Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (19 page)

The origins of Chinatown’s tongs are clearly discernible in China. There, the opposition of Chinese to the Tartar or Manchu Empire established in 1644 was solidified through the creation of patriotic and secret organizations. These tongs, for such they really were, dedicated themselves to the overthrow of the haughty Manchus who had humbled Ming Dynasty China and forced the Chinese to wear queues as a sign of servility. The queue resembled a horse’s tail and the Chinese, like horses, were slaves to the conquering northerners. The pigtails also made it easier for the always mounted Manchus to seize the Chinese.

The beginnings of the tong-like organizations in China are somewhat hazy but definitely predate the Manchu conquest. In the era of the Han Dynasty, about the time of Christ, there were such organizations as the Red Eyebrows (or the Carnation-Eyebrowed Rebels), the Copper Horses, the Yellow Turbans, and later the powerful White Lotus Society. The Red Spears started out as a farmers’ protective association, the White Lily and White Cloud Societies with religious, connotations, having been founded by Buddhist monks. But even the quasi-religious groups later went in for violence and plunder, imitating such organizations as the Ko Lao Hui, or Society of Brothers and Elders, which was not only responsible for anti-Tartar riots—its motto being Overthrow the Manchus, restore the Mings!—but also for personal revenge and banditry. This association and its close relative, the San Ho Hui or Triad Society, were formed after the massacre of Shui Lum monks by Tartar troops.

San Francisco tongs were founded by political refugees from such organizations as the Triad Society. This society was so called because its members venerated a trinity composed of Heaven, Earth and Man. Other names for this secret organization included the Heaven and Earth Society, the Hung Family, the Dagger Society and the Hung League. These refugees, mixed with some out-and-out criminals, entered San Francisco unnoticed among the hordes of coolie laborers. Members who fled to other parts of the world also set up tongs, and in Penang, Singapore and Malacca the British Government had to pass special legislation to protect the people of the Straits Settlements from the exactions of these secret societies. Membership alone was considered a penal offense for Chinese-British colonial subjects.

First to throw light on the tongs was a Reverend Dr. Milne of Malacca whose report of 1825 was read to the Royal Asiatic Society. It was titled “Some Account of the Secret Society in China called ‘the Triad Society.’” Milne accused the secret organizations of only posing as mutual-aid societies while they were really responsible for the many dead men found floating in the harbor with their arms and legs tied together in a peculiar way and their ears lopped off. Little more was known about them until 1840, when two British Army officers, Major General Wilson and Lieutenant Newbold, read another paper on the Triad Society to the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1863, Gustave Schlegel, a Dutch official, obtained documents seized in a police raid on a tong member’s house in Padang, Sumatra. The result was a book—the first work to compare the Triads with European Freemasons. Finally in 1900, a British detective in Hong Kong published another work which reported that the Triad Society “in California, where it is known by the name of Highbinders, has made itself notorious in consequence of numerous daring murders and other criminal offenses.”

In 1891, an Englishman named Charles Mason tried to make himself Emperor of China with the help of the Ko Lao Hui Society, of which he became a member. But Mason bungled his very first filibustering action—the attempted piracy of a river boat—and ended up in prison. Meanwhile in San Francisco the Triad Society had metamorphosed into a secret fraternal order, the Chee Kong tong, or the Chamber of High Justice. In the East, on Doyers Street and thereabouts in New York, it came to be known as the Yee Hung Oey or Society of Righteous Brothers.

The power of the tongs in San Francisco was dramatically demonstrated in March, 1888, with the funeral parade of Low Yet, one of the greatest processions in the city’s history—almost rivaling that of Little Pete, later the King of Chinatown. The streets of the Quarter were crowded with highbinders and curious, fearful or impressed Chinese townspeople. The former swaggered about in ceremonial dress of helmets and bucklers. Fully a thousand tong members marched in the parade or took part otherwise in the funeral ceremonies. Starting at noon from the Chee Kong tong headquarters on Spofford Alley, the long procession wound its way through Chinatown. Those on foot soon climbed into waiting vehicles to accompany those already mounted for the long haul to the Chinese cemetery. The line of march extended for a full mile when the head of the procession entered the cemetery’s gates.

The men of the advance guard bore gaudy banners. After them came distinguished Chinese in carriages; next the Chee Kong tong members. Following them was the hearse, drawn by four black horses. Behind the hearse marched the professional mourners hired for the occasion. They wore what looked like linen dusters and had strips of red-and-white cloth wound around their heads. All the way to the cemetery they kept up an energetic (and doubtless well-rewarded) wailing of artfully simulated grief. Bringing up the rear of the parade was a company of Chinese “soldiers” armed with rifles and another equipped with cutlasses and shields. In the afterguard straggled a motley fleet of battered buggies, express wagons and vehicles of all kinds in all states of decrepitude. These were literally swarming with the common people of the Quarter. Here and there in the long queue were bands dispensing what to Western ears sounded like unremitting discord and cacophony but which were apparently Celestial dirges.

The chief feature of the procession was the dead man’s horse. The animal was saddled and bridled and led by an equerry. Although white, not black, is the color of mourning to the Chinese, the mount was covered with a mantle of black thoughtfully provided by a Caucasian undertaker.

At the cemetery the coffin, covered with a red pall edged in white, was placed on a catafalque in back of a shrine. The family of the deceased and the professional grievers approached the casket and knelt around it. Joss sticks and joss paper were lit, and offerings of roast fowl, tea and
sam shu
(Chinese brandy) were placed before the shrine. The Americans who watched the scene were amused when a flageolet squeaked out a flimsy fanfare. A priest, mounting a parapet to the right of the altar, wore gold vestments and a gilded head cover. He embarked on a monotonous chant which lasted for nearly an hour. From time to time he would punctuate his prayer with a clashing of the cymbals he carried. At intervals, too, an acolyte rang a bell, much as in the Catholic Mass, but it appeared to be merely a signal for the flute player to loose a series of ear-piercing blasts.

While all this was going on others were placing, just to the left of the shrine, a large model house of tinsel-covered bamboo. This symbolized the deceased’s worldly possessions. It was set on fire and bushels of joss paper and punk were thrown on it. Toward the end of the priestly incantations in the background the mourners stripped off their colorful ribbons and threw them into the pyre.

When the priest was finished the coffin was borne to the open grave and lowered unceremoniously into it. Each mourner then walked past the grave and tossed a handful of popcorn and a handful of sand on the coffin. The grave was quickly filled in and the people began to disperse. That is, all dispersed but certain Caucasian tramps who hung back to feast upon the offerings left at the shrine—but not before they got their “lucky money.” At the gate an attendant, hefting a bag of five-cent pieces, gave a shiny nickel to each person as he or she filed out.

Who was this man, that the whole of Chinatown would feel obligated to turn out for his funeral ceremonies? (Or was it that they feared the consequences of failure to put in an appearance?)

Low Yet was the founder and first president of the Chee Kong tong. He was therefore the founder of all tongs in America, and rightly or wrongly, on his shoulders must be placed much of the blame for the bloody tong wars of Chinatown. He was a leader in the Tai Ping Rebellion, which lasted from 1850 to 1864. But Low Yet was forced to flee China long before the soldiers of fortune, Frederick Townsend Ward and Chinese Gordon, with their ever-victorious army, finally crushed the rebels. When Low Yet arrived in San Francisco he broadcast the seeds of the Triad Society and soon harvested a hybrid society—the Chee Kong tong. It was not a secret revolutionary movement, though it was secret, but it was sufficiently warlike even for an erstwhile “long-haired rebel” of Hung Siu Tsuen’s, like Low Yet.

Soon the Chee Kong tong prospered enough to slough off dissatisfied portions of its large membership. These dissidents created their own rival tongs and the San Francisco press was faced with the problem of sorting out a multitude of more-or-less secret organizations whose names proved thoroughly bewildering. A reporter had to keep track of Suey Sings, Suey Ons, Hop Sings, Hip Sings and Hip Yings, Bo Ons, Bo Leongs and Bing Kongs, while not forgetting Bo Sin Seers, Gee Sin Seers, Sai Sin Seers, plus a dozen more tongs and a host of variant spellings, mispronunciations and bad translations.

As surprising as the number of tong progeny spawned by the Chee Kong tong was the manner of Low Yet’s passing. The founder of all of San Francisco’s fighting tongs died, aged eighty-seven years, of natural causes. Most would have laid bets that he would die “in action,” for through him such scenes as that described by Senator Aaron Sargent came to pass: “I have seen a hundred or two Chinese lining each side of a narrow street, violently gesticulating at each other and apparently casting insults as if each party sought to provoke the other to the first blow. Then, like a flash, the clashing of swords and knives and half-a-dozen men were in the dust with mortal stabs.”

The true intentions of the tong members were well-kept secrets, guarded from both police and press for years. But, piece by piece, the force and the reporters began to put the story of the tongs together. The San Francisco
Call
on December 5, 1887, ran a long article on the highbinders. The most startling fact, perhaps, was the wide variety of members. The membership was not confined to professional toughs by any means. Sam Ah Chung, killed by a rival highbinder a week before the article appeared, was revealed to be a tong man though he was employed as a servant in a private home where he was considered to be extremely meek.

The sweet-sounding names affected by the tongs fooled neither police nor press. One of the most notorious was the Progressive Pure Hearted Brotherhood. Signs outside other tong headquarters proclaimed, in translation, their associations to be: the Society of Pure Upright Spirits, the Perfect Harmony of Heaven Society, the Society as Peaceful as the Placid Sea, the Peace and Benevolence Society, and the Society of Secured and Beautiful Light. But the inner workings of the organizations remained well-kept secrets until they were broken by the San Francisco police in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Each tong had two or three English-speaking members who scanned the newspapers to keep their societies posted, and dealt with American lawyers and other English-speaking people when necessary. But they passed on no secrets to the “foreign devils.” Many Six Companies’ men were beginning to feel the pressure and joined one or another of the tongs, which varied from 50 to 1,500 members in 1887. The Chee Kong tong was the largest. Merchants often joined it or another tong out of pure fear of the consequences of nonaffiliation. But the surface of Chinatown remained serene.

Frederick A. Bee, Chinese Consul in San Francisco for a time, noted that the tongs preserved at least vestigial traces of rebel underground units. One tong in particular, which he did not identify but which was probably the Chee Kong tong, deliberately refused to observe Chinese holidays or to recognize Imperial authority in any fashion. This tong even flew a black flag over its headquarters rather than the white and yellow of the Chinese Empire. And when the flag did fly from the staff it indicated one of two things: it was a tong holiday or a crime or tong war was due.

It is not known how extensive was anti-(Chinese) governmental activity by the highbinders, nor how adept at anti-Manchu espionage they became. But it is unlikely that they had much time for such diversions. The day of the typical salaried soldier was a full one of loafing, wenching, gambling, blackmailing, and now and again murder. However, there was no denying that in June, 1885, the Chee Kongs welcomed an unknown eighteen-year-old Chinese to their Spofford Alley headquarters and befriended and protected him during his initial three months’ stay on the Coast, as well as later. The lad was Sun Tai Cheon, later Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese Republic. His dream, the overthrow of the Manchus, seemed as remote as the moon in 1885. But Sun was in the United States long enough to become impressed with American democracy and republicanism, and he determined to introduce these systems into China. Therefore he would only accept the first part of the slogan of the Triad Society and its San Francisco kin, the Chee Kong tong—Overthrow the Manchus, restore the Mings! He saw no reason to rid China of one emperor only to replace him with another. The Chee Kongs were dubious about Sun’s democratic ideas but they supported him. For 211 years they had fought the Manchus, and before Sun’s successful revolution of 1911 they would have participated in five unsuccessful revolts against China’s Tartar overlords.

The tongs did not fool Sinophile Masters for one moment. He hated them and labeled them publicly “bands of conspirators, assassins and blackmailers.” He was irked by what he saw as public gullibility in accepting the brief of the tongs that they were Chinese Masonic societies. Masters quoted J. S. Hopper on this score: “There is no more resemblance between Freemasons in this country and the Yee Hing [Triad] Society than there is between the Grand Army of the Republic and the Chicago Anarchists.” Masters added: “These hatchet societies believe themselves invincible and have defied every effort of the authorities to reach them by constitutional means.”

A letter from a highbinder (Lew Yuet) in the interior to officials of San Francisco’s Chee Kong tong was intercepted and translated by Jonathan Endicott Gardner, a Customs interpreter, in January, 1889. It suggested a type of conspiracy in which the tongs indulged:

On the 5th instant Lee Shan came by stage to our store and said that the Chee Kong Tong had deputed him to come here and collect from Chan Tsung, Lieu Ming Chew, and Chew Keuk Min. He passed the night in our store. The next day he started out. He then stopped with Szlo Kam until the night of the 10th. Soon after it had turned 1 o’clock, Chew Keuk Min died. On the 12th there were certain townsmen of ours who reported that Chew Keuk Min was killed by Lee Shan. Now they are going to arrest Lee Shan. Today Szlo Kam was taken into custody. The trial, however, is not yet commenced. Today the different brethren held a conisulation and decided they would require Lee Shan to make up the sum of $200 for funeral expenses; that they would not be satisfied unless he did make up that amount. How this affair is going to end I do not know. It evidently is going to be quite serious. We hope in some way you brethren will contrive to eave him, somehow. This is the most important thing to do just now. Furthermore, we have no able person here to attend to the matter. The authorities [took him] into custody and yet no trial has taken place. The young woman, when pressed by the authorities, positively identified Lee Shan as the guilty man. We hope you will soon send us word.