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Chinese Americans in Corvallis

The reference to plank houses in the legend of Fusan (see page at left) has led to speculation that the Northwest Coast was referred to, but whether Corvallis, and Oregon, were the Land of Fusang, as some believe, does not affect the central place which China holds in the story of our town.

 The European explorers who first visited this area were searching for a Northwest Passage which would allow them to sail directly from Europe to China. Local fur traders like John Meares, visited China in search of skilled craft workers for the settlements. The central market for the fur trade was itself China, and John Jacob Astor founded Astoria so he could carry the furs and opium directly to the Chinese market rather than transporting them to the East Coast first. Other Americans arriving in the area also marketed directly.  

Above: the "factories" where American and English merchants sold opium in Canton, China. The English Empire was largely a "narco-state", dependent upon the drug trade (illegal  then in China as well as much of the rest of the "civilized world") for its existence. U.S. merchants played the same role satellite role for England that Canada plays today for the U.S. The prominent names in U.S. finance over the past century, whether Forbes, Delano, Astor or Morgan, can trace their prosperity to a time when their ancestors occupied the same position in the opium trade as the drug cartels in Mexico.

During the War of 1812, when the English raided American merchants, the Russians in Alaska permitted Astor and other Americans to fly the Russian flag and the trade with China continued, although at a reduced level.

Daniel Lee, of the first local American settlement, described in 1838 a trade circle which was not uncommon in the 19th century. A ship would be bought in Boston, filled with immigrants sent to Oregon, and filled with wheat there...

Above: The American flag above the U.S. drug "factory" at Canton

Chinese Immigrants

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) records that Chinese immigrants reached New Spain, of which Oregon was a part, as early as 1600. However, Chinese immigration remained low until the middle of the 19th century. The Opium Wars waged against China by England, with the encouragement of American president John Quincy Adams, resulted in massive suffering in the Chinese countryside as the English and American drug cartels pushed their wares into every small village in Asia as a means of paying for massive imports of Chinese tea and silk. 

Above, an opium smoker in Shanghai. Below: an opium den in Manila

It was not only the English and American drug cartels who grew wealthy from the opium trade.The richest person in the world during the the 19th century was the Hong merchant, Wu Ping-Chien, below, known as Howqua II in the West. By imperial decree, all trade with the West came through him. All opium, tea and much of the silk in the world left though his firm. There remain today an old mining region, mountains and a river in Australia named after him, and he invested a great deal of money in American railroads.

Howqua II

The Taipeng Rebellion and its crushing by the Manchus resulted in 10-20 million deaths, and, like the savagely suppressed revolutions of 1848 sweeping across Europe at the time, resulted in a surge of immigration to the United States, including the family of the famous John Day, Oregon, Chinese American doctor, Ing Hay. The discovery of gold in California, Oregon, and Idaho presented new opportunities. 

In 1849 for example, 54 Chinese American men and women lived in California. In 1876, the number stood at 150,000. 45 Chinese Americans lived in Oregon in 1860. In 1880, 9,510 lived here, though none are listed in Corvallis in the 1860 or 1870 census. In the 1880 census, 41 are listed in Benton County. The 1890 census was destroyed in a fire.

Much of the immigration was connected to the discovery of gold in Oregon. The US Census of 1870 showed that 2% of all Eastern Oregonians were Chinese American in 1870, but 62% of the miners were Chinese Americans.

Above: Keswick, Oregon mine

In Umatilla County, 95% of the miners were of Chinese origin, and the Pendleton catacomb, the underground city where the Chinese lived, was 70 miles long.

The Chinese immigrants were predominant in the mines for the same reason they were predominant in the construction of Western railroads, and for the same reason as the Irish were predominant in such industries in the East. The same paradigm accounts for the predominance of Jews in the textile industry, for Scandinavians in the timber industry at the time, as for Mexican agricultural labor, Indian programmers and Chinese engineers among U.S. immigrants today. Immigrant labor, particularly Asian immigrant labor was cheap and the work was demanding. Town founder,Joseph Avery, approvingly called it 'apprentice slavery' in his editorials lauding the slave trade.

The Chinese American miners worked the tailings, after Euro-Americans had exhausted the surface gold, as is apparent from the journal of Theodor Kirchhoff, a German American immigrant who kept a journal of his experiences in Oregon from 1863 - 1872: 

Corvallis's 'Mrs. Ford', interviewed by the WPA years later, had similar memories:

Kirchhoff and Mrs. Ford were speaking only of placer mining, using pans and sluice boxes. Hydraulic mining, requiring larger amounts of capital, also depended heavily on Chinese American labor.

Corvallis resident Ed McClain says of the hydraulic operations:

Most Chinese immigrants came from southwestern China, where wood work has had a centuries old tradition. Corvallis resident Ed Epley remembers seeing the the canals:

To furnish the needs of the miners, Chinese service sector arose including doctors such as Ing Hay of John Day.

In fact, John Day was itself of Chinese origin, once known as Lower Town of the adjacent mining town Canyon City. Euro-American miners burned down Canyon City Chinatown, housing 1000 Chinese Americans in 1885. Chinese Americans, like African Americans and native Americans, were denied the right to vote by the Oregon constitution and the Canyon City council was therefore Euro-American in its entirety.

Canyon City's Chinatown

The City Council refused the Chinese American miners a permit for rebuilding, and the latter moved a few miles away, next to the John Day River, to rebuild. The town eventually took the name of the river, which in turn was named after an employee of John Jacob Astor who went beserk there, running naked into the forest, never to again be seen.

The poet Joaquin Miller, who lived among the Oregon miners in Canyon City, wrote:

Joaquin Miller

"The Chinamen were terribly taxed by the authorities but they always came up promptly and without a word of complaint paid whatever was demanded of them. Let me here say that I never, during all my years of intercourse with these people, saw a single drunken Chinaman. I never saw a Chinese beggar. I never saw a lazy Chinaman. - Joaquin Miller- in Harper's Weekly

Above: Ing Hay's office. The uncashed checks of hundreds of Euro- American ranchers locally, who depended upon the doctor for their health remedies, sit yet in the office.

Nearly a third of the Chinese American population of Eastern Oregon in 1870 were in service industries, serving Chinese, as well as other, Americans. In Western Oregon, the percentage was much higher.

These service industries were not confined to the mining communities only, but sprang up along the transportation routes leading to them, including Corvallis:

"... A mere 20 Germans; yet the place had 2 excellent breweries, proof that Americans regard the brown nectar of grain a highly as do our countrymen. For, no matter how thirsty and how well endowed with Teutonic bibulousness, 20 Germans could not drink the output of 2 breweries. About as many Chinese monopolize the laundries, typical on the Pacific Coast. I saw their signs on several buildings. Sing Sam Washing and Ironing, for example.."

- Theodor Kirchhoff; Oregon East, Oregon West). 1863. Below: Inside a Chinese Laundry.

In reality, only about 20 % of the Chinese Americans who were not engaged in rail roads or mining were in the laundry business, according to the 1870 Corvallis census. The remainder were largely scattered, as immigrants have traditionally been in America, across low paying industries: cooks (25%), clerks (10%, housekeepers (5%) and others. In Benton County, in the 1880 Census, 41 Chinese are listed. Of these, only 5 listed their occupations. All 5 were 'Servant'. 33 had no occupations listed. 2 were listed as 'Boarders', and 1 was disrespectfully listed as 'Heathen Chinee', a reference to a Bret Harte poem about a Chinese gambler who bested 2 men who set out to cheat him at cards. 

We know, however, from the testimony of pioneers, from maps and from news articles, that a number of Chinese Americans worked as farmhands, as merchants, and others for the railroad.

Always, there were suspicions rising among their neighbors at the slightest incident. As was generally the case for bigotry, the Corvallis Gazette led the way:

There were also, of course, the usual criminal occupations associated with  immigrant communities: prostitutes (5%), gamblers (7% - Fantan was a favorite), but there were also professionals: doctors (3%) merchants (5%), etc.

 The boundary between these occupations was sometimes very blurred. Ing Hay was not only a Nei Ching doctor but a grocer,an  I Ching seer and a Te Ching priest. His partner in the medical business, Lung On, was also a gambler, scribe, labor contractor and eventually eastern Oregon's first auto dealer.

By 1880, the mines had begun to fail and the bulk of Chinese immigrants, for example 67% in Eastern Oregon, worked for the railroads. 

Above: Chinese railroad workers east of Corvallis

In Corvallis, T.E. Hogg hired 500 Chinese railroad workers as part of his railroad/wagon road scheme.

An engine on the  Corvallis & Eastern

It was in Summit that the Greenback Party, with its emphasis on denying the right of Chinese to immigrate to the U.S., alongside the 8 hour day, was organized locally.

The traditional reluctance of immigrants to participate in censuses is evident in the data from Corvallis. We know, from news accounts and eyewitnesses that Chinese merchants existed in the city, yet unlike in the Eastern Oregon censuses, not a single one is listed.

2nd Street and Jefferson, where the WPA/CCC constructed the Post Office decades later, was known as Chinatown. In the 1900 census, 20 Chinese Americans are listed, 6 of whom still worked for the railroads, alongside 2 Japanese. Ed McClain, Corvallis resident, was told by his older brother that Corvallis' Chinatown was burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan in the 'Twenties. Although the KKK was certainly strong in the area, no newspaper account exists of such a holocaust in Corvallis. Newspapers were not famous for printing accounts of racist bullying but it may be similar to other stories related about Chinese laborers being buried alive in mines and railroad tunnels by their employers after contracts were fulfilled. Such tales, though widespread among other longtime Oregon residents, have not been verified and may simply stand as testimony to the hardships faced by the Chinese immigrants, in the face of local hostilities. Certainly, such rumors recall news reports of the time concerning mass suicides by the Chinese laborers, such as that reported by the American Panama Railroad.

Opium had followed some of the immigrants from China, and in the United States, it was legal, although in 1886, Melancthon M. Davis, a pharmacist of Corvallis, pushed through a bill giving pharmacists a monopoly on its sale.

More ominously, the chemists of the U.S. and Europe purified for sale the opium derivatives, morphine and heroine, and these were also legal and widely advertised locally.

Bigotry  such as the above article by the Gazette, jumping as it does from a dime lottery to opium, alongside the job-loss fears of European and African American laborers, resulted in the enactment of Chinese Exclusion laws, which lasted fifty years. Illegal immigration by Chinese people was punishable by a year of hard labor in the penitentiary, followed by deportation. From 1882 to 1943, Chinese Americans who had been in the U.S. prior to passage of the law were required to carry documents signed by a Customs inspector proving they were residents prior to the law, a difficult proposition in many cases. Since 97% of all Chinese immigrants were male, the law effectively precluded marriage, since the immigration of a sweetheart was banned, unless one returned to China. The law was very effective. In 1910, only 5 Chinese Americans remained in Corvallis and Benton County, half as many as the city's Japanese immigrants. The Japanese provided even the city's railroad workers after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.

In 1900, the anti-imperialist Boxer Rebellion occurred in China. Another frenzy of anti-Chinese sentiments were unleashed. The exclusion act was extended indefinitely.

Sun Yat sen

The success of Dr. Sun Yat sen in China - Sun Yat-sen had toured Oregon -  gave many Chinese hope, and the Chinese community in Oregon were supportive. Among Ing Hay's many papers, were, for example, many records of money sent to Sun Yat sen by this man of very modest means.

The growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon in the Twenties was largely directed at Irish Catholics and the Japanese, but Chinese people, few of who remained in Oregon, were also targeted. The flourishing of anti-Japanese sentiment, however, led to a reversal of Chinese American fortunes in Oregon when the Japanese invaded China in 1932.

The dead, fater 'the Rape of Nanking' by the Japanese

The Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, when China and the US were allies, and Chinese Americans fought in the US army in WWII, although anti-Chinese bigotry flourished anew after the Chinese Revolution in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. A residue of that remains, and to it, the arrest of Dr. Lee at Los Alamos has been attributed. Nonetheless, today, the census lists 843 Chinese Americans as residents in Corvallis, among more than 5000 Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants.

See Also: The Coming of the Chinese Immigrants

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