The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [51]
For many of the wives, home in the United States was nothing more than a gilded prison, where they were jealously guarded as treasured possessions. Some Chinese immigrant women could easily count the number of times in their lives they had ever stepped outdoors. “My father traveled all over the world,” one Chinese American remembered, “but his wife could not go into the street by herself.” Only during holidays were some permitted to venture out, accompanied by a chaperone. A merchant’s wife in Butte, Montana, recalled, “When I came to America as a bride, I never knew I would be coming to a prison . . .”:
I was allowed out of the house but once a year. That was during the New Year’s when families exchanged New Year calls and feasts. We would dress in our long-plaited, brocaded, hand-embroidered skirts. These were a part of our wedding dowry brought from China. Over these we wore longsleeved, short satin or damask jackets. We wore all of our jewelry, and we put jeweled ornaments in our hair.
The father of my children hired a closed carriage to take me and the children calling. Of course, he did not go with us, as this was against the custom practiced in China. The carriage would take us even if we went around the corner, for no family women walked. The carriage waited until we were ready to leave, which would be hours later, for the women saw each other so seldom that we talked and reviewed all that went on since we saw each other.
Before we went out of the house, we sent the children to see if the streets were clear of men. It was considered impolite to meet them. If we did have to walk out when men were on the streets, we hid our faces behind our silk fans and hurried by.
No doubt many Chinese men felt they had good reason to keep their wives under lock and key. The scarcity of women in the West and the violence of frontier society posed a very real danger of kidnapping or molestation in the streets. A bound-foot woman could neither run from assailants nor fend off attacks. Indeed, with several toes rotted away from foot-binding, she could hardly walk—or even remain standing—for an extended period of time. The annals of nineteenth-century California recount many stories of helpless Chinese women being thrown down into the mud, dragged by the hair, pelted with stones, their clothes and earrings yanked off.
So perhaps staying indoors was safer, though less than stimulating. One wife whiled away the hours playing cards with her servant, looking after her son, gossiping with neighbors, or hiring a hairdresser or a female storyteller to entertain her. In her essay “The Chinese Woman in America,” Edith Maud Eaton, a Eurasian writer who used the pen name Sui Sin Far, offered a glimpse of these women’s lives:
Now and then the women visit one another. They laugh at the most commonplace remark and scream at the smallest trifle, they examine one another’s dresses and hair, talk about their husbands, their babies, their food, squabble over little matters and make up again, they dine on bowls of rice, minced chicken, bamboo shoots and a dessert of candied fruits.
In contrast, other Chinese wives did not enjoy the luxury of idleness. Some belonged to the laboring class, toiling long hours like their husbands. In the late 1870s, a few could be found as domestics or in intensive labor industries as seamstresses, washerwomen, shirtmakers, gardeners, and fisherwomen. In family-run operations, like laundries or grocery stores, the line between business owner and laborer blurred, and wives were often compelled to work alongside their husbands to keep their businesses afloat.
Difficult as her life could be, the typical Chinese wife had more power in the United States than she could have