The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [31]
The Chinese émigrés also hungered for art and entertainment. In 1852, the first Chinese theater was constructed in San Francisco from a prefabricated kit. The building, with a pagoda as its edifice, housed an auditorium for a thousand people and a stage of embroidered panels and gilt walls, gleaming with pictures of men, animals, and sea monsters. Visiting troupes from Guangdong province performed Cantonese operas there, performances that could last for weeks, attended by both Chinese and curious whites. The actors sometimes narrated in minute detail the epic sagas of an entire dynasty, providing audiences with nightly entertainment; according to one observer, “two or three months are generally consumed before all the acts of a play are finished.” At these performances, Chinese immigrants far from home could lose themselves in heroic stories of the past, forgetting for a short while their demeaning roles in everyday life and how far they had had to go to achieve their dreams.
White San Franciscans, watching the Chinese community expand and thrive, felt emotions ranging from awe and fascination to fear and hatred. Although details remain sketchy, the earliest Chinese in San Francisco seem to have received a warm welcome when they arrived—a mix of genuine excitement and curiosity. In 1850, when the Chinese colony numbered only a few hundred, the city fathers invited their participation in rites observing the death of President Zachary Taylor, assigning them a prominent place in the memorial procession. That year, Mayor John Geary and other city officials also honored the Chinese with a special ceremony, and when California became the thirty-first state in the union, the Chinese took part in the lavish celebrations. In May 1851, the San Francisco Daily Alta California went so far as to predict that the “China Boys will yet vote at the same polls, study at the same schools and bow at the same Altar as our own countrymen.”
But as the Chinese population grew, so did consternation among certain whites. In April 1852, Governor John Bigler called for an exclusionary law to bar future Chinese immigration. Although ignored by the federal government, his request may have been the first expression by a public official of an emerging anti-Chinese sentiment. Infuriated or alarmed, or both, by Bigler’s proposal, several Chinese in San Francisco published a long reply, defending their character and their ability to assimilate. “Many have already adopted your religion as their own, and will be good citizens,” they wrote. “There are very good Chinamen now in the country, and a better class will, if allowed, come hereafter—men of learning and of wealth, bringing their families with them.”
Such assimilation, however, was what some whites feared most. In 1853, the San Francisco Daily Alta California changed editors, and its tone swiveled from pro-Chinese to a virulently racist, pro-Bigler position. The Chinese, asserted a series of editorials, were “morally a far worse class to have among us than the negro. They are idolatrous in their religion—in their disposition cunning and deceited, and in their habits libidinous and offensive. They have certain redeeming features of craft, industry and economy, and like other men in the fallen estate, ‘they have wrought out many inventions.’ But they are not of that kin that Americans can ever associate or sympathize with. They are not of our people and never will be, though they remain here forever ... They do not mix with our people, and it is undesirable that they should, for nothing but degradation can result to us from the contact... It is of no advantage to us to have them here. They can never become like us.”
These sentiments echoed faintly in Washington. During this time, a few federal lawmakers began to express