Willa Cather Foundation

Copyright © 1998 by the Willa Cather Pioneer ISSN 0197-663X Memorial and Educational Foundation (The Wi/!a Cather Society) Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter and 326 N. Webster Street VOLUME XLII, No. 1 Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970 Summer, 1998 Review Telephone (402) 746-2653 The Chinese Connection: Cather and Pittsburgh’s Chinatown Li Zhu, Marquette University, and Tim Bintrim, Duquesne University "The Conversion of Sum Loo" (1900), the last of missionaries to China," for Cather believes that "the Cather’s three short stories on the Chinese in America, ancient civilization of China could get along quite well the other two being "A Son of the Celestial" (1893) and without our cultural interference" (136). After compar- "Affair at Grover Station" (1900), has seldom attracted ing "The Conversion of Sum Loo" and Austin’s "The favorable criticism. The few scholars who have Conversion of Ah Lew Sing," Stouck concludes that the ventured their opinions do not agree on its sources. tone of these two fictional treatments of Chinese David Stouck, in his "Mary Austin and Willa Cather," immigrants is not "condescension but respect" (3). states that Cather’s source "had to be largely literary Marilyn Arnold, in Willa Cather’s Short Fiction, notes and a quick perusal of Amer- briefly that the tone of "Sum ican fiction in the late nine- Loo" is ironic and somewhat teenth century reveals that a lighter than that of the earlier number of writers, including "A Son of the Celestial," "for in Bret Harte, Frank Norris, and the later story Cather enjoys a Mary Austin, found the Orien- little joke at the expense of tal in California an interesting Christians who had wrongly subject for short fiction" (2). assumed that their Oriental James Woodress, in Willa convert to Christianity was Cather: A Literary Life, is puz- safe in their throng" (6). Wood- zled that the story was "set in ress, however, pronounces San Francisco, where Cather decidedly that "the pathos" of ¯ never had been" (146). But in the story is "feeble" and that as early as 1957, Mildred ’the story is certainly one of Bennett, in her Early Short Cather’s bad apples" (146). Stories of Willa Cather had So far, no study has pointed to an Eastern city -- treated Cather’s three Pittsburgh. Shortly before the Chinese stories as a record of publication of this story, Ben- her developing understanding nett noted, Cather had inter- of the Chinese immigrants in viewed Yee Chin (misspelt as America. The lack of solid Lee Chin in Cather’s article criticism of Cather’s Chinese and subsequent criticism), the Yee Chin and his wife, in a photograph originally stories may be due to the leading Chinese importer of printed with Cather’s 1900 article "A Chinese View of inaccessibility of Cather’s Pittsburgh. Furthermore, Ben- the Chinese Situation." journalism on Chinese sub- nett found that in the story jects. Several of these pieces Sum Loo’s merchant husband, Su~ Chin, not only had have only recently been identified, but others have the same given name as Yee Chin, but also that their been known for decades. For example, Bennett’s life stories had many similarities (265). introduction to the Early Short Stories recalls that in Cather scholars also disagree upon Cather’s 1948 she had been called to Pittsburgh by Rose treatment of the Chinese in the story. Bennett, in The Demorest, a Carnegie reference librarian, who thought World of Willa Cather, explains that Cather’s antag- she had discovered previously unknown writing by onism was directed not at the Chinese but "against (Continued on page 3) -I- PITTSBURGH’S RICHEST CHINAMAN The Tragedy of His Two Wives. Scrupulous Honor and Extreme Politeness. His Business Motto. Confucius and the Cow. By Henry Nicklemann (Written for The Sunday Gazette) Yee Chin, the wealthiest Mongolian in Pitts- young man has never been to this country and his burgh, is a wholesale merchant in Chinese com- father says he will never allow him to come until modities, and said to. be worth upward of he is settled with life, for eastern and western $100,000, aft of which he has accumulated in his ideas of education are so incompatible that six business here. His place of business in River months in America would relax the boy’s severe Avenue is a sort of storehouse full of Chinese scholastic habits and give him ideas which would wearing apparel, fireworks, dried fish, dried vegeta- be injurious to his career as a scholar in China. bles and fruits, nuts, teas, drugs, gums, spices and Yee Chin tells an interesting anecdote about preserves. These he supplies to Chinese retail the difficulties of Chinese scholarship. "Confucius, merchants in Pittsburgh, Altoona, Johnstown, and our great master," he says, ’~was once asked by the smafler cities in the westem part of the state. the emperor if he knew all the Chinese language. His business proper is largely d~e to his high Confucius replied: ’Sir, let the Chinese language character and unusual intelligence. The freight be represented by all the hairs on the body of a agents of the railroad over which all his shipping is cow; I am able to number only the hairs on one of done say that there is not a whiter man in Pitts- her legs,’" burgh to do business with. Aft his business ac- Some four years ago, on his return from quaintances affirm that his word is always a China, Yee Chin married a Chinese mission girl of sufficient guarantee and that he has an unusually considerable beauty, in San Francisco. He sound conception of upright conduct in business brought his bride to Pittsburgh in the stateroom of matters. He has a good memory for favors, and a Pullman car and established her in the rooms never forgets a man who has done him a good over his shop. About a year after their marriage turn. the girl became so bitterly homesick that she Yee Chin is an unusually taft man for a China- began to show signs of melancholia. There was man, standing nearly six feet in his felt soles. He only one other Chinese woman in the city whose is straight, broad-shouldered and well-built, with birth and education made her companionable to muscular arms and well-shaped hands. His skin Mrs. Yee Chin, and Chin persuaded her husband is a pale yellow and his face full, smooth and to occupy the building next to his shop and had a intelligent. His manner is both dignified and door cut through the wall that the two women confident and his courtesy unfailing. He has in his might communicate freely. Chinese doctors were bearing, in short, that unmistakable something in constant attendance upon her, but about two which characterizes a gentleman of any race or years ago an American physician declared her color. Not a few women of the city go to his shop mentally deranged and her husband at once for various Chinese specialities, and declare that engaged a stateroom and took her back to San he could instruct many American shopkeepers in Francisco, hoping that a few months in her father’s politeness, promptness and courteous attention. home would restore her. She died there some Yee Chin has by no means lost touch with his weeks after her arrival native country, and returned to Canton every other His first wife, Yee Chin never brought to year to buy his goods. Though he looks not more Pittsburgh at all, believing that the necessary than 35 Chin is about 50 years old, and has a son isolation of a Chinese woman’s life here would be in China of whom he will make a mandarin. A unbearable to her. He left her in China with her hundred dollars a year, he says, is sufficient to son and spent some months with her every two keep the young man at one of the best Chinese years. On his fourth trip home she declared that universities. The young man has passed his first she intended returning to America with him and examination, and also the second examination and grieved bitterly at his refusal to permit. On the had obtained the degree called in China, ffhe night of his departure for the United States she degree of the Flowering Talent." He is now a committed suicide. candidate for the third examination which will ad- m# him to an honorable govemment post. The -2- THE CHINESE CONNECTION And she describes his height, physical robustness and (Continued) pleasant looks, all of which blunt the caricaturist’s pen. Finally, she commends Yee Chin for having "the Cather in the back files of two local magazines, the courtesy and address of a man of the world and a Library and Home Monthly (viii). Bennett confirmed fluent speaking knowledge of English," Demorest’s discoveries, which included "The Conver- Despite Yee Chin’s superb personal qualities, he sion of Sum Loo"; moreover, they noted that just two suffered from two marital tragedies, brought about in weeks before "Sum Loo" appeared in the Library, large part by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which "Henry Nicklemann" (one of Willa Cather’s pen names) had effectively sealed off immigration of Chinese, and had published in the same journal "A Chinese View of especially Chinese women, to the United States. As a the Chinese Situation," an interview with Chinese merchant rather than a common laborer, Yee Chin was importer Yee Chin about the Boxer Rebellion. A not targeted for exclusion; he was supposed to be able condensed and updated version of this interview, to come and go as he liked.

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