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We were on holiday this past weekend, but the Chinese across the ocean are still protesting against discrimination.
When it comes to American Chinese, excessive "gentleness and frugality" seems to have become a label, as if it is always the Chinese who are beaten, robbed, and discriminated against, and the Chinese will only suffer in silence, and only when they are in a hurry will they shout two slogans on the street.
Even in the American marriage market, Chinese men with "insufficient martial virtue" have fallen to the bottom of the chain of contempt.
But in fact, more than a hundred years ago, the Chinese people left a formidable image of a rioter in suits on American society.
On August 6, 1905, the Chinese Theater in New York's Chinatown was staging a Cantonese opera "Emperor Girl Flower", which was quite popular with the Chinese. This is a royal tragedy in the chaotic era of the late Ming Dynasty.
Just as the play was reaching its climax, four Chinese in suits and leather shoes pulled out Colt revolvers pinned to their waists and shot wildly at the crowd watching the play.
Reference oil painting
When a large number of policemen rushed into the theater where the smoke had not yet dissipated, the killer had already fled, leaving only a few corpses and shell casings.
The people who were killed were the Chinese gangsters "An Liang Tang", and the perpetrators were the killers of the rival gang "Xie Sheng Tang".
Such a bloody gangster fire is neither the first nor the last in Chinatown.
The Chinese Theater in New York's Chinatown where the shootout took place.
In the late 19th century and early 1920s, the American metropolis was not only prosperous but also full of crime.
In film and television works, it is often the Irish gang and the Italian mafia that are popular, but the American gangsters of that era also have Chinese figures.
Chinese Gang vs Irish Gang.
Although China was still in the late Qing Dynasty, these Chinese gang members had already cut their braids, combed their oily hair, and put on elaborate suits and three-piece suits to walk the rivers and lakes.
Initially, these Chinese gangsters only did business such as collecting protection fees, but this kind of unskilled work was both hard and slow, and obviously could not satisfy their appetite.
But the Chinese gangs soon found several lucrative livelihoods.
The first is to open an opium smoke house.
Chinese, who had been poisoned by opium at home, brought their superb drug-making skills back to the United States, and a gangster's underground smoke house could bring in $250,000 a year, while a Chinese laborer's monthly salary was only about $20.
The second is to open a casino.
The Chinese casino had many ways to play, such as stalls, pai nine, white pigeon tickets, etc., and for the Chinese who lacked entertainment at that time, there was no more leisurely activity than going to the casino at night to try their luck. These casinos, large and small, pay a monthly fee to the gangs, ranging from a few tens of dollars to a few hundred dollars.
Some gangs also run a transnational business – human trafficking and smuggling.
They sell their countrymen to the United States as coolies or prostitutes, and for every $200 they sell, there is probably no more immoral deal under the heavens.
To support such a business, a tight organizational structure is required.
Among the Chinese who crossed the ocean from China to settle in the United States were many members of the Hongmen Triad, who directly transplanted the mature "organizational management technology" in China to the United States.
The typical structure of a Chinese gangster.
And the most prominent on the street are those "red sticks" and "four or nine boys" who lick blood with knives.
In the 1920s, police raided various weapons seized by the "Kyo-sung-do".
The Chinese who take a boat from China to the United States every year to "pan for gold" are often single young people from the lowest level, and the 2-month sea drift itself is a cruel test. The conditions of the boats transporting Chinese workers are usually extremely harsh, and 20% of the people are thrown into the Pacific Ocean to feed the sharks before they see the Statue of Liberty.
Those Chinese who came ashore alive were the reserve army of gangster thugs.
Nicknamed "Plain Duck," Sai Wing Mock was one of the most feared gangsters in New York's Chinatown at the time.
This Chinese, who is less than 1.67 meters tall, dresses like a high-class American gentleman and speaks fluent English.
But underneath the suit is a perennial lock armor.
He started from a low-level, relied on his heart and became a big man of the Xieshengtang step by step.
No one can say exactly how many people he killed, but he was a regular visitor to the New York court for the first half of his life, and in the first 20 years of the 20th century, he was behind almost all the bloody cases in New York's Chinatown, so that whenever there was a murder in Chinatown, the first person the police greeted was "vegetarian duck".
In 2020, in order to respect this Chinese gangster, P Society also made him a protagonist in the game "Sin Empire", with strong team combat ability.
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The survival of any gang requires two elements, a power vacuum and an umbrella.
At that time, the Crime of the American Metropolis was rampant, compared to their white "peers", the Number of Chinese Gangsters and the number of crimes had a big gap, for the overstretched American police, the Chinese were not the number one enemy, not to mention the unfamiliar language and complex culture in Chinatown, which made the blind white policemen head bigger.
And the Chinese gangs have taken advantage of this power vacuum in a semi-autonomous state.
At that time, the Chinese gangsters ate through the political rules of the United States and took a two-pronged approach to the umbrella.
The first is to get the "strip".
More than a hundred years ago, the judicial environment in the United States was no more difficult than it is now, and it was extremely difficult for police officers with meager salaries to be promoted, and spending money to buy officials was almost the only way out.
The Chinese gangsters saw this and paid bribes to police personnel, and the chief of the New York City Police Department could receive $30,000 in black money at a time, which was about his salary for a year.
Casinos controlled by Chinese gangsters in New York even openly created a "gambler alliance" that fixed $3 million a year to the police system, and the police department directly became the agency that issued casino "licenses".
In 1895, Theodore Roosevelt became chief of the New York City Police Department, a tough guy who fought in the Spanish-American War who tried to reform the police system. Although the chief himself did not take bribes, the police under his command hardly had a clean master.
Police officers who were bribed into the police station often turned a blind eye to their criminal behavior, and once the police mistakenly targeted a casino that had paid protection fees and smashed the door of the casino.
The Chinese gangster made a phone call to the police station, and the policeman actually went to repair the door with a screwdriver.
What's more, the owner of a Chinese gang called An Liang Tang directly hired his nephew Franklin Roosevelt as legal counsel. The results of Director Roosevelt's crackdown on the gangs can be imagined.
Situ Meitang (third from left), the head of the Anliangtang General Hall, took a group photo with Premier Zhou.
The San Francisco Police Department's "Chinatown Squad", the axe used to break the door is a must-have equipment.
Another trick of the Chinese gangsters is to go up the upper line and get the political circle.
In the United States, money and guns may solve many problems, but votes can solve all problems.
Li Xiling, the first Chinese to hold a public office in the United States, was the first Chinese in New York to do the work.
Li Xiling
He often organized lavish banquets at the headquarters of Anliangtang, where Li Xiling would smoke cigars while explaining his political ambitions to the elites of high society.
As the leader of Chinatown, he plans to promote the naturalization of more than 500 Chinese each year and call on them to vote for partisan candidates who are willing to "take care" of the Chinese community.
The former site of Anliangtang.
Although the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 put his plans in the way, he continued to send huge political contributions to the Tammuni Association under the Democratic Party for a long time, and of course, if the Republicans' policies were more friendly to the Chinese, he would also "bet" in reverse.
For example, he actively assisted Benjamin Harrison in his presidential campaign in 1888.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese gangs had formed a huge force overseas, so big that even Sun Yat-sen, who went to the United States to raise funds for the revolution, had to run to the pier, otherwise he could only brush dishes in restaurants to carry out revolution.
Li Xiling's mixed-race son, Li Jinlun, became Sun Yat-sen's secretary and chief secretary of state for foreign affairs in the Guangdong military government after the revolution.
In 1904, Sun Yat-sen joined the Hongmen ZhigongTang as a "double flower red stick".
However, the Chinese gangsters who "contributed" to the revolution brought to Chinatown were mostly violence, murder and pornography in the end. And Chinatown itself, along with its residents, has become a face-like image in the eyes of Americans.
Some white even worked as tour guides, specially organizing white people from the wealthy class to come to Chinatown for adventure hunting. Brothels, casinos and opium smokehouses in Chinatown became their attractions.
White women who come to Chinatown to "hunt for curiosity".
The image of the Chinese in the American public opinion world is fluid, and gangsters are by no means their first identity label.
And "coolie" is the first image of the Chinese in the United States, and probably the first Chinese word that Americans have come into contact with.
It all started with the California gold rush.
In the 1850s, American missionaries brought news of the discovery of gold in California to Guangdong. At this time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement arose, and the Lingnan region had become a pot of porridge.
Some brave poor people saw that they would not be able to survive, so they simply fought for their lives and took a boat to the west coast of the United States to pan for gold.
Chinese miners who made a small fortune during the gold rush.
Along today's California Route 49, the Chinese who successfully landed set up shacks and embarked on an exotic gold rush.
Mark Twain, an unputable journalist at the time, was reporting on the gold diggers in California, and his Chinese miners were similar to the impression that Chinese people leave on the world today: hardworking, low-key and moderate.
At that time, California was completely the law of the jungle, and whoever had a strong fist was the boss.
In order to compete for the ore vein, whites often drove away Chinese miners. There were also many large-scale armed struggles between the Chinese and the Irish, and the Chinese workers suffered heavy casualties each time, but they also saw the power of the revolver for the first time.
When the gold rush was over, the Chinese who came to the United States began to join the army of building railroads and other industrial sectors, and in these places, the Chinese once again showed the quality of hard-working.
Not only did the Chinese workers complete the Pacific Railroad seven years earlier, but they also paid a third of their American counterparts, even lower than white child laborers. With the increase of Chinese, large-scale Chinatowns have also emerged in large cities such as San Francisco and New York.
And this also touches the interests of white people.
Chinese workers who build the Pacific Railway in the ice and snow.
At that time, shortly after the end of the Civil War, there were several economic crises in the United States, and the influx of cheap Chinese labor snatched up the jobs of many white people. These whites, with their "pigtails" in their eyes and strange language, became scapegoats for their unfortunate lives.
Many people know about the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but in California, as early as the 1870s, laws were introduced prohibiting the employment of Chinese in public programs.
In those years, white people discriminated against Chinese people much more fiercely than they do now, and it was systematic discrimination, which meant that even if a Chinese person was killed by a white person in the street, the judicial organs would not waste a minute on him.
The harsh reality made some Chinese who had accumulated a lot of wealth after years of hard work began to realize that if they did not organize their own groups, they would only have to be slaughtered in the United States.
As a result, various communities based on regions and clans have emerged. And these guilds have also set up a joint organization , six major companies.
·“ The Six Companies later changed their name to the Zhonghua Office and later became the behind-the-scenes organization that had long controlled the Chinese community in the United States.
Initially, these groups were only mutual-aid organizations, mainly helping the new Chinese to solve problems of food, lodging, work, and occasionally helping people in trouble to fight lawsuits.
But soon, some ambitious leaders of the community began to pursue greater interests, and these associations were alienated into bloody gangs.
Honest Chinese coolies cut their braids, put on top hats, and became fierce gang members.
For generations of Chinese living in the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, survival is the only law, not a choice.
When the Chinese are systematically excluded from mainstream society, they are left with few opportunities.
When the gold rush faded and the Pacific Railroad was completed, only the lowest jobs were the home of the Chinese who lacked capital.
For a long time, in addition to coolies, laundry was one of the few legal businesses that the Chinese could operate.
Even in such a barely subsistence business, the gang also has to intervene, and the common means is to make several nearby laundries drastically reduce prices, until the new laundry can't stand the price war and succumb to the control of the gangs.
At the same time, the Peggy Act of 1875 nominally prevented Asian prostitutes from entering, but in practice completely blocked the entry of Chinese women into the United States, which also reduced Chinatown to a bachelor community.
Later, the Scott Act prevented the departing Chinese workers from returning to the United States, which completely cut off the hope of returning to China for many Chinese workers.
And it is not difficult to understand why the Chinese gangsters only need to pay $500 to recruit a killer with a knife to die.
The limited "market" also means brutal fighting for the gangs themselves.
Li Xiling of "An Liang Tang" is known as the "underground mayor", and the Lord of AKA Chinatown of "Xie Sheng Tang" Mai Shi Rong.
In order to compete for territory, the two big men led their respective horses to carry out four large-scale "hall fights" in Chinatown, which lasted for nearly twenty years, and each time they drew a rest with several heads on the ground.
· Schematic diagram of the Chinese gang fighting drawn by the New York World newspaper that year.
In order to crush the opponent, "An LiangTang" once used a machete to unload the opponent's little brother in broad daylight, and both sides offered thousands of dollars in rewards to take each other's head.
The "Xieshengtang" did not even hesitate to use the hands of the judicial organs to rectify the "enemy" from the outside, and as a counterattack, the "Anliangtang" slaughtered a person from the "Xieshengtang" as a funeral every time it was raided by the police.
Although they have the same black hair, dark eyes and yellow skin, they speak the same hometown dialect.
Chinese gang members arrested by the police during the Spring Festival Operation in 1906.
In response to this lose-lose situation, the "Big Six" set up war boards to mediate disputes between the various gangsters. However, the clashes between Chinese gangsters have never been completely quelled.
It was not until the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression that the "people in the rivers and lakes" either grew old or died on the streets or returned to their families, that these Chinese gangs barely learned to coexist peacefully, and the "big era" belonging to the Chinese gangs also came to an end.
The Chinese gangsters who once licked the blood with their knives could not escape the wind and clouds in the end.
Sun Yat-sen, who was a gangster, once said: "China's 40,000 million people are like a scattered sand." ”
On the other hand, today, most of the Chinese who climb to the upper echelons look down on the Chinese below, and the skilled immigrants want to be a good and disciplined citizen, but they are still excluded from the workplace, so they are even less keen on fighting for political rights.
As they face the reverse current of Asian-hate today, they may wish to take a look at the stories of the Chinese gangsters of the past.
And how to integrate their own power, this problem can only be left to the Chinese people to think for themselves.
Design/Vision Teacher Li