Politics and Chinese Laundries!

Here’s a little light-hearted  Trivia Quiz about how Chinese laundries were connected with American politics!

1. What American presidential candidate voted (presumably for himself) at a polling place in a Chinese laundry?

2. Where did the Republicans nominate a Chinese laundryman in 1900 for City Council (where they felt he could win against two competing Democratic candidates)?

3. The Sam Wah Laundry occupied the first capitol building of which state?

Early Charlotte Chinese Laundries

A Charlotte Chinese Laundry Before 1900

As in many other cities and towns in the Deep South, Chinese laundries existed well before 1900. Loo Sam, age 40, and a partner, Loo Show, age 36, probably a relative, operated one of the earliest Chinese laundries in Charlotte at 219 N. Tryon St.  In an 1891 newspaper advertisement, they promoted their laundry service as “neat, prompt, satisfaction guaranteed or no charges.”

However, a white-owned rival laundry, the Charlotte Steam Laundry, presented serious competition for Loo Sam and other laundries.  Their advertisement in 1891 promised their wagon would pickup and delivery at any time to any part of the city.

World View  and Social Life

In an interview in 1894 with Loo Sam and Ying, his new assistant, the newspaper reporter asked how they felt about the war between China and Japan.  They stated that Charlotte Celestials were indifferent or uninterested in the conflict, which Ying said was “none of my business.”

A newspaper article in 1901 described a social visit when Low Sam and his assistant Wun Lung hosted a “whole family of their own race.”  Chin Lee  and his wife  came with their children from Salisbury, N. C., where they had operated a laundry for 6 years to spend  two weeks while they searched for a new location in Charlotte.  The writer of the article exuded over the playfulness of their 5 year old son and how much joy he brought to the laundrymen who, as the journalist noted, had few opportunities to enjoy the company of Chinese children.

The Disappearance of One Laundryman in 1906

The operation of Loo Sam laundry, at some point, was taken over by Charlie Lum, perhaps due to Loo Sam’s retirement.  In 1906, however, Charlie Lum inexplicably disappeared and in so doing created a quandary for his customers. A newspaper article entitled “The Collarless Multitude” described the predicament they were in because they could not decipher the Chinese writing on the laundry tickets so it was going to be difficult to get the laundry items distributed to the proper owners.

Welcome for New Chinese Laundries in Charlotte

Although Chinese were targets of racial discrimination at this time in many parts of the United States, the prevailing reception for Chinese laundrymen around the turn of the twentieth century in Charlotte seems to have been positive as several new laundries opened to welcoming comments.  The headline in the Charlotte Observer for March 25, 1908 proudly proclaimed, ‘Chinese Laundry to Open,” in anticipation of an American-born Chinese, Jon Gee, who was about to start a new laundry in a store room.  The writer endorsed the arrival of this new laundry by stating, “Patrons of laundries well remember former institutions conducted by Chinese in this city and those who are inclined to this method of stiffening linen will probably give Mr. Gee a whack at their bundles.”

In 1908, the Charlotte Observer announced that Charlie Wing and his assistant, who had a laundry in Winston Salem, were coming to open one in Statesville.

“The washing will be done by hand and the ironing by machine.  The foreigners are agreeable fellows and will doubtless do a big business.  They do not belong to the laundry union, and their prices are lower than those of the steam laundries of the State which belong to the laundry association…”

In 1914, the Charlotte Observer announced “New Laundry Here” when Mr. Benj. D. Fong opened his laundry at 233 N. Tryon St., which was described as the third Chinese laundry in the city.

Anti-Chinese Images Used Laundrymen

Derogatory, demeaning, and condescending images of Chinese laundrymen were commonplace in media portrayals and advertising as illustrated in this sample.

A White-owned “Chinese Laundry” in Kinston, NC.

In Kinston, North Carolina, two white men, an electrician and a printer, both unemployed, opened a laundry on the premises of a Chinese laundry recently abandoned by Tim Sing, a Chinese from Hong Kong or Canton.  The Greensboro Daily News headline on Jan. 6, 1932 on page 4, proclaimed “Chinese Laundry” Run By Whites. The article explained that the white owners planned to operate in the “Chinese style,” and make occasional presents of lily bulbs and tea to patrons. However, no mention was made about whether they would use Chinese style laundry tickets.

One wonders, moreover, where they ever got this impression about how Chinese laundries typically operated. No mention was made about what experience the men had previously in doing laundry work. Hopefully, they knew how to heat those 8 and 1/2 pound irons and not scorch clothes as well as how to spray water to moisten them, Chinese style, of course.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any record of how successful they were with their unusual business plan for a Chinese laundry.  Prospects would have been dim indeed if many local residents followed the lead of Kinston firemen who in the previous spring installed a washing machine so they could do their own laundry (Greensboro Daily News, March 31, 1931, p. 2).  Wonder if that fact could help explain why the previous laundryman, Tim Sing, abandoned his laundry equipment and his store?

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The “Sam Lee Laundry” in Goldsboro, NC (ca. 1910-1960)

As noted in a prior post, Sam Lee was a common name for a Chinese laundry.  A small sample of Sam Lee Laundries is shown in the photograph below.  You could find one in virtually every state, but the Chinese men who operated them were not necessarily named “Sam Lee.”

An examination of the history of one Sam Lee Laundry located for many decades in the heart of Goldsboro, North Carolina, illustrates some reasons why the name was so prevalent even though misleading with respect to the names of the owners. This Sam Lee Laundry was operated by a Chinese  known in this town as Sam Lee.  Born in Canton, China,  sometime in the 1870s,  he immigrated to the U. S. hoping to earn more here than he could in China.  Like many Chinese immigrants during this era, he first worked in elsewhere, two years in New York, before coming to Goldsboro and settled down with his laundry for around 60 years, according to him. However, there is no record of the exact year he came to Goldsboro but he did stay there until he closed his laundry in 1960.

Although the 1911-12 Goldsboro City Directory listed a “Sam Lee Laundry” at 138 East Center South, the U. S. census did not list a “Sam Lee” living in Goldsboro in either the 1910 or 1920 Census. This absence does not prove that he was not there, only that he was not available when the census enumerator came to his address. The 1910 U. S. Census did list a different Chinese, 28-year old Sing Lee, operating a laundry with a 17 year old cousin Joseph Lee at 218 East Center South, an address  very close to the 1911-12 location for the aforementioned Sam Lee Laundry.  Although it might seem that  these were two different Chinese, each operating his own laundry, it is possible that there was only a single laundry and it was operated by the same Chinese man.  Census enumerators may have made an error in recording the address. Another possibility is that the two different  numbers of the two laundries on the same street reflected renumbering of street address numbers that occurred in some towns as they grew.  Another conjecture is that the 28- year old Sing Lee might actually have been the same man known as Sam Lee who was the same approximate age. Perhaps when the Chinese man spoke his name, with imperfect English pronunciation, for the census enumerator in 1910, it might have been that “Sam Lee” was heard as “Sing Lee.” 

In Chinese,  “Sam Lee” is not a person’s name but a concept that translates to mean “three (triple) profits,” 三利, a name that might be chosen for a laundry business in hopes that the name would magically bestow good fortune.  However, many people assumed that a Chinese operating a “Sam Lee Laundry” must be someone named Sam Lee.  For such reasons, it is conceivable  that his real name was not Sam Lee. The Chinese character for Lee as a surname is  李 , which differs from the Chinese character for profit, 利, even though they have a similar pronunciation.

Many years later, when  Sam Lee was asked to write his name in Chinese for a newspaper article, he did not use the character for the surname Lee 李 but instead he wrote the  characters for triple profits,  三利, although the newspaper, unfamiliar with Chinese, printed his name upside down.

The first City Directory for Goldsboro, published for 1916-17, followed the fashion at that time and used the heading “Chinese Laundries,” to distinguish them from the white-owned steam laundries. It  listed two Chinese laundries, one run by Charles Lee at 130 south Center East and another one run by Sam Lee at 137 south Center West. The street number differed by a single digit from the location, 138, given for Sam Lee Laundry in the 1911-12 Directory, so it is reasonable to assume it might actually be the same laundry.

Sam Lee, finally turned up in the U. S. Census lists for Goldsboro for both 1930 and 1940. The 1930 Census recorded Sam Lee as 51 years old and married.  However, there was no listing of a wife or children for Sam Lee in either the 1930 or 1940 Census.  It is likely that, like many other Chinese, he was unable to bring any family members because the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 did not permit laborers like him to do so. Although this law was repealed in 1943,  difficulties persisted for many years for Chinese trying to bring family members over.  On Nov. 26, 1951 a Greensboro Daily News article about Sam Lee when he was 71 years old is consistent with this conjecture. It cites his inability to bring his family to the United States, a situation that was aggravated by the rise of the Chinese Communist government around the early 1950s. Even though he had already sent his family $500, the most he could raise, he was still unsuccessful. He received a letter from his wife that pleaded, “Send for me. I don’t pay fine. I put to death.”

According to the 1930 Census, Sam Lee had a Chinese roomer, Lee Joe, age 37.  The Census enumerator probably reversed his name, because as noted previously, in 1910, a 17-year old cousin, Joseph Lee, was listed with Sing Lee at his laundry.  Lee Joe and Joseph Lee were probably the same person. This evidence fits the conjecture that Sing Lee and Sam Lee might have been the same person since it is highly unlikely that two different Chinese laundrymen of about the same age would each have a roomer named Lee Joe (Joseph Lee).  Interestingly, Joe Lee or Lee Joe, worked for a different laundry in between his time in 1910 with Sing Lee and in 1930 with Sam Lee for in the 1920 Census he was listed as a 28-year old servant for a laundryman, Kai Hong,  at 127 James St.  His moves may have reflected the ups and downs of the laundry business for by 1930 Sam Lee Laundry moved to 205 N. Center St. which was also its address  in the 1940 census.

Almost 20 years later, on June 1, 1969, the Goldsboro News-Argus newspaper published a heart-wrenching story about Sam Lee (then 89 years old, but described incorrectly as 98 years old). He had operated his laundry for over 50 years until he closed it in 1960, unable to compete against large steam laundries.  Without work, he struggled to survive on social security and welfare, unable to even afford glasses or a hearing aid for his declining vision and hearing.  Fortunately, a former laundry employee of about 46 years provided him with housing by taking him into her home.

The story involved a little white girl who received a pair of small chopsticks from her father serving in the American Air Force in Vietnam who had sought Sam Lee to teach her how to use them. Sam Lee made a gift to her of a larger pair of chopsticks, ones  he had brought with him when he first came from China.  As news of this kind gesture  spread, people in the community reached out to provide Sam Lee with glasses, a hearing aid, food, and even money.

Sam Lee’s life was similar in many respects to that of hundreds of other Chinese laundrymen, especially those who lived and worked in isolation from other Chinese, often separated from their wives, children, parents, and other family. The more fortunate ones may have had brothers, cousins, and even sons who managed to circumvent the immigration barriers to join them in operating their laundries.

Sam Lee died in Goldsboro in 1978. Death records for North Carolina reported Sam Lee as born in 1877 and dying in Goldsboro at age 100 in 1978, although a local newspaper obituary reported his age as 107.

“North Carolina, Deaths, 1931-1994,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FGRS-WJY : accessed 08 Apr 2013), Sam Lee, 23 Mar 1978.

The Index of North Carolina Deaths, 1931-1994, indicated he is buried in Willow Dale Cemetery, Goldsboro, N. C., but a check of that Cemetery’s records does not confirm this claim.

On The Relationship of Chinese Laundry Names and Their Owners’ Names

In my book, Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain, I speculated about the origins of Chinese laundry names.  I noted that while some laundries bore the name of the owner, many laundries had names such as Sing Lee or Sam Lee that were often mistakenly assumed to be the names of  the owners.   One of the most common Chinese surnames,李, is Lee in English. Sing Lee and Sam Lee being two of the most common Chinese male names in the U. S. from around 1900 to 1920.   Most men named Sing Lee and Sam Lee ran laundries. In a sample of 50 Chinese named Sing Lee and 50, Sam Lee, in the 1910 census, 73 percent were listed as laundry heads. Many Chinese did not speak English well so census takers may have sometimes inferred their names from examining their laundry names, thus inflating the number of laundrymen named Sing Lee and Sam Lee.

In Chinese,  the ideograph for the common Chinese surname, Lee, sounds like “li,”the Chinese character 利 that means ‘profit.’  Thus,  a laundry might be named Sing Lee because “Sing” which refers to “victory,” when  combined with “Lee,” translates  to “victorious profit.”   The Chinese  ideograph, 三,  for the number three is pronounced “Sam” and when combined with “Lee” 利 connotes making a three-fold  or triple profit.  Thus, the owner of a “Sam Lee Laundry” is not necessarily someone named “Sam Lee,” but customers might readily make the assumption that it was.   Thus, many laundries used names that represented a form of wishful or magical thinking, a belief that its name might contribute to financial success.

For example, my father owned a Sam Lee Laundry and even though his Chinese name was Lau Kwok Fui and he adopted Frank Jung as his American name, he was commonly known as “Sam Lee” by townspeople, an error that  he felt no need to correct.  A similar disparity probably exists for many Chinese laundries, but proof would have to come from interviews with owners as it can not be confirmed from official records.  Thus, examination of City Directories can help identify the names and addresses of Chinese laundries, but the name of the owner is not specified.  In contrast, U. S. Census records can help identify the names of Chinese who ran laundries but they do not specify the names of their laundries, only their addresses.  And, to make matters more difficult, sometimes Chineses names are misspelled, misheard, or illegibly recorded. Census data is sometimes incomplete because the enumerators could not locate some Chinese residents who may have been absent or in hiding, fearing deportation if they lacked proper papers.  Discrepancies between owner names and names of their laundries might also occur when there is a new owner.  The existing name of an established business might be retained instead of using the new owner’s name for continuity, and to save the expense of a new sign.

Chinese Used Tapioca As Laundry Starch Before They Invented Boba!

Perhaps the most celebrated legal victory of Chinese laundrymen was the ruling in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886) in which the U. S. Supreme Court overruled the 1880 San Francisco ordinance requiring laundries in wooden buildings to pay for a permit. The Court ruled that this ordinance violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution because almost all San Francisco laundries were in wood structures, and mostly operated by Chinese.  Whereas all white laundry operators, except one, received permits, not a single one was allowed to a Chinese laundryman.

A much less known U. S. Supreme Court case involving Chinese laundryman in 1900 dealt with whether tapioca imported into this country was entitled to free entry or subject to duty under the Tariff Act of 1890. 26 Stat. 567 which stipulated, “Starch, including all preparations, from whatever substance produced, fit for use as starch, two cents per pound.”  Chinese laundrymen circumvented paying this duty by using tapioca flour as a starch and it was even commonly known as “Chinese starch.”  In fact, even a generation later, “Chinese Starch” for home use was marketed in Canada in 1929 in boxes bearing an illustration depicting a Chinese laundryman ironing a shirt.   Although Chinese men stopped wearing queues around the time of the revolution in 1911, the laundryman is still shown with one.

When the Customs Collector in San Francisco imposed a duty of two cents per pound on a shipment of tapioca imported in November, 1893, the Chinese importers claimed that the tapioca was entitled to free entry.  The board of general appraisers ruled in their favor and decided that the imported tapioca was free of duty. In turn, the collector unsuccessfully appealed the ruling to the Circuit Court of the United States in the Ninth Circuit, Northern District of California, which affirmed the decision of the board, 77 F. 734.

The collector next appealed, with success, to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where the judgment of the circuit court was reversed, 83 F. 162. However, his victory was short-lived because the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chinese, Chew Hing Lung v. Wise, 176 U.S. 156 (1900).

  This bit of history seems rather quaint today, over a century later, as only a few Chinese laundries exist and  those remaining find little demand for starch since detachable collars for men’s shirts requiring starch are no longer in vogue. However,  Chinese  found a new profitable use for tapioca in the 1980s in Taiwan  with the creation of boba for tea beverages that are popular today in many parts of the world.