by Paul R. Spitzzeri
For this Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we highlight from the Museum’s collection, a postcard issued by San Francisco’s Edward H. Mitchell (1867-1932), a prolific publisher of the inexpensive product that preserved a good deal of the visual record of California during his thirty years, from 1893 to 1923, of activity.
His lithographed cards, manufactured in the millions monthly at the peak, included those he published directly, as well as those from firms he acquired, including that of Michael Rieder of Los Angeles, of whose cards the Museum’s collection has about three dozen. Cards identified as being from Mitchell number about twenty in our holdings and several from both Rieder and Mitchell having Chinese-related themes.
The one featured here, “A Chinese Fortune Teller,” may well be from a photograph taken in San Francisco, but it was postmarked from Los Angeles, where the daughter of Florence Powell of Des Moines, Iowa, was visiting. The unidentified sender just arrived in the Angel City from Oakland, so she may have purchased the item while visiting San Francisco and she doesn’t say much in her brief missive, other than she would send an address once rooms were secured.
The view shows a man seated behind a small wood folding table, on which is a cup of sticks, suggesting he was a practitioner of kau cim, in which those items were used for divination. As a TIME magazine article from 2018 puts it,
The idea is that you bear a question in mind (Will I get married this year? Will my business prosper?) as you shake a cylindrical container of 100 bamboo sticks — each about the same size and shape as a chopstick and engraved with a number. You keep shaking the container until a single stick works its way free of the bunch and falls out on to the ground. The number on that stick corresponds to a short allegory or verse that, traditionally, interpreted by a soothsayer.
The article went on to note, however, that, in Hong Kong, from where the journalist, Eli Mexiler, was writing, more people were using apps on their phone, but he also wrote of residents who went to a temple to perform tau cim and learn what the future held for them.
A 2021 piece by Salina Li and Adela Suliman for NBC News observed that divination, spurred by online platforms, was skyrocketing among young people in Hong Kong, including kau chim, as it was spelled in this article. They noted that the practice of fortune telling in China goes back to the beginning of recordkeeping more than 3,000 years ago, though it was suppressed as superstition during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.
In early 20th century Los Angeles, there were a few references to Chinese fortune telling, but usually in the context of criminality. For example, the Los Angeles Times of 7 May 1910 reported that,
Lee Yew Yee, a Chinese fortune-teller, was arraigned yesterday afternoon on a charge of telling fortunes without a license. A box of Chinese junk used in invoking the hidden voices of the spirits was produced as evidence. Lee was arrested once before on a similar charge and sentenced to sixty days on the chain gang. Yesterday he begged to be released. He said that he didn’t like to tell fortunes, but that he was grieved at being arrested, because there was easy money in the business.
He pledged to stop telling fortunes if given another opportunity to reform and the police judge gave Lee a 30-day suspended sentence, meaning that if a violation were to occur at any time in the future, the month-long term in jail would be enforced.
The same magistrate heard another case, reported on by the Times of 4 January 1911, which, as was often the case with people of color, thought it a matter of hilarity, with the headline reading “No Carrots But Fines.” The paper noted that, the prior spring, about the time of Lee’s case, Wong Quai foretold the future of Lee You Yen (whose name was very close to that of the aforementioned) and told him that it was a good year to plant carrots on what was, presumably, a truck farm. The crop, however, failed so the second Lee “proceeded to the abode” of Quai “in Chinatown [east of the Plaza, including where Union Station is today] and tried to beat him up.” The attacker was fined $15, but the fortune teller was handed a $5 penalty, as well, for disturbing the peace.
Who knows if Miss Powell ventured into Chinatown during her Angel City sojourn, but there were some interesting items related to the Chinese of greater Los Angeles during the first ten day of May 1921. The Times of the 1st noted that the popular store of F. Suie One at the southeast corner of Seventh and Flower streets downtown was closed and the stock divided between the flagship store on Los Angeles Street in Chinatown and the branch on Raymond Avenue north of Green Street in Pasadena.
A post about the F. Suie One enterprise was previously published here and a photo from the Museum’s collection has just been included in a National Trust for Historic Preservation Google Arts and Culture page about America’s Chinatowns, specifically in a section dealing with acclaimed writer Lisa See’s contribution to the document.
The edition of the paper the following day included a notable editorial titled “A Chinese Complaint” about concerns in that community about representations of the Chinese in films. The piece began with the comment that,
Perhaps the Chinese are justified in protesting that in almost every film portrayal of a Chinaman he is shown to be a disreputable character. Chinese scenes are generally opium dens or gambling halls, whether it be in comedy or serious drama, and the Chinese intriguing scoundrels, breaking the law in devious ways.
Consequently, the piece went on, “it is very difficult to get the local Chinese to appear in pictures, and few of them regard it as an honorable profession.” Those who participated tended to be “the old and the poor who find the money too great a temptation to resist.” A local resident, Thomas Gubbins, said to have spent much time in China and friendly with many Angel City Chinese denizens, the prominent members of the community “permit scenes to be taken in Chinatown with the greatest reluctance” and request to see a script, adding that no other ethnic group in Los Angeles “is so persistently selected for these undesirable roles.”
While the Times acknowledged truth in the concern, it then added “the fact remains that the Chinese do specialize in gambling” and then asserted that “with the gambling goes most of the other vices,” though it then observed that these were not always viewed as such by the Chinese but were “certainly vices to the white man and particularly the American.” Further averring that those Chinese who participated in movie-making was dissipated in gambling, the editorial noted that “it may not be fair to show only this side of the Chinaman’s character, and the injection of a good Chinaman into the films might be reasonable.”
The piece offered that David Wark (D.W.) Griffith, best known for his pro-Confederate Birth of a Nation, first titled The Clansman when released in 1915, “gave us a good Chinaman” in his 1919 film, Broken Blossoms, subtitled “The Yellow Man and the Girl,” but the paper observed that “even this character did not appease the Chinese, who dislike the association of the little white girl, no matter how innocent it is shown to be.”
The film was based on a British short story set in London’s Chinatown and which was titled “The Chink and the Child,” though the character of Cheng Huan settled in England’s capital city to spread the peaceful messages of Buddhism but took to opium in despair in the seedy conditions of Limehouse. He finds redemption in the “broken blossom” of Lucy Burrows, who was abused at home, and the two became close as societal outcasts though Griffith depicts Cheng as wanting to kiss the young woman before pulling back and kissing her dress sleeve instead.
The drunken father, assuming there’d been interracial sex and livid at his wanton daughter, forces Lucy home and kills her, but Cheng shoots “Battling” Burrows, a boxer, and takes Lucy’s body back to his residence. Before he can be arrested for killing the father, Cheng, having laid out Lucy on a sort of altar, prays to Buddha and commits suicide. One critic views Broken Blossoms with mixed feelings, noting Griffith’s intent, especially after Birth of a Nation to address racism and toxic masculinity but seeing Lucy, played by legendary actor Lillian Gish, as less a woman as an idealized Virgin.
Cheng was played by Richard Barthelmess and there could be no question of having a Chinese or Asian actor playing the character, well-intended as Griffith’s portrayal and characterization may have been and appropriation was not a concern certainly for the Times of more than a century ago. What the paper tried to do, though, was notable:
For the Chinese abhor the inter-racial idea and agree with us that mixed marriages and intimate association between the races are to be deplored. In their own country a woman who has been associated with foreigners is henceforth taboo for themselves. And in local Chinatown they are equally critical of the men who associate with white women.
The editorial ended with the note that “as this subject has proven itself equally unpopular with Americans, it is unlikely that D.W. Griffith’s innovation will be repeated” and the Times offered that “it is desirable that no particular race be affronted in the film industry” because “it should be quite possible to find good picture plays without insulting other nations.” What that remedy would entail, however, was not discussed in the piece.
A second film with a Chinese element appearing in the Angel City, showing at Miller’s Theatre, at the same time was The Money Changers, which, unsurprisingly, was a very free adaptation of a 1908 novel from Upton Sinclair, following his famous The Jungle from two years prior and which dealt with the financial depression of 1907 and stock manipulation. The 1920 film, however, dealt largely with white slavery in a Chinatown, though the ringleader was a white man who is killed by an employee, Ling Choo Fang, played, of course, by a white actor, and the white woman who was held was free to marry the reporter who investigated the drug and prostitution organization.
Another entertainment-related item, definitely tied to stereotypes though in an unexpected way, concerned the appearance in Los Angeles and Long Beach of the African-American comedy duo, Senna and Stevens, who appeared at the Hippodrome Theatre in the Angel City and at Loew’s State Theater in the seaside metropolis. The Times of the 1st briefly recorded that “Senna and Stevens, colored comedians, in their ‘Chinese Laundry’ burlesque will probably carry off the laugh honors” in a program featuring a mimic, singers, a minstrel comedian named Josie Flynn and the feature film Flame of Youth.
The Long Beach Telegram of the 5th felt that “Senna and Stevens offered a rather disjointed arrangement between a Chinese laundryman, who dressed his part with Oriental taste, and a colored man.” The paper declared the performance “but mildly interesting,” but found that “the colored man scored with his dance, which was typical of the southern darkey.” Carlotta Dantzig of the Long Beach Press of the same day, felt that, of the program, “two of them are so good they would keep even a blase audience guessing.” This included “In a Chinese Laundry, in which Mr. Stevens, if he isn’t one, acts more like a negro than Bert Williams [a very popular Bahamian-born comedian who usually appeared in blackface and who died in March 1922] ‘hisself.'”
Speaking of a form of female subjection, a notable case arose as reported in the Los Angeles Express of 6 May, as the paper reported,
The matrimonial slave system of China was reflected in Los Angeles today when Mrs. Lem Sue [also spelled as “Soo”] was sentenced by [Federal] Judge Trippet to nine months’ imprisonment for violation of the Harrison narcotics act.
The Chinese woman was seized . . . [at] the alleged headquarters of an opium ring in this city and when her safe deposit box was broken open a quantity of narcotics was found. The woman pleaded that her husband had forced her to do as he directed under pain of death.
Mrs. Sue’s attorney, Guy Eddie, told the paper that his client’s conviction “was a direct result of a complete subjection of a Chinese wife to her husband” and added that “in China marital disobedience was punishable by death by strangulation.” While the judge did not agree that she was not liable for the crime and she was incarcerated in the Orange County jail because the one in Los Angeles was overcrowded, Eddie insisted that he would appeal and, if necessary, ask President Harding for a pardon.
A frequent topic of fascination for local media were the real or purported activities of the tongs or benevolent associations or companies that were generally believed to control much of the legal and illegal activities in Chinatown. The Times of the 3rd briefly reported that “Los Angeles Chinatown yesterday began to enjoy a brief state of ‘peace with reservations,'” as “the Bing Kong and the Hop Sing tongs, whose gunmen have been busy the past few months, have signed a fifteen-day truce.” This “armistice” was said to have been reached in San Francisco, but the caveats allegedly involved the fact that the truce only held “in the event that no stray bullet happens to find a victim in a member of one of the tongs.”
Another subject of particular relevance for us today concerned what the Times of the 1st declared was a “Rush of Orientals” seeking to cross the border with México at Calexico. Some thirty immigrants were detained, including “a load of twenty-five Chinese and Japs” who were to sail from San Diego to San Francisco under the charge of federal immigration officers. Two days later, the Telegram cited a United Press International report from the border town of Nogales, Arizona that “rioting broke across the line last evening after the arrival there of 76 Chinese laborers from Hong Kong” and it was reported that five men were mortally wounded in the fracas, while an American Army infantry unit was prepared to guard the border.
On 6 May, the Express reported that Wang Wah Chong was assisted by crew members of a train after the migrant was found “starving to death on the desert after having been robbed by Mexican bandits, who took from him all his food, clothing and supplies.” Wang arrived from China with two other men, but was set upon by the brigands who “beat him with rifle buts [sic] and left him for dead.”
The man was unconscious for hours, but came to and walked toward Yuma, Arizona, though the “unfortunate oriental” was overcome by a blinding sandstorm and revived by the crew. Yet, the account continued, he received this assistance “only to be turned over to the immigration authorities and brought here today to face trial” as “he is alleged to be a contraband alien” and subject to immediate deportation.
The Times of the 5th and the 10th, meanwhile, recorded that Karl Albrecht, a blacksmith residing in San Diego, was nabbed at Murrieta in Riverside County ferrying a half-dozen Chinese migrants in his car. It was reported that he was to receive $1,800 for the smuggling and he was handed over to an immigration official at the adjacent Temecula.
Appearing before Judge Trippet in the federal court at Los Angeles, Albrecht forewent legal representation and pled guilty, being handed a thirteen-month sentence at McNeil Island in Puget Sound, Washington. Albrecht claimed he did not bring the immigrants over the border and said he wanted to get the matter over with—notably, the paper added that the German native “was listed among the aliens in San Diego county who were under the surveillance of the Federal authorities” during the recent First World War for potential subversive activities.
There were frequent references in society pages in local papers to parties involving “exotic” themes, including those that involved Chinese elements, but one mentioned in the Times of 10 May was particularly interesting. Roland D. Haskell was a San Pedro and then Los Angeles civil employee, working for the county weights and measures department, and he and his wife Betta hosted a “Chinese dinner” at their home, during which “the guests were in Chinese costume and the menu and decorations were Chinese.”
What set this gathering apart, however, was that the Haskells’ son, Roland S., a graduate of Pomona College and the University of Southern California law school, was an attorney in Shanghai, now China’s largest and its chief financial center, where he’d been since 1917. Haskell’s career there ended abruptly, however, in September 1925 when he returned home amid allegations that he was involved in the embezzlement of funds intended for the purchasing of American weapons for a Chinese official. The matter was referred to again in early 1927 with Haskell continuing to deny any culpability—his then-wife’s sister was in a bitter divorce with his accuser—and the matter dropped off the media radar.
We’ll look to share other Mitchell and Rieder postcards from the Museum’s holdings, including those with Chinese themes, in future posts, so keep an eye out for those.
Superstition was eradicated in China during the Cultural Revolution, when most Chinese were universally poor with no or very little fortune for them to worry about.
However, over the past three decades since the advent of reform and opening policies, Chinese have been fervently catching up with the global capitalism and owning material fortune. Once fortunes become attainable, concerns about their future and whether their wealth can last long and grow more have arisen.
Consequently, we now see many people in China flock to temples or turn to fortune tellers asking about their fortunes, mirroring the superstitions prevalent in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Thanks, Larry for the comment; it is fascinating, as the post noted with reference to recent articles, to see the resurgence of fortune telling in China and your insights help add to this.