“No. 142. Chinese Woman and Child. San Francisco, Cal.” c. 1870-1889. Photographer probably J.J. Reilly (from the collection of the Bancroft Library).
Pioneer Mothers, Children, and the Power of Their Images
On this Mother’s Day, this studio stereograph of a Chinese mother and child represents more than venerating the relationship of mother and child, or even the mere striving for respectability by Chinese America’s merchant class. Such photographs conferred on pioneer Chinese American women and mothers often crucial legal advantage in the US immigration process.
The Page Act of 1875 (Sect. 141, 18 Stat. 477, 3 March 1875) was the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, which effectively prohibited the entry of Chinese women, marking the end of open borders. (Seven years later, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act would effectively ban immigration by Chinese men.) The law was named after its sponsor, Representative Horace F. Page, a Republican representing California who introduced it to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.” The law technically barred immigrants considered “undesirable.”
Chinese women who sought entry to the US at San Francisco would be interrogated, and their faces compared with images produced by the then-growing photographic identification industry to serve the government’s need to screen and deny entry to immigrants.
Studio portrait of mother and child, San Francisco CA, no date. Photographer unknown. A print of this photograph titled “Mother and Child” appears in an album titled “San Francisco Chinatown” published by Cunningham, Curtis and Welch of San Francisco, which contains photos by Isaiah West Taber.
Photograph technology became a principal means to identify the Chinese women through each stage of the examination process in order to ensure that unqualified women would not be substituted for a woman who was properly questioned at any point in time. According to historian Eithne Luibheid, Chinese women were subject to this method of identification prior to any other immigrant group because of the “threat of their sexuality to the United States.”
Mother and child, San Francisco CA, c. 1880. Photograph by William Shew (from a private collection).
Chinese mother and two children, c. 1880. Photograph by Allen’s (apparently using props identical to those seen in Shew’s studio portrait) from a private collection.
Thus, Chinese women had to demonstrate that they grew up in respectable families and that their husbands could afford to support them in the United States.
“Interior, Chinese Restaurant, S.F. (1880)” – Carleton E. Watkins. From the collection of the New York Public Library. A stereograph version of this Watkins photo, titled “Interior Chinese restaurant, S.F. 3764″ circa 1875 may be viewed online in the Getty Open Content Program). “’Chinese Women, San Francisco’ [above] shows two fantastically silk-gowned women in a bright sunlit room full of Chinese tropical hardwood furniture, traditional string instruments, and art calligraphy,” writes Stanford professor Gordon H. Chang. “Partially visible elegant inscriptions declare that the owner of the artwork is a cultivated person. The setting is unlike anything most Euro-Americans at the time could ever have imagined existing on American soil. The women, who may be mother and daughter, seem relatively at ease; they do not appear to have bound feet (which suggests they are either Hakka or Manchu neither of whom engaged in the practice), and are clearly well-to-do. They hold painted fans, wear jade bracelets and rings, and are elegantly coiffed and groomed. An opium [sic] pipe sits on the table between them.”
Immigration officials considered a range of clues about an entrant’s character based on the appearance of the body and clothing in an effort to differentiate between bona fide wives and mothers from prostitutes. In contrast, men were not required to carry photographs or match photographs that had been sent in advance to San Francisco Port authorities.
“Three Generations” c. 1899. Photograph by Hortense Schulze published in The Cosmopolitan, An Illustrated Monthly Magazine (vol. 28, no. 6) April, 1900, p. 606. (Prints repose in the collections of the California Historical Society and the Bancroft Library).
As law professor Kerry Abrams wrote in an article, “Polygamy, Prostitution, and the Federalization of Immigration Law” for the Columbia Law Review [vol. 105, no. 3: 641–716 (April 2005)], enforcement of the Page Act resulted not only in fewer prostitutes but also the “virtually complete exclusion of Chinese women from the United States.” [Abrams p. 698] In 1882 alone, during the few months before the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the beginning of its enforcement, 39,579 Chinese entered the U.S., only 136 of them women.[Abrams, p. 701] Therefore, Chinese immigrants were unable to create families with each other within the U.S.[Abrams, p. 701] The Page Act was so successful in preventing Chinese women from immigrating and consequently keeping the ratio of females to males low that the law "paradoxically encouraged the very vice it purported to be fighting: prostitution.” [Abrams, p. 702]
To the photographers of the late 19th and turn of the century San Francisco, the infrequent and rare appearance of Chinese mothers with their children on the streets of Chinatown attracted attention as photographic subjects.
The photos mattered then, as they do now. Happy Mother's Day.
Mother and child crossing Dupont Street, no date. Photographer unknown (from a private collection). The intersection appears to be Dupont and Sacramento Streets.
Mother and four children walking north on Dupont Street. No date. Photographer unknown (from a private collection). Based on the awning ornamentation and street inclines, they are possibly crossing from the southeast to the northeast corners of the intersection with Clay St.
“A Street Scene in Chinatown. San Francisco, Cal.” c. 1881. Photograph by A.J. McDonald (from a private collection). The group has paused outside of a what appears to be a restaurant offering wonton mein (a dumpling and noodle combination usually served in soup and which remains to this day a signature dish of Hong Kong and Guangzhou).
A mother and two children walking south along Waverly Place in old San Francisco Chinatown at the northwest corner of the intersection with Clay Street, c. 1900 (Courtesy of the National Archives; photo also in the collection of the California Historical Society) The elaborate headdress worn by the daughter at right indicates that the photo was taken during the New Year holidays.
“Woman and children walking down a street, Chinatown, San Francisco,” c. 1896-1906. Photograph by Arnold Genthe (from the Genthe photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division). The building facades in the background suggest that photo may have been taken on Washington Place, a.k.a. “Fish Alley.”
A mother follows two children, walking east on Clay Street at its southeast corner of its intersection with Dupont Street, c. 1900. Photographer unknown (from the Cooper Chow collection at the Chinese Historical Society of America).
[updated 2024-5-11]