The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [48]
Chinese prostitutes shipped to mining camps on the western frontier were deterred from escape by the wilderness itself. One woman fleeing from her master in Nevada was later found half-dead in the hills, with both feet frozen and requiring amputation. In the hinterlands, they faced an even greater male-to-female ratio than in San Francisco’s Chinatown. They also endured insults and abuse from white miners, who called them “Chiney ladies,” “moon-eyed pinch foots,” and “she-heathens.”
At the same time, the prostitute-trafficking tongs were battling incessantly among themselves for control over territory and profits. Before such a war would erupt, the tongs often contrived a public excuse for the pending hostilities, such as a slap in the face or a stolen prostitute. In outbursts of Chinese tong warfare on the western frontier, some prostitutes were kidnapped and held for ransom; others died in the crossfire between rival gangs. In one notorious case, tongs seized four women in the Comstock Lode; only one victim was found alive—nailed shut inside a crate that had been shipped from San Francisco to Reno.
By the 1860s, the tongs almost entirely controlled the sex trade, leaving little room for independent operators. For prostitutes on the lowest level, there was no respite from work: many were doubly exploited by San Francisco brothel owners, who leased them out to local garment factories to sew by day, then sold their bodies by night. There was no respite from abuse: most were routinely beaten with clubs, threatened with pistols, burned with red-hot pokers. If they failed to make enough money, the madam “beats and pounds them with sticks of fire-wood, pulls their hair, treads on their toes, starves them and torments and punishes them in every cruel way.” One prostitute had acid thrown in her face by a Chinese actor who resented having to share her with other men. Some women chose to escape their unbearable lives by committing suicide, often by swallowing opium or flinging themselves into San Francisco Bay.
For some Chinese women taken into prostitution, the only escape was death. Those who tried other methods found themselves up against a corrupt system comprising not only the tongs and their network of opium dealers and gambling houses, but also the police, the courts, and even the Six Companies. Since prostitution was so lucrative—in 1870 the average brothel employed nine women, each of whom brought in an average net annual profit of $2,500 (compared with the $500 average annual income of the Chinese male laborer)—the tongs jealously guarded their golden-egg-producing property, hiring “highbinders”—associations of Chinese thugs—to monitor the women. They also paid $40 in insurance for every Chinese prostitute brought into the United States, as well as weekly or monthly fees to hire special policemen for surveillance. Brothel owners forced women to sign contracts penalizing them if they fell ill or were unable to perform their duties because of menstruation or pregnancy, virtually guaranteeing deeper bondage for these women. The following agreement is typical:
Yut Kum consents to prostitute her body to receive company to aid Mee Yung for the full time of four years. When the time is fully served, neither service nor money shall be longer required. If Yut Kum should be sick fifteen days she shall make up one month. If she conceives, she shall serve one year more. If during the time any man wishes to redeem her body, she shall make satisfactory arrangements with the mistress Mee Yung. If Yut Kum should herself escape and be recovered, then her time shall never expire. Should the mistress become very wealthy and return to China with glory, then Yut Kum shall fulfill her time, serving another person.
By the 1870s, horrified Christian activists, mostly middle-class white Protestant women, established rescue homes for Chinese women. San Francisco had two sanctuaries: the Women’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, established