CHINA’S LOST WOMEN
The dead body of a Chinese woman was found last Tuesday morning lying across the sidewalk in a very uncomfortable position. The cause of her death could not be accurately ascertained, but as the top of her head was caved in, it is thought by some physicians that she died of galloping Christianity of the malignant California type.
In the summer of 1870, when Chinese women remained relatively scarce in California, writer Ambrose Bierce penned this acerbic dispatch for the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser. Killing two birds with one stone, the consummate cynic offender was calling out an epidemic of callousness regarding the often sad fate of Chinese women out West.
From the latter half of the 19th century through the early 20th century thousands of Chinese men left their homeland to seek their fortune amid the California Gold Rush and in its aftermath. As their stay in the United
States was to be temporary, they left wives and family at home. In 1850, according to UC Santa Cruz professor Judy Yung’s book Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco, only seven of the 4,025 Chinese in the city were women. That dearth of female companionship created a natural market for prostitution, and Chinese girls soon began to flood into San Francisco.
Chinese secret societies known as the tongs oversaw prostitution in that city’s Chinatown from the beginning. Sworn brotherhoods of immigrants
