislation had been introduced, and accordingly the Emigration Officer would no longer ��pass the deckhouse.�� Jardine insisted that Wo Hang should have been aware of the new constraints so that for it to claim ignorance was untenable. Wo Hang fi nally acceded to its liability, and Jardine took over the flasks of quicksilver.64
The episode shows some of the biggest players in the field in action. Wo Hang was well served by his American associates, Russell & Co. and Macondray & Co. Though Wo Hang eventually yielded, it managed to hold out until the circum-stances were fully explained by Jardine rather than cave in at the fi rst instance.
The episode also sheds light on how the Chinese Passengers�� Act aff ected opera-tions on the ground.
The other emerging Chinese chartering firm, Cum Cheong Tai�Xunlike Wo Hang, a one-family enterprise�Xwas formed by three partners who were appar-ently unrelated by blood. Th e fi rm fi rst appears in our record as an exporter of goods to California, sending a cargo of cotton, melon seeds, common paper, and pills at a declared value of $72.52 on the Black Warrior in August 1859.65 It is not clear when it started chartering ships, but in 1865 it chartered at least 16 ships from Augustine Heard & Co (as agent) alone.66 The ��head�� of the company�X who was referred to simply as ��Cum Cheong Tai�� 67�Xseems to have spent some time in California where he made connections helpful to his shipping and other businesses; by 1863, he was back in Hong Kong.
Cum Cheong Tai [the man] obviously traveled frequently between Hong Kong and California to develop his business, building up personal ties, and social and economic networks, across the Pacific. One of his many friends and business associates in San Francisco was Charles Ryberg, an American char-terer of numerous ships on the Hong Kong�VCalifornia route in the 1860s and an active exporter/importer of goods. They kept a running account with each other so that in Hong Kong, Cum Cheong Tai settled accounts for Ryberg on many occasions. For instance, with regard to the vessel Arracan which Ryberg consigned to Augustine Heard & Co. in 1864, he instructed Heard & Co. to draw on Cum Cheong Tai for the balance if there were insuffi cient funds on hand for commissions, stevedore bills, and so on.68 Both Cum Cheong Tai and Ryberg worked frequently with Heard & Co., with Cum Cheong Tai chartering ships from Heard (as agent) and Ryberg appointing Heard as the inward agent for ships he dispatched to Hong Kong, thus forming a tightly knit symbiotic transpacifi c relationship. Though Heard & Co. would be in a very good posi-tion to procure passengers for Ryberg for vessels that he had chartered by the round voyage�Xthat is, from San Francisco to Hong Kong and back�XRyberg made it clear that he preferred to have Cum Cheong Tai procure passengers for him in Hong Kong, ��as he is an old friend of mine.��69 Like many Americans, Ryberg realized that no one could substitute for the Chinese as passage brokers on these routes.
In addition, Cum Cheong Tai��s [the man��s] wide experience in international trade and shipping, ample resources, and integrity must have appealed to Ryberg for him to be trusted so implicitly. Besides chartering ships to California, Cum Cheong Tai firm also chartered large numbers of ships for Southeast Asia and was a big rice trader. Another of the firm��s occupations was gold. With Hong Kong a major destination of the gold exported from California, it is hardly surprising that Cum Cheong Tai should be involved in that business as well.70 Nor should it be surprising that it too had shares in a major opium syndicate, although obviously its participation in opium was on a much smaller scale than that of Wo Hang.71
Wo Hang and Cum Cheong Tai, working closely with Russell & Co. and Heard & Co. respectively, played a dynamic role in sustaining the transpacifi c flow from the late 1850s through the 1860s to the early 1870s. The dense trans-pacific network was further woven by two latecomers, Cornelius Koopmanschap and Charles Bosman, who burst on to the scene in 1859 and, with their fl am-boyant and aggressive style, colored the Hong Kong�VSan Francisco shipping landscape for the next few years.
Transpacific Duo: Koopmanschap and Bosman
Cornelius Koopmanschap hailed from Holland. Born in Amsterdam in 1828, he went to California around 1850 and operated a commission house handling Chinese goods, acting as consignee of goods and vessels from China. In August 1853, for instance, at least two vessels, Graf von Hoogendorp and Rose of Sharon, dispatched in Hong Kong by Meyers, Schaeffer & Co., were consigned to him.72 In the 1850s and 1860s, he traveled to China on a number of occasions, staying long enough in Hong Kong to appear on the jury list for 1859 and 1862 and for the California Police Gazette to describe him ��as a rich merchant living in Hong Kong.�� However, his membership in the San Francisco Union Club attests to his residence and eminence in California.73
Around 1859, Koopmanschap set up a company in Hong Kong. His partner was Charles H. M. Bosman, who arrived that year�Xprobably also by way of San Francisco�Xand when Koopmanschap returned to the United States, the 23-year-old Bosman was left behind to run the show in Hong Kong.74
Their company started with a bang. In 1859, the first year of its operation, Koopmanschap & Bosman Co. acted as agent for (or chartered) 6 out of the 25 ships that sailed from Hong Kong to San Francisco,75 and in 1861, 16 out of 32 ships. At the same time, the company also sent ships to Bangkok and other destinations in Southeast Asia.76
In August 1862, the firm was reorganized as Koopmanschap & Co. in San Francisco and Bosman & Co. in Hong Kong, with the latter taking on a new partner, Henry F. Edwards of San Francisco.77 Their aim was to control the transpacific passenger trade at both ends by seeking the privilege of appointing agents in the destination ports when negotiating the charter of a ship. Since the ship��s agent was in a strong position to decide on the next charterer, or even to take the charter itself�Xin other words, the agent usually had ��fi rst dip���Xby consigning vessels to each other as far as possible, Koopmanschap and Bosman were potentially able to exclude competitors from the fi eld.
We see Koopmanschap and Bosman in action in the following transactions. In June 1862, when chartering the Aurora from Heard & Co. (as agent) in Hong Kong, their company managed to obtain an agreement to consign the vessel inwardly to Koopmanschap & Co. in San Francisco for a commission of 2.5 percent of the charter amount, which was $20,000.78 This rate was not uncommon. Not all ships�� agents, however, were ready to treat Koopmanschap and Bosman so favorably, especially with regard to giving the agent in San Francisco a free hand. In December 1862, when applying to charter the 1,970-ton British ship King Lear from its agent, Jardine, Matheson & Co., Bosman also asked that Koopmanschap & Co. be appointed the consignee in San Francisco at 2.5 percent commission. Jardine agreed only after some hesitation, claiming that it would have preferred to consign the vessel to its own ��friends�� in San Francisco at 2 percent commission.79 Jardine also imposed restrictions. ��As respecting the consignment of the vessel,�� it wrote to Bosman, ��we believe Captain Cradduce will avail himself of Koopmanschap & Co.��s service during his stay in San Francisco,�� but beyond that, he ��does not wish to be bound to any particular consignee.��80 In other words, once Koopmanschap had discharged all the inward duties, the captain would be free to find another charterer or appoint another agent of his own choice for the outward voyage, and not leave the business in Koopmanschap & Co.��s control for any longer than he absolutely had to. As it turned out, after arriving in San Francisco and being processed by Koopmanschap & Co. for all the necessary inward formalities, the vessel was consigned to another firm and did not return to Hong Kong.
Jardine��s toughness did not deter Bosman from persisting in his attempt to appoint Koopmanschap & Co. the agent in San Francisco whenever possi-ble, including his negotiation for the charter of the 335-ton barque Speedwell from Jardine on another occasion. Again, the British hong showed itself a tough negotiator. While accepting that ��Messrs Koopmanschap & Co will under your [Bosman & Co��s] guarantee, collect and remit the Speedwell��s freight to us,�� it would only do so on condition that the charterer��s agent would charge ��but one half of the customary commission.��81 Bosman accepted the terms, perhaps in order to fulfill the commitment of a monthly sailing (see below). If this was so, the commitment to monthly sailings could certainly be a liability.
Their business thrived: in 1862, out of a total of 39 vessels leaving Hong Kong for San Francisco, 20 were dispatched by them; in 1863, it was 22 out of 41 and in 1864, 12 out of 25�Xfigures that reflect a significant market share. What was striking was not only the number of vessels the two companies handled but their ambition to establish a regular operation, sending out a ship each month in each direction. In this way, they realized to a greater degree than ever before the long-hoped-for idea of a regular, scheduled operation. Th roughout 1862, Koopmanschap advertised his operation as the ��Black Ball Clipper Line,�� but the trope�Xfor reasons unknown�Xlasted only about a year, and the reference to a ��line�� was dropped from all advertisements thereaft er.82 However, the rela-tive regularity of the operation persisted, though it never succeeded in having strictly scheduled sailings.
In early 1863, Koopmanschap & Co. in San Francisco committed itself to a time charter, taking vessels on an annual basis�Xfor example, the 1,200-ton ship Imperial was chartered for 12 months at $3,200 per month, with all port charges paid.83 Though this mode of charter might better enable the company to off er monthly sailings, or near-monthly sailings, such an ambitious move might prove risky too, as it would not be able to respond flexibly enough to changing market conditions. Koopmanschap and Bosman��s market share in the chartering busi-ness began to shrink in the second half of the 1860s for a variety of reasons, but one of them was a huge fallout between the two men.84 Bosman was declared bankrupt in 1869 and left for England, where he died in 1893 (though he might have made a brief trip back to Hong Kong in the interim).85 Koopmanschap, on the other side of the Pacific, also dropped out of shipping and import/export trade to focus increasingly on bringing Chinese labor into America to build rail-roads as well as to work on plantations in the South, his experience in transpa-cific business no doubt helping to establish him as the leading contractor and importer of Chinese labor by the end of the decade. He died in 1882 in Brazil, where he had gone to negotiate the importation of Chinese contract labor.86
��Knowing all the Chinese��: Macondray & Co.
Koopmanschap and Bosman��s demise in the shipping field may partly be accounted for by the ascendancy of Macondray & Co., whose story off ers insights into the increasingly complex connections between Hong Kong and California. Captain Frederick William Macondray, as shown in the fi rst chapter, provided one of the earliest bridges across the Pacifi c.87 Th e firm he set up in San Francisco in 1849, Macondray & Co., acted as commission agent for fi rms in Boston, Mexico, Australia, and China, while also trading on its own account exporting flour, wheat, and lumber to China and Australia; it later became a leading importer of tea�Xfirst from China and then Japan.88 Shipping formed a major part of its trade, with the Hong Kong�VCalifornia route one of its main foci. In 1852 alone, it sent at least 12 ships on this route.89 As noted, it was Wo Hang��s agent in America for the Caribbean in 1858. The company became espe-cially active aft er 1863, when Captain Macondray died and his son, Frederick
W. Macondray Jr., took over.
Young Macondray had big plans. One of his primary ambitions was to capture a bigger share of the California�VHong Kong shipping business�Xperhaps even to monopolize it. Given such a goal, it was no wonder that he saw Cornelius Koopmanschap as his chief rival. Macondray was confident that he had greater resources: his company knew ��all the Chinese�� in California and could get twice as much freight from the Chinese and ��white people�� than ��Koop.�� He believed that he could ��run him [Koopmanschap] off in one or two years,�� and got into many unpleasant situations with him.90
To gain a larger share of the market, Macondray had to find a close collabora-tor in Hong Kong so that they could consign ships to each other as charterer��s agent, much as Koopmanschap and Bosman had been doing. To this end, he set sail for the British colony in February 1865. Though aware that he could fi nd association with a number of firms there, Russell & Co. was his main objective. Russell & Co., occupying ��a first class position�� in China, was naturally a desir-able collaborator.91 In addition, the old business and family associations going back to the time when Captain Macondray commanded Russell & Co.��s ships must have come into play, and the younger Macondray was constantly writing to Russell & Co.��s partners, such as Richard Dana and Warren Delano Jr., deferen-tially and seeking advice. But one of Russell & Co.��s greatest appeals for Frederick Macondray Jr., as far as passenger shipping was concerned, was its close relation-ship with Wo Hang. ��Wo Hang [i.e. Li Sing] is a very large man among the Chinese and his influence is great,�� he wrote to his office in San Francisco aft er arriving in Hong Kong.92 Indeed, Macondray & Co. seems to have enjoyed a comfortable working relationship with Wo Hang��s San Francisco branch, the Wo Hang Lung, which supplied passengers for vessels chartered by Macondray & Co.93 Unfortunately, few ships coming from Hong Kong were consigned to his firm. Macondray felt that if he could consolidate his collaboration with Wo Hang through Russell & Co., he would be assured of more agencies of ships coming from Hong Kong.94 In this way, a two-way transpacifi c business would be clinched, and he would come closer to cornering the market. Th e problem was that the relationship between Russell & Co. and Macondray & Co. was an asymmetrical one in terms of their respective assets and business standing; it was certainly asymmetrical on the operational level. For the first nine months of 1864, during which Macondray & Co. had consigned Russell & Co. ten vessels, the latter company only sent one from Hong Kong in return. Macondray tried calling Russell & Co.��s attention to this ��little fact���Xthat their relationship was ��a little one sided���Xbut it did not seem to have made much impression on the older and bigger fi rm.95
Thus, once in Hong Kong, Macondray busied himself speaking to various parties, including Li Sing, and had ��some considerable conversation�� with him about his hopes for Wo Hang to consign vessels to him. Macondray even went to check out Charles Bosman, of whom he had heard many unfavorable things, as a possible collaborator. Bosman seemed willing enough, but Macondray even-tually decided it best and safest not to have anything to do with him.96
When Macondray finally got Russell & Co. and Wo Hang to sign an agree-ment concerning the shipping business, he was thrilled. The exact content of the agreement is not known, but he wrote to the San Francisco offi ce rejoicing that: ��In this agreement I have exacted everything that I think we wished to have agreed to,�� and ��nothing but what we are able and willing to perform,�� and ��if the contract is followed up, I think you will agree with me that it will be all that we desire in the premises.��97 Moreover, having met Li Sing several times by then, he believed that he ��talks fair enough�� and would do what he promised,98 and when Li signed his name to a paper, he [Macondray] might depend on him.99 The agreement with Russell & Co. and Wo Hang did not immediately come into effect, but from around 1868 onward, Macondray & Co. became the chief charterer of ships to Hong Kong.100 Operating under the banner of ��Macondray & Co.��s Line,�� its vessels were dispatched on an almost monthly basis, and to emphasize the regularity of the operation, every vessel advertised to sail was described as scheduled ��to follow�� a previous vessel. Th e fi rm fi nally established the kind of close collaboration with Russell & Co. that it had long coveted, and the fact that Russell & Co. was Macondray��s agent in Hong Kong was promi-nently displayed in every Macondray & Co. advertisement�Xno doubt a declara-tion of Frederick Macondray��s new standing in the transpacific business world.101 His connections with Wo Hang must also have enhanced his standing among the Chinese in California, a fact that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company had to reckon with in due course.
A Scheduled Line
In Hong Kong, talk of a regular line between Hong Kong and California fl oated about long before it materialized and, as we have observed, none would have been possible without employing a fleet of steamships. The absence of a sched-uled line on this route was a sore point. Merchants complained that California-bound vessels often just slipped out of the harbor without advance notice,102 making it difficult for them to plan their activities�Xwhether sending a letter or goods on a certain ship, or calculating the supply and demand of freight, passage, or goods.
As early as May 1852, Jardine, Matheson & Co. was informed by John Parrott, a merchant in San Francisco, that a petition had come before the United States Congress for aid to establish a line of steamers between California and China.103 Two years later, the Hong Kong newspapers published news of a ��company of wealthy and enterprising gentlemen, with a capital of ten mil-lions of dollars�� planning to establish a line of steamers between San Francisco and China, touching at the Sandwich Islands.104 The matter was mooted again the following year, with R..B..Forbes, one-time head of Russell & Co., being reported as establishing a line of mail steamers from the United States across the Pacific to China.105 None of these came to pass. Although several Hong Kong�V San Francisco ��lines�� were established in the 1860s, they only lasted briefl y, and precisely scheduled sailings were never achieved.
Yet all this time the demand for passage and freight, and for regular and scheduled sailings, continued to grow and merchants in the United States waited for the right moment to make the move. In 1865, with the end of the Civil War as well as the completion of the transcontinental railroad in sight, the future looked very different and a new excitement was in the air. The US Congress, in the mood to develop trade with Asia, authorized a subsidy of $500,000 for a line of steamers to transport mail to Japan and China, to start not later than January 1, 1867. Th e Pacific Mail Steam Ship Co. (PMSSC) made a bid for the subsidy, agreeing to make 12 round trips annually between San Francisco and Hong Kong, with calls at Honolulu and Kanagawa. The PMSSC had been founded in 1848 by a group of New York City merchants to execute a contract to carry mail from the Isthmus of Panama to the newly annexed territory of California. When gold was discovered just months later, the company was positioned ideally to cash in on the hordes of eager passengers from Europe and the American East. With almost 20 years of effi cient and punctual service to its credit, it won the contract to carry mail to Asia, and was tasked with pioneering the venture of establishing a line of steamers, with first-class accommodation, across the Pacifi c.
Punctually, the Colorado departed from San Francisco on January 1, 1867. The occasion was celebrated lavishly, with officials and merchants making extravagant speeches on future exchanges between the United States and the ��Far East.�� There was even talk of 100,000 laborers from China and India arriv-ing to help develop California and increase trade.106 Despite carrying only 191 passengers on this voyage�Xa relatively small number107�Xthe PMSSC liners were to become the main carriers of Chinese passengers for decades to come.
For us, it is significant that it was Hong Kong and not some other port on the China coast that was chosen as the terminus at the western end of the Pacifi c�Xa clear recognition of its status as a leading Pacific gateway to Asia, a gateway with established networks and vital maritime terminal facilities. In the case of steamships, Hong Kong was especially privileged as the Chinese port that could provide high-quality coal for coaling ships for the return journey.108 Yet Hong Kong almost missed the opportunity of being the PMSSC��s terminal.
In April 1867, the Pacific Mail�Xpossibly to save money�Xapplied for per-mission to terminate the voyages of the steamers at Yokohama and maintain the line to Hong Kong by smaller ships. Permission was granted for these altera-tions but the change was never made. The company��s president, Allan McLane, vetoed the proposal after an inspection tour of the entire route from New York to Hong Kong. His ��timely arrival in Asia,�� he claimed, enabled him to prevent ��the consummation of what must have proved a serious commercial blunder�� in changing the terminus of the main line from Hong Kong to Yokohama, given that ��the existing trade between Hong Kong and California is to-day our prin-cipal dependence.��109 As a result, Hong Kong remained the terminus for the line as planned.
Before larger ships were built specifically for the China run, the side-wheeler Colorado was taken off the Panama route by the PMSSC to sail for Asia. It was given an extra mast and strengthened all around the water line against the beating of Pacific storms. At 340 feet and with a gross tonnage of 3,728 tons, she greatly outsized any of the sailing vessels that were plying the Pacific sea lanes. On its initial voyage, it arrived in Hong Kong 28 days out of San Francisco, quite a record considering that the average of later steam voyages was 34 days. It returned to San Francisco with passengers and a full cargo of more than 2,000 tons after being in Hong Kong for more than a fortnight.110
Four new side-wheelers that the PMSSC built specifically for the China route�XGreat Republic, China, Japan, and America�X entered service between 1867 and 1869. In May 1872, in anticipation of a further mail subsidy from Congress, a semimonthly schedule was introduced and the Colorado was recalled to help in the new program. After the burning of the America in August of that year, the Alaska joined the transpacifi c fl eet.111 Between 3,500 and 4,000 tons, these vessels were in fact much larger than required by the mail contract. Besides the need to provide bunker capacity for the 1,500 tons of coal they carried, the company obviously planned to carry a large number of passengers, its main source of revenue. Th e Great Republic, for instance, was designed with quarters for 250 cabin passengers and 1,200 steerage passengers.112 The luxury of the accommodations for cabin passengers�Xthe black walnut furniture, silk uphol-stery and floors covered not with carpets or oilcloths but with stripes of spruce and black walnut in ��Zebra pattern���Xwas much publicized. Contemporaries spoke of their cabins being furnished like drawing rooms ashore, and a traveler was rhapsodic about the ��immense proportion and superb finish of this noble vessel.��
Figure 8 ��Chinese emigration to America�Xsketch on board Pacific Mail steamship Alaska.�� Source: Harper��s Weekly, vol. 20 (May 20, 1876), p. 408. By courtesy of HarpWeek.
Few Chinese traveled in cabin. Since steerage passengers provided the bulk of its income,113 the Pacific Mail designed the steamers very much with them in mind. Steerage passengers, accommodated mainly on the berth deck, with a smaller number forward on the main deck, slept in standee berths consisting of wooden frames over which canvas was stretched. By all accounts, their quar-ters were well ventilated and the ship��s officers saw that they were kept clean. In general, cleanliness was recognized as one of the line��s selling points. Steerage passengers mostly stayed below deck, gambling or lying in their berths, and there was a space curtained off for opium smoking. Deck space was provided for them, however, and in warm weather or whenever another ship was sighted, passengers swarmed out into the open.
Food for steerage passengers was prepared by Chinese cooks in their own galley, with the meals consisting of rice, dried fish, fresh pork, boiled cabbage, stewed turnip, and duck��s egg as a particular delicacy.114 Westerners oft en ridi-culed Chinese food for its strange smells and taste, but to the Chinese travelers facing the hazards of a perilous journey and an uncertain future in the desti-nation, the very smells and taste of hometown cooking must have been most comforting. By the same token, the gambling and opium smoking provided the necessary entertainment to reduce the tedium of a long voyage. Oft en, too, there would be musical or drama performances organized by passengers or crew members, which further provided a sense of conviviality. We may imagine that when professional opera actors and musicians happened to be on board, as many troupes were organized to appear in the United States and Canada, the perfor-mances they put on informally would have been greatly appreciated. Not sur-prisingly, even many wealthy Chinese who could well have afforded to travel in cabin preferred to go steerage, not only because the food was more to their taste but for the overall congenial atmosphere.
Unquestionably, Pacific Mail��s main income was derived from passage, as shown in Tables 3.5 and 3.6.
Entering China with gusto, PMSSC was a force to be reckoned with. It pulled out all the big guns, appointing Russell & Co. its agent in Shanghai and Augustine Heard & Co. to the position in Hong Kong, though by 1869 Heard & Co. had been replaced by George E. Lane as agent.115 Initially, Koopmanschap & Co. responded to the potentially threatening situation by positioning itself
Table 3.5 Receipts of the PMSSC China Branch ending 1868
Source Amount
From passengers $340,650 From freight $258,019 From mail payment $208,383 From sundries $8,165
Total $821,168
Approximate expenses of the same voyages $673,395 Profi t $147,772
Source: Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Report of the President to the Stockholders, February 1868, p. 24.
Table 3.6 Receipts of the PMSSC China Branch ending April 20, 1876
From Transpacific Line passengers $910,252.02 From Freight $627,029.98
Total $1,537,282.00
Expenses $1,188,996.15 Subsidy $500,000.00 Balance $848,285.85
Source: Kemble, Side Wheelers Across the Pacific, p. 34.
as PMSSC��s broker in San Francisco for freight and passengers, but this strat-egy did not work and Wells Fargo was appointed instead.116 Indeed, PMSSC might have contributed to Koopmanschap��s demise and helped Macondray & Co. reduce its rival.
The number of non-PMSSC vessels departing San Francisco for Hong Kong declined aft er 1867 (14 vessels in 1868 compared with 45 in 1864), as might be expected, yet PMSSC never completely monopolized the transpacifi c pas-senger trade. In 1869, for example, almost 5,000 passengers sailed on chartered vessels to San Francisco.117 For Macondray & Co. at least, the market share did not diminish. In 1871, for example, there were still 14 chartered vessels sailing to Hong Kong, and Macondray was sending 12 of them. A year before inau-gurating its steamship service, the Pacific Mail had done its market research by sending its representatives to China and canvassing the Chinese in California to
Figure 9 US-fl agged Pacific Mail steamer City of Peking shown in Hong Kong harbor,
c..1874. Source: Chinese school painting, oil on board. Potash Co. Collection. By courtesy of, and with permission from, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company Collection of Stephen J. and Jeremy W. Potash, San Francisco Bay Area.
fi nd out the sentiments of prospective travelers.118 While the response to these investigations was generally satisfactory, PMSSC could not rule out the possi-bility that some travelers might still prefer to travel by sail, with cheaper fares being a major reason. In 1866, the PMSSC��s steerage rate from San Francisco to Hong Kong was $55.50, but by the end of 1867 it had to be reduced to $40 to be competitive.119
Table 3.7, which lists ships from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1869�Xtwo years after the establishment of a line of steamships�Xreveals some noteworthy points. First, while it is no surprise that five PMSSC steamers (total tonnage 47,820) took 9,393 Chinese passengers to San Francisco on 12 voyages in that year, it is interesting to note that another 22 chartered sailing vessels (total
Table 3.7 Ships sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1869
Departure Days Arrival Name of Tons Flag Type of Master Dispatched by Consigned to in Female All Hong Kong San Vessel vessel in Hong Kong San Francisco Chinese Chinese Francisco passengers passen-gers
Jan 10 35 Feb 23 China 3,836 Am stmr Warsaw PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 359 596 Jan ? 49 Mar 29 Golden 1,114 Am sh Rice Russell & Co. Macondray & NP NP Horn# Co. Feb 3 50 Mar 27 Pekin# 595 Am bq Seymour Olyphant & Vernon Seaman NP NP Co. Feb 19 36 Mar 27 Great 3,856 Am stmr Cavarley PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 95 230 Republic Mar 4 51 Apr 26 Douglas# 540 Br sh Morrison Bosman & Koopmanschap NP NP Co. & Co. Mar 18 46 May 12 Albatross# 360 N Ger bq Ouken Heard & Co Williams, NP NP Blanchard & Co. Mar 19 35 Apr 24 Japan 4,000 Am stmr Freeman PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 49 1,239 Apr 1 47 May 20 Shirley 1,049 Am sh Ferguson Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 372 Co. Apr 10 66 Jun 16 Windward 782 Am sh Barrett Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 331 Co.
(continued on p. 127)
Table 3.7 (continued)
Departure Days Arrival Name of Tons Flag Type of Master Dispatched by Consigned to in Female All Hong Kong San Vessel vessel in Hong Kong San Francisco Chinese Chinese Francisco passengers passen-gers
Apr 15 51 Jun 17 F. A. 1,626 N Ger sh King Heard & Co. Williams, �V 549 Palmer Blanchard & Co. Apr 17 44 Jun 4 National 1,095 Am sh Nickerson Heard & Co. Williams, �V 430 Eagle Blanchard & Co. Apr 19 29 May 20 China 3,836 Am stmr Warsaw PMSSC Oliver Eldridge �V 1,250 Apr 24 51 Jun 17 Helvetia 1,205 Am sh Bailey Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 515 Co. May 1 60 Jul 3 Old 690 Am sh Freeman Heard & Co. Williams, �V 299 Dominion Blanchard & Co. May 19 30 Jun 19 Great 3,856 Am stmr Cavarley PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 29 1,249 Republic May 22 52 Jul 15 Parsee 540 Am bq Saule Bosman & Koopmanschap �V 266 Co. & Co.
(continued on p. 128)
Table 3.7 (continued)
Departure Days Arrival Name of Tons Flag Type of Master Dispatched by Consigned to in Female All Hong Kong San Vessel vessel in Hong Kong San Francisco Chinese Chinese Francisco passengers passen-gers
Jun 4 70 Aug 14 J.L. 1,047 Br sh Winchell Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 451 Dimmock Co. Jun 16 58 Aug 14 Malay 812 Am sh Clough Heard & Co. Williams, �V 322 Blanchard & Co. Jun 18 45 Aug 3 Eduard 687 N Ger bq Sohst Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 296 Co. Jun 19 30 Jul 20 Japan 4,000 Am stmr Freeman PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 111 1,164 Jul 10 44 Aug 24 Akbar 845 Am sh Crocker Heard & Co. Williams, �V 188 Blanchard & Co. Jul 13 40 Aug 23 Mary 1,140 Br sh Townsend Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 447 Co. Jul 19 30 Aug 20 China 3,836 Am stmr Warsaw PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 80 805 63 Oct 3 Sarah 524 Br sh Morton Heard & Co. Williams, Blan-NP NP March## chard & Co. Jul 30 46 Sep 16 Elcano 1,230 Am sh Brown Russell & Co. Macondray & �V 366 Co. (continued on p. 129)
Table 3.7 (continued)
Departure Days Arrival Name of Tons Flag Type of Master Dispatched by Consigned to in Female All Hong Kong San Vessel vessel in Hong Kong San Francisco Chinese Chinese Francisco passengers passen-gers
Aug 19 30 Sep 18 Great 3,856 Am stmr Cavarley PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 149 479 Republic Sep 10 108 Dec 30 Nightingale 722 Am sh Sparrow Russell & Co. Macondray & NP NP Co. Sep 18 32 Oct 20 America 4,454 Am stmr Doane PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 244 710 Sep 21 110 12 Jan North Star 818 Br sh Jeff rey Heard & Co. Williams, Blan-NP NP 1870 chard & Co. Oct 11 75 Dec 30 Galveston 622 Am bq Briard Heard & Co. Williams, Blan-NP NP chard & Co. Oct 19 22-Nov Japan 4,000 Am stmr Freeman PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 215 529 16 Mar Russell & Co. Williams, Blan-Oct 31 78 1870 Jewess 475 Br bq Watson chard & Co. NP NP Nov 19 36 Dec 25 China 3,836 Am stmr Warsaw PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 139 474 Dec 18 35 Jan 23 American 4,454 Am stmr Doane PMSSC Oliver Eldridge 210 668
Notes:
NP: Not provided. # Data not included in Hong Kong government records. ## Data not found in Hong Kong newspapers but only in Alta California. Sources: Hong Kong Government Gazette/Blue Books, Hongkong Daily Press, Alta California.
tonnage 18,515), taking 4,832, were still actively engaged in the passenger trade. The other significant feature is that almost all Chinese women who went to the United States that year traveled by steamer, leading one to speculate that steam-ers did indeed offer more comfort than sailing ships, and perhaps greater privacy as well.120
On a slightly different level, another revelation of the table is the great gaps in Hong Kong government data; many of the vessels that were cleared for San Francisco were missing from the records because ships carrying fewer than 20 passengers (i.e..carrying mainly cargo) were not required to be examined by the Emigration Officer, and no other department in the colonial government was responsible for monitoring them. Yet it seems hard to believe that any ship going to California did not carry passengers.
Competition certainly existed for Pacific Mail. Writing a year aft er the PMSSC��s operation began, its president admitted to competition from sailing vessels, which were influenced and controlled particularly in California by those merchants who had had the monopoly of the carrying trade between California and Asia before.121 Macondray & Co. was definitely one of them. Its long-estab-lished ties with San Francisco��s Chinese community�Xespecially with the infl u-ential Five Companies (also known as the Six Companies), as the large Chinese huiguan were known�Xmade it a formidable rival. Realizing that it would be easier to join Macondray than to try to beat the company, PMSSC decided to make Macondray its passage broker in February 1872, agreeing to pay it $2 for every Chinese passenger it could bring; in return, Macondray must give up char-tering vessels for passengers. At the same time, through Macondray��s interces-sion, Pacific Mail also obtained the support of the Five Companies by paying them a commission as well. This move to coopt Macondray was most likely made in anticipation of the semimonthly sailings that would begin in May of that year, and PMSSC must have foreseen that it would face problems fi nding enough passengers for these extra voyages.122 The agreement was for passengers only, leaving Macondray free to continue trading and chartering vessels for freight.123 For a while, the firm stopped sending vessels to Hong Kong, though it continued to act as consignee to vessels arriving from Hong Kong.124
For those consumers who had long dreamed of a scheduled and effi cient line of vessels between San Francisco and Hong Kong, Pacific Mail��s entry into Asia must have been a boon. However, shareholders saw things differently, and a group of them condemned what they considered to be a highly risky venture.125 They pointed out that the extension of business to Japan and China absorbed nearly a third of the company��s capital. With the new ships so expensive to build at $1.3 million each, totaling $5.2 million, it would be hard to turn a profi t. Apart from the risk of fire, typhoon, stormy seas, and the fluctuating price of coal, they believed the shiploads of Chinese passengers would only make things worse, since ��desperate and bloody encounters�� were not unknown on emigrant ships. The company had sought to cut costs by employing Chinese seamen extensively on its ships,126 but instead of winning the approval of these share-holders, the economy drive only fueled their attack. Chinese crews, in their opinion, would simply be exposing Pacific Mail to real dangers:
If the agents or officials of the Company, who are charged with the selec-tion of the Chinese firemen, sailors and stewards, make a blunder in the selection of their men, these splendid vessels may go down to their destruc-tion amid scenes of fire and blood.127
In other words, Chinese seamen were perceived as incompetent�Xeven as poten-tial mutineers who would destroy the ships, and perhaps even the company itself.
Such gory events did not come to pass, but another of the dissenters�� proph-esies did. They also warned against competition, predicting that as soon as the China trade became remunerative to the costly ships of Pacific Mail, other companies would enter the route with British-built screw steamers, which were cheaper to build and generally more adaptable to the route.128
In June 1872, British businessmen in Hong Kong began planning a line of steamers between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Its agent in Hong Kong was Russell & Co., so it is hardly surprising that Macondray & Co. should be approached to act as agent in San Francisco. Such an agency would confl ict with Macondray��s current agreement with PMSSC, which was not due to expire until February 28, 1873, and it had to give three months�� notice to get out. Deciding whether to break with PMSSC was not easy, as Frederick Macondray was not certain whether the new line would really come about, or when it would do so, and it was crucial not to make a false move. ��Of course we do not wish to relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty, or give up a good thing without a good prospect of a better,�� he wrote shrewdly.129 As the incipient company�Xthe China Trans-Pacific Steamship Company�Xtook shape,130 Frederick Macondray decided to throw in his lot with it, and allowed his firm��s name to be listed as agent in the new company��s prospectus.131 Since it was seeking Chinese support not only as passengers but also as investors, Macondray went about raising a sub-scription among them. To get Chinese support, the new company committed itself to paying the Chinese Five Companies the same commission on passengers that the PMSSC had been paying.132
The China Trans-Pacific Steamship Company was the first British company to operate services between China and California. It chartered the 2,147-ton iron steamship Galley of Lorne and dispatched it on June 1, 1873 from Hong Kong for a trial run, taking 641 Chinese passengers and no cabin passenger. It arrived in San Francisco 26 days later, a new record.133 Subsequently, the company oper-ated two regular carriers. Th e fi rst was Vasco Da Gama, advertised as being ��built especially for the Oriental trade, fitted up most luxuriously with all the latest improvements for the comfort and safety of passengers.�� The company also pro-moted the fact that the ship was to carry an experienced surgeon and stewardess. The other ship was the Vancouver. Faced with this new competitor, Pacifi c Mail again resorted to reducing fares. For cabin passage, they were reduced to $150 to Yokohama and $200 to Hong Kong, but the reduction in steerage fares is not known.134 Such price reductions�Xa tactic often used by PMSSC�Xmust have placed sufficient pressure on the China Trans-Pacific Steamship Company to lead to its closing down toward the end of 1874. Pacific Mail ended up charter-ing its two ships for a year.135
Apart from being forced out by a price war with Pacific Mail, China Trans-Pacific Steamship Company��s ready withdrawal after less than two years of operation could be due to news of the formation of a third steamship company intended to operate on the same route. The Occidental and Oriental Steamship Co. (O&O), formed by the Union Pacific and Central Pacifi c Railroads�Xwith Russell & Co. as agents�Xwas announced in November 1874. It chartered three vessels�Xthe Belgic, Gaelic, and Oceanic�Xfrom the British White Star Line for the route, each sailing on the 16th or 17th day of the month, on three-month cycles.136
This time, instead of clashing with its rival, Pacific Mail decided to work out a sensible arrangement with it. They agreed to jointly use PMSSC docks, and to synchronize their sailings: for the first few years, PMSSC ships departed on or about the fi rst of the month and O&O ships on about the 16th. When the schedule was later stepped up to one sailing every ten days, it was agreed that whichever ship was in port took the next sailing, regardless of the company to which it belonged.
Unscheduled chartered ships continued to take Chinese passengers across the Pacific alongside the two companies�� lines. A small number of large freight-ers with passenger accommodations operated on the direct route,137 with Macondray and Parrott & Co. the main charterers for the rest of the 1870s. In 1875, two Chinese merchants in Hong Kong who had spent many years in California planned to start a new company to charter sailing ships and steamers to carry cargo and passengers. One of them was Ah Mook, an old-timer who had gone to San Francisco in 1849 and returned to Hong Kong in 1865; it is unclear whether he was returning for good or just making one of many similar trips. Described by Charles Ryberg as having ��a great deal of infl uence among his people,��138 Ah Mook was obviously well connected in both San Francisco and Hong Kong. His partner was Fung Tang, who was no less skilled at net-working and moved with ease in Hong Kong��s foreign and Chinese business and social circles not long after arriving there. We will meet him again in Chapter 4. Clearly an old friend of the younger Macondray, Fung wrote to sound him out about the new company and offered to consign the vessels to Macondray & Co. in San Francisco; Macondray promised to do all that he could in San Francisco to help them.139 However nothing came of it. It is possible that the strategic and profitable collaboration between Pacific Mail and O & O made Ah Mook and Fung realize that there was simply not enough room for another company on this route.
There is no question that the Pacific Mail steamers were the giant carriers. Even if they occasionally took very few passengers�Xfor example, the Japan took only 67 passengers from Hong Kong in November 1870 and the China took 72 in October 1870 and 72 again in August 1872�Xthey were the ones that carried the largest numbers. On some voyages, the numbers carried were quite stagger-ing. Th e Japan, for example, sailed with 1,239 passengers in March 1869 and the China carried 1,249 in May the same year. The only chartered vessel that came anywhere near the capacity of these steamers was the Lord of the Isles, a British-built steamer of 2,477 tons, which carried 891 passengers from Hong Kong in April 1873 and 946 in May 1874. This tramp steamer was regularly consigned to Macondray & Co. in San Francisco and dispatched by it to Hong Kong during these few years.140 Most of the other chartered vessels carried much smaller numbers of passengers. However, we should remember that the reported number of passengers was often smaller than the actual number, as there fre-quently were stowaways and passengers taken on by members of the crew for their own benefit, so that ��offi cial�� figures are not always reliable. Pacifi c Mail itself was very conscious of the ��entire want of discipline system and honesty everywhere, and the interests of the Company neglected at every point���X clearly a reference to the smuggling activities of the Chinese crew.141
The easy flow of Chinese to the United States was stemmed by the Exclusion Act of 1882, the first of a series of increasingly stringent laws to restrict the entry of Chinese into the country. The 1882 Act was designed specifi cally to keep out ��coolies�� (including both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining) by prohibiting Chinese in certain occupations from enter-ing the United States and making it impossible for them to become citizens. Th e Geary Act of 1892 tightened some procedures and extended the Act for another ten years; the Act was again extended in 1902, and it was not until 1943 that President Roosevelt formally rescinded the Chinese Exclusion Act.
In response, the president of Pacific Mail, in its 1883 report, estimated a loss to the company in steerage fares of several hundred thousand dollars.142 In fact, in the short term, the shipping business did very well. In 1882 alone, almost 40,000 Chinese passengers arrived in the United States ahead of the imple-mentation of the new law. During May and June of that year, more than 6,000 Chinese laborers were transported to Portland for work on the railroads and in the mines. They were carried on both steamships and sailing ships, and among the former were seven British tramp steamers, one of which was the Bothwell Castle (2,592 gross tons), which transported 1,190 of them.143 The number of departures from San Francisco was also exceptionally high from 1883; between 1883 and 1889, more than 10,000 departed every year.144
In the long run, shipping businesses were inevitably adversely aff ected by the Exclusion Act, though the traffi c fl ow was never abruptly cut off. It is true that the number of new ��immigrants�� fell off immensely; however, as Robert Barde shrewdly observes, the Chinese population in America ��did not shrink to zero.��145 Chinese who were not ��coolies�� but had the required documents to certify that they were merchants, students and teachers, ministers, bona fi de tourists, diplomats, and dependents of anyone in these categories, were allowed to enter the United States and they needed passage.146 Those already resident in the United States in 1882 also traveled back and forth; they were allowed to re-enter provided they obtained the proper papers before leaving the United States. In view of this, data on ��new arrivals�� compiled by the US Immigration Services alone provides a skewed picture of the human flow between China and California and obscures the vibrancy that continued after 1884. In that year, for instance, when US Immigration figures show that only ten Chinese immigrants were officially allowed to enter the country, according to Hong Kong govern-ment records, the number of Chinese passengers departing for San Francisco was 8,516; in the following year, the corresponding figures were 26 and 12,452.147
Indeed, Chinese society in the United States was hardly one of ��aging bach-elors,�� as suggested by some scholars148�Xa description that implies not only celi-bacy but also immobility. Many continued to come and go, and as long as they did so, ships sailed back and forth across the Pacific between San Francisco and Hong Kong, leaving ever-deepening ��tracks�� in the ocean��s water.
Conclusion
Many factors contributed to Hong Kong��s development into a major world shipping hub, but transpacific connections were surely one of the key catalysts. Initially boosted by the gold rush cargo and then passenger trade, the traffic was sustained and sometimes expanded in following decades by continued movements to and fro across the Pacific. Shipping, along with myriad related activities�Xmaking fortunes for some and giving employment to thousands of others�Xgreatly enhanced Hong Kong��s general prosperity, and reinforced its position as a key sector in the city��s economy.
By the end of the century, besides being the terminus for liners from San Francisco, Hong Kong also served ships coming from many other Eastern Pacific ports, whether liners or unscheduled chartered vessels. Besides PMSSC and the Occidental and Oriental Company, other companies soon appeared to offer travelers from Hong Kong more choice, including the Japanese Toyo Kisen Kaisha (TKK) and a handful of short-lived Chinese-owned companies.149 For Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, there were the luxurious liners of the Canadian Pacific Railways (steamships line) featuring the legendary Empress liners, and for Seattle, Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK)��s monthly service via Kobe and Yokohama. Alternatively, passengers could always fall back on chartered vessels, including those chartered by the Li family��s Lai Hing & Co., which con-tinued to cross the Pacific during the rest of the century.150
Indeed, by the late nineteenth century, Hong Kong had become the hub for ships taking Chinese to many different destinations in their search for work and profit and to bring them home, with routes fanning out across the Pacifi c to Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, and various Pacific Islands, and down the South China Sea to various parts of Southeast Asia. While the passenger trade indisputably led to the growth of shipping activ-ities, we can also see the ��corridors�� as conceived by Philip Kuhn as channels for letters, money, goods, and dead bodies�Xall borne by ships. Without ships, the corridors would have been unsustainable. Extending Kuhn��s imagery, we can see Hong Kong as the nexus�Xthe ��in-between place���Xof the hundreds and thou-sands of ��corridors�� that extended between hometowns and destination coun-tries around the world.
Yet, amid all these multidirectional corridors, somehow, the Hong Kong�V Gold Mountain connections remain special, even iconic. At all levels, the many players wove thick and intricate networks across the Pacific that had long-term social and economic implications, firmly embedding Hong Kong and San Francisco as two vibrant foci in an ever expanding and deepening transpacifi c community.
4
The Gold Mountain Trade
The gold rush is well known for stimulating migration from China; however, much less has been said about it as a stimulus of trade. Even before Chinese went to California in any significant numbers, firms and individuals in Hong Kong and South China had discovered that California was not only a place full of gold mines, but an immense, seemingly insatiable market for goods of all types, off er-ing enormous profits for investors. Everything had to be imported to California, as few of the tens of thousands arriving there were interested in producing goods for basic consumption or industrial processing. As importantly, high prices backed by easy money prevailed, giving rise to the impression�Xor illusion�X that any goods that could find their way to California would bring huge returns. Orders for goods were sent out to Europe, the East Coast of the United States, South America and China; between 1848 and 1861, the world sent over 6.8 million tons of merchandise into San Francisco.1
In the rush to California, the Pacific Ocean was re-created into a new highway, making Hong Kong one of the closest global ports to San Francisco, and what had once been a peripheral trading zone was being integrated into the mainstream global economy.2 Businessmen in Hong Kong, where entrepot trade had only evolved slowly up to this time, jumped on the bandwagon, and by the early 1850s the colonial port city had become one of California��s leading trading partners. The Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade stimulated trade elsewhere; given that Hong Kong had few industrial or agricultural resources, the new exporting activities necessitated importing goods from many different sources for trans-shipment. Later, when California itself developed an export economy and goods poured in from there as well, Hong Kong��s role as a transshipping hub and the node of many trade routes was reinforced. Thus, just at the point when people were despairing of Hong Kong��s future as an entrepot, the gold rush proved a catalyst, almost serendipitously creating a watershed in its development toward the ��great emporium�� envisioned by the first governor, Henry Pottinger.
Th e Economist journalist who commented that the California trade might turn Hong Kong into ��a useful settlement�� after all noted that in the fi rst six months of 1850, some 10,776 tons of shipping loaded in the British colony for the West Coast of the United States, carrying articles that included coarse silks, lacquerware, matting, camphorwood ware, tea, sugar, molasses, wrought granite, and various other items.3 On the other side of the Pacifi c, Alta California also noted that: ��Each day adds to the value and amount of our China trade and each month shows new sources of profit to those who embark in this adventure.��4 Since almost all vessels from ��China�� trading to California sailed from Hong Kong, it is clear that the links between the two ports were multiplying rapidly.
The Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade not only proved profitable for the players during the gold rush, it also had long-term consequences for Hong Kong��s eco-nomic and social development. Chinese�Xparticularly Cantonese�Xmerchants were to make California their happy hunting ground, participating in a range of economic activities while strategically organizing branches and lianhao across the Pacific. Powerful networks emerged. The Hong Kong�VCalifornia corridor, which we have earlier defi ned by the flow of people, will be defi ned further by the flow of goods and money, as the three were inextricably intertwined. Th e outward flow of passengers from Hong Kong, moreover, was to be comple-mented by the inward fl ow of ��overseas�� Chinese merchants who added depth to the colony��s commercial and financial capacity while accentuating its status as a second home for returned emigrants. The Gold Mountain trade, which was to become iconic of Hong Kong, remains to this day one of the most glamorous chapters of Hong Kong history.
China Trade to California before 1849
American merchants had been hopeful of developing the China trade from California even before the gold rush, as shown earlier. Since 1822, when California was freed from Spanish rule and many of the prohibitions against trade were lifted, indirect trade had taken place using the Sandwich Islands for transshipment, as noted in Chapter 1. Occasionally, a ship from China would sail directly to San Francisco, such as the brig Eagle, which sailed from Guangzhou and arrived in February 1848, carrying different kinds of silk shawls, embroi-dered slippers and handkerchiefs, lacquerware, spices and matting. Some of the merchandise was brought by C..V..Gillespie, who was on board.5
The situation changed dramatically after the discovery of gold. Ships were urgently ordered to Hong Kong to carry cargo to San Francisco. One such ship was the Eveline. Two California merchants, Thomas Larkin and Jacob P. Leese, had bought it and sent it out to China in January 1849 to buy goods with a capital of $53,000. The total investment for the venture was around $68,000�Xa huge sum for that time. Larkin was to learn later what an enormous risk he was taking when he was told in June that the market in San Francisco was very dull�Xthere were five ships in the harbor from China, with eight more on their way. The blind frenzy of shippers for the gold-rush market is only too clear. Th e Eveline left Hong Kong for San Francisco on August 15, making only a ��very modest profit�� for its investors.6
In the meantime, in Hong Kong Y. J. Murrow��s Kwang Lee Hong advertised the tea clipper Sir Edward Ryan for both freight and passage to San Francisco. A few months later, the firm advertised the Lord Hungerford, emphasizing that ��a supercargo acquainted with the Trade will accompany the Ship, whose services are available to shipper.�� To promote business, it offered free passage for goods coming from Guangzhou for loading in Hong Kong. At this point, of course, cargo rather than passengers was the main purpose of the voyages. Th e British brig Richard and William, which left in early 1849, took only four passengers.7 Only a few foreigners traveled as ��cabin passengers�� on each trip. However, as the passenger trade expanded and increasingly became concentrated in Hong Kong, for reasons that we have examined earlier, cargo trade too gravitated to Hong Kong from Macao, Guangzhou, and Whampoa. Almost all traffi c between San Francisco and South China, to a large extent funded by passengers traveling in steerage, was channeled through Hong Kong for decades to come.
Transpacific Intelligence Network
A lively intelligence network sprang up as merchants in Hong Kong and San Francisco eagerly sought information on each other��s markets, and the fl ow of information intensified with the increasing frequency of ships. Apart from gold itself, news of the great demand for all kinds of goods was disseminated by newspapers and letters that arrived in Hong Kong with every ship. In December 1848, for example, a great stir was created when a letter arriving on the Mary Frances was quoted by The Friend of China describing how goods such as sugar, coffee, and butter were selling in California at high prices�Xsometimes at three or four times the normal prices.8 Merchants in San Francisco were no less eager to monitor conditions in Hong Kong, and the Alta California, besides reprint-ing articles from Hong Kong��s papers, kept a Hong Kong newspaper file in its office for its readers�� reference.9 Individuals and firms wrote tirelessly to their close associates to update them on market conditions, and sent circulars to a wide circle of potential clients to solicit business.10 Indeed, some fi rms arose that specialized in the collection and dissemination of commercial information, and produced circulars such as the San Francisco Prices Current, which helped merchants make more informed decisions about what to send to the California market.11 For California, a relatively new and unfamiliar market, such informa-tion was especially indispensable. All factors affecting the market were noted in the letters sent out to corresponding fi rms. These included the usual items such as exchange rates and prices, new immigration laws and customs regulations, as well as factors more specific to California,12 such as the changing population. Th e constantly rising population affected demand, of course, but so did the charac-teristics of new immigrants. When a large number of American women started arriving from the Atlantic Coast in early 1852, for instance, Macondray & Co. informed its associates that whereas previously demand had been for silk goods with rich patterns and gaudy colors suited to Mexican tastes, the new demand ��adapted to the American market�� was likely to increase.13 Since Hong Kong was exporting goods such as house frames, building materials, sugar, rice, coff ee, and other foodstuffs that were also being sent from other countries, Californian merchants conscientiously reported on the movement of ships arriving in San Francisco from around the world, together with the type, quantity, and value of their cargo.14 The arrival of a boatload of a specific commodity not infrequently depressed its price to practically zero. A glut in one item or another was inevita-ble from time to time, with one of the most common sights in San Francisco in these early years being boxes and bales of expensive merchandise used as fi llage to build sidewalks.15
In addition, given that gold mines were California��s economic lifeline, chang-ing conditions at the mines were watched closely. When gold was easy to fi nd and plentiful, the supply of money increased and people spent readily. California merchants also had to educate their Hong Kong counterparts on the idiosyn-crasies of the climate. Winters were especially harsh in the mountainous areas where the mines were located, and the difficulty of transporting goods during cold, wet winters made trade sluggish. Unseasonably early rains could wreak havoc in the market. Miners, sometimes forced to stop working by heavy rains, bought less of everything. Even seasonal changes affected the consumption of specific commodities: correspondents were told that December to March was not the time to send port, since much less of it was consumed during the winter months while the country abounded in game.16
From Hong Kong, an equally energetic stream of commercial intelligence fl owed to San Francisco. Earlier letters between the two ports were concerned mainly with exports and passengers from Hong Kong but from about the mid-1850s, when imports from California increased and more Chinese pas-sengers were returning to China, these subjects too were discussed regularly.17 Correspondence between close, long-standing business associates or partners naturally contained information of a more confidential and intimate nature than mere circulars.
Gold Rush Trade
San Francisco appeared for the first time in the Hong Kong government��s Blue Book for 1849 as a destination of Hong Kong exports, an indication of its sudden rise to signifi cance. The table of exports, based on data collected from 23 out of 27 ships that had sailed there the previous year, listed 85 amazingly diverse types of goods (see Appendix 1, pp. 309�V311). The list makes for interesting reading. There were building materials to meet California��s construction needs: 148,122 bricks, 1,158 marble slabs, and 12,059 timber planks. There were 40 casks and 312 cases of beer, 536 cases of brandy, and 286 piculs of coffee, in addition to gin, rum, champagne, and wine, to quench the thirst of Californians. And there were huge amounts of tea�X1,235 chests plus 1,267 half-chests. There were also caps and hats, boots and shoes, and 138 cases of ��wearing apparel�� to clothe and shod the miners. There were bedstands, chairs, couches, and tables to furnish their homes, and silverware to lend refinement. To feed them went all kinds of foodstuff s, from eggs to preserved meats, from chocolate to ginger, but above all sugar and rice. Some of the articles, such as beer, butter, and rum, must have come from very far away before being re-exported from Hong Kong!
Such diversity reflects what might be called the ��send-everything-and-hope-to-make-a-profit�� mentality that was sweeping Hong Kong�Xin fact, the whole world�Xat the time. Diversity, or indiscriminate confusion, is similarly refl ected in tables provided in the Blue Book in 1852 and 1856. Despite the spotty information, these tables do provide a general impression of the Hong Kong�V California trade.
In time, some order emerged from chaos, and articles that could most advan-tageously be procured at Hong Kong dominated the export list. Th ese included articles for general consumption, such as rice, sugar, coffee, tobacco, cigars, pre-serves, cordage, trunks, China goods, and teas, which�Xoriginating either from China or Southeast Asia�Xcould easily be sent to Hong Kong for transshipment. Interestingly, granite, mined locally in Hong Kong and exported in large quan-tities to San Francisco, was the only truly native product. The richness of the granite supply and the robust mining activity were noted by the colonial govern-ment, which issued a permit for the monopoly of granite quarrying. Th e days of prosperous granite mining are immortalized by place names on Hong Kong Island such as Quarry Bay, Shek Tong Tsui (Putonghua, Shitangzui; literally the tip of the stone quarry) and Shek Pai Wan (Putonghua, Shipaiwan; literally the bay where stone pieces were lined up). In addition, a large amount of granite was also quarried across Victoria Harbor on the Kowloon Peninsula�Xterritories that were to become parts of the British colony only in 1860 and 1898.
When the Chinese population in California expanded, a niche market for specific goods emerged. Foremost was prepared opium, processed in Hong Kong from raw Indian opium. Hong Kong gained a reputation for producing the world��s finest prepared opium; indeed, the export of this article was to have such far-reaching impact on the colony��s economic development and on Hong Kong�VCalifornia relations that Chapter 5 will be devoted to it. Rice�Xespecially high-quality China rice�Xwas another major item, as was sugar, to include in time sugar refined in Hong Kong itself. Goods catering to the Chinese commu-nities also included style-specific goods such as shoes and ready-made clothes, taste-specific foods such as preserved eggs, bird��s nest, and salt fish, and cul-ture-specific items such as medicines and joss paper. Notably, Cantonese opera troupes were also sent to California from as early as 1852 and for decades to come: these went through Hong Kong, where some of the contracts for actors going on tour were drawn up.
In addition, huge volumes of articles labeled as ��general merchandise,�� ��sun-dries,�� and ��chow chow�� were also sent. Frustratingly, there is no indication of their specifi c content, and that may remain forever one of the mysteries of the history of the China and Hong Kong trade.
Activities of European/American Firms
Trade between Hong Kong and California offered a wide range of investment opportunities, and the two cities soon became major trading partners. Firms of all sizes and nationalities exported or imported goods as commission agents and on their own account. Some were additionally involved as agents, owners, or charterers of the ships that carried the cargo, while others provided diff erent forms of credit to shippers and operated insurance agencies that underwrote these ships and cargoes.
Jardine, Matheson & Co., Russell & Co., Olyphant & Co. and other large firms, with their worldwide connections and large resources, were able to cash in early; some already had a foot in the door through the China�VSandwich Islands�V California trade even before the gold rush.18 As always, Jardine was especially well-positioned through its friendship with R. C. Wyllie, the Scotsman who became Minister for Foreign Relations of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Wyllie was so keen to maintain (British) China trade ties that he arranged to have Joseph Jardine appointed the kingdom��s Consul-General in China and David Jardine Consul in Hong Kong in 1849.19 At the same time, a number of employees, partners, and associates of these large firms who had left China to set up in California both before and just after 1849 became strategically placed to facili-tate their entry into the new market.
Jardine��s engagement in the export/import trade between Hong Kong and California throws light on these early developments. One of Jardine��s employ-ees, Augustus Howell, left for San Francisco at some point, and by early 1849 was acting as Jardine��s agent for various activities.20 The captains of ships in which Jardine had direct or indirect interests also formed valuable links. From the many letters that Jardine wrote to introduce individuals visiting the Pacifi c Coast in order that they could receive ��assistance, advice and civilities from the friends of Jardine, Matheson & Co.,�� we can see the breadth and dynamism of its network. In turn, the firm��s growing ties with San Francisco helped to enhance existing communications with Mexico and South America.21
In late 1848 or early 1849, Jardine received two pieces of gold�Xactually, gold dust22�Xfrom Theodore Shillaber in California. Shillaber, formerly based in Honolulu but now operating in San Francisco, had sent the gold to have its purity tested and to inquire about how California gold might fare in the China market. California gold was not minted and its value standardized until 1854 when a US Mint was finally set up in San Francisco. Until then, few people were confident handling it, so it is no wonder that Jardine was not particularly keen. Besides, the gold Shillaber sent was of a rather low level of purity�Xonly of 85 and 80 touch. In China, where silver was much more highly valued than gold, even gold of 100 touch fetched only $25.25 per tael�Xwhich was quite cheap. Jardine therefore told Shillaber that ��China cannot be looked upon as a favora-ble market for this description of metal,�� and instead suggested that gold of such low quality might find a more satisfying price in England.23 However, California gold�Xmostly in the form of gold coins�Xdid later enter as a new component in Hong Kong��s financial structure, as will be shown.
Jardine did not wait long to trade with California: one of its earliest ship-ments was 50 barrels of flour on the Mary Bannatyne in 1849. Th is unfortu-nately resulted in a heavy loss.24 Flour, which had to be shipped from quite a distance to Hong Kong for re-export, was sent no doubt with the ��send-any-thing-and-hope-to-make-a-profit�� mentality current at the time. In fact, fl our did not last long as an export item, partly because it could be imported into California more cheaply from other countries but more importantly, as will be shown, because a few years later California grew enough wheat itself to export large quantities of flour and wheat to China.
One of Jardine��s closest trading partners in San Francisco was C..S. Compton, who might have been related to J. B. Compton, a ��mercantile assistant�� with Jardine in the 1840s. Over the years, Jardine sent to C. S. Compton��s order large quantities of teas, sugar, rice, and silks. In 1852, for instance, it chartered the Nile to send 559 bags of sugar amounting to $20,026 and 3,390 packs of tea oil amounting to $20,726. The ship also carried 130 Chinese passengers. Th e sugar included around 500 piculs of no..1 sugar at $5.10 a picul, 300 piculs of no. 2 sugar at $4.80 and 200 piculs of no. 3 sugar at $4.40 a picul; the inverse propor-tion between superior and inferior sugar clearly indicates California��s demand for high-end goods. Jardine charged 3 percent commission on sugar and 4 percent on general cargo, so that on these shipments alone, it would have earned commissions amounting to over $1,400. Later in the year, the hong shipped 837 bags of sugar plus 13,333 bags of rice amounting to $30,480.57, in addition to 837 packages of tea and sundries amounting to $4,910.96 to Compton��s order.25 Another large order by Compton was sent on the Lanrick: 4,000 piculs of sugar and 2,000 piculs of no. 1 rice, with a declared value of $10,000.26
Jardine��s close associates in San Francisco also included A. W. Macpherson. On the Lanrick, Jardine sent a mixed cargo of teas, vermillion, opium, and matting, valued at $12,758, to Macpherson as agent. Sales went well, and together with another cargo it sent on the Alster, Jardine made a total profi t of $10,840.79.27 Jardine had chartered this Hamburg barque from the agent A. Lubeck & Co., engaging the whole capacity of the ship. Believing that passen-gers might damage the cargo, Jardine deliberately refrained from taking passen-gers in the ��tween decks, even though it was entitled to do so. The ship sailed for San Francisco in December 1853 carrying prepared opium, tea, sugar, and rice put on by Jardine, with certified invoices totaling $35,418.65. A quarter of the first quality of sugar and rice was Macpherson��s interest, the rest was apparently shipped to Compton��s order. However, after her departure Jardine discovered that the ship��s captain, Captain Piening, had taken 18 passengers on board, 16 of them women. Not only was this a gross infringement of the charter party, it also meant that the ship carried 100 tons of cargo less than Jardine had been led to expect.28 Despite the Captain��s misdemeanor, however, Jardine still managed to make a neat profit out of this voyage.
With the cargo sent on the Cyane, Jardine was less lucky. In August 1854, it shipped 150 tons of China sugar and 100 tons of tea (including black and green) totaling over $32,000 to Macpherson as agent. Jardine was hopeful that the cargo would do well since the unrest in the neighborhood of Guangzhou was restricting the export of sugar and tea from China and goods were in short supply.29 Jardine��s networks along the China coast must have helped a lot in getting it the supplies, enabling the Cyane to depart in mid-September with a full load while other ships in Hong Kong, still waiting for supplies to come, were unable to sail. Unfortunately the Cyane encountered a storm and got so badly damaged that it had to return to Hong Kong for repairs and discharge the cargo. Of Jardine��s cargo, 1,807 bags of sugar and 290 packages of tea were damaged and sold at auction. Once repaired, the Cyane set sail again for San Francisco. Jardine was able to replace 1,408 bags of sugar costing $5,769, but it failed to find fresh teas for this voyage, thus forfeiting the golden opportunity to corner the market as it had hoped.30
The sugar sent from Hong Kong in the early days was raw sugar or partially refined sugar imported from China, the Philippines and Java. However, from the 1870s onward, with the establishment of a sugar-refining industry, Hong Kong was able to ship locally refined sugar. Th e first attempt to refi ne sugar in Hong Kong was made by Wahee, Smith & Co. which had among its part-ners Tong Achick, who was in San Francisco between 1852 and 1857, and his brother, Tong King-sing, Jardine��s comprador. Soon afterward, the refi nery ran into trouble, and Jardine, Matheson & Co. took it over and operated it as the China Sugar Refi nery.31 In 1884, the Taikoo Sugar Refinery was founded and operated by the other large British firm in Hong Kong, Butterfield & Swire. Hong Kong��s refined sugar, both brown and white, was very popular and found profitable markets in China, Japan, India, and Australia. California was one of its most regular outlets.32 It is very tempting to speculate that the sugar-refi n-ing industry�Xthe colony��s first large industry�Xhad originally been founded with the California market in mind, but there is as yet insuffi cient evidence to support such a hypothesis. Still, it is interesting to note that California was the destination not only for goods re-exported from Hong Kong but also for its domestic industrial products.
Granite was another item that Jardine shipped in large volumes.33 California was in great need of building materials, and Hong Kong was in an ideal posi-tion to supply it. Granite, which was plentiful on both sides of Victoria Harbor, was excellently suited as ballast, especially on passenger ships. Often ships were unable to sail until there was sufficient ballast, and on occasions when they were desperate to depart, agents would charge very low freight for ballast cargo, sometimes even nothing at all.
In early 1852, Bernard Peyton came out to Hong Kong to meet Jardine, Matheson & Co with an introduction from John Parrott, a banker and trader in San Francisco.34 Peyton also had with him four boxes of gold ingots valued at $40,000 for buying building materials and silk. Jardine helped him ship 8,500 tiles by the ship Robert Small in March 1852, and promised to ship another 6,500 tiles and 100,000 bricks once it could find tonnage on other ships.35 In the meantime, Peyton chartered the Dragon to ship cut stones and other goods he had bought back to California. Since Parrott had ordered the granite�Xamount-ing to $4,000 in all�Xfor building a house for himself, Chinese workmen were also sent on the Dragon to help with the construction.36
Construction started in August 1852, and the house was completed by December 4. The interesting story of its building is described in a publication of the Society of California Pioneers:
It was built entirely by Chinese labor, of granite blocks from China, all carefully cut and dressed and labeled with Chinese characters, each ready to be fitted into its place. The Chinamen came to the States on the barque Dragon, and were to stay in the capacity of stonemasons or common laborers for the full term of ninety working days �K When fi nished it was regarded as one of the handsomest buildings in the city and it may be said as a tribute to its builders that they built well, for not only did it survive the several early fires, but even the great fire of 1906, only to be torn down in 1926 to make room for greater growth and progress.37
Hong Kong granite became so ��hot�� that the Friend of India��s prediction in 1852 that ��Cities of the new El Dorado may not improbably be built out of the hills of Hong Kong�� came close to fulfi llment.38 Two years after Parrott built his
Source: Roy D. Graves Pictorial Collection Series 1: San Francisco Views; Subseries 1; San Francisco, Pre-1906; volume 5: San Francisco, Pre-1906. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. By courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
granite house, Jardine accepted another contract from him to ship 2,000 tons of cut granite to California for the US government��s use. The order took a long time to fill, partly because it was so large, and partly, as Jardine explained, because it would take Chinese workers longer to dress the stone to the specification of the contract. Though it was not mentioned, competition from other parties buying up large quantities of granite for the California market was another cause for the delay. Jardine sent the first 120 blocks on the Cyane, which sailed in August 1854;39 after that, granite was put on the Pathfi nder, Caldera, and Alfr ed during the rest of 1854. Accidents also caused delay. Th e Cyane, we know, had to return to Hong Kong because of a storm. Th e Caldera met an even worse fate: it was disabled by a typhoon, delivered into the hands of pirates, and then looted and burned. Fortunately for Jardine, it was able to claim the cut granite as a total loss against the insurance policy.40 Shipments of granite continued throughout 1855, and as late as April 1856 we find Jardine shipping 284 blocks to California on Alfred the Great, apparently still part of the same order. Hong Kong contin-ued to send granite to California well into the 1870s; it was used in public works such as curbs.41
If twenty-fi rst century readers are surprised to learn that granite was one of Hong Kong��s leading exports to California, they would be even more surprised that the most valuable export was prepared opium, in comparison to which the granite trade was inconsequential. It is well known that Hong Kong was founded as a British colony primarily to facilitate the British opium trade between India and China, but much less is known of Hong Kong��s domestic prepared opium industry. The Chinese consumed opium by smoking it, and raw opium imported mainly from India was boiled in China, Hong Kong, and Macao to prepare it for smoking. California, with its growing Chinese population, became a thriv-ing market for the product�Xthe best-quality opium. Prepared opium was sold under different brands, and name branding played a big part in the trade. Th e quality of prepared opium depended not only on the quality of the raw material but also on the skill and experience of boilers; even the quality of water used for boiling was a factor. In Hong Kong, expertise in opium boiling abounded, and in time several opium brands prepared in Hong Kong were recognized as the best money could buy and consumers in California�Xas well as Australia, Canada, and other high-end markets around the world�Xsought them earnestly.
Besides being the dominant trader in raw opium, as is well known, Jardine was by far the largest exporter of prepared opium to California up to the mid-1860s. Th e first shipment of prepared opium Jardine made on record was in 1853, though it is safe to surmise that there must have been earlier shipments. It consisted of six boxes with a market value of around $3,225 and an expected net profit of $1,200�Xabout 60.percent. Unfortunately, the cargo��s packaging came loose in passage, and it arrived in such bad shape that Jardine��s agent, Edwards & Balley, thought it best to return it to Hong Kong for repacking.42 Th is did not deter Jardine from raising its stakes, however, and for most of the decade, it dominated the markets. But by the early 1860s it began to lose its market to Chinese competitors.43
Jardine��s main problem was the inability to ensure the quality of the prepared opium it sent. Since the firm was not involved in preparing opium, it depended on Chinese suppliers, and somehow never managed to obtain the better quality brands that were most popular in California. Th e British hong might know raw opium, but it seems to have lacked the special acumen of Chinese traders for prepared opium. In May 1859, one of Jardine��s shipments of opium had to be sent back to Hong Kong for reboiling.44 Some months later, Edwards & Balley was appalled that Jardine was sending opium prepared by Ping Kee in Hong Kong, ��whose brand has long been in bad repute in this market�� and was unable to fetch good prices.45 Though Hong Kong-prepared opium was popular in general, not all brands sold equally well. It was also possible that more successful Chinese prepared opium manufacturers chose not to sell to Jardine. Chinese merchants in Hong Kong were clearly cornering the market for the best prod-ucts, and their domination grew. The story of prepared opium�Xa key episode in Hong Kong��s political, economic, and social history�Xwill be told in Chapter 5.
Besides the big players, the California cargo trade provided ample business for many small operators, such as Murrow, Stephenson & Co. and William
M. Robinet, whom we met earlier as charterers of passenger ships. Robinet was by far the more colorful. While people such as Augustus Howell, James Stephenson, W. O. Bokee, J. Kruyenhagen and thousands of others traveled to California to seek their fortunes, Robinet sailed west to China. A Peruvian by birth, he arrived in the Hong Kong region in late 1850 from South America via San Francisco, with the specific purpose of starting up trade between China and California.46 He had been given money by several Californian merchants who wanted him to make investments on their behalf. Some of the fi rst ship-ments he made were of white sugar. Sugar was in great demand in California, but he believed that since most of the sugar sent there was brown, there should be a great market for white, refined sugar. Besides, freight for white sugar was 50 percent lower, making it an even more attractive commodity to ship. Consignees of his early white sugar shipments included a Mr B. Davidson in San Francisco, who had given him 1,000 pounds sterling to invest; after selling the pounds at a very unfavorable rate, Robinet hoped to make up for losses with the sale of the sugar.47 The white sugar was imported from Manila, and he was particularly keen on a new refining machine that was being developed there by Aguirre & Co., which was to become a leading sugar-refining concern in the Philippines.48
Another consignee of Robinet��s white sugar was Alsop & Co., a Chilean company in San Francisco with which he had close ties. Besides white sugar, he also sent the firm large quantities of brown and light brown sugar. For example, in June 1852 he informed Alsop that he would be sending 500 piculs of white sugar at $5 a picul, 1,500 piculs of light brown sugar at $4 a picul, and 1,000 piculs of first-quality light brown sugar at $4.50 a picul, making a total of $13,000 worth of sugar shipments. On the same vessel, he also sent 2,000 piculs of first-quality China rice.49 He was extremely upbeat about the rice market, foreseeing as early as 1851 that increasing Chinese emigration would surely lead to a rising demand for rice�Xand not any old rice but rice of the best quality, considering the large consumption power of the Chinese there.50 Th eoretically, there was a law in China that banned rice exports, but California��s demand for superior China rice led to rice being exported illegally.51 In 1853, high prices and less than average yield led to such shortage in China that the Chinese authori-ties took action to enforce the ban, but its effect must have been negligible since large shipments of the finest rice from Guangdong continued to find their way across the Pacific. In turn, cheaper and coarser rice was imported from Siam, Annam, and Burma to feed the poorer consumers in China. Rice continued to be supplied to California through Hong Kong well into the twentieth century.52
Robinet also displayed considerable insight in seeing the Chinese as custom-ers for ready-made clothes,53 which would make good sense considering the paucity of wives, mothers, or professional seamstresses in California to make them. Robinet��s operation shows that while the California trade was hyped as highly lucrative, not all transactions were equally profitable. Investors did some-times get their fingers burned, and Robinet certainly had his share of calamities. They started with his selling Mr Davidson��s pounds sterling at 5 shillings and tuppence (2 pennies) to the dollar when the pound generally ruled at well below 5 shillings for most of the year. Though his projection of San Francisco as a large consumer market for high-quality rice and sugar was shrewd and sending them was the right strategy, in practice he was not always able to guarantee the quality of the goods he purchased for export. At least one shipment of rice sent to Alsua & Co., another close business associate, caused complaint because the quality was so poor, and Robinet was compelled to confess that he was ��astonished,�� as the sample he had seen was very good. Possibly he was still too inexperienced in the rice business to know better.54 His judgment of China barley was equally faulty. Some barley he sent in 1851 arrived full of weevils. After losing $12,000 on China barley, mainly because he had not realized that it would not keep over such a long voyage, he later advised others not to touch the stuff .55 On another occasion, when he was supposed to send green teas to Alsua, he discovered aft er the ship had left that the tea, which he had selected himself, had not been taken on board.56
No doubt less shrewd a businessman than he would have liked to be, Robinet did have some strengths. One was his Spanish connections that stretched from South America through San Francisco and Hong Kong to the Philippines. As James Delgado shows, a trading zone had emerged along the southeastern Pacific Rim for some time before the gold rush;57 California��s ties with Chile and Peru had deep roots, and we can see Robinet moving comfortably in that zone. He used these connections to import large amounts of sugar, rice, tobacco, and coffee from Manila for re-export to California, trusting his contacts in Manila to give him good prices, and many of his business associates in California were Spanish or South American. He made full use of Hong Kong��s entrepot status: not only did he import products for transshipping to San Francisco, he also imported goods from San Francisco for re-export�Xfor example, quicksilver to Calcutta and Bombay. He realized as well that from Hong Kong he could con-tinue to capitalize on and expand his old connections with Chile and Peru via San Francisco.58
Locally, he managed to establish his credibility quite successfully, and somehow his reputation was good enough for Russell & Co.�Xwhich was usually very cautious when extending credit to shippers�Xto provide advances on his shipments.59 On April 5, 1852, he was able to draw $14,900 on Russell & Co. (in favor of Nye, Parkin & Co.) as advances on quicksilver shipped by Russell to India on Robinet��s account.60 The quicksilver was most likely imported from California.61 Russell & Co. also granted him advances on the many shipments he sent to Alsop & Co. in San Francisco.62 The amounts involved were large. In 1857, Robinet had drawn �G15,000�V20,000 (approx. $72,000�V$96,000) on cargo to Alsop & Co. alone.63
In these early days of modern banking, many trading houses provided credit facilities to traders. Merchants trading to California were able to obtain advances on their cargo from big companies such as Jardine, Russell, and Augustine Heard & Co., which charged fees and interest on the advances. In 1862, for instance, Jardine provided $20,000 to Bosman & Co. at an interest rate of 10 percent per annum, payable in seven months, which the latter used as advances in con-signments to Koopmanschap & Co. in San Francisco on the South Cross.64 By comparison, the amounts that Russell & Co. granted to Robinet were unusu-ally large, especially for such a small and rather dubious fi rm. The big fi rms also granted advances to Chinese shippers, as will be shown; such financing was a vital means to sustain the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade.
Robinet��s career ended in a scandal that shook Hong Kong society�Xand to no small degree entertained it. In 1858 he put a great quantity of silk on a ship for Lima, bought insurance on it, and sailed on the ship himself. On the way, the ship mysteriously caught fire and when some of the bales of ��silk�� were opened it was discovered that there was no silk in them but only gunny bags made of matting. Robinet was reportedly so distraught that he told the captain he should commit suicide, but was dissuaded from doing so. Then, just before the ship reached Lima, his cabin was found to be empty with a note saying that he had thrown himself overboard. News of his death quickly reached Hong Kong and appeared in the newspapers. His many debtors, including Russell & Co., were in an uproar. This was not the end of the story, however. Unfortunately for him, someone subsequently spotted him in the streets of Lima, and he was brought back to Hong Kong and eventually jailed. His story was told and retold with relish in gossipy Hong Kong, but those who had lost money because of him were certainly less amused.65
Chinese Merchants
Chinese Merchants in California
While no doubt as eager as their foreign counterparts to profit from the California trade, it took Chinese merchants in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macao longer to enter the fi eld. After all, the West Coast of America was largely unknown to them�Xfew would have even heard of the place before the gold rush. Though legend has it that a Chinese merchant, ��Chum Ming,�� had gone to San Francisco from Guangzhou in 1847 and made a living selling teas, shawls, and other Chinese goods, it would be reasonable to assume that the scale of his operation would have been quite insignificant. In any case, as the story went, he quickly gave up his trade and made for the hills when gold was dis-covered.66 Until a substantial number of Chinese had reached California and set themselves up, those Chinese merchants at home eager to invest in the new trade could only rely on the existing Western�Xmainly American�Xnetworks, sending goods through American agents and consigning them to foreign fi rms in California. Predictably, the cargoes they sent were small in volume, low in value, and usually of a mixed nature, showing that though they were keen to invest, they were hesitant. For example, the shipment of a consignment of eggs worth $169 which Olyphant & Co. sent on the Freja in 1851 on the account of Boston Jack (whom we met earlier) was quite typical.67
Things changed with the gradual arrival in San Francisco of Chinese mer-chants, among them Norman Assing, Afai and Akwai, Amook and Chan Lock, as mentioned in Chapter 2. Some had gone with the specifi c purpose of trading: they included entrepreneurs armed with capital ready to try their luck on the strange continent as well as employees and junior family members of established firms in South China dispatched to set up branches and lianhao. Others originally had gone as servants, gold diggers, or artisans but went into business after making a small fortune. By the end of 1850, Sacramento Street was known as ��Little China�� because of the concentration there of Chinese busi-nesses. In addition, there were four Chinese restaurants on Pacific, Jackson, and Washington.68 Chinese merchants�Xmainly Cantonese�Xformed a beachhead on a new frontier of commercial expansion and, by acting as principals, agents, brokers, copartners, and bankers, they cleared the way for their counterparts in south China to participate more fully. Apart from the obvious business institu-tions, the huiguan merchants formed also played a vital role, particularly in the early years, facilitating long-distance international trade as debt-collectors, sup-pliers of information, and agents for other matters. In the process, they became an indispensable component of the Hong Kong�VCalifornia corridor. Chapter 7 will discuss huiguan further.
Some of the Chinese firms, such as Norman Assing��s Yuan Sheng Hao and Afai, Akwai & Co., were short-lived. Others, however, were to continue oper-ating for many decades. Chan Lock��s Chylung Co., which by the 1860s had become the largest Chinese enterprise in San Francisco, went from strength to strength into the twentieth century, though Chan Lock himself died in San Francisco in 1868. Chan Lock, a native of Nanhai county in Guangdong, who went to San Francisco in 1850, founded the company on Washington Street with four partners�Xa Nanhai tongxiang, Cha Ming Lai, and three clansmen, Chan Fong Yan, Chan Sing Man, and Chen Nu. Th e fi rm began by importing and selling teas, opium, silk, and lacquered goods, Chinese groceries and other everyday ware. Advertisements in English newspapers such as Th e Oriental as early as 1855 and later the Alta California indicate its ambition to reach out to foreign customers in San Francisco and other cities. Later, it would expand further afield, establishing agents along the West Coast and forming lianhao in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama.69 Th e firm serves as a useful vehicle for studying the trade and inter-fi rm/intra-firm relations between Hong Kong and California. By tracking the movements and activities of Chan Lock and his partners, the deep commercial and social connectedness between California and Hong Kong becomes very clear.
Chinese Merchants in Hong Kong
With the beachheads established by family members, clansmen, friends, and other associates in California, Chinese merchants already established in Hong Kong, as well as those who were to arrive later from the Guangzhou region, entered the market with greater confidence and verve, with their shipments growing ever larger and more valuable. Contemporaries often observed that it was in the 1850s that Chinese ��families of means�� began coming to Hong Kong and setting up new commercial firms, and attributed the cause of the exodus to the disturbances in Guangdong.70 But the prosperity promised by the California trade must surely have acted as a powerful pull factor for such an outfl ow.
As in the case of Westerners, it was Chinese already engaged in shipping who were best positioned to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the cargo trade. Tam Achoy, with his early participation as shipowner, charterer and agent, and lender to passengers, was one of the fi rst significant Chinese export-ers to San Francisco. The shipment of rice, lard, and so on consigned by his fi rm Kwong Yuen on the Ann Welsh (which he might have chartered) in 1852 was worth $4,112�Xa considerable amount for a Chinese firm in those days. Th e consignee was ��Ya Ru [pronounced Ahnee in Cantonese] of the Yuyuan fi rm���X Tam Ahnee was also a charterer/passage broker,71 who was probably a relative or tongxiang of Achoy��s. Ahnee��s firm was Yu Yuen, and since the character ��Yuen�� is common in the names of both firms, we may surmise that they might have been lianhao. Tam Achoy seems also to have founded a company called the Kwong Yuen Tim Kee specifi cally to trade with the United States.72 He might even have visited San Francisco himself, as a ��Quong Yune�� was recorded as a passenger on the Lord Warriston in 1853,73 since Quong Yune is conceivably an alternative way of spelling Kwong Yuen.
Another early Chinese firm exporting to California was Chong Wo. Chiu Yu Tin, who founded Chong Wo around 1849, started working in Hong Kong almost immediately after the colony was established, when he was 14 years old. Coming from an impoverished family in Nanhai, he arrived in Hong Kong with nothing, but from humble beginnings he ended up a powerful businessman with global interests. By the time of his death in 1923, at age 95, his many busi-nesses, with Chong Wo as the flagship, were still going strong.74
Chong Wo was listed in the Hong Kong Directory of 1853 as a ��Fancy Chinese Goods�� company, showing that it might have been an importer, wholesaler, and/or retailer; at the same time, it was an active exporter�Xsome-times as agent for others, sometimes on its own account. The earliest record we have of its exporting activity dates from 1851 when San Francisco Custom House records show ��Chinaman Chungwoo�� in Hong Kong shipping on the Margaretta a cargo of silks, merchandise, and tea worth $426 to Ayook, Asing, and Achung.75 Over time, the goods Chong Wo exported included shawls, bed covers, and lacquerware that might be classified as ��fancy Chinese goods�� cater-ing to Westerners, but they also included rice, opium, clothing, medicinal roots, vegetables, and women��s shoes, which were clearly for Chinese consumption.76 Through the 1850s, Chong Wo��s cargoes grew in value, partly refl ecting general trends and partly the expansion of the firm��s own capacity. One shipment, consisting of women��s shoes, counting boards, and opium, that it sent on the
many items imported from Hong Kong. Source: BANC PIC 1905.17500�VALB v. 14:83, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. By courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Black Warrior in 1859, consigned to Wing Wo Cheong ��for sale and returns,�� was worth $11,633; the amount was reassessed and raised by the San Francisco Custom House to $12,082.77
Chong Wo expanded its business through a series of lianhao and other associated companies in California and other localities. Forming lianhao was a common Chinese business strategy�Xone that Chiu Yu Tin used with great eff ectiveness. These were firms connected through overlapping ownership and/ or cross-shareholding, and frequently connections were further underpinned by personal, family, and native-place ties. Though each company in the group was a separate entity maintaining separate accounts, they were often tightly controlled by just one or a small handful of owners/shareholders.78 Functioning as a group of lianhao made for greater effi ciency, as the firms were able to share resources including capital, information, goodwill, and logistical services. Very oft en, companies operated by the same group of owners, holding shares in diff erent combinations, were able to cover all the bases, including export and import, ship owning/chartering, cargo and passenger broking, provisioning, money lending, depositing and remittance services, and later insurance and modern banking as well, thus achieving both vertical and horizontal integration. In addition to lianhao, some groups of firms, although not structurally linked by interlock-ing ownership, were nevertheless closely affiliated due to long association, high levels of transactions, friendship and native-place and/or family ties, and they also helped each other in many ways by reducing competition and risk�Xmuch as lianhao did. The result was a smorgasbord of entwined interests and a labyrinth of asset flows across the Pacific that bound people, organizations, and localities.
Source: BANC PIC 1905.17500 v. 29:11�VALB, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. By courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
There is reason to believe that Chong Wo originally set up a branch in San Francisco in the early 1850s, managed by a brother or close relative of Chiu��s. Later, however, it formed a new firm in San Francisco called Wing Wo Sang with several partners, and seems to have done a lot of its business through it. Chong Wo probably held shares in other firms in California as well.79 Together and separately, Chong Wo and Wing Wo Sang carried on a thriving and large-scale trade, with Chong Wo in Hong Kong frequently sending Wing Wo Sang large amounts of rice, opium, and oil, and Wing Wo Sang shipping fl our and quicksilver in return. Wing Wo Sang was in fact a major exporter of quicksil-ver, and was listed as a shipper on almost every ship that carried the mineral. Wing Wo Sang��s income for 1863 was assessed by the California Assessor of Internal Revenue at $1,800 in 1863 and $1,918 in 1865,80 thus placing it among the largest Chinese firms in the state. The establishment of Wing Wo Sang and other fi rms in which Chong Wo had an interest benefited Chong Wo in many different ways, far beyond just facilitating its import/export trade. Th rough Wing Wo Sang, for instance, Chong Wo was able to invest in gold mines,81 an opportunity that many Chinese in Hong Kong must have craved but that would have been impossible without the proper agent.
Chong Wo��s commercial network spread in all directions, and Chiu Yu Tin was credited with having, through his generosity and connections, assisted ��over a thousand�� relatives, neighbors and friends to set up businesses abroad.82 Even assuming this to be an exaggeration, one can still imagine the pivotal position he must have occupied in a network that covered Hawaii and spanned the east coast of the Pacific from California to Panama, Chile, and Peru. San Francisco no doubt played a major role in the expansion, serving as the springboard for Hong Kong trade with other parts of North and South America, in the same way that Hong Kong became San Francisco��s gateway to China, Southeast Asia, and beyond. The Hong Kong�VCalifornia corridor became the concourse from which many tributary corridors emerged, directed, and redirected by the move-ments of Chinese migration and attendant trades.
It should be noted that at the same time that he was looking east across the Pacific, Chiu Yu Tin was also busy trading with China and Southeast Asia through his Nam Pak Hong firm, Kwong Mou Tai. In China, he had lianhao in many cities all along the China coast, including Shantou, Shanghai, Jiaozhou, Yingkou, and Dalian.83 Such multidirectional operations centering like spokes to Hong Kong��s hub created immense synergy.
Chiu��s prominence is clearly reflected by his position on the Tung Wah Hospital board of directors. As we noted in Chapter 2, the board of this key Chinese institution was composed of the leading merchants in the colony, nominated by their guilds. The Nam Pak Hong merchants formed a guild in 1868 and the merchants who specialized in trading with California, Australia, and other ��gold�� countries formed the Gold Mountain Traders�� guild, probably around the same time. In 1873, Chiu was nominated to the board by the Gold Mountain Traders�� guild and elected chairman (shou zongli); subsequently, in 1879 and again 1889, he was nominated by the Nam Pak Hong guild, both times as chairman. Very few directors served more than once on the Tung Wah board and fewer still represented two separate guilds. Given that the Tung Wah Hospital directorate was regarded as a roll-call of Hong Kong��s economic and social elite, there is little doubt that Chiu must have become legendary in his own lifetime.
Another big exporter emerging around the early 1850s was Hoon Shing (spelt variously as Hong Sing, Hung Sheng, Hung Shing, and Hoonshing). Th e owner of Hoon Shing, who was probably Chan Hung, arrived in San Francisco on the Troubadour on August 2, 1852, taking with him nine cases of shawls with a declared value of $1,862. He must have returned soon to Hong Kong, for he was there to send four shipments on Hoon Shing��s own account by the Aurora in 1853 to four separate agents in San Francisco, with a total value of $4,097.84 Hoon Shing had a namesake in San Francisco, which must have been its branch. Judging from the fact that, in the days before there were street numbers, Hoon Shing in San Francisco was often used as a point of reference for addresses on the packages of imported merchandise, it must have been quite an outstanding establishment. In 1855, it advertised itself in English in the bilingual newspaper Th e Oriental as ��Hoon Sing Chinese Goods, Rice, Oil, Tea, Sugars, Sweetmeats &c., no. 137 Washington Street near Sacramento.��85 The owner of Hoon Shing was a partner in at least one other firm, Yung Chan, which also had operations in both cities.86 Like Chong Wo, Hoon Shing continued to thrive for several decades in Hong Kong, and in 1902 its owner, Chan Kan Hing, possibly Chan Hung��s son, became a Tung Wah Hospital director.
By the late 1850s, heavyweights such as Kum Sing Lung, Wo Hang, and Cum Cheong Tai had entered the field. Kum Sing Lung��s shipments are conspicuous for their high values, often exceeding $10,000 each. In 1859, for instance, it sent a shipment of sugar, rice, mushrooms, and opium to Sing Kee worth $17,530 (raised to $19,901 by customs) and a consignment of rice, again to Sing Kee, worth $13,500 (raised to $14,453).87 The many shipments Kum Sing Lung sent to Sing Kee and the similarity in their names lead us to speculate that they were lianhao.
We have met Cum Cheong Tai and Wo Hang in earlier chapters as leading ships�� charterers. To handle the increasingly important California trade, Wo Hang��s owners, Li Sing and his brother Li Chit, started another company, Lai Hing, to trade with California, and Li Chit went there to establish a branch
vailed among wealthy Chinese in San Francisco. Source: BANC PIC 19xx. 111:03�VPIC, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. By courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
firm, Lai Hing Lung. After Li Chit returned to Hong Kong, Li Yu Bik�Xprob-ably a distant relative�Xstayed behind to mind the shop.88 By the mid-1860s, the Li family had set up another branch, Wo Hang Lung, in San Francisco. Th ere must have been some division of labor between Lai Hing Lung and Wo Hing Lung or a diff erent configuration of shareholding, thus making it necessary to establish two separate branches. Li Sing and Li Tak Cheong, a relative who ran Lai Hing Lung, became extremely powerful in Hong Kong society. Li Sing was one of the founders of the Tung Wah Hospital, and sat on the first board as the Founding Chairman�Xit was difficult for a Chinese merchant in nineteenth-century Hong Kong to be more highly honored than that. Li Tak Cheong sat on the second board. Both were nominees of the Gold Mountain guild.
The Li family��s entrepreneurship was also expressed later in their forma-tion of the On Tai Insurance Company, the first Chinese-operated insurance company and the first Chinese company to join the European-dominated Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. In order to operate in California, which was obviously one of its target markets, a statement of its ��Conditions and Affairs�� was certified by the US consul in Hong Kong before being pre-sented to the Insurance Commissioner of the state of California. At the end of December 1886, its capital (capital stock paid up in cash) was $416,666 and total assets were $653,263. For many years, its general agent in San Francisco was Lai Hing Lung & Co.89 The Hong Kong�VCalifornia business zone provided endless opportunities for the realization of Chinese entrepreneurial aspirations, and insurance was certainly one area that fi rms with the necessary resources�X including widespread and effective transnational networks�Xwould fi nd too tempting to resist. Later, the Man On Insurance Co. was established in Hong Kong and its San Francisco Agent was Tuck Chong & Co., which was owned by Fung Yuen Sau, Fung Tang��s uncle.90
Another reason for the proliferation of branches and lianhao between Hong Kong and California was to set up a strong mechanism (and opportunity) for remitting qiaohui, the savings (and capital) of Chinese migrants. We will discuss qiaohui more closely below; here, we will just look briefly at it in terms of intra-firm or inter-firm operations. Much of that money was collected by Chinese firms in California and, through various channels, transferred to firms in Hong Kong. Trust and control were fundamental in money matters and, theoretically at least, firms could trust or control no one better than their own branch offices and lianhao in long-distance transactions. No doubt, some of the firms and their branches and lianhao mentioned above would be involved in handling qiaohui, but there were many others. Firms in California eager to capture qiaohui busi-ness advertised not only a flawless track record but also highlighted the fact that they worked through their branches or liaohao in Hong Kong. The Chong Tai, for instance, formed a lianhao, the Dong Chong Tai, in Hong Kong to receive the money, and later, when the Dong Chong Tai��s manager died, it formed an alliance with another firm, the Kwong Lun Tai, in its place.91 For an emigrant, it must have been vital to know who would be handling his hard-earned money, and he would be comforted to know that the fi rm in California that collected his money had a trusted partner in Hong Kong receiving the money and for-warding it to his family in China.
Native-place identity played a key role. Most firms served only specifi c native-place groups and focused on certain clusters of villages in China; yet, by carefully defining the geographical scope of their service and relying on close-knit social and economic networks, they built a very loyal clientele that appreciated their record of safe deliveries.92 The journey of the emigrant��s money, which might start at the remotest mining site or railroad camp in the Sierra Nevada and end up in an equally remote village in South China, was a long and tortuous one. The money was handled by many players in the process, and presumably at every stage the handlers capitalized on the cash at hand, but for the emigrant this was irrelevant so long as the amount he sent reached his family safely, at some point.
Merchant Mobility
Besides being structurally tied by interlocking ownership/shareholding of fi rms, the interconnectedness between Hong Kong and California was additionally enhanced by personal ties. First, there was the constant movement of the mer-chants themselves. Chan Lock, for instance, was almost a ��jetsetter�� by the stand-ards of the day. Sometime after arriving in America in 1850, he returned to Hong Kong and in March 1852 sailed again to San Francisco on the North Carolina with a large consignment of goods�X24 cases of silks, 100 packages of merchan-dise, and 200 bags of rice.93 Shortly afterward, he sailed on the Challenge for Hong Kong,94 where he must have stayed for most if not all of 1853. Another of the many trips he made was in 1859, when we find him arriving in San Francisco on the Black Warrior, carrying with him a long list of articles including opium worth $7,403. In the mid-1860s, he was in Hong Kong again.
While in Hong Kong, Chan Lock busied himself buying and selling, as testified by the many certified invoices he signed at the US consulate in Hong Kong on cargoes he was shipping. Being the senior partner, he styled himself ��Chylung, of the firm Chylung & Co.�� on such occasions. Between 1865 and 1866, Chy Lung (the firm) sent him a series of shipments comprising goods ranging from potatoes to treasure�Xmany shipments of treasure. Records show that in 1865 alone, he received at Hong Kong at least the following: one box each on the Marmion and Bacchantic in April, nine boxes on the Elvira in June, one on the Midnight in July, one on the Parsee in August, and three on the Fairlight in November, totaling 16 boxes and $l48,378 in value.95
The movement of other Chy Lung partners is equally noteworthy. Chan Fong Yan left San Francisco in 1866 for China; before his departure, he put a notice in the Alta California to ��respectfully�� inform the public that he was leaving ��with his family, on the barque Cap-Sing-Moon for the purpose of remaining in Canton for two years in connection with business of the fi rm,��96 and while in China (probably Hong Kong) he developed a reputation as a tea buyer for Chy Lung and other firms in San Francisco.97 By 1875, he was back in San Francisco. Around the late 1860s or early 1870s, Fong Yan and other Chy Lung partners, Chan Sing Man and Cha Ming Lai (Tse Ming Lai), and several other persons formed the Ming Kee Company which became Chy Lung��s main liaohao in Hong Kong. Its starting capital was HK$10,000 and the value of its shares grew many folds over the next few decades. By the 1920s, it was particularly known as a ginseng dealer. The partners also formed two other firms, Ming Tak Bank and Chi Tak. Cha Ming Lai spent most of his time in Hong Kong and when he died in 1881, his son inherited his shares.98 Fong Yan��s son, Kwai Cheung, also managed the firm and sat on the Tung Wah board in 1887 as the representative of Ming Kee Gold Mountain fi rm.
Chan Sing Man was extremely mobile too. He was in Hong Kong in 1853, where he sent two shipments on the Aurora, signing the invoices as ��Sinkee of the firm of Chylung�� and the cargo was consigned to Sinkee in San Francisco.99 (It is very tempting to speculate that Sinkee was in fact the same as Sing Kee; the Chinese character for ��Sing�� is the same in Sing Kee and Sing Man.) A promi-nent merchant in his own right, Sing Man was one of two Chinese representa-tives in a commercial delegation from California paying an offi cial visit to East Coast cities in 1869, and his presence created a great deal of media excitement wherever he went. Later in his life, he spent longer stretches of time in Hong Kong where he bought land (1885, 1889).100 He seems to have returned to San Francisco for good in 1892 when he assigned his Hong Kong properties to Chan Kwai Cheong and Chan Hung as trustees.
Chan Sing Man��s extended periods of residence in Hong Kong highlight a striking role Hong Kong played in the Chinese diaspora. True, conventional wisdom has it that most Chinese emigrants left China with the intention of returning home to grow old and die, and many of them did just that. What was also true, however, is that a large number of merchants who fi rst established themselves in California�Xand for that matter in Australia, Canada, and other places�Xspent long stretches of time in Hong Kong before eventually returning to their villages when they were much older; others died in Hong Kong. A small handful spent their last days in California.
One reason for their propensity to gravitate to Hong Kong was that they no doubt saw it as a more strategic place from which to control their businesses; they could capitalize on the connections they had established abroad and their knowledge of overseas conditions while cultivating the China and Southeast Asia markets. Politically, it would be easy to see why they found Hong Kong a safe haven from increasingly brutal anti-Chinese violence on the West Coast, and later exclusion laws. In times of war and civil disturbance on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong��s relative peace made it even more appealing. Th ere could be social and cultural reasons too: when men grew old and became nostalgic for their homes, Hong Kong was an ideal place of transition where there was a combination of Western elements to which they had become familiar overseas and Chinese elements that ensured a high comfort level. Moreover, being geo-graphically closer to their home village, if they became ill they could be taken home quickly to die, or if they died in Hong Kong it was easier to send the body home in a coffin. In this sense, too, Hong Kong was the ideal in-between place.
This phenomenon of ��overseas Chinese�� returning to Hong Kong as an operational, social, cultural, and geographical in-between place is best exempli-fied by Fung Tang and Fung Pak. Fung Tang, whom we have met previously, was taken to California by his uncle in 1857, when he was 17.101 Th ere, while minding his uncle��s shop, he learned English from the Reverend William Speer. His fluency in that language, plus a smattering of French and German, made him a popular and useful fi gure in the commercial world of San Francisco. He had many American friends, among them the first governor of California, Peter
H. Burnett, Frederick Macondray Jr. and Charles Ryberg, the charterer, who interestingly left Fung $350 in his will when he died in 1868.102 Fung became prominent, representing the Chinese community in its communications with the government and with San Francisco��s white society. A consummate orator, his speech in June 1869 chiding the American government for anti-Chinese laws, which had a large impact in San Francisco, was reprinted in a Hong Kong newspaper. In the best oratorical manner, he pointed out that the Chinese were already contributing greatly to the prosperity of California, but as long as they faced disabilities in the United States�Xsuch as the tax on Chinese miners and the ineligibility to testify in court�Xhe would not advise the many rich Chinese bankers and merchants to come to invest in America as there would not be ade-quate protection for their persons and property.103 He spoke confidently as one who had immense influence in the transpacific business community.
Fung Tang appears to have made his first trip from California to Hong Kong in (or just prior to) 1860; during the trip, among other things, he sent 18 boxes of prepared opium valued at $8,020 back to San Francisco.104 In 1865, he became the partner of a fi rm in Sacramento, Wo Own Yu Kee. He was also an avid investor in gold mines. At some point, as a result of a falling out with his uncle who objected to his bringing his wife to America, he left his uncle��s firm and joined with former ship captain and auctioneer S. L. Jones in setting up an import/export company to trade with China. In 1870, he was recorded by the San Francisco census as having considerable personal properties worth $6,000.105
Fung Tang made other trips to Hong Kong�Xhe was certainly there in 1871106�Xand from around 1875 he began spending more time in the East and immersed himself in Hong Kong��s social and commercial circles. In that year, he was appointed by the US consul in Hong Kong, along with a handful of other members of the Chinese elite, to the ��Committee on Emigration of Women to America�� (to be discussed in Chapter 6). From 1878 to 1899, he was on the Hong Kong List of Jurors, with a break only between 1894 and 1896. Besides operating the Gold Mountain fi rm, I Cheong Ching�Xwhich seems to have specialized in ��specie,��107 the most valuable export from California�Xand other firms he owned, he also worked for foreign companies. As secretary of the Chinese Insurance Co. and comprador of the Oriental Bank and later the New Oriental Bank, he enjoyed access to banking facilities not only for trade but also for exchange operations.108 As in California, Fung played an energetic bridging role in Hong Kong, this time between the Chinese community and the colonial government. We can see his acceptance by Hong Kong��s Chinese community when he was nominated a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1879, representing the Gold Mountain guild.109 His social prominence and ability to move easily in different circles, whether in California or Hong Kong, were tremendous assets that both helped his own business dealings and drew Hong Kong and California closer together. He died in China in 1900, but one of his firms in Hong Kong, the Fung Tang Kee, continued until his son��s death in 1941.110
Like Fung Tang, Fung Pak also spent a good part of his later life in Hong Kong. Fung Pak was probably a younger brother or cousin of Fung Tang, and was taken to California when young. (In the 1870 San Francisco census, the two were recorded as residing in the same house; Fung Tang was 30 at the time, Fung Pak, 24.) Th e first trip on record that Fung Pak made to China was on September 1877 (on the City of Peking), ostensibly for the purpose of going to districts from which most emigrants originated to warn people against going to America because of the anti-Chinese violence there.111 Already a successful entrepreneur, he would no doubt have taken the opportunity to do business in Hong Kong as well. His business thrived. In 1886, it was said that his fi rm exported ��fully $500,000 worth of ginseng alone�� to Hong Kong every year.112 Unlike thousands of other Chinese passengers, who traveled steerage, he sailed in cabin class. What is interesting is that by 1889, when he was 43, he was resid-ing in Hong Kong�Xat least this was how he was described in the advertisement announcing his co-partnership in the San Francisco firm Wing Tuck & Co. with his brother Fung Nam Pak, a resident of that city.113 In Hong Kong, he had a large share in the Wing Tung Kat Gold Mountain firm, founded with a number of fellow clansmen, and must have spent his mature years operating it. He became a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1900. Notably, both he and Fung Tang made their wills in Hong Kong.
Other Chinese merchants who had first established themselves in California, like Fung Tang and Fung Pak, kept the Hong Kong�VCalifornia corridor bus-tling through their constant movement between the two cities, frequent busi-ness transactions and endless correspondence transmitting information and maintaining friendships. They became the first groups of ��returned migrants�� to gravitate to Hong Kong and use it as the headquarters of their business opera-tions; they set a precedent that would be followed by many others from diff er-ent parts of the world in later decades.114 Their movements accentuated Hong Kong��s position as an ��in-between�� place in the Chinese diaspora, while at the same time the high concentration of ��overseas Chinese�� from around the world, with their many assets�Xfi nancial and network capital, entrepreneurship, com-mercial and industrial expertise�Xgreatly strengthened Hong Kong��s position as a business and cultural hub.
The Development of Trade
Chinese firms, though latecomers and generally starting with less capital than their Western counterparts, began to play a more dominant role in the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade from the late 1850s, as their numbers grew and their capacity was boosted by ever more complex networks. In 1859, Edwards & Balley reported to Jardine with some alarm that the cargo of the Robert Passenger from Hong Kong, consisting of rice, sugar, tea, oil, sundries, and 28 boxes/14,000 taels opium, was ��all shipped by and to Chinamen.��115 In fact, ships carrying cargoes all shipped ��by and to Chinamen�� were rare. However, it is certainly true that on many voyages, foreign shippers and consignees were the minority, though the value of their goods might be high. For example, of the 100 separate consignments on the Derby sailing from Hong Kong in January 1865 (with 146 Chinese passengers) only 4�Xand none of the cabin cargo�Xwere sent by non-Chinese.116 Likewise, on the Notos, which sailed from Hong Kong in August 1865 with 37 consignments, only 2 were shipped by non-Chinese fi rms and only 3 of the consignees were non-Chinese.117 Th e W.A..Farnsworth sailed from Hong Kong with only one cargo sent by a non-Chinese fi rm�XJardine, Matheson and Co.�Xwhich paid only $180 in freight out of the total freight of $2,118 for this voyage.118
Edwards & Balley��s comments give the impression that Chinese merchants in Hong Kong were a powerful force behind those in California, providing vital financial support as partners or shareholders, or as creditors advancing on goods exported from Hong Kong, wielding a strong influence on the California market. On occasion, Edwards & Balley even made it sound as if whether a company in San Francisco would sink or swim depended on whether its credi-tors in Hong Kong were willing to extend their loans. In particular, Edwards & Balley expressed its concern at the way Chinese merchants were playing the opium market. It would seem that having made some bad judgments in face of wild fluctuations in prices and causing Jardine to lose money, the firm fell back on blaming Chinese merchants in Hong Kong for making ��reckless�� advances which inevitably led to overshipping and crashes in the San Francisco market, with disastrous results all around.119
These comments deserve analysis. The impression that Chinese merchants only dealt with other Chinese merchants is deceptive. This was true only in a narrow sense, for the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade in fact crossed many ��national lines.�� Even Jardine, Matheson & Co., which seems only to have con-signed goods to non-Chinese agents in San Francisco, could not avoid buying prepared opium from Chinese producers/dealers�Xnot to mention the fact that, in its capacity as agent, it hired out many ships to Chinese charterers to carry cargoes shipped by and to Chinese firms. It and many Western companies also sold a huge amount of insurance to Chinese shippers and charterers.
Collaboration between Chinese and non-Chinese concerns was indeed common. Charles Ryberg��s operations demonstrate this very well, as we have seen. His strength lay in the strong connections he had succeeded in building with Chinese merchants in San Francisco, many of whom traveled frequently to Hong Kong, and through them with their associates in the British colony. Thus, like the Chinese merchants who, in the early days, established their foot-hold in the California trade by tapping into older Western networks, he now piggybacked on Chinese networks. In San Francisco, Ryberg��s Chinese friends acted as guarantors for his charter parties, and went into joint ventures with him in exporting activities. In Hong Kong, they bought goods for him for export to America and bought goods he sent from San Francisco on the ships he char-tered.120 In April 1864, he sent 400 barrels of flour to Hong Kong on his own account, which he sold to Tong Tuck & Co., thus saving Augustine Heard & Co., his official agent, the trouble of finding a buyer.121 Cum Cheong Tai, whom Ryberg described as ��an old friend of mine,�� took over the water casks he had put on board the vessel Midnight after it arrived in Hong Kong.122 An impor-tant task his Hong Kong friends performed for him was to fi nd passengers for the return voyage to San Francisco. Cum Cheong Tai was someone he espe-cially trusted to do a good job in this area.123 There was also Amook, another of Ryberg��s trusted Chinese friends. As mentioned, Amook was a successful charterer and trader who had gone to San Francisco in 1849; he took good care of Ryberg��s interest when he was in Hong Kong, where he resided from time to time. For example, when a shipment of lumber in which Ryberg had a half share, and Amook and other Chinese had the other half, arrived in Hong Kong from San Francisco, Ryberg authorized Amook to settle the deal on his behalf. He informed Augustine Heard & Co. that any settlement Amook might make in Hong Kong would be satisfactory to him.124 By keeping running accounts with his Chinese friends, Ryberg was able to ask Augustine Heard & Co. to draw on them in Hong Kong for expenses incurred by the ships he chartered, thus greatly expediting his operations.125
Other foreign firms such as Augustine Heard & Co. played a large role in the trade by offering advances to Chinese shippers on their cargoes�Xjust as Jardine and Russell aided smaller Western companies like Bosman & Co. and Robinet & Co. with loans and credit facilities. For shipping companies, making advances was a means to attract freight business. Besides cargo, the advances sometimes also covered freight (as in the case of the Viscata)�Xeven return freight. Th e ear-liest record I have of advances made by Augustine Heard & Co. was on goods carried by the Black Prince in early 1858.126 During the first three months of the following year, the company advanced a total of Mex $12,284 to six ship-pers on 11 bills of lading, the largest amount per bill being $2,500 to Tuck Kee and the smallest $500 to Quong Yue Loong, with the latter including $34 for return freight.127 Rice and opium were the two commodities against which most advances were made.
The advances paid in Hong Kong were collected in San Francisco by the agents of the lending firm: Augustine Heard��s agents there included the London and San Francisco Bank, William T. Coleman & Co. and Macondray & Co. The cargoes were consigned to the collecting agent and the real importer could take delivery of them only aft er paying the agent. Not only did the advancing company profit from interests and fees for the facility, it was also protected as the amount of the advance was smaller than the real value of the goods. It could benefit from the exchange if the rate was set high enough, as the advances were made in Mexican dollars in Hong Kong and repaid in gold dollars in San Francisco at a premium; for most of the 1850s and 1860s, the premium set by Augustine Heard & Co. was between 17 and 17.5 percent (which was fairly high). For example, in 1866 Heard paid shippers on the Bosworth Mex.$5,600 in Hong Kong while its agent, the London & San Francisco Bank, would collect $6,580 gold from the importer�Xa 17.5 percent premium.128
A large Chinese concern like Wo Hang also collaborated widely with non-Chinese merchants. We have noted its close relationship with Russell & Co. in all respects; in San Francisco, Macondray & Co. had some of its shipping and trading business. Moreover, advances Wo Hang made on shipments to San Francisco were sometimes collected by an American agent, Sam P. Goodale. In June 1858, for instance, Wo Hang had advanced on cargo on the White Swallow; Goodale bought quicksilver with the money collected on Wo Hang��s behalf and shipped it to Hong Kong, consigned to Augustine Heard & Co.129
Exports from California
In general terms, it is true to say that California gold promoted international trade. In the early days, however, merchants in Hong Kong and China trading with San Francisco faced the problem of what to do with the returns of sales as there was not much to buy in California for the return voyage. A variety of means were tried. One was to send the proceeds in the form of bills to a bank in London with which the Hong Kong company had an account. This was not fea-sible for all firms, especially smaller Chinese ones not plugged into the system, and the transaction cost was high. Another option was to send accounts sales in the form of gold dust; there was plenty of gold dust in California but, as we saw, it was impractical as a medium of exchange. It was not until 1854 that a US Mint was established in San Francisco to mint California gold into coins, and even then it took more years before there were enough coins to meet the demands of trade. Jardine even bought property in San Francisco in the early days, pos-sibly as a means to invest proceeds from sales, but the venture was disappoint-ing.130 Fortunately, the problem of what to do with the proceeds from California sales subsided as California over time increasingly became able to offer items for which there was a market in Hong Kong; such items included everything from abalone to quicksilver, shrimp to ginseng, and flour to gold and silver bullion (mainly coins). With respect to international trade, the new situation helped to redress the imbalance of trade and the US (especially Californian) government was delighted at the increasing export values. For individual firms, too, two-way trade�Xwhich potentially increased the profit-making opportunity of any given amount of capital�Xwas a welcome development. This was particularly crucial in the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade, where the balance of payment was always in Hong Kong��s favor due to the huge amounts of goods imported from Hong Kong and the money emigrants sent home. The export of commodities like fl our and quicksilver from California were therefore vital to reversing, to some extent, the unfavorable balance of payment.131
Qiaohui
Before examining export activities from California, it is important to address the important issue of qiaohui�Xmoney sent home by Chinese abroad. There is no record of how much money was sent home by Chinese in California, but it was estimated in 1869 that nearly $5 million was held by them. A proposition was afoot to establish a Chinese Savings Bank to encourage them to deposit their savings so that the fund could ��flow out into the regular channels of trade�� and relieve the pressure on the coin market.132 The bank was not established, and the Chinese continued to send their money home. By its very nature, such remit-tance was unrequited ��export�� in terms of international trade because it only went one way�Xin this case, in favor of Hong Kong/China. The large volume of funds remitted, and the high percentage of emigrants�� savings, has long been rec-ognized as a central feature of Chinese emigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and many economists and historians have noted the signifi -cance of qiaohui to China��s economy.133 Most of the empirical research on the subject, however, has been focused on remittances from Southeast Asia rather than from the Gold Mountain countries, and unavoidably some of the gener-alized patterns discussed below are based on the former situation. Still, it will hopefully serve as a starting point for future research on remittances from the United States.
For Chinese emigrants, two of the most meaningful ways of maintaining ties with their native homes were sending money and arranging while still alive to have their bones sent home for reburial. Clearly migrants from other countries also sent money home, but the degree and scale of Chinese remittance practices were exceptional. The majority of Chinese emigrants sent money home as a primary duty. Most male emigrants left home unaccompanied by wives, but far from being bachelors, they were married men with wives and children�Xand parents�Xall of whom needed their support.134 Rather, the Chinese migrant��s goal was typically to make money abroad in the hope of eventually rejoining the family in China where he would grow old, die, and be buried among his ancestors. Philip Kuhn��s claim that when Chinese emigrated in the nineteenth century, they were not definitively ��leaving China�� as much as they were expand-ing the spatial dimension of the ties between worker and family135 is a perceptive way of reading the situation.
Household remittances, the most common type of qiaohui, ranged widely in amount. At one end of the spectrum, a migrant might send as little as a few dollars at a time, just enough to keep the family from starvation. Better-off migrants sent enough to sustain a reasonably comfortable living, even to build a larger family house, purchase a few acres of farm land, or start a small business. At the other end of the spectrum, wealthy migrants remitted huge amounts to construct ancestral halls, accumulate large landholding estates, and build gargantuan houses that often incorporated flamboyant architectural fea-tures that transformed the landscape of the home county.136 Th ese successful migrants, held up as models, became the best advertisement for migration as a sure avenue to wealth. Myths about how easy it was to make money in Gold Mountain enticed many to take the journey despite having to face loneliness, physical hardship, racial hostility, and endless risks. By the same token, the pres-sure on migrants to meet the obligations of constantly sending money increased in proportion, and not surprisingly the burden sometimes became a source of resentment and despair.
In addition, money was remitted as donations to charities and public works, all of which would assure the wealthy migrant a special status among the local social and even political elite when he returned. In some regions, funds for start-ing or improving schools, libraries, temples, and public amenities in the native village took up some 15�V20 percent of total remittances. There were regions that became greatly dependent on the ��remittance economy.�� Money was also remitted for investment purposes. In fact, data for the years 1871 to 1931 show that of all China��s resources for keeping its international balance of payment in balance, overseas Chinese remittances�Xaccounting for 41 percent of all receipts�Xwere the most important.137
Qiaohui was sent in different forms, but basically as either currency or invest-ment. In the latter case, the funds were most commonly invested in export com-modities, including gold and silver; after the goods arrived in Hong Kong and were sold, the investor recovered the cash and, if they were lucky, made a profi t on top of it. Despite the lack of substantial empirical data, it would be reason-able to assume that a significant proportion of qiaohui entered the market to fund international financial transactions, and scholars pursuing serious studies on the commercial relationship between China and the United States, the com-mercial implications of Chinese emigration, and other related subjects will fi nd it helpful to remember this and factor it into their analysis.
Gold and Silver
The Hong Kong�VCalifornia market was transformed as exports from California increased in variety, volume, and value. The dynamics of this trade can be illustrated by the movement of three key articles: gold and silver, quick-silver, and fl our.
Before the mid-1850s, the flow of treasure had typically been from Britain (and Europe) to Asia, a situation that guaranteed London��s status as the world��s exchange center and ensured big profits for British carriers, especially the P&O steamers. Th e flow of treasure from the United States westward to Asia�Xmost of it channeled through Hong Kong�Xformed a new counter-trend that assumed long-term global significance. Gold was taken on board in huge amounts by returning Chinese passengers, especially in the early days. In the 1860s, the Hong Kong Harbor Master provided some data on the traffic and, though far from complete, it gives us some idea of the amounts (see Table 4.1). In 1864, the fi rst year that such information was given, he reported six vessels from San Francisco bringing $1,181,500 dollars in gold; the total number of ships from that port for the year was 20.138 Once in Hong Kong, the passengers exchanged the gold for silver which would then be sent home through diff erent channels.
In addition, treasure�Xgold and silver in various forms�Xwas remitted by banks and trading firms in California.139 Some of that presumably was
Table 4.1 Gold carried by Chinese emigrants arriving in Hong Kong from San Francisco, 1864�V70 (select ships only)
Total number Ships Total Passengers Amount
of ships from inspected passengers on inspected of gold
San Francisco by Harbor ships reported
Master
1864 $1,181,500
1868 12 10 4,427 4067 $3,962,000
1869 14 7 5,103 2283 $3,147,641
1870 12 6 5,182 2159 $2,863,748
Source: Hong Kong Blue Book, various years.
composed of qiaohui. Treasure was also exported for the purpose of settling bills of exchange drawn for American East Coast or European accounts, and increas-ingly for speculation purposes.140 Silver, greatly preferred by the Chinese, was in special demand. Whereas the Spanish dollar had been the favorite for many decades over all other currencies and other forms of silver, from the 1850s its popularity was overtaken by the Mexican dollar. This predilection was fortuitous for the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade. In California, Mexican dollars�Xwhich poured in from Mexico to buy gold�Xwere plentiful and quickly found their way into the China market. During some years, Hong Kong and China were the only destinations to which Mexican dollars were shipped from San Francisco. Demands by the China trade drove up the value of the Mexican dollar in San Francisco to make it more expensive than elsewhere, including London. As the economic historian Porter Garnett puts it: ��The merchants and bankers of San Francisco were paying a large sum for the privilege of doing business in China with Mexican dollars.��141
Jardine, Matheson & Co. quite early on saw the Mexican dollar as the best way to remit funds from California against account sales, and frequently requested it specifically from agents/consignees at San Francisco.142 Other companies fol-lowed suit. However, when the Mexican dollar was too expensive to buy in San Francisco, gold and silver bullion were shipped as alternatives. In 1860, it was reported that Chinese merchants would ship gold bars instead when they were unable to procure dollars at less than 9 percent premium, and for most of that year the price had been above 9 percent.143 As a consequence, the demand for gold bars became a new, perhaps unanticipated, feature of the Hong Kong�V California trade, leading to a rise of the value of the metal to from about $880 to $890�V900 per bar in that year. In fact, both the price of the Mexican dollar and gold rose as demand continuously rose: in 1865, the Mexican dollar was purchased at a premium of 11�V12 percent, while gold had risen to between $980 and $990 per bar.144 As we have seen, lenders in Hong Kong sometimes demanded a premium of 17 percent on the Mexican dollar for the advances they made to shippers in the mid-1860s, thus making a neat profit on the exchange.
Frederick Macondray Jr. was only expressing conventional wisdom when, while advising a correspondent in Macao on the best mode of remittance for account sales, he suggested that the Mexican dollar, gold, or silver bullion were all worth considering, though the Mexican dollar was no doubt the best. Silver and gold bullion from California were desirable because of their high quality: the former was refined silver, with as high as 99 parts of pure silver to 0.0001 of base metal and the latter was superior to a ��Pekin Bar�� of 99 touch. Th e choice between the diff erent forms of currency ultimately depended on their relative value at any time�Xand, not forgetting to include a plug for his own business, Macondray added in the letter that the invaluable service his company could offer to its clients was to keep an eye on the market in San Francisco and ��decide on silver or gold whichever at the time might be the cheaper and promised the best result.��145
From a broader perspective, Macondray also observed that during 1864, over $10 million in gold and silver were shipped from San Francisco to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Kanagawa. Of this amount, nearly $9 million went to Hong Kong, and as the exports in merchandise to San Francisco from Hong Kong during the same period amounted to only about $1.35 million, he con-cluded that a considerable portion of the bullion sent to Hong Kong was sent ��under exchange operations.��146 This observation was only partially true. What Macondray forgot to mention was that a portion of the treasure remitted was composed of qiaohui, although it would be difficult to isolate it to calculate the exact amount. But Macondray��s analysis does highlight the large trade in treas-ure between the two cities.
One manifestation of the impact of the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade was the introduction of the US trade dollar by the American government in 1873 to compete with the Mexican dollar. For some time before that, it had become apparent that the popularity of the Mexican dollar in international trade (mainly with China) was crowding out American silver products, and therefore devalu-ing them, and the US.government therefore decided to mint a trade dollar that was superior in quality to reverse the trend. The new US trade dollar, being 2 mills more valuable than the Mexican, more uniform in weight and fi neness, and of superior artistic workmanship, was enthusiastically received in South China and quickly became recognized as legal tender. Though not recognized in Hong Kong as legal tender, it was nevertheless extremely popular in the marketplace. The US consul in Hong Kong reported:
The bulk of the direct exchange business between San Francisco and Hong Kong (which is very considerable) is done in this coin, the natives prefer-ring it to the Mexican dollar. Late advices from San Francisco report that so great is the demand for trade dollars for shipment to China that the California mint is unequal to the task of turning out the coin fast enough to satisfy requirements.147
Unfortunately, the trade dollar was withdrawn in 1887 for domestic reasons.148 This episode of the short-lived trade dollar, however, demonstrates the significance of the Hong Kong�VCalifornia trade on both sides of the Pacifi c.
Treasure was sent on almost every vessel from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Shipping merchants welcomed treasure as cargo since freight charges on it were
0.5 percent,149 which was generally higher than for other commodities. In some cases, a good cargo of treasure could cover the cost of the charter party and still leave plenty of room for other merchandise.150 The other advantage of transport-ing treasure was that once it was loaded and locked away, it placed little demand on the crew�Xunlike passengers, who would require much more service.151 For commercial houses and banks, sending treasure to Hong Kong was big business, and at 1.5 percent premium, insurance companies did equally well out of the treasure traffi c.
The transfer of treasure was also big business: it was said that the sole line of business of Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank��s San Francisco Branch, opened in 1875, was the purchase and export of Mexican dollars and bar silver to China,
Table 4.2 Treasure exported from San Francisco to Hong Kong, 1856�V90
Year Value of treasure ($)
1856 1,475,538
1860 3,377,209
1865 6,943,692
1866 6,533,084
1869 6,487,445
1870 6,055,080
1875 7,168,649
1880 3,511,683
1890 10,550,290
Source: Alta California, various years.
part of which would have consisted of qiaohui. Later, the selling of Hong Kong dollars to the thousands of Chinese residing in the Western states of America, either for remitting or for saving, also became important.152
The export of treasure from San Francisco to Hong Kong remained lively despite the Exclusion Act, as Table 4.2 shows.
Quicksilver and Flour
Other leading exports from California were quicksilver and fl our. Quicksilver was discovered in a cave in the hills south of San Jose, California in 1845, but full production did not begin until 1850. From then to 1900, California quick-silver mines produced half of the world��s output; production peaked in the late 1870s, providing two-thirds of the world��s demand.153 Up until 1850, China produced and even exported quicksilver, but the California product was so much cheaper that California quickly became the main supplier of quicksilver to China, where it was used mainly in the production of vermilion.154 Quicksilver was often bought with the sales proceeds of exports from Hong Kong,155 from where it was re-exported to China and India. The growth of the quicksilver trade between California and Hong Kong is indicated in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3 Export of quicksilver to China
Year No. of flasks* Value in US$
1856 3,409 �V
1860 2,282 �V
1866 9,752 331, 464
1870 4,051 126,500
1875 16,856 928,577*
1879 36,896 1,073,183
1880 19,488 578,190
1884 200 [sic]
1885 595 [sic]
Note: Quicksilver was exported from Europe and America packed in iron fl asks, each containing around 76.5 pounds of quicksilver. Source: Alta California, various years.
Table 4.4 Quicksilver shipment on the Belgic, November 1875
Shippers No. of flasks Value in US$
S. L. Jones & Co. 458 25,000
Wing Wo Sang & Co. 197 9,854
Shing Yik & Co. 206 10,300
Hip Wo & Co. 25 1,224
Fred Iken 400 20,064
Sing Kee & Co. 17 826
Degener & Co. 1,351 66,600
Total 2,656 fl asks $133,868
Source: Alta California, November 17, 1875.
The San Francisco Custom authorities required shippers to report under oath the market value of their shipments, which the newspapers reprinted. Th e papers also watched enthusiastically for record shipments of quicksilver: one of the biggest shipments up to 1875 was made in November of that year by the Belgic. It took several years before the record in value was broken when the same vessel carried 4,750 flasks of quicksilver valued at $134,658 in April 1879.156
In Hong Kong, quicksilver became so popular that by the late 1850s it was accepted almost as currency. We may recall that in the dispute over payment for the chartering of the Caribbean in 1858 between Jardine and Wo Hang, the disputed amount was remitted to Hong Kong in the form of quicksilver while the matter was being resolved. Indeed, speculation on quicksilver was rife. Investors gambled on its price, buying and selling short, and a key factor was the timing of its arrival from San Francisco. In 1877, a case of quicksilver speculation rocked Hong Kong. Lee Yu Chow, a brother of Li Sing and Li Chit and an avid dealer in quicksilver, ��borrowed�� 200 flasks of quicksilver from Wai Akwong, comprador of the Chartered Mercantile Bank. A seasoned speculator himself, Wai lent quicksilver at interest to people who were in urgent need while he waited for prices to rise before selling his stock. Lee Yu Chow had ordered 1,000 flasks from California through Lai Hing and its branch in San Francisco, but they seemed to have arrived too late. When the shipments did arrive, Lee Yu Chow ��returned�� the borrowed quicksilver to Wai Akwong with $50 interest, but Wai refused to accept it, as he now insisted that Lee had committed himself to purchasing the quicksilver, not merely borrowing it. The problem was that on the day Lee obtained the quicksilver from Wai, the price was invoiced at $94.50 per picul; after that, the market price went up to $100 within a few days, and then dropped dramatically so that by the time the quicksilver was returned to Wai Akwong, it was worth a lot less. While Wai tried to pursue the matter, Lee Yu Chow in the meantime declared bankruptcy and left the colony. Th ere was nothing else Wai could do but to sue Li Sing and Li Chit as sureties for the sale amount to the transaction.157 The court ruled for the Li brothers, as no commit-ment to purchase could be proved.
Like quicksilver, fl our rather unexpectedly turned out to be a major import item from California, but it far surpassed quicksilver in value, market signifi -cance, and cultural ramifications. It was a surprising development, partly because only a few years previously, California had to import all kinds of foodstuff s for the thousands who poured in between 1848 and 1850. Even Hong Kong, where not a grain of wheat was grown anywhere nearby, shipped fl our there.158 Farmers in California, however, soon began to grow wheat and, with the emergence of very large farms and mills, there were surplus wheat and fl our seeking overseas markets. Compared with Great Britain�Xtheoretically a major market because of high demand but almost 100 days away by ship�Xthe China market was an attractive alternative as it was only a month��s voyage away, thus entailing smaller freight costs and cheaper insurance premiums. The large number of ships from San Francisco to Hong Kong, many of them taking returning Chinese emi-grants, presented an ideal opportunity for bulk goods such as lumber, wheat, and flour: the availability of cargo space at cheap freight rates on ships largely paid for by passage money and treasure was crucial to the early introduction of flour to China. The close relationship between flour and passengers is refl ected in this rather tongue-in-cheek report: ��We read in a San Francisco paper that the ship Titan, at Portland, Oregon, is loading Chinese and fl our for Hong Kong. She will carry 450 of the former and 600 tons of the latter.��159
It might also seem surprising that the Chinese, supposedly a rice-eating nation, should be importing such enormous amounts of flour. In fact, that Chinese only ate rice was a myth; they consumed other grains as well. Not only were Chinese in the north accustomed to consuming flour in the form of noodles, cakes, dumplings, buns, and youtiao (deep-fried dough sticks); those in the south did so too.
What was really surprising was why the more expensive California fl our was imported when cheaper flour could be obtained locally in China. Th e answer lies partly in the fact that California flour was purer and finer than Chinese fl our. It was also more glutinous�Xthe more glutinous the flour, the longer it could be pulled for making noodles and the thinner it could be rolled for making pastries. Brand recognition and brand loyalty also played a role, and California brands such as Sperry��s ��XXX�� acquired a faithful following once they convinced Chinese consumers of their superiority.
But how did California fl our find its way to China in the first place? Some contemporaries claimed that it was returned Chinese emigrants who fi rst introduced California flour to the China market, just as they introduced many other ��foreign luxuries�� to their hometowns.160 This is plausible. Certainly with their greater consumption power, they could afford it, and they set the trend for other well-to-do Chinese at home, making the finer and more expensive California fl our a status symbol. Interestingly, Chinese merchants were among the first major brokers and shippers of California fl our. After Isaac Friedlander, San Francisco��s leading wheat merchant who opened the Eureka Mill in 1853, sold a trial shipment of flour to China in 1854, the flour trade fell mainly into the hands of Chinese firms in San Francisco and Hong Kong, which seized the opportunity fl our offered as a means to remit funds to Hong Kong. Th e China flour market was perhaps not only the result of ��natural�� Chinese consumer demand; it was just as likely that, as Fung Tang seemed to have implied in 1869, Chinese merchants in San Francisco and Hong Kong aggressively promoted and cultivated a taste for it among Chinese consumers at home in order to create a demand for their supply.161 The fact that American producers pushed sales by providing credit on the sale of flour to Chinese exporters, occasionally for cash, usually for 30 days and sometimes for longer, must also have encouraged the latter to engage in the trade.162
Though in the early years wheat was also exported from California, it did not last; flour exports on the other hand, except for the odd year, grew by leaps and bounds. This was because until the twentieth century there were no mills in East Asia to offer competition or to process American wheat. Advanced machinery�X purifiers, bolters, and rollers�Xin fact made it possible to refi ne middlings163 into a lower-grade flour, and this grade of flour was the mainstay of American exports to Hong Kong.
Th e flour trade became a catalyst invigorating the Hong Kong�VSan Francisco networks. Among the major flour exporters was Quong Ying Kee, owned by Ah Ying. He had started in San Francisco very humbly, but after working at the Golden Gate Mills, the leading flour producer in California, he gained enough expertise in the business to achieve a dominant position in the export market. According to a contemporary San Francisco merchant familiar with Chinese merchants, Julius A. Palmer Jr., Golden Gate Mills shipped about $50,000 of its fl our annually on Ah Ying��s behalf in the late 1860s, and when Ah Ying had a contract with the French government to supply French troops in its East Asian colonies, even greater shipments were made.164
Another large flour shipper besides Quong Ying Kee was Tung Yu & Co., which did a brisk business with Tung Tuck in Hong Kong. Records show Tung Yu shipping 6,984 sacks on the Elvira ( June 1865), 3,000 on the Midnight ( July 1865), 2,000 on the Parsee (August 1865), and 6,000 on the Oracle (September 1865); the last vessel was also carrying 310 Chinese passengers back to China.
Table 4.5 California flour exports to China, 1866�V90
Year No. of barrels Value in US$
1866 160,960 631,791
1870 138,372 658,454
1875 107,858 550,887
1890 401,392 1,601,791
Source: Alta California, various years.
Chan Lock, who was in Hong Kong in the mid-1860s, received many large ship-ments sent by his firm Chy Lung in San Francisco.165
Hong Kong developed into a thriving center for the flour trade, despite dis-advantages such as the humidity and high incidence of worms and weevils that damaged flour. In 1863, California shipped more than 40,000 barrels of fl our to Hong Kong, compared with 31,000 to Vancouver Island and 12,000 sent around the Horn to England.
Around 1880, the leading California mills opened a joint offi ce in Hong Kong to control their exports directly. Managed by two businessmen, W. W. Whiley and Tsui Hang On, the branch office promoted not only acceptance of California flour in Hong Kong, but also the re-export of flour to Guangzhou and other Chinese ports. Large amounts of flour were also shipped to Hong Kong after the opening of new transpacific steam lines from other Pacifi c Coast cities such as Tacoma, Vancouver, and Portland in the late nineteenth century. Though this development meant competition for Californian exporters, for Hong Kong it led to a further consolidation of its status as a flour hub. By 1900, American flour exports to Hong Kong exceeded 1.4 million barrels and com-prised nearly 50 percent of the total value of all US exports to Hong Kong.166 No wonder Quan Kai, comprador for several shipping companies�Xthe Pacifi c Mail Steamship Co., the Toyo Kisen Kaisha, and the Portland and Asiatic Steamship Co.�Xand agent for the Portland Flour Mill Co., became a millionaire control-ling an immense flour business in Hong Kong.167
In Hong Kong, flour was re-sacked for the diff erent markets and redistrib-uted; it was sent south to Southeast Asia�Xthe Straits Settlements (including Singapore) and Vietnam�Xand north to Chinese ports and beyond, as far as Vladivostok. In 1890, US Consul at Ningbo, John Fowler, chastised West Coast millers for continuing to ship all flour bound for China via Hong Kong when shipping directly to Japan and from there to Chinese ports would eliminate a thousand miles of freight charges and save time.168 But despite Fowler��s inter-vention, Hong Kong��s position as a transshipping center for fl our remained unchallenged, obviously because of the sophisticated and deep-rooted market infrastructure that had been developing apace since the 1850s.169
Gold Mountain Firms
The California trade opened countless opportunities for firms in Hong Kong, Chinese and non-Chinese, and cooperation as well as competition occurred among them on many levels, as shown above. Yet there were certain distinct areas which only Chinese firms were able to penetrate, including a range of ser-vices for emigrants. For the emigrant, these firms were not only a commercial concern but a one-stop shop that served as bank, post office, travel agency, emi-gration consultancy, and hostel.
Let us begin with the transmission of qiaohui, which was such a key matter in the Chinese migration process. Emigrants�� money sent from California�X whether through banks, carried by passengers on board, sent in the form of goods or treasure or some other channel�Xmore oft en than not ended up at a Gold Mountain fi rm in Hong Kong, and in turn this fi rm arranged for its dis-patch to the sender��s home. It was generally believed that the money would arrive safely at the designated address, no matter how remote or inaccessible, and that it would finally reach the hands of the designated recipient�Xdespite the fact that mishaps occurred from time to time.170
In addition to transferring funds, Gold Mountain firms provided a wide range of banking services that catered to individual needs. Migrants�� savings were accepted for safekeeping and as interest-bearing deposits; on special instructions from the sender, the firms could hold the remitted money and send it by installment to the recipient rather than in one lump sum. They even, on occasion, advanced money to the families on credit. Many of their services went far beyond the purely commercial. Aft er the implementation of the Exclusion Act, prospective emigrants were offered a place to stay at the shop during the two or three weeks they had to spend in Hong Kong waiting for papers to be processed and for their ships to arrive. Large firms had offices complete with living rooms and bedrooms for their clients. In 1928, the Hong Kong govern-ment even had to give special dispensation to Gold Mountain fi rms for provid-ing accommodation on their premises to clients without registering as inns.171 They also helped migrants�Xand their wives, sons, daughters, and nephews�X negotiate the complicated process of emigrating overseas by buying tickets, arranging health examinations, preparing evidence of identity, and fi lling out forms at the US consulate. Given such service�Xflexible, intimate, and generally trustworthy�Xit is no wonder that migrants relied heavily on these fi rms, and preferred to continue entrusting them with their money rather than turn to the state and commercial banks that also vied for their business.172
Some Gold Mountain firms provided additional services necessitated by the Exclusion Act. A number of them were actively involved in the thriving market for forged papers that enabled ��paper sons�� to enter the United States. Moreover, since merchants were free to enter the United States, many Chinese tried to do so by posing as merchants. Th e Alta California alleged that all a Chinaman in Hong Kong�Xeven a house servant or laborer�Xwould have to do would be to buy an interest in some firm in California to qualify as merchant.173 This was no doubt an exaggeration, but it would not be surprising that some Gold Mountain firms, equipped with the necessary connections, would have assisted in this process. For those appalled by the injustice of the Exclusion Act, these organized attempts to sidestep the Act might be looked upon as creative and honorable.174
With their wealth and widespread connections, Gold Mountain traders became a social and political force to be reckoned with. As noted, the Gold Mountain guild was one of the eight or nine guilds that nominated directors to the powerful Tung Wah Hospital board annually, and this practice contin-ued until the early twentieth century. Apart from everything else, the entrepre-neurial outlook, managerial expertise, and global network of Gold Mountain merchants strengthened the effectiveness of the Tung Wah and raised its profi le as a social and political force, both in Hong Kong and around the world. Just as importantly, the Gold Mountain trade stimulated and complemented other trades in Hong Kong, in particular the Nam Pak trade. The dynamic interac-tions between the two main trade routes, as exemplified by Chiu Yu Tin, owner of the long-running Chong Wo Gold Mountain fi rm and the Kwong Mou Tai Nam Pak firm, accentuate the radial, interconnected, and overlapping nature of Hong Kong��s networks.
Conclusion
With the gold rush, Hong Kong moved closer to being a world-class entrepot. To supply the California market, and later to redistribute goods imported from it, Hong Kong��s merchants ventured into new trade routes and formed new trade patterns, casting their networks ever wider. While once focused on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, they now turned their gaze upon the Pacifi c, an ocean throbbing with energy, and saw a new horizon with endless possibilities. Hong Kong��s unique position as an open and free port on the Asian end of the Pacific Ocean, midway between North China and Southeast Asia and guarding the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, assumed unprecedented relevance. Business and social networks multiplied as more players entered the field and expanded in many new directions.
The California trade introduced diversity into a market once overwhelm-ingly dominated by a single article�Xopium�Xand played a big part in trans-forming Hong Kong into a world center for rice and sugar, flour and ginseng, and foreign exchange. The surge in Chinese emigration made the Hong Kong�V California intercourse more complex and multilayered. On the most obvious level, the increase in passenger ships to and from San Francisco (in most cases, though not all) made available cargo space and lowered freight rates, and passage money became a vital source of trade capital. The growing presence of Chinese in California, moreover, swelled the consumption of certain specifi c articles and changed the content of the trade. Zhang Zhidong, the governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces (1884�V89), who closely monitored the activities of overseas Chinese, was highly conscious of the fact that Chinese in the United States and elsewhere were an immense impetus for the circulation of Chinese goods, both as consumers and as traders; the Exclusion Act alarmed him. He knew that any restriction on Chinese migration would have dire eff ects on the national economy and he memorialized the Emperor to pressure the US government into suspending the Act.175 Unfortunately, China failed to infl uence Washington and the exclusion policy persisted. Nonetheless, Zhang��s memorial is an eye-opener. Scholars of Chinese migration are very aware of the impor-tance of remittances, but much less so of trade, and they might be encouraged by Zhang��s observation to research on how Chinese migration actually aff ected Chinese trade on a national scale.
A new stock fi gure, the gum saan haak or ��Gold Mountain sojourner�� (Putonghua, jinshanke), the high-income, big-spending Chinese emigrant in California, emerged in the public consciousness of south China in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He was keenly sought aft er as husband and son-in-law, but no less keenly as customer, investor, and business partner. Th e gum saan haak��s consumption patterns, to a large extent, dictated the composition of the trade. His preference for Hong Kong��s prepared opium put the product on the world map, and as a result of his taste for fine, expensive California fl our, Hong Kong became an unlikely international distribution hub for it. The money he sent home not only benefited his family but became an invaluable and integral component of Hong Kong��s financial structure, providing capital for trade and other activities, and boosting Hong Kong��s position as an international foreign exchange center.
On the one hand, the dynamic interactions between the Gold Mountain trade and other trades�Xin particular, the Nam Pak trade�Xmeant increased shipping activity for Hong Kong as a port and greater business opportunities for Hong Kong��s merchant houses. On the other, with California turning into a conspicuously high-end market that demanded the best goods that money could buy, the overall value of Hong Kong��s import/export trade was raised in value as a result. I would argue that it was this upgrading in Hong Kong of trade across the board that made the California trade such a valuable catalyst to Hong Kong��s development. I would further argue that it was from this circumstance that the general impression arose among many Chinese that for a variety of goods, including medicines, dried marine products, and prepared opium, Hong Kong was the best place to get them�Xthe reason being that it was here that the best products were concentrated for the purpose of re-export to the biggest-spending consumers.
The overlapping personal and commercial interests of Chinese merchants in California and those in Hong Kong energized transpacifi c connections.
Extraordinary glamor attached to the Gold Mountain commerce that emerged in the 1860s as a distinct, even iconic Hong Kong trade. The Gold Mountain traders�� wide range of functions underlined the intricate relationship between the flow of goods, the flow of money, and the flow of people along that corri-dor. No doubt they occupied a special place in many emigrants�� hearts. And no doubt, too, they were an important factor that enabled Hong Kong to occupy a special position in the Chinese diaspora.
While merchants of all nationalities engaged in the California trade, it had singular significance for the Chinese, and in particular the Cantonese. Merchants active in California found Hong Kong a strategic and comforting place in which to position themselves. As a result, Hong Kong was transformed into the nerve center for numerous business networks and empires. Merchants from Fujian province and the Chaozhou districts had for centuries carved out special spheres of international trade for themselves. Now, for the fi rst time, merchants from the Pearl River Delta were able to put their stamp on a trade and turn the Pacific Ocean into what Henry Yu so aptly calls the Cantonese Pacifi c.176
5
Preparing Opium for America*
The high income of California created a market for top-quality commodities and luxury goods. The Chinese there demanded, and were able to afford, No. 1 China rice, refined white sugar, shark��s fin and bird��s nest. Above all, they wanted the best opium that money could buy. The export of prepared opium from Hong Kong to California, more than any other commodity, highlights the inextricably intertwined relationship between Chinese emigration and Hong Kong��s politi-cal, social, and economic development. It demonstrates the immense volume and value of Hong Kong��s export trade, and the alignments and strategies that opium merchants had to adopt to take full advantage of the trade. At the same time, the trade had a crucial impact on the colonial government��s fi scal policy and practice, as well as its management of the Chinese business community.
From Raw Opium to Prepared Opium
With the occupation by the British in 1841, Hong Kong became the major dis-tribution center and warehouse for Indian opium�Xmainly Patna and Malwa from Bengal�Xfor the China market. By the late 1840s, it was estimated that three-quarters of the entire Indian opium crop passed through Hong Kong.1 To a large extent, being the emporium for Britain��s trade in opium was Hong Kong��s raison d��etre, and in turn, with its scarcity of resources, Hong Kong relied heavily on the drug for financial support. As historian Christopher Munn claims:
* An earlier version of this chapter appears in Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol..1, no. 1 (2005), pp. 16�V42.
[T]he opium trade and Hong Kong are so obviously intertwined that it is hardly possible to consider the early history of the colony without some reference to the drug: the colony was founded because of opium; it sur-vived its difficult early years because of opium; its principal merchants grew rich on opium; its government subsisted on the high land rent and other revenue made possible by the opium trade.2
In the 1840s, most of the raw opium was transshipped to the newly opened treaty ports on the China coast, with only a small amount remaining in Hong Kong to be boiled and prepared for smoking by local consumers. Hong Kong consumers were able to enjoy the luxury of having Patna opium imported in bulk, and Patna�Xbecause of its low morphia content�Xwas deemed to produce the finest quality of smoking. Turkish and Persian opium, containing a much higher proportion of morphia, was rarely used for smoking, while ��native opium���Xthat is, opium grown in China�Xthough grown in greater volume than generally recognized, was considered very low grade.3
Raw opium was imported to Hong Kong in chests of 40 balls, with each chest weighing on average 120 catties or 1,920 taels. Since the main mode of consum-ing opium among Chinese was by smoking, the raw opium had to be boiled beforehand. After boiling, a ball weighing 48 taels raw was reduced to about 25 taels, so that a chest of 40 balls of raw opium�X1,920 taels�Xwould produce approximately 1,000 taels of prepared opium.4 When boilers made more than 1,000 taels from one chest, the product became more dilute and its value depre-ciated. Though by so doing the boiler might make a greater profi t temporar-ily, in the long term, as word quickly got around, he discredited himself. Like today��s cigarettes, opium prepared by different companies was marketed under different brand names, with the leading ones boasting of prominent ��master boilers�� and emphasizing other features of their products, such as the quality of the water used. It was well known that the two Hong Kong firms producing the leading brands, Fook Lung and Lai Yuen, never returned more than 1,000 taels per chest, and consumers who valued quality were happy to pay more for them.5
Opium smoking has been so widely condemned that it is hardly necessary to expand our discussion in that direction. Rather, it would be useful here to take a broader view in order to understand the cultural, social, and economic issues within the context of transpacific Chinese society in the late nineteenth century.
Source: Samuel Merwin, Drugging a Nation: The Story of China and the Opium Curse (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1908), p. 172.
It is useful to see that, as the historian Frank Dikotter and his co-authors point out, opium smoking among Chinese fulfilled a variety of social roles that endowed its consumption with positive meanings: it could be alternatively or simultaneously a medical product, a sign of hospitality, a recreational item, a badge of social distinction, and a symbol of elite culture.6 Th e discriminating smoker could not only distinguish between the many different grades of opium, like a connoisseur of wine, but would also appreciate the use of beautiful imple-ments to smoke it with, just as tea drinkers appreciated extravagant and refi ned tea sets for serving tea.7 The elaborate procedures and rituals of opium smoking heightened its mystique. As one author puts it: ��Opium demands much from its admirers; it has to be coaxed and coddled, because, like a lover, it responds best to skilled hands.��8
Branding Hong Kong
The Fook Lung and Lai Yuen brands, both prepared (or nominally prepared) in Hong Kong, continued to dominate the market until the 1900s, as we see in numerous advertisements. The term ��Zheng Gang Fu Li�� (authentic Hong Kong-produced Fuk Lung and Li Yuan brands) was widely used to emphasize authenticity.9 What is significant is that in the minds of consumers in America, quality opium was associated with Hong Kong from the beginning. Not only was Hong Kong blessed with easy access to high-quality Patna, but a popular belief arose early that ��the water in Hong Kong possessed some peculiar qualities that made the city better fitted than any other for the boiling of opium,�� and it seems that the belief persisted.10 Apart from its pleasing taste, Hong Kong opium�Xby commanding higher prices�Xmust also have had snob appeal. Advertisements of Fook Lung and Lai Yuen highlighted the claim that their patrons were ��rich merchants��; even to those who could not aff ord these brands, they must have represented objects of aspiration and desire.11 Consequently, despite the estab-lishment of opium factories in San Francisco and British Columbia in later decades, opium prepared in Hong Kong continued to be held in high regard, and demanded good prices.
As importantly, the Hong Kong brands became the target of counterfeits, and consumers were reminded constantly of the need to be vigilant. Emphasis was placed on Hong Kong as the source of ��genuine�� quality opium. Today��s market researchers are keenly aware of the salience of consumers�� country-of-origin bias�Xthat consumers not only consider brand name but also where the product is produced.12 Such bias clearly reinforced the preference for Hong Kong-prepared opium among Chinese in California up to the mid-1900s. Th e phenomenon reflects the prominence Hong Kong occupied in the emigrants�� minds as a place of refi ned taste, of authentic Cantonese style, and somewhere that delivered the goods.
The emergence of brand consciousness among opium smokers added a crucial dimension to the consumption of, and the increasing attachment to, Hong Kong-prepared opium among Chinese consumers in America. This played a vital role in shaping the pattern of production, delivery, and marketing strate-gies of suppliers as well as government policy. As the export of prepared opium
activity. Source: HKMH PC1994.0052, Hong Kong Museum of History. By courtesy of the Hong Kong Museum of History.
to California increased, the twin pillars of Hong Kong��s economy�Xopium and Chinese emigration�Xcombined to generate yet another source of revenue for the colonial government and of profit for its merchants.
With the steady emigration of Chinese, opium�Xonce prepared in Hong Kong merely for local consumption�Xquickly found a ready and expanding market in California and assumed new significance as an export item. Th e Chinese did not introduce opium to America. By the middle of the nineteenth century, opium in various forms was a standard item in all the pharmacopoeia of the world.13 In America, opium was included in many patent medicines that were used to quiet crying babies and calm frayed nerves, as well as treat cholera, dysentery, ague, bronchitis, earache, bedwetting, measles, morning sickness, and piles. Recognized as an unsurpassed cough suppressant, it was used in many cough syrups. Opium ��eaters�� drank opium, usually in the form of laudanum�Xa mixture of alcohol and opium�Xor small pills, often mixed with substances to disguise the bitter taste.14 But the smoking of opium, which was how the Chinese consumed it, was relatively new to America.15
Transplanting Opium Smoking to California
There is no question that opium smoking was pervasive among Chinese emi-grants to California, and no foreign account of Chinatown fails to mention the phenomenon. ��One cannot walk a block in Chinatown without realizing what a powerful grip the drug has upon that community �K From basement and open doorway pours forth the sickening odor that testifies to its presence.�� It was oft en pointed out that, unlike white people who indulged in drinking and delighted in the excitement and boisterous nature of the saloon, the Chinese ��takes his pleasures sadly and in silence. It is in the tomblike silence of the opium den that he seeks tranquility. It is to the seductive narcotic that he turns to lull his pain and grief.��16 Most white accounts were much more hostile, as they demonized both the habit and the smoker in crude racist terms.
But that is only part of the story. Contemporary white observers and schol-ars today frequently forget that opium was more than a simple indulgence. For those Chinese emigrants engaged in heavy physical labor, such as panning for gold in hostile terrain, or blasting through rocky mountains to build railway tracks, opium was smoked for the alleviation of aches and pains. It was accepted as a panacea for many ailments, so that in a strange country where unknown as well as known diseases prevailed, it was particularly prized. In a strange country, too, where many lived far away from home without family or female company, opium was smoked in the company of male friends as a form of social lubri-cant, a source of deep comfort. Apart from opium dens, it was also smoked in homes, restaurants, brothels, and clubhouses of emigrant associations, where it was a social rather than anti-social activity. Nor was it necessarily a sleazy phe-nomenon, as sensationalized in the Western press, as opium was also smoked in highly elegant environments amid fine furniture and using beautifully craft ed implements. Perhaps the insistence on maintaining some aspects of an old life-style, however expensive it might be, was seen as compensation for the sacrifi ce one made for the hazardous journey and long separation from home. Given the popularity of opium smoking among the Chinese in the mid-nineteenth century, prepared opium became a major export commodity to the United States.
Almost every vessel that left Hong Kong for San Francisco carried a certain quantity of opium on board, by a combination of means. For example, we fi nd that on the Lord Warriston, which left for San Francisco in January 1853, some opium was taken by passengers as their own merchandise; some was sent by Chinese merchants in Hong Kong to Chinese consignees in San Francisco; two cases of it were shipped by a European merchant in Hong Kong consigned to the ship��s captain.17 In addition, passengers frequently took opium on board for personal use�Xor nominally for personal use, which would be untaxed�X during the voyage and after, and such opium would not have appeared in the ship��s manifesto. To elude the customs inspector��s examination in order to avoid paying duty, they frequently hid opium in their clothing, hollow-soled shoes, hollow trunk covers, leather pillows, and even scooped-out limes.18 Th e Customs Department, having seized unclaimed merchandise that had evaded duties, advertised in the newspapers for ��claimants�� of such property, calling on them to appear and file claims for ownership�Xand no doubt to pay the required duties; goods that remained unclaimed would be sold by public auction.19 Later, when duties on opium were raised, smuggling became more systematic, oft en involving crew members as well as customs offi cials.20
Prepared opium normally was packed in tins, which were in turn packed in cases. At first there was no standard packaging�Xtins contained varying amounts of opium and the number of tins per box also varied. For instance, in 1851 Captain John Cass of the Th etis shipped one case of opium to San Francisco with 24 tins inside, each containing 10 taels.21 Or it could be sent in tins containing only 7.5 taels each, or in odd amounts such as 1,585 taels or 1,008 taels.22 Soon, however, standardization set in. The term ��Gold Mountain opium�� (jinshan yan��gao) came into currency in Hong Kong in the late 1850s to depict opium destined for the gold-rush countries,23 with a standard packaging of 5 taels per tin: opium designated for California was packed in boxes or cases of 100 tins each, while for Australia it came in boxes of 120. Only occasion-ally would a case containing an amount of opium that varied from 500 taels be shipped to America after the 1850s.
Along with opium itself, implements for smoking it�Xsuch as pipes, which could be expensive objets d��art�Xwere also exported so that the familiar experi-ence of smoking opium could be replicated in its totality in a foreign land. Th e vessel Mohammed Shah, for instance, not only brought two cases of prepared opium to San Francisco in 1851, but also 12 pipes for smoking it.24
The Prepared Opium Trade
In the early years, merchants of different nationalities on both sides of the Pacific participated in the prepared opium trade. It is no surprise that Jardine, Matheson & Co., the giant in the raw opium trade, should be a major player; other foreign shippers included Douglas Lapraik and J. J. dos Remedios;25 James Stephenson & Co. also sent a good amount to Australia. By the late 1850s, when the trade had become more structured, Chinese merchants began taking over a greater share of the exporting business, though Jardine, Matheson & Co. continued to dominate, as mentioned in the previous chapter. Compared with its raw opium trade aimed at the China market, Jardine��s prepared opium busi-ness to California and Australia must have been minuscule, but it cast a long shadow across the Pacific nonetheless. In July 1859, its stock in San Francisco was around 200,000 taels and in January 1860, it held five-eighths of all opium stock in the United States.26 Its American agent was none other than Edwards & Balley, a firm that knew both the China and California markets well. By the mid-1860s, Jardine seems to have left the market almost entirely to the Chinese, directing its efforts to other activities instead.
Chinese merchants, who began with relatively small capital, first entered the market on a smaller scale before gradually increasing their share of the market. In early 1859, when the steamer Robert Passenger astonished Edwards & Balley by carrying an entire cargo ��shipped by and to Chinamen,�� the cargo on that occasion included 28 boxes, or 14,000 taels, of opium.27 Individual consign-ments also grew. In the following year, the San Francisco merchant Fung Tang exported a shipment of 18 boxes valued at $8,020.28 Other big shippers included Lee Ping, one of the partners of Cum Cheong Tai, and Kwong Chong Loong. Within a period of six months in 1865, Lee sent at least 66 cases of prepared opium to San Francisco; more interesting still, his consignees/agents included Chinese as well as foreigners, such as Richard Newby and Wm T. Coleman & Co.29 Again, it is clear that in the Hong Kong�VCalifornia business world, Chinese and non-Chinese interests were closely intertwined.
The volume of opium carried per ship also grew. While the early vessels carried a few tins of opium on each voyage, the volume had increased greatly by the mid-1860s: in 1865, the Albrecht Oswald carried 75 cases on a single voyage and the Viscata carried 98.30 As in the case of treasure, the rate charged for ship-ping opium was also much higher than for other cargo. It was usually shipped as cabin freight, meaning it would be locked up in stowage. We can get a sense of the relative freight rate by comparing the cost for shipping diff erent goods on the Vertigern, which sailed from Hong Kong in June 1865: the freight for opium (cabin freight) was 75 cents per 100 taels (each tael being around 1.35 ounces) while for tea, rice, and oil it was $8 per ton (2,200 pounds).31 It would not be hard to imagine that anyone with cargo space to offer would be happy to receive opium as freight.
More than any other commodity, in the early years at least, it was mainly money from Hong Kong that financed the opium trade, with importers in California relying on advances made by Hong Kong merchants. In 1859, aft er particularly disastrous losses resulting from speculation, leaving many Chinese merchants in California insolvent, Edwards & Balley noted that ��unless their friends in Hong Kong are wealthy, they also will likely be crippled in their opera-tions for some time.��32 This again illustrates how closely the fortunes of the Hong Kong and Californian merchants were bound up with each other.
The American market was special in a number of ways. Whatever might be said of the hardship of Chinese emigrants in North America, it must be remem-bered that their incomes were much higher than what Chinese people of equiva-lent social strata or occupation made anywhere else. Not only did opium�Xfor which there was no ready substitute�Xfind a niche market there, it was also the highest quality opium that was being exported for consumption because the Chinese there could afford the best.33 By the mid-1850s, the two top brands that emerged as the most highly valued were Fook Lung and Lai Yuen, with Fook Lung��s prices always leading by about 50 US cents per 10 taels.34 Th ese two were recognized as the only two grades of ��No. 1�� smoking opium. Another early brand was Ping Kee, which was less popular, fetching about US$1 less than Lai Yuen.35 Newspapers in California, especially Chinese-language newspapers, published the prices daily. Jardine, not having its own brand, bought opium manufactured by others, and on occasions when it sent Ping Kee opium, it was met with some annoyance from Edwards & Balley, which had a low opinion of the brand.36 Ping Kee was followed by other less distinguished brands, such as Hop Lung and Wa Hing.
Parallel to the prominence of brand name-based consumption was another peculiar feature of opium consumption in the United States. Despite their rela-tively high earnings, individual consumers did not buy in large amounts, but only enough for their daily wants. It was retailed in little buff alo-horn boxes about the size of a pill box.37 According to Edwards & Balley��s analysis, this was because every dollar the Chinese had or could borrow on their goods was being remitted ��to their friends in Hong Kong.��38 The small size of these transactions must have aff ected the retail business by making prices even more sensitive to the amount of prepared opium available on the open market.
Being a high-value item, prepared opium involved huge investments and huge profits, as well as huge losses. Merchants anxiously timed the market in order to sell at the most favorable prices, constantly monitoring stock available in San Francisco and the ��interior,�� while keeping a keen lookout on the number of vessels that would be arriving from Hong Kong, the time of arrival, and the amount of opium each would bring. Each house clearly had its own strategy to deal with changing situations. Edwards & Balley, which was involved in it in a big way because of its connections with its principal, Jardine, had its own phi-losophy on the matter. In July 1853, for instance, it wrote to Jardine that it was waiting anxiously for the arrival of the Lady Eveline and Rose of Marne, as six boxes of opium were expected on one or the other of the two vessels. It planned to sell the opium as soon as it arrived at a price in advance of present rates, and not wait. Prices had been kept low with the earlier arrival of the Raleigh and Moselle, which had brought considerable quantities of the article so there would be no advantage in waiting.39
On the other hand, when the article was in short supply, diff erent action was required. In November 1859, aft er the Mary Whitridge had brought only a small amount of opium and the next shipment was not expected until the Early Bird, which would not be arriving for another 30 to 45 days, Edwards & Balley advised selling the stock on hand, but only in small amounts at a time, thus driving the market up slowly but surely. The Chinese holders, Edwards & Balley observed, were unwilling to sell, and the price advanced to $16.50 per 10 taels as a result; anticipating that the price would continue to rise in the following fort-night, Edwards & Balley sold another 3,000 taels at this price�Xa relatively small amount compared with its total holding. A week later, when it had advanced to $17, the firm sold another box (500 taels), and then held for $17.50. Such strat-egy was based on what it considered its insight into Chinese business mentality:
We may remark that it is our object to keep advancing the price with every sale and thus encourage the Chinese to hold for, and induce others to buy in advance of, or pay for what they may require at advanced prices. If we were to withdraw our stock from the market and allow the Chinese to sell out, it may be supposed that with the small stock outside of ours, we would sooner get high prices. But we have always found the Chinese here very unwilling to give a sudden and great advance. They get more excited and more eager to buy by gradually advancing the price. By forcing sales now we might get from 15 to 16$ for all [emphasis in original]. But our calcu-lations are that as the late advices from this have been very discouraging, that the next vessel (the Early Bird) will take from 45 to 60 days to load (she may have sailed on or about 1st inst) and that at any rate it is fair to calculate in the circumstances that she will not arrive here before the 15th prox. In the meantime prices are likely to advance to 20$ when we may be able to sell all at say $19. Besides she may not have got off by the 1st inst. She may meet with an accident or may make a long passage. And if she does arrive before 15th prox., she may not have much opium on board, and we still may be able to get higher prices than we can now get.40
As with other commodities, a constant flow of commercial information passed between the two ports as merchants wrote to their associates on market conditions�Xwhat items were in demand, what were sluggish, what to send immediately, and what to hold back�Xbut in the case of opium, the intensity was extraordinary.
Speculation was rife. In the first decade or so in particular, when a feeling of euphoria prevailed, many felt that, regardless of the extent of shipments to California, anything could be sold at a great profit. Unfortunately, such eupho-ria was unjustified, and ill-considered speculation often led to merchants becom-ing insolvent.41 The enormous fluctuation of prepared opium prices refl ects this volatile situation. For example, in early January 1858, the price fell from US$22 to US$15 per 10 taels within a fortnight.42 In the mid-1860s, the range was often between US$13 and US$17.43 But prices remained unpredictable: in April 1894, Lai Yuen and Fook Lung were quoted at $150 per 100 taels, while in April 1898 they were quoted at $180 and $180.50 respectively. Risk was high, but so was profit. In 1853, Edwards & Balley forecast that the six boxes of opium Douglas Lapraik shipped could get a net profit of $1,200 if sold at $10.75 per 10 taels�Xthat is, $200 per box, or 59 percent;44 if it had been sold at $11, which was the price a month later, the net profit would have been 63 percent. Th roughout the 1850s, the declared value of prepared opium was only 50 to 55 cents per 10 taels, so to be able to sell at $22 would represent a gross profit of 430 percent.45
Consumption also increased over time�Xa natural consequence of the increasing Chinese population in America.46 In July 1859, when the Chinese population in California probably stood at around 50,000, it was estimated that the year��s import of opium was 352,404 taels, with a monthly consumption of 31,000 taels. In January 1860, total imports were 388,500 taels, with a monthly consumption rate of around 38,000. By July 1860, the consumption rate had risen to 40,000 taels per month.47
As significantly, prepared opium for export�Xto the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada�Xsoon constituted a large portion of all opium pre-pared in Hong Kong. In 1869, it was 80 percent,48 and in the early 1880s, it was estimated at 60�V75.percent.49 The rapid expansion of this extremely valuable trade became a matter of great interest not only to the business community but also to the Hong Kong government, since the sale of opium abroad had a direct bearing on its coff ers.
The Opium Monopoly in Hong Kong
It should be remembered that, like governments in most Southeast Asian locali-ties�Xwhether colonial or otherwise�Xthe Hong Kong government imposed a tax on opium consumption.50 The mode of taxation changed from time to time�Xsometimes through establishing a monopoly, sometimes through the issuance of licenses. The opium monopoly in Hong Kong was first leased in March 1845 to two Europeans, George Duddell and Alexander Mathieson, for $710, but they were only able to hold it for three months as the forces militat-ing against the monopoly were too overwhelming.51 After several false starts in the 1840s and early 1850s, an ordinance was finally passed in 1858 that created a monopoly by which the rights to boil opium and to sell prepared opium were reserved to the monopolist. Under the ordinance, opium farmers were empow-ered to grant sub-licenses and, more importantly, to protect them with a revenue police backed up with fines of up to $500 (increased to $1,000 in 1879) and imprisonment for up to six months, either of which could be imposed by the magistrates on those caught attempting to invade the monopoly. From the late 1870s, with the increasing value of the opium revenue and the growing bureau-cratization of government, the monopoly was heavily policed by offi cially regu-lated excise officers funded by the monopolist. Prosecutions were common and sentences were stiff .52 Thus the administrative and judicial apparatus of the colo-nial state were placed at the service of the opium farmer.
The monopoly, or the farm, was sold by tender, and usually the highest bidder would win the privilege for a specified number of years. With only a short break between 1883 and 1885, this system lasted until 1914, when the Hong Kong government itself took over the monopoly.
For the Hong Kong government, which suffered from chronic fi nancial insecurity, the opium farm became an indispensable source of revenue. Having declared itself a duty-free port, the colony was compelled to raise a large portion of its revenue through a whole range of monopolies: on salt-weighing, stone-quarrying, gambling, and franchises for building and operating markets, running slaughterhouses, managing public privies, collecting night-soil, and maintaining rope-walks.53 None of these, as may be expected, came close to the value of the opium farm. Between 1845 and 1885, the monopoly accounted for from 4 to 22 percent of the revenue, and over 23.percent in 1889 and 1890.54 Even in 1896, when the export volume to the United States and Australia had greatly declined, revenue from the opium farm still constituted one-sixth of the total revenue.55 Since the opium farmer��s profit depended so overwhelmingly on the amount of opium exported, which in turn influenced the amount he was willing to pay for the monopoly, inadvertently the colony��s financial well-being became tied up with the consumption of opium by Chinese overseas. For the government, therefore, it was imperative that the value of the farm was maintained at a high level�Xthat there should be healthy competition among the bidders and that the high demand for Hong Kong opium by overseas markets should continue. The government did not want to lose out on a good thing, even if it sometimes meant intervening unduly with the market and taking steps that might appear unscrupulous.
Nor were the merchants willing to miss out on such a golden opportunity. With the expansion of the export market and local consumption, profit for the opium farmer increased almost yearly, and the farm became an object of intense rivalry. Not surprisingly, merchants�Xfirst local merchants, and then those from abroad�Xstruggled to acquire the farm, and once they obtained it, spared no eff ort in fi ghting off interlopers. Animosity among Chinese opium merchants was further stirred by the government��s mischievous interference.
For almost three decades until 1885, two main syndicates�XYan Wo and Wo Hang�Xdominated the field in Hong Kong. There was frequent reconfi guration within each group so that the firms appeared under different names at diff erent times, but the basic grouping remained largely the same. Yan Wo was composed of fi ve firms, all owned by merchants from Dongguan county, and included Fook Lung and Lai Yuen, which produced the favorite brands in California, and Ping Kee, whose product was less favored. From 1858 to 1862, one or the other of the Yan Wo partners held the monopoly. Being the only players at the time, they managed to keep the price of the tender low, backed up with several much lower dummy tenders�Xmuch to the chagrin of the colonial government.56 In 1862, the farm went to a newcomer, Wo Hang, but it held the farm for only one year, and from 1863 to 1873 Yan Wo regained the farm. Despite its high profi le in many businesses, ranging from ship chartering and real estate to labor broker-ing, Wo Hang��s brands of opium, Wa Hing and Hop Lung, never became as popular in California as Fook Lung or Lai Yuen, and one can imagine that they were mainly consumed by a less affluent or less discerning clientele.
Rivalry between Yan Wo and Wo Hang was vicious. According to the gov-ernment, when Yan Wo held the farm, it guarded its export trade jealously, not allowing anyone to send an ounce of opium from Hong Kong except what it had prepared.57 In 1873, Wo Hang�Xwith some prompting from the govern-ment�Xoffered a very large bid and succeeded in gaining the monopoly for the following three years. Governor Arthur Kennedy was delighted. For one thing, he was pleased that the stranglehold Yan Wo had on the farming business was broken at long last. The new farmer, unlike Yan Wo, was willing to both build up the value of the farm and tolerate rivals by granting sub-licenses, thus retain-ing the business dynamic. Besides, Kennedy was happy that the new farmer was another of the Li ��brothers,�� Li Tak Cheong, whom colonial offi cials recognized as an enterprising and most substantial trader, and who was the owner of much land and house property in the colony.58 Li Tak Cheong appears to have been totally fluent in English, and was the type of person who would have appealed to colonial officials, who tended to assume that the more anglicized a native, the more trustworthy and cooperative. Unfortunately for them, Li turned out to be more feisty and self-confident and much less malleable than they had hoped.
Yan Wo relocated to Macao after losing the farm in Hong Kong, and though two of its brands were so popular in California, it faced diffi culties in Macao and tried hard to get back to the British colony. After a short opposition, Yan Wo made an agreement with Wo Hang (now reconfigured as Chap Shing) in 1874, which allowed Yan Wo to share the privileges of the Hong Kong farm. According to the agreement, which was very much in Chap Shing��s favor, the two would amalgamate and trade as the Sun Yee Company, starting from April 1, 1874. Now, with the two powerful competitors finally joining forces, it would appear that they would be able to devote their energy to expanding their busi-ness rather than getting at each other��s throats. They even went so far as to form partnerships with firms in California and Australia, Hop Li and Hop Yik, so that both Chap Shing and Yan Wo had representation in these overseas fi rms, enabling them to control the import business there as well. Such vertical ration-alizing reinforced the already strong transpacific trading links.
The Sun Yee Company continued to hold the Hong Kong farm and held sway over the prepared opium market from 1874 to 1879. Such a combination naturally managed to keep the price of the farm low�Xalways anathema to the colonial government. Frustrated that big profits derived from the export trade were not benefi ting its coffers, the government finally decided to break Sun Yee��s dominance by inviting an outsider to bid for the farm. And so it was that in 1879, Ban Hop, or Cheang Hong Lim, who held the opium farm in Singapore, became the first ��overseas�� holder of the Hong Kong opium farm and inaugu-rated a new era in the local opium scene.59
Maintaining the Export Business
Ousted by Ban Hop, Sun Yee retreated to Macao, where it held the Macao farm. Sun Yee, with all the combined influence of Wo Hang and Yan Wo behind it, was a very powerful force. The directors of the company also ��played their trump card,�� as the China Mail commented, by taking the best boilers of the drug with them.60 Sun Yee even had ideas to set up boiling establishments in Australia and California.61 But again, it was proved that once an opium fi rm left its base in Hong Kong, with all its shipping and commercial facilities and brand name associations, maintaining the export trade with California and Australia was very diffi cult.
Logistics was the main problem, as ships destined for North America and Australia would not go by Macao. The Hong Kong government, ostensibly to suppress the ��coolie trade�� for destinations such as Havana and Peru�Xmuch of which was conducted from Macao�Xbut no doubt also to protect its many busi-ness interests, made every ship that picked up passengers in Hong Kong pledge not to go to Macao afterward. Since passengers embarking at Hong Kong were the main source of income for these vessels, as we have seen, their captains and owners would not want to risk being prosecuted by the Hong Kong government for perjury by proceeding to Macao.62 Under these circumstances, Sun Yee was forced to make alternative shipping arrangements.
At first, the company organized steam launches to meet the large steamers as they were leaving Hong Kong harbor on their way to California or Australia in order to load the opium midstream. But the Hong Kong government, com-mitted to protecting the Hong Kong farmer��s interest, prohibited Macao opium from entering Hong Kong waters. Thus thwarted, Sun Yee tried another strategy by arranging with a line of steamers that ran between Hong Kong and Shanghai to go to Macao for the opium. For this eight-hour detour, it paid $2,000 in addition to freight. After the opium landed in Shanghai, opium intended for Australia was transshipped to Colombo and thence to Australian ports. Opium intended for California was loaded on to Mitsubishi steamers, which on arrival at Yokohama transshipped their cargo on to the regular line of steamers that left Hong Kong every fortnight for America�Xthat is, the Pacific Mail or Occidental and Oriental steamers that then proceeded to San Francisco.
Needless to say, the situation was a logistical nightmare for the Macao exporters, and detrimental to all parties concerned.63 It certainly did not benefi t Ban Hop, the Hong Kong farmer. A Saigon man of Fujianese origin, he had few local connections in Hong Kong. His product, sold under the Man Wo Fung brand, was unknown in the foreign markets and made few sales. He had origi-nally offered a high price for the farm under the illusion that he would be able to exploit the export market, but his hope proved unfounded. He had all the advantages of the shipping and market facilities of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong stamp, but a product that had no appeal abroad. Besides, being an out-sider, he found it difficult to enforce the monopoly within Hong Kong.64 He soon got into fi nancial diffi culties.
In the meantime, the Macao farmers, despite being able to dominate the export market with their popular brands and excellent overseas connections, paid a very high price for not being able to operate out of Hong Kong. Th e alter-native logistical arrangements they had to make were expensive and cumber-some�Xand, one may assume, cut deep into their profi t margins.
Faced with losses, Ban Hop approached Yan Wo (now renamed Wo Ki) to form a new company. Business improved after the merger, and the new company had no problem paying the government the very high fee of $210,000 for one year. In the meantime, Wo Ki��s decision to join Ban Hop led to a fi erce falling out with Chap Shing.65 Their rivalry, deep-rooted and fierce, erupted again in a court case where Wo Ki and Chap Shing fought over the ownership of certain shipments of opium dispatched under Sun Yee��s name. They included 185 boxes sent to San Francisco on the Gaelic, 150 boxes sent to Melbourne and 40 to Sydney. The opium came into the receivership of Jardine, Matheson & Co; the two companies were invited to bid for it. Li Tak Cheong of Chap Shing off ered to purchase all three lots at $180,687; he eventually raised the offer to $181,720, and appears to have outbid Wo Ki.66 The episode not only underlines the irrec-oncilable enmity between the two main camps, but also the huge amounts and volumes in which they were dealing.
With Wo Ki still holding the farm in Macao, Chap Shing was driven to Penang, where it arranged with the Penang farmer to boil opium for a fee.67 Chap Shing��s main objective continued to be to capture the export markets in the United States and Australia, and it seemed to be doing well, exporting 1,145,700 taels of prepared opium from July 1 to November 26, 1882. Yet the cost of operating outside of Hong Kong again took its toll. With Penang even further from the transpacifi c route than Macao, this time the opium had to be shipped to California via Australia, making the route even more circuitous than via Shanghai!68 It was no wonder Chap Shing ��felt the great inconvenience from carrying on their business at Penang at this distance,�� and was eager to return to Hong Kong.69
The Government��s Machinations
While the merchants were battling, the opium trade was too lucrative for the Hong Kong government to stand idly by. In fact, it took aggressive measures to increase its revenue. Colonial officials knew only too well that the Hong Kong connection�Xwhether real or fictional�Xremained crucial to the success of exported prepared opium. James Russell, the Colonial Treasurer who had long handled opium matters, keenly aware that ��the great advantage of fi guring in foreign markets as mercantile houses of Hong Kong�� was a key consideration of the opium merchants, was determined to make them pay dearly for that advan-tage.70 The question was how to bring all the players back to Hong Kong and make them play on the government��s terms.
The government considered replacing the monopoly with a licensing system that would enable anyone wishing to boil opium to do so by paying a fee, and hopefully to derive an amount of revenue that was commensurate with the fab-ulous profits that it believed the Chinese merchants were raking in. In other words, the new system would be a state enterprise, with an ��Opium Department�� issuing licenses to boilers and managing a centralized boiling factory.71 However, before determining the optimum fee to charge for licenses, it was imperative to know accurately what the business was worth. This was no easy task. As Hong Kong was a free port, exporters were not required to declare the quantity of their sales, and ready data were not available. Besides, with the merchants jealously guarding their accounts, the only way the government could find out anything was to act surreptitiously. Not wishing the merchants to know of the impend-ing changes, Russell secretly, cloak and dagger style, interviewed individuals involved in the business. How low the Colonial Treasurer had stooped!
Based on the interviews, Russell estimated that total export value to America and Australia in 1882 was about 1.7 million taels.72 On this basis, he fi xed the fee for boiling opium at $2.25 per ball, or $90 per chest, and he happily pro-jected that the new system, to be inaugurated in March 1883, would yield an income of $228,000 for the government�Xa considerable improvement on the previous year��s revenue of $210,000.73
His optimism turned out to be misplaced, as revenue fell drastically. For one thing, the great quantities of opium exported in 1882 and 1883 to California, on which Russell based his calculations, were not sustained. The great surge of export in those two years had been caused by unusual circumstances. Th e US government announced it would raise the import duty on prepared opium from US$6 per pound to US$10 on July 1, 1883,74 and when merchants got wind of this, they sent as much opium as possible into the United States beforehand, thus almost doubling the imports of the previous year; in the process, they pretty much flooded the market.
Opium boiling in Hong Kong decreased in 1883�V84 also because the gov-ernment��s charge of $2.25 for boiling every ball�X$90 per chest�Xproved so formidable that the leading merchants again withdrew, one group to Penang and the other to Macao.75 Having overplayed its hand, the government was now paying for its greed and miscalculation. It was in a dilemma. Should it entice the syndicates back by reducing the fee, which might drastically reduce revenue, or should it just stay with the high fee and hope that demand would rise again? Eventually, the government reduced the fee to $45 per chest, and the two big syndicates returned. Th e fiasco not only made the government lose revenue, but caused it to lose face too. As one member of the Colonial Offi ce commented, it was ��undignified�� for the colonial government to be bargaining with the mer-chants in this way.76
In fact, the government was to stoop even lower when it allowed Yan Wo to ship from Hong Kong opium prepared in Macao by paying the $45 fee.77 In other words, the fee became a kind of export duty or even a re-export tax, an anomaly in a free port. What was basically involved was the need to maintain the illusion that the opium was prepared in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong government�Xfor a price�Xwas ready to collude in the charade.
Interestingly, this illusion was further strengthened by John S. Mosby, who became US consul in Hong Kong in 1881, when he certified invoices of Macao-prepared opium, thus putting a Hong Kong stamp on it. For this service, the consulate received a fee, which constituted an important source of its income. Mosby regularly certifi ed goods that did not originate from Hong Kong when they passed through Hong Kong for America; more significantly, he certifi ed opium prepared in Macao which never came near Hong Kong. When chal-lenged, he argued that since there was no US consul resident in Macao,78 he was the US consul nearest to Macao. Strictly speaking, however, it was not incum-bent on him to perform the certification. One of his predecessors, D. H. Bailey, had refused to certify opium coming from Macao bound for America on the ground that it would affect the ��propriety�� of his certification of such docu-ments. On one occasion, in August 1873, a steamer was stuck in the Hong Kong harbor for a whole month waiting for his certification of the opium and failed to get it.79
According to American law, if the consul had refused to certify the goods, the shipper had only to apply to the first representative of a friendly power in Macao to perform the service or, failing that, by any two respectable citizens.80 Th e fact that the Macao opium farmer chose to have the US consul in Hong Kong rather than US consuls in other jurisdictions certify the invoices seems a clear indication of the farmer��s eagerness to get a Hong Kong stamp on his goods.
Developments aft er 1883
After the 1883 export boom, demand for prepared opium in California began to drop sharply. Income from the opium boiling fee fell so much that the Hong Kong government realized that the only way to ensure predictable revenue was to revert to the old farming system. Yan Wo won the tender. Th e interest-ing thing is that by this time the fi rm was also trying to expand its activities to Victoria, British Columbia, by collaborating with 12 Chinese firms there that boiled opium for the San Francisco market!81 Unfortunately it is not known whether the deal went ahead, but regardless, it clearly demonstrates the Hong Kong Chinese merchants�� keenness to spread their wings and expand their infl u-ence across the Pacific in as many ways as possible.
From 1886 to 1889, the Hong Kong farm was granted to Lee Keng Yam, again an outsider who was also holding the Singapore farm. He was descended from a well-established Malacca family and a part of the Straits Chinese network of families.82 The farm went to an outsider for a second time because the Hong Kong government decided, again, that it should ��break up the little clique of firms at Hong Kong,�� which had been trying to impose their own terms on the government. The Hong Kong opium merchants again retreated to Macao and controlled the export market from there. In 1889, the farm went to Koh Cheng Sean, hailing from Penang, but in 1891 he petitioned the government for a reduction of his rent. He had submitted a high bid, thinking that he would make substantial profi ts from exportation.83 As with Ban Hop before him, the export market did not materialize, leaving him in the lurch.
From the late 1880s onward, there was no doubt that the ��practical monop-oly of the export trade�� was controlled by the Macao opium farmer, consisting of Hong Kong firms that had migrated there, which were the producers of the top quality opium. Not only did they dominate the US market, but a considerable quantity of opium was even smuggled into Hong Kong for its high quality.84 Th e value of the Hong Kong farm decreased, and in 1892, when the farm was again given to Hong Kong merchants, it only went for $340,800, $136,200 less than the previous farm. But even then, it was much higher than the $130,000 that the farmer paid for his privilege in Macao.85
It is also worth noting that despite the fact that the prepared opium imported into North America later in the century often came from Asian cities other than Hong Kong, such as Guangzhou, Macao, and Penang, to the popular mind Hong Kong was the only significant exporter of prepared opium in Asia. For example, writing in 1896, Frederick Masters, an American missionary who had spent 22 years among the Chinese in Guangdong province and America, and was considered a specialist on the subject, made the general statement that prepared opium consumed in the United States was ��cooked, prepared and tinned in Hong Kong.��86 In fact, in that year, according to the US Department of Agriculture��s calculations, only US$3,525 worth of prepared opium (614 pounds) was imported into the United States, representing only a tiny fraction of the year��s total import of US$735,134.87 Yet, in the marketplace, Hong Kong opium continued to enjoy a privileged symbolic position, despite the fact that its actual role was diminishing. Masters further stated that smugglers taking opium into California from Victoria and Nanaimo in British Columbia ��placed it in old Hong Kong tins to avoid the scrutiny of internal revenue offi cers.��88 Once the association between Hong Kong and opium�Xespecially high-quality opium�X was fixed in people��s minds, it greatly affected the behavior of consumers. In addition, it also affected the behavior of suppliers, with far-reaching political and economic consequences.
US Policy and the Effect on Importation
Ultimately, it was US policy related to immigration and tariffs that was to have the defining impact on the opium trade. The trade not only brought
important revenue to the Hong Kong government, it was also signifi cant for the US Treasury for the duty collected by the Custom House in San Francisco.89 Before 1862, prepared opium imported at San Francisco paid the normal rate of 2.25 percent ad valorem. Between July 14, 1862 and June 30, 1864, the rate was raised to 80 percent ad valorem, and from then to July 14, 1870, it was 100 percent. Th ereafter, the rate was fixed at US$6 per pound until 1884 when it was raised to US$10. In 1890, it was further increased to US$12. Th is meant that customs incomes remained high despite the drop in import amounts. For instance, in 1882, when the import amount was 141,476 pounds, the duty at US$6 per pound was US$848,856. In 1891, when the import amount had fallen to 63,189 pounds�Xthat is, half of that in 1882�Xwith duty fixed at US$12 per pound, the total collected amounted to US$758,268, or just US$90,000 (or 11 percent) less.90 In 1897, the duty was again reduced to US$6 per pound.91
White America��s opposition to opium smoking had started quite early on. Municipal laws against opium smoking first appeared in San Francisco in 1875, and a California state law against the operating and patronizing of public dens was enacted in 1881. These laws had little effect, either on the consumption of opium or the size of its import.92 The Treasury cheerfully continued to collect duty on opium despite such legislation, which Frederick Masters condemned as the ��shameful complicity of our government in this hateful traffi c.��93 And shops continued to sell opium openly, and loudly advertised it in newspapers.
Major changes took place in the 1880s as a result of federal policy. In 1880, a new treaty between China and America was signed. Its main thrust was to exclude the entry of Chinese laborers, but one of the articles prohibited Chinese from bringing opium into America, and Americans from taking opium into China.94 News of this attempt at preventing Chinese from taking opium into America initially caused great alarm. James Russell was so worried that it would stifle the export trade from Hong Kong�Xand thus significantly lower the value of the opium monopoly�Xthat he asked the Colonial Office whether Britain could intervene.95 In fact, rather than disallowing opium from entering the United States, the new treaty simply limited importers to white American com-panies. In practice, this presented no big problem for Chinese exporters, who were able to find as their consignees American companies, such as Macondray & Co., which had long-established relationships with Hong Kong Chinese merchants.96 As far as the mechanism for the import/export trade was con-cerned, it was more or less business as usual.
In fact, as shown above, the measure that had the most immediate eff ect on the opium trade was not who could or could not import opium into the United States, but the rise in import duty. When it was known that on July 1, 1883, the tariff on opium was to be raised from US$6 to US$10 per pound, export-ers in Hong Kong, Macao, and Penang sent off the equivalent of a year��s supply. Raising the duty only affected the size of the import to a certain extent; it did not snuff out the trade altogether, as long as consumer demand existed. In fact, Frederick Masters was sure that high tariffs, far from driving down imports, only encouraged smuggling�Xwhich could amount to twice the regular imports.
In the long run, it was of course the exclusion legislation that had the most fundamental impact on the scale of consumption. Th e effect was greater than many had expected. The Exclusion Act of 1882 not only limited the number of new Chinese migrants entering the United States, it also made it more diffi cult for those who returned to China to re-enter the United States.97 As a conse-quence, the number of Chinese in America dropped from 103,620 in 1890 to 85,341 in 1900, and finally to 53,891 in 1920, leading to a drastic fall in the demand for imported prepared opium.98
The import of non-medical opium was finally prohibited in 1909.99 Smuggling became active as a result, but this is a different chapter in the story of the opium trade.
Perpetuating the Hong Kong Prepared Opium Connection
Opium export from Hong Kong to the United States continued in the 1890s, though, as shown above, on a much smaller scale. Even though the Hong Kong farmer could not export as much of his own opium as former farmers had done, the trade continued in other ways. As long as Hong Kong remained the center of Chinese passenger traffic, opium was bought by large numbers of passengers who took it on board ships for their own use during the voyage and beyond. Th e government believed that it was this aspect of the farmer��s business that enabled him to pay $340,800 fee at all.100
Table 5.1 Importation of prepared opium, 1871�V81 (Kane)
Year Weight (lb) Value ($) Rate of duty Amount of
duty ($)
1871* 12,554.00 113,635.00 100 percent 113,635.00 ($9.05169
per pound)
25,270.60 239,699.00 $6.00 per 151,623.63
pound
1872 49,375.00 535,597.00 $6.00 296,250.00
1873 53,059.00 581.656.20 $6.00 318,354.00
1874 55,343.75 556,844.00 $6.00 232,062.50
1875 62,774.66 662,066.00 $6.00 376,647.93
1876 53,189.42 577,288.51 $6.00 319,136.50
1877 47,427.94 502,662.27 $6.00 284,567.70
1878 54,804.78 617,160.20 $6.00 328,828.68
1879 60,647.67 643,774.00 $6.00 363.886.02
1880 77,196.00 773,796.00 $6.00 463,176.00
Total 551,642.82 lb $5,222,521.50 $2,770,646.94
Sources: Kane, Opium Smoking in America and China (1882), p. 16. *The duty on opium was changed during the year from 100% to $6.00 per pound.
The export of opium continued to be important to Hong Kong for other reasons. Though the Macao farmer dominated the export market, Hong Kong still had the advantage of much better shipping facilities than Macao, and the prestige of its stamp. The Macao farmer thus paid the Hong Kong farmer Koh Cheng Sean $3,500 a month for the right to bring Macao-prepared opium into Hong Kong waters for the purpose of shipping it to America and Australia.101 As long as consumers were fixated on Hong Kong opium, it paid to maintain the illusion that opium was prepared in Hong Kong. Even though Fook Lung and Lai Yuen were boiling opium in Macao,102 it was possible for them to acquire a Hong Kong connection, either through Hong Kong shipping documents or the certification of the US consul. The fact that advertisements in California newspapers continued to promote ��genuine�� Hong Kong opium as late as 1906
Table 5.2 Importation of opium, 1880�VApril, 1896 (Masters)
Year Amount imported Amount of Duty
(lb) duty per lb
1880 67,741 406,446 $6.00
1881 77,333 463,998 $6.00
1882 141,476 848,836 $6.00
1883 220,867 1,325,202 $6.00
1884 18,820 188,200 $10.00
1885 54,434 554,340 $10.00
1886 58,523 585,230 $10.00
1887 65,397 653,970 $10.00
1888 94,955 949,550 $10.00
1889 44,674 446,740 $10.00
1890 77,578 818,912 McKinley Bill
$12.00 part of year
1891 63,189 758,268 $12.00
1892 74,268 879,204 $12.00
1893 52,393 628,716 $12.00
1894 84,952 715,860 Wilson Bill;
August $6.00
1895 116,354 698,124 $6.00
1896 43,692 261,852 $6.00
(4 months)
** Note discrepancy between Masters�� and Kane��s fi gures. Source: Masters, ��The Opium Trade in California�� (1896), pp. 54�V61.
is a clear indicator of how crucial the Hong Kong stamp was for marketing the product. This was what James Russell meant by ��the great advantage of fi guring in foreign markets as mercantile houses of Hong Kong,�� however tenuous that claim had become.
Conclusion
In 1906, a notice in a San Francisco Chinese newspaper warned consumers against fake smoking opium that claimed to be brands produced by Fook Lung and Lai Yuen. The two firms stated that they were registered in Hong Kong and Macao, and had been preparing their own opium from old raw Patna for several decades. Renowned in China and overseas, their brands had been patronized by rich merchants in America. Now, shameless criminals, using cheap and low-grade opium, were faking the names of Fook Lung and Lai Yuen or pretending that their opium was produced in San Francisco by branch factories of the fi rms. Th e firms wished customers to know that they had no branch factories in any other city, and that only one person, H. G. Playfair, was authorized to import their product, and the government chop on the tins bore his name. ��All custom-ers must therefore pay special attention to the chop and the taste of the opium in order not to be deceived,�� the advertisement advised.103
Such advertisements abounded in the Chinese newspapers published in San Francisco, such as the Ta Tung Yat Po and the Chung Sai Yat Po. The ads were inserted by different shops, including those specializing in tobacco and opium products and general stores that sold a range of goods, but all claiming to sell genuine Hong Kong-prepared opium and genuine Fook Lung and Lai Yuen products. These opium ads reveal the intricate relationship between Chinese emigration and the economic development of Hong Kong.
When thousands of Chinese flocked to the United States during and aft er the gold rush, they created a high-end market for a wide range of products. Th ough inevitably these migrants had to adapt to the new environment and make con-cessions in some areas, such as the shortage of Chinese women, in other areas they insisted on maintaining certain lifestyles, including smoking opium, which was made possible by their high purchasing power. Even for the less well-to-do, it seems that insisting on smoking opium was compensation for being so far away from home, living hard lives among strangers. In the process, they created a transnational space of consumption based not only on the use of specifi c items, but specific ways of consuming them and specific standards by which to recog-nize their worth, thus perpetuating in the new land habits and values carried over from the old. The symbolic meaning and social ritual associated with smoking opium were often as significant as the sensual experience they provided. The popularity of prepared opium among Chinese in America made it one of the most profitable items in the long-distance trade across the Pacifi c, aff ecting different aspects of the market.
On the supply side, Hong Kong became the chief supplier of prepared opium, and remained for a long time identifi ed in consumers�� minds with high-quality prepared opium. The easy availability of duty-free raw opium and the large emi-gration traffic to gold-rush countries were the chief factors making Hong Kong the main arena for this business, even though at times much of the opium was not even prepared there.
The export of prepared opium to the United States and other gold rush coun-tries shows how deeply Hong Kong��s political, social, and economic develop-ment was intertwined with Chinese emigration. Of particular interest is the way it reveals the dynamics in the relationship between the colonial government and Chinese businessmen, and among Chinese businessmen themselves. We see that for most of the nineteenth century, two Hong Kong syndicates, sometimes com-peting viciously against each other, sometimes combining to outwit the colonial government and resist outside syndicates, dominated the arena. Th e colonial government, no less determined to capitalize on a good thing, employed diff er-ent strategies to trump the merchants. The tried and tested divide-and-rule prin-ciple frequently was applied. Fully aware of the crucial significance of the Hong Kong connection, the government even went so far as to collude in keeping up the illusion that opium prepared in Macao was Hong Kong opium�Xso long as a price was paid for it. The administration��s constant interference in the market, moreover, may persuade scholars to re-examine the long-held belief that Hong Kong��s economy was run on the principle of laissez-faire and rethink the basic premises of Hong Kong��s economic history.
6
Bound for California
The Emigration of Chinese Women
It is significant to note that the colony of Hong Kong, where it is now settled by a judicial decision of its supreme court and by admission in solemn memorial of all the leading native residents, that Chinese slavery exists and ever has existed as an essential feature of the Chinese political and social system, is the entrepot for all the Chinese emigration to the US. And perhaps it is worthwhile to query whether that emigration is not thus shown to have in its every lineament the taint of human slavery?��1
�XDavid H. Bailey, former US Consul at Hong Kong, 1879
The Story of Ah Toy
Sometime between late 1848 and early 1849, Ah Toy�Xtall, slender, with bound feet and laughing eyes�Xsailed for San Francisco, leaving her husband behind in Hong Kong. She made the perilous and arduous journey across the Pacifi c to ��better her condition�� by working as an independent prostitute. Starting off from a humble residence, a small shanty on an alley off Clay Street, her unusual physical attributes made her an instant success. It was said that white miners lined up around the block and paid an ounce of gold ($16) just to ��gaze on the countenance of the charming Ah Toy.��2 The ability to speak English must have enhanced her value in a racially and culturally mixed market. By 1850, she was in a position to employ two recently arrived Chinese prostitutes, Aloy and Asea, showing that she was as enterprising as she was alluring.3
At the beginning of 1851, San Francisco had probably five or six independent Chinese prostitutes. In the middle of the year, following a complaint made by two Chinese men, the first Committee of Vigilance deported two prostitutes, Ah Lo and Ah Hone. During the Vigilance Committee��s investigation, Ah Toy was spared, reportedly because one of her lovers was the vigilante brothel inspec-tor, John A. Clarke. The deportation of the two women reduced the number of Ah Toy��s competitors and she went from strength to strength.
Within two or three years, she was prosperous enough to move to better quarters. In 1852, she was listed in a city directory as proprietor of not one but two ��boarding houses,�� clearly a euphemism for brothels.4 Responding to rising demand for female service, and no doubt bolstered by her success, she began bringing in prostitutes for other Chinese brothels as well. Frank Soule, a local literary figure, blamed her for the coming of several hundred Chinese prosti-tutes in 1852, claiming that ��her advices home seem to have encouraged the sex to visit so delightful a spot as San Francisco.�� She did more than sending advices. In 1854, she herself went to China and brought back to San Francisco six or eight women whom she had purchased at $40 each. Their passage cost $80 each. From time to time, she ��sold her stock�� at the rate of $1,000 to $1,500 each, to Chinese merchants and gamblers. She appeared to have made a number of these purchasing trips. In 1857, she announced to journalists that she was packing her bags and retiring to China with no intention of returning to California, but she did return, and in 1859 she was reportedly arrested in San Francisco for keeping a ��disorderly house.��5
Her work as a prostitute, her ��free and easy style,�� and her obvious rebellious-ness in refusing to pay homage to the patriarchal set-up of the Chinese com-munity in San Francisco antagonized some of its members who, for a variety of reasons, made repeated attempts to get rid of her. As early as 1851, Norman Assing, one of the city��s most prominent Chinese, tried to force her to return to Hong Kong, alleging that her husband had sent for her. He and others appealed to the Californian authorities to issue an order for her return, saying that they had the money in hand for her passage, and when the authorities refused, they responded by asking the authorities not to interfere with the matter and allow the Chinese community to handle the matter in its own way.6
There is speculation that Assing��s hostility toward Ah Toy might have arisen from rivalry between them to control prostitution and the traffi cking of women in California. Others besides her were beginning to organize the importation of females from China via Hong Kong�Xwomen and girls who could be sold as prostitutes, domestic servants, or concubines. These procuring rings7 became increasingly tightly organized and powerful; as the historian Benson Tong sug-gests: ��The arrival of new prostitutes controlled by male-dominated groups meant the beginning of the end of the period of laissez-faire,�� and the operation of free prostitutes such as Ah Toy declined.8 By the 1860s, Ah Toy had faded from the prostitution scene; reportedly, she lived with her husband in Santa Clara County, California after 1868. She died in 1928, three months short of her 100th birthday.
Ah Toy��s story�Xwith its triumphs and tribulations�Xhighlights some key aspects of Chinese emigration to America. Connections with Hong Kong, pros-titution, the buying and selling of women, a source of seemingly endless supply of women in China on the one hand and seemingly endless demand for them in California on the other, characterized the phenomenon of Chinese women��s migration in the nineteenth century. These elements formed the backdrop to the experience of many women who were involved in emigration to America, including those who went voluntarily and involuntarily, those who succeeded in landing there and those who did not.
The Emigration of Chinese Women
There are many histories of the Chinese in America, but most of them treat male laborers as the standard and women as the exception.9 Th e emigration of Chinese women to America, studied most often in terms of the oppressive and discriminatory nature of American immigration policy and the problem of prostitution, is well embedded in the discourse on race, gender, and class in American history.10 This chapter looks at the flow of female emigration across the Pacific, with a focus on how social, political, and economic conditions in Hong Kong affected the supply of women emigrants for America�Xindeed, the American market. We see many players at work in this activity. At one end were men and women on either side of the Pacific working to supply the hungry California market, giving rise to a lucrative business that drew to it not only hard-nosed gangsters and brothel-keepers but others�Xcorrupt seamen and con-sulate staff among them. Intent on maintaining the flow of women, these opera-tors came up with ever more innovative means to subvert attempts to restrict the movement. At the other end were policy makers in London and Washington, and other levels of the American system, each group with its own diff erent, oft en opposing, agenda. On the ground in Hong Kong were colonial offi cials and suc-cessive US consuls whose duty was to enforce the immigration/emigration laws of their respective countries, and they too had conflicting attitudes and interests. The situation was complicated by the intervention of a rising Chinese merchant elite that took it upon itself to protect Chinese emigrants�Xbut according to its own set of moral principles. Widely varying, oft en incompatible economic interests, political goals, and social ideals provided a complex and dynamic back-drop to the whole phenomenon of female migration.
In the process, ��slavery�� became a pivotal and highly charged issue. Th ose who opposed Chinese immigration tried to stretch the definition in order to label all Chinese immigrants as ��slaves/coolies,�� or at least to show that they�X being tainted by the slavery system�Xwould destroy American institutions if allowed to enter the country. Others defined ��slavery�� more specifi cally: they argued that not all Chinese emigrants were ��slaves/coolies,�� and that through a system of examination, free emigrants could clearly be distinguished, and such emigration should be encouraged. Still others had to go even further to show that even the buying and selling of women and boys did not necessarily con-stitute ��slavery.�� The proponents of this view conceded that the kidnapping of people for emigration and the selling of women to become prostitutes overseas were evil and should be criminalized, while stressing that other forms of buying and selling of persons should be permitted. The broad array of moral, social, and legal positions of the framers and enforcers of policies, as much as market forces, combined to shape the nature of female emigration from Hong Kong to California.
Sexual Imbalance in Nineteenth-Century California
One of the most prominent features of nineteenth-century Chinese emigration to America was the disproportionately small number of women compared with men. According to US Census Bureau records, the percentage ratio between Chinese male and female immigrants admitted to the United States was 0.0 in 1853, 0.1 in 1863, 4.4 in 1873, and 0.5 in 1883, although in the intervening years the percentage could be higher�Xfor example, in 1862 it was unusually high at 17.9 percent.11 Th ese figures are obviously problematic, but they do give an idea of the low percentage of Chinese woman compared with men. It was noted by observers from the earliest days, and the reasons for it have been debated keenly ever since, both by opponents and supporters of Chinese emigration/immigration.12
Such a discrepancy in numbers may seem natural for the early years of Chinese presence in California. Like many frontier towns, San Francisco attracted single male workers rather than women. In 1852, the California state census reveals that among the Chinese, only 19 females resided in the city com-pared with 2,954 males, a ratio of 1:155; the ratio for the non-Chinese popula-tion in San Francisco came closer to parity at 1:3.13 The mining sites where most of the men worked were isolated and inhospitable, hardly conducive to bring-ing family along. But the situation hardly changed even when mining declined
arriving from the dock in express wagons.�� Source: Frank Leslie��s Illustrated Newspaper, April 10, 1869, p. 56. By courtesy of British Library.
in the mid-1850s. When large numbers of men left the sites to congregate in fast-developing towns such as San Francisco and Sacramento to engage in other occupations, there was no commensurate rise in the number of Chinese women.
There have been many attempts to explain the small number of Chinese women in America. Since the 1970s, a popular explanation has been that the US government made it difficult for them to enter the country. The claim refl ects a larger trend in Asian American historiography eager to reverse images of Asians as ��perpetual foreigners�� in American society, and document their ��claim to set-tlement�� in the United States.14 Under this influence, even legal scholars from outside that discourse, such as George Peffer and Kerry Abrams, argue that the Page Law of 1875 acted as a serious obstacle to the immigration of Chinese women and the establishment of Chinese families in the United States, even before the Exclusion Act of 1882.15 While there is no doubt that American federal and state laws were racist and sexist, they do not entirely account for the small number of female immigrants, either before or after 1875. To under-stand the nature of Chinese female emigration, it is necessary to examine the principles and practices of the Chinese patriarchal system. Historian Adam McKeown, in addition, puts forward the concepts of circulatory migration and transnational households as powerful tools for analyzing the remarkable sexual imbalance in Chinese emigration.16
Chinese women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generally did not travel overseas because Chinese society was patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal: women��s acceptable role was bearing children, and serving their hus-bands and parents-in-law at home. Given the key importance of filial piety, the moral duty of wives to remain in China to wait on their parents-in-law overrode the need to stay close to their sojourning husbands. Even when the parents-in-law passed away, it remained the wives�� duty to make offerings to ancestors and keep the home in order. One needs to remember the vital relationship between the living, the dead, and the as-yet-unborn in a patriarchal society, and relocat-ing a primary wife to a foreign land would sever that relationship. With the migrant��s intention to return, it was all the more important that she stay behind to uphold his interests in the lineage and family during his absence. Indeed, wives often played an active role in managing the absent husband��s properties and handled investments made with remittances, thus demonstrating a strategic division of labor within a transnational household, as suggested by historian Sucheta Mazumdar.17
There was also fear of moral corruption of women leaving home. While a small number of men in the second half of the nineteenth century might wish their wives and daughters to join them in America, the majority felt that women would be safer at home in China, where they were not exposed to strange, foreign ways, or the relative individualism of American society. Those few men who wished to educate their daughters thought that a Chinese education would be better for them.18 Overall, it would seem, it gave the Chinese men in America a greater sense of security to keep their women at home knowing that the social structure and norms there protected their interests as husband and father much more than those in the outside world. For transnational households that were amenable to long-term dispersion, McKeown argues, the act of bringing women and children to a distant environment like the United States, with little supportive infrastructure, was actually more destructive than constructive.19 Economically, it made more sense for men to leave wives and young children at home where it was cheaper to live. The Chinese family was, of course, not only patriarchal but also frequently polygamous; the idea of marriage as a consensual love match was as alien as the idea of the inviolability of the nuclear family. For men of means, long separation from the primary wife could be compensated for by the presence of a concubine in America, whose moral character�Xeven if corrupted�Xwould have not represented such a stain on him or his family. Transnational households were not without tensions, as Michael Szonyi dem-onstrates,20 but they did serve many useful purposes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Objective conditions�Xeconomic reasoning in addition to legal and bureau-cratic obstacles�Xand subjective desires shaped by social and cultural values combined to keep the number of Chinese women in America small and prevent the development of Chinese families there.21 Whatever the factors, the small number of Chinese women emigrating was widely recognized at the time�Xand not just for California. The British emigration agent James T. White, who was trying in vain in the early 1850s to recruit women emigrants for the West Indies, lamented the difficulty of his task. The only solution, he concluded, was to pur-chase them, either directly or indirectly, and he went so far as to ask the Colonial Land and Emigration Office to advance him the money for this purpose. He added that 10 to 15-year-old girls of respectable connection might be obtained for about $40, and proposed to pay this amount to a few of the ��more respect-able emigrants�� so that they could buy the women, marry them, and take them along to the West Indies.22
Sale of Women, Prostitutes, Concubines, and Domestic Bond Servants
With few exceptions, the only way to ensure a supply of women emigrants was by purchase, and to understand the phenomenon of the buying and selling of Chinese women, we need to look again at the position of women in a patriarchal society, where daughters generally were considered liabilities. Poor families oft en had no qualms about selling them as bonded domestic servants (known in South China as mui tsai), adopted daughters, concubines, or prostitutes. Orphanages allegedly were also a source of girl babies who were taken away and then later sold. Girls were sometimes put in a brothel by their own mothers or other members of their natal family. Mui tsai were also sold to brothels by their master or mistress. Girls sometimes sold themselves in cases of urgent need for money, such as to pay for a father��s funeral. Husbands selling or mortgaging their wives and concubines to brothels was not unheard-of.23
Very young girls were often sold fi rst as mui tsai only when a few years old; they might be sold and resold several more times from hand to hand, and at the right age be sold as a prostitute or concubine. The transactions were made over the girls�� heads, so to speak; they were not in a position to oppose the deci-sion, either out of filial piety (if the family had made the arrangement) or out of fear of punishment. Given the pervasiveness of patriarchal values, there were few options for dissenters, and patriarchal values were so deeply instilled in individu-als that even looking for escape was rare.
Sometimes young girls were bought directly from poor families as an invest-ment and trained in the skills of the courtesan�Xsinging, music, and sexual tech-niques.24 When old enough, their owner would take them to a brothel, where they became a kind of ��boarder�� to ply their trade. In addition, there were ��free�� (or, ��self-owned,�� as categorized within the trade) prostitutes�Xthat is, those not owned by anyone else, who had entered a brothel voluntarily. This was common at the lower end of the market, where girls were usually older. Some were former prostitutes who had returned to work after an unsuccessful ��marriage.�� Oft en, in need of quick money, they went to the brothel-keeper for an advance payment and would continue working until the loan was paid off .25
The Hong Kong Connection
The situation in Hong Kong, the prime embarkation port to California, played a defining role in female emigration and traffi cking. Though a British colony by 1842, as far as practices related to family and women were concerned, Hong Kong remained very much an extension of the mainland patriarchal society. Prostitutes were among the first women to arrive, and it was reported that: