11. Differentiation and Integration

CHAPTER 11 Differentiation and Integration THE Chinese migrants, fending for themselves in an often hostile world, could well appreciate the value of a United Chinese Society which could speak, and sometimes act, in their common interest. At the same time, the migrants who made up the Hawaii Chinese population were by no means a homogeneous group with strong personal loyalties to one another. Hakka and Punti, Sam Yup and See Yup, Christian and non-Christian, of this or that clan, of one village or another, from different districts—these and other identities were the bases for subgroups within the Chinese community. Unlike the situation among Chinese on the U.S. mainland, especially in California, the United Chinese Society preceded the evo- lution of formal organizations based on these varying old-world identities, but development of a sense of affinity with tung bau did not replace older and deeper subgroup loyalties. The first district association was formally organized in 1890, eight years after the beginnings of the United Chinese Society; the first village club came in 1897; the first surname society in 1889. Eventually migrants organized more than forty societies based on these subgroup affiliations, but even then such societies were only a minority of the more than two hundred formal organizations developed by the migrant generation.1 Associations founded on old-world subgroup loyalties multiplied most rapidly as anti-Chinese agitation in Hawaii was dying down, but this was also the period (1889–1930) when Chinese political organizations ap- pealing to tung bau loyalty were most active.2 The District Associations Among the strongest and most important of the migrant organizations were the district associations, most of them established between 1890 and 1907, mainly a sojourner period. Each district association was made up of members who had migrated from or were somehow identified with a specific geographic locality in Kwangtung province. Some of these districts covered only forty or fifty square 215 Differentiation and Integration miles, but from one small area, with a population of more than 100,000, migrants came to Hawaii from at least eighty-three different villages. Chinese migrants came to Hawaii from just a few districts of Kwangtung province (Table 13). In fact, more than half the contract laborers arriving during the years 1895–1897 came from See Yup—the “Four Districts” of Sun Ning (Toi Shan), Sun Wui, Yen Ping, and Hoi Ping (see Map 1, on endpapers). A little less than one-third came from Chung Shan district, but Chung Shan had been the chief recruiting ground for laborers for more than a generation before this, and it is likely that a large majority of the six thousand Chinese “free immigrants” who arrived in the Islands during the same three years came from Chung Shan. Prob- ably one-tenth of the contract laborers in these years were Hakkas. The number coming from all other districts of Kwangtung was negligible. Table 13 Origin of Chinese Contract Laborers (1895–1897) and Chinese Women (1893–1898) Granted Permits to Land in Hawaii Area of Origin Number of Number of Chinese Chinese Contract Women Migrants Laborers 1893–1898) (1895–1897) Heung Shan (Chung Shan) 2,269 190 See Yup districts Sun Ning (Toi Shan) 2,132 15 Sun Wui 778 10 Yen Ping 607 — Hoi Ping 414 2 Hok Shan 23 2 Hakka districts Sun On (Pao On) 436 54 Kwai Sing 109 19 Tung Kun 90 25 Other Hakka districts 36 3 Other districts 60 16 Unidentified 143 73 216 Differentiation and Integration Total 7,097 409 Note: Data tabulated under the direction of the writer from records of the Board of Immigration now filed in the Archives of Hawaii. The records for men refer to Chinese brought in under “conditional permits” as contract laborers, mostly for the Haole-controlled sugar plantations. The figures for women refer to permits issued to Chinese women by the Board of Immigration validating their right to land. Not all the women actually arrived in Hawaii. The local origins of the Chinese women immigrants closely approximated the origins of all Chinese migrants in Hawaii—the largest element from Chung Shan, the Hakkas more numerous than the See Yups, with an insignificant re- mainder of Puntis from other Kwangtung districts, including some in and near the city of Canton.3 The district associations organized in Hawaii by the Puntis reflect, in their number and nature, this distribution. Because of the general illiteracy and immobility of Chinese villagers for generations, considerable dialectal and cultural differences existed even between areas as small and close together as these districts. A modern Westerner can scarcely comprehend the social distance between migrants even from neighbor- ing villages, much less between those of different districts. As one migrant stated, the district had been the universe for the ordinary Chinese villager and like most universes it contained conflicting groups—in the Kwangtung districts and villages these were competing clans. However, migrants who would have had little to do with each other at home in China were drawn together in Hawaii by their common local origins. Abroad, old-world rivalries, distrust, and feuds became subordinated to the fellow feeling among those who spoke the same dialect, ob- served the same local customs and had similar childhood memories. The first three district associations formally organized in the Islands were for migrants from three of the ten doo (subdistricts) of Chung Shan district, and all but three of the other district associations were also organized by migrants from Chung Shan.4 (See Map 2.) The other three district associations were formed by migrants from See Yup (“The Four Districts”). Because they spoke a different dialect of Cantonese and were culturally different in other ways from the numer- ically and economically predominant Chung Shan migrants, See Yup migrants tended to be a separate group apart from the main Chinese community. Chung Shan people generally claimed to be closer dialectally and in other ways to the city of Canton, the cultural center of Kwangtung province, than the See Yup people whom they regarded as more rustic than themselves. Heavy migrations of See Yup contract laborers to the sugar plantations between 1895 and 1898 were important in making the See Yup Wei Quan the second largest association in the Islands, at one time claiming three thousand members. Factions led to the forma- tion of the other two associations: Yee Yi Tong open to migrants from all four of the See Yup districts and Kong Chau Wei Quan open only to migrants from Sun 217 Differentiation and Integration Wui. The following list presents the district associations organized in Hawaii. In some cases the year given is only the approximate year of founding: Map 2. Chung Shan District Source: Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), p. 17 Honolulu 1890 Chuck Sing Tong (Wong Leong Doo) (“Wong Leong Doo Chuck Sing Tong”) 1890 Duck Doo Kee Loo (“Duck Doo Society”) 1891 Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong (“Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong Benevolent Society”) 1897 See Yup Wei Quan (“See Yup Benevolent Society”) 1901 Yee Yi Tong (“Yee Yi Tong”) 218 Differentiation and Integration 1901 See Dai Doo Wui Goon (“See Dai Doo Society”) 1907 Leong Doo Wui Goon (“Leong Doo Society”) 1907 Kong Chau Wei Quan (“Kong Chau Benevolent Society”) 1930 Kung Seong Doo Luen Heung Wui (“Kung Seong Doo Society”) 1930 Gook Doo Sam Heung Tung Heung Wui (“Gook Doo Sam Heung”) 1950 Chung Shan Tung Heung Wui (“Chung Shan Association”) Hilo 1904 Wong Leong Doo Kung So (“Wong Leong Doo Benevolent Society”) Membership in the district associations was open to any migrant whose “na- tive place” was a village in the district. Every association had an admission fee, generally two or three dollars, but no annual dues. Most associations required that migrants returning to China subscribe an additional sum, generally two dollars. Representatives of the association would be at boatside at embarkation time to collect the admission fee if it had never been paid, as well as the departure contribution. Indigent migrants being helped to return to China were exempt from these fees. As an association’s expenses increased, especially when a head- quarters building was put up, admission fees were sometimes raised and special assessments levied against affluent members. Sometimes admission fees were lowered later and a scale of fees for admission of sons of members was adopted. Wealthy members who made voluntary contributions in addition to the regular fees were formally recognized. The See Dai Doo Wui Goon had this bylaw on special donations: Each … member who makes an extra donation of $50 or more shall be rewarded with a first-class silver medal, and his portrait shall be hung on the wall of the meeting hall to show him respect; each … member who makes an extra donation of $25 or more shall be rewarded with one first-class medal; and each … member who makes an extra donation of $10 or more shall be rewarded with a second-class medal; each … member who makes an extra donation of $5 shall be rewarded with a third-class medal. The Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong, the largest association, illustrates the nature and functions of the district associations. In the mid-1930s it had more than 4,250 members—about 15 percent of the Hawaii Chinese population at that time. When this society applied for a charter of incorporation in 1905 the fifty-six petitioners stated that they were “by occupation, merchants.”5 Like most migrant organizations, it was to have a president and vice-president, a Chinese secretary and assistant secretary, an English secretary and assistant secretary, a treasurer and assistant treasurer, two auditors, and a board of directors.

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