In the traditions of China and in the freedom of America: The making of San Francisco's Chinese New Year Festivals

American Quarterly

Volumn 56, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 395-420

  Yeh, Chiou Ling ^a  

^a SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 28644432124     PISSN: 00030678     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/aq.2004.0029     Document Type: Review

References (73)

1. The title of this article is taken from "Chinatown Organizes a Celebration," San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 1953. By Chinese Americans, I mean persons who were immigrants or U.S.-born. The account of the Chinese New Year celebration could be found in all Chinese American community newspapers published in San Francisco. Therefore, the footnotes are not an exhaustive list of the sources but representative ones
2. Chinese World, February 16, 1953, 6 (Chinese section)
3. Gary Scharnhorst, ed., Bret Harte's California: Letters to the Springfield Republican and Christian Register, 1866-67 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 27
4. Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 138
5. Susan Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 5
6. Scharnhorst, ed., Bret Harte's California, 51-52
7. David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991), 57
8. Paul Gail Chace, "Returning Thanks: Chinese Rites in an American Community" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 1992), 205
9. Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 239
10. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996), 11
11. Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 301, 215-29
12. For the image of the Chinese, see also Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (New York: John Day, 1958), 63-238
13. "Editorial: Chinatown Loyalty," San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1950
14. "Chinese Here Pledge Their Loyalty," San Francisco Chronicle, December 2, 1950
15. Gloria Heyung Chun, Of Orphans and Warriors: Inventing Chinese American Culture and Identity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 75
16. Him Mark Lai, Meiguo huaren shehui fazhan shi (From Overseas Chinese to Chinese American - the Development of Chinese American History in the Twentieth Century) (Hong Kong: Sanlian Shudian, 1992), 355
17. Chinese World, February 22, 1956, 6 (Chinese section)
18. Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 11
19. Tung Pok Chin, Paper Son: One Man's Story (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 68-71, 83-87, 126-29
20. For the history of Min Qing, see Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ', 207-17
21. Chen, Chinatown Files
22. For details on the case, see Tsai, Chinese Experience in America, 131-32
23. Him Mark Lai, "To Bring Forth a New China, to Build a Better America: The Chinese Marxist Left in America to the 1960s," in Chinese America: History and Perspectives (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1992), 51
24. For the history of Chinese American Communists, see Lai, "To Bring Forth a New China," 3-52
25. Chinese Pacific Weekly, December 17, 1949, 11
26. Philip P. Choy, "San Francisco Chinatown Historic Development," in The Chinese American Experience: Papers from the Second National Conference on Chinese American Studies, ed. Genny Lim (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America and the Chinese Culture Foundation, 1980), 130
27. Msu Kai-Yu, "Flower Stands on Sidewalks of Grant Avenue," Chinese World, February 6, 1951
28. Thomas Chinn, Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and Its People (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1989), 244; Hilary Wong (pseud.), interview with the author, San Francisco, June 11, 1999
29. Chinese New Year Festival, souvenir program (1962), San Francisco Public Library, Chinatown Branch
30. "Chinatown Welcomes Year of the Dragon," Chinese Press, February 1, 1952, 11
31. "Chinatown Elders Offer Prophecies," San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 1958
32. "Honolulu Girl Wins 'Miss Chinatown' Title," San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 1959
33. San Francisco Chronicle, February 24, 1962
34. T. Kong Lee, "Welcome to Chinatown," in Wong, ed., San Francisco Chinatown on Parade, unpaginated
35. Chinese World, January 31, 1957, 6 (Chinese section)
36. Chinese World, February 26, 1953, 6 (Chinese section). In 1953 the stores in Chinatown could be divided into three types. The 170 grocery stores had 90 percent Chinese shoppers
37. Young China, January 6, 1954
38. Chinese World, February 2, 1954, 6 (Chinese section)
39. "Chinatown Rebellion," San Francisco Chronicle, February 18, 1956
40. See D. Bodde, Festivals in Classical China (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1975), 145-51
41. Chinese Times, February 14, 1953, 3
42. Chinese Times, February 2, 1954, 3
43. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 138-66
44. "Dragon Time in Chinatown," San Francisco Chronicle, February 6, 1954
45. A controversy broke out between the Chinese World and the Anti-Communist League. Dai-Ming Lee, editor of the Chinese World, accused the league of being "a propaganda organ for the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek." He also asserted that the money raised by the league was for Chiang Kai-shek ("Editorial: The Sincerity of the Anti-Communist League," Chinese World, February 2, 1951, 1)
46. For more on the controversy, see Pierre Salinger, "Chinatown Dispute Issues: Funds for Chiang, GFs Communism," San Francisco Chronicle, March 5, 1951
47. "Chinatown Parade Stresses Anti-Communism," San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 1951
48. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 415
49. Arthur Hoppe, "Montgomery St. Hails the Chinese New Year," San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 1957
50. Franklin Ng, ed., The Asian American Encyclopedia (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1995), 481
51. For information on mainstream beauty pageants, see Lois Banner, "The Pursuit of Beauty as Woman's Role: The Beauty Contest 1800-1921," in American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983), chap. 12
52. Armando R. Riverol, Live from Atlantic City: The History of the Miss American Pageant before, after, and in Spite of Television (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992)
53. Frank Deford, There She Is: The Life and Times of Miss America (New York: Viking, 1971)
54. Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)
55. Chinese American scholars have only recently begun to pay attention to this subject. For the first article-length study on Chinese American beauty pageant, including an analysis of Chinese American identity formation, see Judy Wu, '"Loveliest Daughter of Our Ancient Cathay!': Representations of Ethnic and Gender Identity in the Miss Chinatown U.S.A. Beauty Pageant," Journal of Social History 31 (September 1997): 5-31
56. For early twentieth-century beauty contests, see Yung, Unbound Feet, 148-9
57. Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 189, 192-94
58. On the history of the cheongsam, see Antonia Finnane, "What Should Chinese Women Wear? A National Problem," Modern China 22 (April 1996): 99-131
59. Anthony W. Lee, Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 252-53
60. Ivan Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940," Pacific Historical Review 43 (August 1974): 367-94
61. Chinese Pacific Weekly, January 12, 1954, 25. At this time, Chinese-language newspapers often used the term westerners to refer to the general public
62. Alice Lowe, "Concealing-Yet Revealing," in Wong, ed., San Francisco Chinatown on Parade, 27
63. "Chinatown Celebrates Start of New Year's Festivities," San Francisco Chronicle, February 12, 1956
64. William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 217-18
65. Gina Marchetti, Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 116
66. Chinese Pacific Weekly, February 3, 1956, 1
67. Chinese Pacific Weekly, March 9, 1961, 8
68. Dai-Ming Lee, "Editorial: Expanding the Chinese New Year Celebration," Chinese World, February 5, 1957, 1
69. George Christopher, "Gung Hay Fat Choy from the President of Board of Supervisors," Chinese World, January 24, 1955, 2
70. Dai-Ming Lee, "Editorial: An Archway for Chinatown," Chinese World, January 27, 1956, 1
71. For details, see Chiou-Ling Yeh, "Taking It to the Streets: Representations of Ethnicity and Gender in San Francisco's Chinese New Year Festivals, 1953-2001" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 2001), 61-67
72. Him Mark Lai, interview with the author
73. Chiou-Ling Yeh, "Contesting Identities: Youth Rebellion in San Francisco's Chinese New Year Festivals, 1953-1969," in The Chinese in America: A History from Gold Mountain to the New Millennium, ed. Susie Lan Cassel (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Alta Mira Press, 2002), 329-50