Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (23 page)

Florence's leisurely life was a marked contrast to Alice's burdensome
one. She had few responsibilities at home, aside from occasionally helping with the dishes. She recalled playing tennis on Saturdays with her
brothers in the Italian section of town, where Chinese were not welcomed. "We would go early and climb the fence," she said.' To do her
share for the church, Florence taught English to Chinese immigrants at
home five days a week, contributing her monthly earnings of $5 to the
Women's Missionary Society.

Whereas Alice's parents did not believe that girls needed more than
an elementary education (nor could they afford it), Florence's father
treated her like his sons and encouraged her to pursue college-at a time
when it was still considered unusual for Chinese girls to finish high school.
As a young girl, Florence was also one of the few Chinese Americans to
attend school outside Chinatown. Her parents enrolled her at Denman
Girls' School until the board of education insisted that all Chinese students be restricted to the Oriental Public School. After elementary
school, Florence went on to graduate from Girls' High School in 19 15.
Throughout her public school years, her parents also had her attend the
Chinese school they had started at the Chinese Congregational church.
Although her mother wanted her to marry and settle down to a domestic
life upon graduation from high school, her father told her to continue
on to college, earn a Ph.D., and then go serve China:

He said that people are coming over here and the United States was
building things over there and they wanted better relations between
[the two countries]. My father was teaching English to men here, and
if I went back to teach, then when they came they would get better jobs
over here.... And also, my mother had that missionary goal of bringing Christianity to China.'

In this way, the Christian and nationalist idea of serving China and her
people were instilled in Florence at an early age. After attaining a bachelor's degree in English at the all-women's Mills College (she was the
first Chinese woman to graduate from there, in 1919) and a master's
degree in religious education at the University of Chicago, Florence de tided to try and serve the needs of Chinese women in San Francisco.
For two years she worked as the associate secretary of the Chinese YWCA,
and she also helped to start the Girls' Club at the Chinese Congregational church. Then she decided to marry a medical student from China
whom she had met at the University of Chicago. She gave up her job at
the YWCA to accompany him to China, where he worked as a physician
and she volunteered at the YWCA for the next twenty-six years, thereby
fulfilling her parents' wishes of serving China.

Although both Alice and Florence ended up leaving the sheltered
environment of Chinatown to go abroad, major differences in their upbringing led each of them to make that decision for their own reasons.
Coming from a working-class background and raised according to traditional values, Alice was not given the same educational and social opportunities as Florence. But having to leave home to work made her a
more independent woman, allowing her to marry the man of her choice
against her parents' wishes and then take a job in which she could travel
around the world. In contrast, because Florence's parents were middleclass and guided by Christian and Chinese nationalist values, she received
a more progressive upbringing than Alice. Not only did Florence enjoy
a more intimate relationship with her parents, but she was also encouraged to pursue higher education with the goal of serving China. Whereas
Alice had to defy her parents, both of Florence's parents supported her
choice of marriage partner and the decision to make her life with him
in China. Indeed, it was her mother's "pin money" from taking in sewing
for many years that paid for the young couple's passage to China in 19z3.

Cultural Conflicts at Home

As young daughters, Chinese American girls had little
choice but to give unquestioning obedience to their parents. However,
as they became older and more exposed to a Western lifestyle and ideas
of individuality and equality through public school, church, and popular culture, some began to resist the traditional beliefs and practices of
their immigrant parents, even to the extent of ridiculing their "old-fashioned" ways. Like most second-generation children, Chinese Americans
experienced cultural conflicts and identity dilemmas when they tried to
reconcile the different value system of their home culture with that of
mainstream American society.10 Many disagreed with their parents over the degree of individuality and freedom allowable, the proper relationship between sexes, and choice of leisure activities, education, occupation, and marriage. For young Chinese American women, the cultural
clash was often compounded by stricter adherence to traditional gender
roles and by the parental favoritism bestowed on the boys in the family.
Depending on the family's economic circumstances, daughters were usually expected to forgo higher education in deference to their brothers.
They were also expected to stay close to home and do all the housework,
while their brothers were allowed greater freedom of movement and had
fewer responsibilities at home. Parents frowned on their sons taking up
sports and partying instead of studying, but disapproved of their daughters going out at all, dancing, or even mixing, with the opposite sex. Adhering to the double moral standards in the community, they were more
concerned about regulating their daughters' sexuality than their sons',
of protecting their daughters' virginity and the family's upright standing in the community. I i

It is evident from written accounts that second-generation women of
middle-class background were preoccupied with generational and cultural conflicts, especially those that revolved around gender. The same
cannot be said of working-class women, in the absence of comparable
evidence. Most likely, working-class daughters also experienced such conflicts, but they were probably more concerned with making a living than
with challenging traditional gender roles. As the following stories of Jade
Snow Wong, Esther Wong, and Flora Belle Jan (all of middle-class background) reveal, there were at least three patterns of response to the conflict over gender roles: acquiescence, resistance, or accommodationcreating a new gender identity by combining different aspects of two
cultures. Borrowing from Karl Mannheim's concept of the sociology of
generations, we find that accommodation-as exemplified in the story
of Jade Snow Wong's life-was the dominant response of the second
generation under study.12

As she states in her first autobiography, Fifth Chinese Daughter, Jade
Snow Wong was the fifth daughter in a family of seven children. I3 Her
father owned and ran a Chinatown garment factory and was an ordained
Protestant minister on the side. Her mother was the faithful wife and
benevolent mother, constantly hard at work at the sewing machine. The
family was among the first in Chinatown to have a bathroom equipped
with running water in their home. Although her father was progressive
in many ways, he still believed in a Confucian upbringing for his children. From an early age, Jade Snow was taught her proper place as a
daughter in a traditional Chinese family and insulated community:

A little girl never questioned the commands of Mother and Father, unless prepared to receive painful consequences. She never addressed an
older person by name.... Even in handing them something, she must
use both hands to signify that she paid them undivided attention. Respect and order-these were the key words of life. It did not matter what
were the thoughts of a little girl; she did not voice them.14

So ingrained was this deference in her that even as an adult she chose to
write her autobiography in the third person singular, signifying her understanding of her proper place in the Confucian hierarchal order:

Although a "first person singular" book, this story is written in the third
person from Chinese habit. The submergence of the individual is literally practiced. In written Chinese, prose or poetry, the word "I" almost
never appears, but is understood. In corresponding with an older person
like my father, I would write in words half the size of the regular ideographs, "small daughter Jade Snow," when referring to myself; to one of
contemporary age, I would put in small characters, "younger sister"but never "I." Should my father, who owes me no respect, write to me,
he would still refer to himself in the third person, "Father." Even written in English, an "I" book by a Chinese would seem outrageously immodest to anyone raised in the spirit of Chinese propriety.15

As was true for most of her peers, Jade Snow's parents did not spare the
rod. "Teaching and whipping were almost synonymous," Jade Snow
wrote. "No one ever troubled to explain. Only through punishment did
she learn that what was proper was right and what was improper was
wrong." 16 It was expected that she excel in both American and Chinese
schools, that she learn to cook and sew, that she look after her baby
brother, work in her father's sewing factory, and help her mother with
the household chores, and that she never go out unless escorted and with
her parents' permission.

In the area of education, Jade Snow's father was more progressive
than most other Chinese parents. As a Christian and a nationalist reformer, he believed in education for his daughters as well as his sons, at
least through high school. Expressing the sentiments of a Chinese nationalist, he explained to Jade Snow:

Many Chinese were very short-sighted. They felt that since their daughters would marry into a family of another name, they would not belong
permanently in their own family clan. Therefore, they argued that it was
not worth while to invest in their daughters' book education. But my answer was that since sons and their education are of primary importance,
we must have intelligent mothers. If nobody educates his daughters, how can we have intelligent mothers for our sons? If we do not have good
family training, how can China be a strong nation?17

For the sake of a strong China, it was equally important that his children be educated in the Chinese language and have an appreciation of
Chinese culture. Even before Jade Snow started kindergarten, her father began tutoring her in Chinese at home. By the time she was ready
for Chinese school, she knew enough Chinese to be placed in the third
grade. Jade Snow, in essence, had a bilingual and bicultural education,
which would later help shape her ethnic and gender identity.

Once Jade Snow left the sheltered environment of home for public
school, she began to notice subtle but significant differences between
Western and Chinese ways. Creativity that had been stifled in the regimentation and rote memorization of Chinese school was given free rein
in public school activities such as making butter, painting, and sports.
Children were encouraged to speak their minds and expected to strike
back in self-defense when hit. Whereas her parents believed in maintaining a distance and encouraging their children through negative reinforcement, her public school teachers practiced the opposite. When
Jade Snow was hurt by a flying baseball bat, her teacher Miss Mullohand
comforted her by embracing her. Unaccustomed to such intimacy, Jade
Snow broke away in confusion and embarrassment.

Christian organizations such as the Chinese YWCA and library books
also broadened her outlook on life. When she went to the Chinese YWCA
for piano lessons, she experienced "American dishes of strange and deliciously different flavors" cooked by her older sister who worked there,
and she found that to see other faces than those of her friends at school
and at the factory, and "to play without care for an hour or two were
real joys."18 Through reading, she discovered how different life was outside Chinatown: "Temporarily she forgot who she was, or the constant
requirements of Chinese life, while she delighted in the adventures of
the Oz books, the Little Colonel, Yankee Girl, and Western cowboys, for
in these books there was absolutely nothing resembling her own life.""
Later, as a live-in housekeeper with the Kaisers, a European American
family composed of husband and wife, two young children, and a large
dog, she was able to observe first-hand the different lifestyle of a rich
family:

It was a home where children were heard as well as seen; where parents
considered who was right or wrong, rather than who should be respected;
where birthday parties were a tradition, complete with lighted birthday cakes, where the husband kissed his wife and the parents kissed their children; where the Christmas holidays meant fruit cake, cookies, presents,
and gay parties; where the family was actually concerned with having fun
together and going out to play together; where the problems and difficulties of domestic life and children's discipline were untangled, perhaps
after tears, but also after explanations; where the husband turned over
his pay check to his wife to pay the bills; and where, above all, each member, even down to and including the dog, appeared to have the inalienable right to assert his individuality-in fact, where that was expectedin an atmosphere of natural affection.20