REVOLUTIONARIES, MONARCHISTS, AND CHINATOWNS Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns CHINESE POLITICS IN THE AMERICAS AND THE 1911 REVOLUTION L. Eve Armentrout Ma Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824880149 (PDF) 9780824880156 (EPUB) This version created: 17 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. © 1990 L. Eve Armentrout Ma All Rights Reserved TO MY PARENTS, EDWARD GOODWIN BALLARD AND LUCY MCIVER WATSON BALLARD, AND TO MY VERY PATIENT FAMILY CONTENTS Dedication iv Note on Romanization vi Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix 1 / Chinese in the Americas 1 2 / The Founding of the Political Parties 33 3 / The Pao-huang Hui Takes Root 64 4 / The Beginning of Differentiation 76 5 / Reformers and Revolutionaries, 1903–1908 92 6 / The Denouement 117 Conclusion 147 Appendix A Principal Surname Associations in North America, 1903 157 Appendix B Triad Lodges in the Americas, 1893–1911 159 Notes 161 Glossary 210 Bibliography 217 v NOTE ON ROMANIZATION Generally, the Wade-Giles system of romanization following the Mandarin pronunciation has been used for Chinese characters in this book. In the case of proper names, where another roman- ization has become standard (for example: Foochow or Canton), I have used the standard. Where there are proper names with alternative forms that are not commonly known, such as the names of Chinese persons living in the Americas, I have in- cluded the alternative form in parentheses after the Wade-Giles form, where the name is first mentioned in the text. In the case of publications, I have tried to keep in mind the convenience of future researchers. If a publication was readily available in a library, I have kept the romanization used by that particular library, and again, at the first mention of the publication in this text, the Wade-Giles spelling has been given in parentheses. For publications not readily accessible, Wade- Giles has been used, with any alternative romanization included in parentheses at the first mention of the title. Libraries may catalog many (but not all) Chinese-language newspapers ac- cording to an English added title or translation of the tide; in this case, I have followed the library where the newspaper is located, but then have added the Wade-Giles romanization in parentheses at the first mention of the newspaper. If a library has used an alternative romanization, I have also used the alter- native, and then put the Wade-Giles version in parentheses at first mention in the text. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of many people and institutions. The original manuscript was my doctoral thesis prepared for the University of California at Davis. At that stage, I received much help from Don C. Price and Frederic Wakeman, Jr. Others whose support was important include Kwang-ching Liu, David Brody, and Ben- jamin E. Wadlacker. In addition, I benefited from the financial support of the Committee on American-East Asian Relations, and also received a small grant from the Center for Chinese Studies of the University of California at Berkeley. During the post-doctoral period, a grant from the Kellogg Foundation of the University of California at Davis helped me begin revising the manuscript. In addition, Edgar Wickberg gave the text a thorough reading, Don C. Price gave additional comments, Michael H. Hunt sent me his advice, and Richard J. Lee gave the first part of the manuscript a final reading. A number of libraries have also been helpful: the Bancroft, the East Asiatic, and the Asian American Studies Libraries of the University of California at Berkeley; the San Francisco Public Library; the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; and the Hamilton Library of the University of Hawaii. The staff at Shao-nien Chung-kuo ch’en-pao (Young China) let me spend months reading early issues of that newspaper. Jung-pang Lo, Taam Wu, Him Mark Lai, and William Fong gave me important source material and in interviews provided additional facts. Others interviewed include Charles Mah, Chew Long, Howard Ah-Tye, Huang Yün-su, Ira C. Lee, and Lee Jit Sing. In addition, Edgar Wickberg and Wei Chi Poon helped locate some of the photographs. Last but not least, Phyllis Killen gave some editorial advice, and the staff at the University of Hawaii Press, especially Pamela Kelley and freelance editor John Benson, were most vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS helpful. My thanks to all those listed above, and to others whose names I may have overlooked. Any errors of fact or interpre- tation, and any infelicities of style, remain my sole responsi- bility. viii INTRODUCTION This is a book about an important period in the history of the Chinese in the Americas. (The designation Americas in- cludes North America, Latin America, and Hawaii. The latter became a possession of the United States in 1898.) During this period, major social and political changes occurred in America’s Chinese communities, 1 changes intimately linked to and to some extent reflecting developments in China, especially the Chinese revolution of 1911. It was a period in which Chinese in the Americas began to be politicized and became active for the first time in the national politics of their motherland. The politi- cization altered their social structure and social order in a way that was probably more profound than anything that has taken place in the Chinatowns of the Americas up until the late 1970s, when the modern Civil Rights movement caught up with them and the “new immigration” from East Asia began. America’s Chinese communities owed most of the direction and impetus for these changes to three Chinese statesmen who visited the Americas on several occasions between 1894 and 1911. The first was Sun Yat-sen, the major leader in the prorev- olutionary camp and a proponent of a republican form of gov- ernment for China. (He was later to become the first provisional president of the Republic of China.) The other two were K’ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, the celebrated “reformers of 1898,” best known for their efforts to establish a constitutional monarchy in China. These three, K’ang, Liang, and Sun, estab- lished China’s first political parties—parties which operated in the Americas as well as within and on the borders of China. The first two of these parties were actually founded in the Americas: the Hsing-Chung hui (Revive China Society), founded in Hawaii in 1894 by Sun Yat-sen, and the Pao-huang hui (Chinese Empire Reform Association/Chinese Constitutionalist Party/Save the Emperor Society), founded in Canada in 1899 by K’ang Yu-wei. ix INTRODUCTION Good documentation exists on the functioning and devel- opment in the Americas of these and later parties; on the in- teraction between the parties and preexisting social organiza- tions such as surname associations, Triad lodges, and hui-kuan (fellow-regional associations); and on the competition between reform and revolutionary parties. Contemporary Chinese-lan- guage newspapers provide an especially rich source of infor- mation on these topics. A number of these newspapers were founded by the political parties themselves as a means of in- fluencing overseas Chinese, and each newspaper reported its party’s activities in great detail. In addition, there is much to be learned from the several usually politically unaffiliated news- papers of which San Francisco’s Chung Sai Yat Po (Chung-hsi jih- pao, East-West News) was the most important. Chinese in the Americas enjoyed a fair degree of political freedom, certainly more than their fellow citizens in Japan, Southeast Asia, and China itself. This freedom permitted the branches of the Chinese reform and revolutionary parties to develop with less outside interference than they encountered elsewhere in the world. It also allowed for more spontaneous political participation on the part of the members of the Chinese communities. As a result, Chinese in the Americas were able to sustain the political parties when these parties were restricted or came under attack elsewhere in the world. Moreover, the American environment permitted the growth of independent, unaligned political groups. In fact, a number of would-be revolu- tionary organizations in the Americas were not tied to the major political parties led by Sun Yat-sen or K’ang and Liang. The greater political freedom among Chinese in the Americas, however, was accompanied by discriminatory laws and practices directed against Chinese as a group. Discrimi- nation went a long way toward confining the Chinese to China- towns and to their own social organizations. It also greatly re- stricted the economic opportunities of Chinese in the Americas. As a result, not surprisingly, Chinese in the Americas held a somewhat jaundiced view of North America’s liberal institu- tions. The more evenhanded functioning of the higher (federal and central government) law courts in the United States and Canada stood as a partial exception to this generalization. Chinese in North America were aware that at least the higher courts of the judiciary were not always against them.