04/25/2011

The Tarnished Gold Mountain: Vice and Tourism in America’s Chinatowns

When the average editor of the average travel magazine decides which destination he is going to publicise this week, there are certain images he will look for. A beach sunset, a bustling market place or a city skyline are prominent types he will consider. Less prominent in his mind, however, would be a poverty stricken street in the middle of a dense urban area, filled with the most despised immigrant group.

Chinatown 1906

Chinatown in San Francisco, 1906

Yet one of the more surprising tourist destinations in America’s nineteenth century was a place like this. Chinatowns are now considered top tourist attractions, boasting world-class restaurants and theatres. They were anything but in the late nineteenth century. Chinatowns were largely residential, but what business there was split into two categories. The small businesses of laundries, restaurants and shops attracted very few tourists. Catering largely to other Chinese Americans, they formed a strong internal economy, so tight-knit that historian Judy Yung attributed to it the Chinese Americans’ relative success in withstanding the Great Depression.

The other side of Chinatown’s business was less promising. Poverty, disease and deprivation provided breeding grounds for the usual suspects of drugs and prostitution. Yet it was this side of Chinatowns which attracted white Americans. Ignoring advice, they travelled from their rich and wealthy suburbs to the poorest districts of America’s Chinatowns. Few travelled further than from the outskirts to the city centre to visit this tourist destination, but then few needed too. Throughout the nineteenth century unrecorded numbers travelled to visit the Chinatown districts. There were lots of individual reasons why, but broadly we can break into two categories – the vice tourist and the voyeur.

Opium den
A Chinatown opium den

Early visitors went to the opium dens and the brothels for the simple attraction of opium and prostitutes. A common saying went that if you wanted the best opiates and the dirtiest sex, Chinatown was the place to go. Many Chinese Americans, especially in the Tong gangs, catered almost exclusively to this white clientele searching for cheap thrills. The opium trade was strong, and actually formed a strand in a larger transnational network, linking the Chinese American community to China. Opium was cheap and addictive, and lured many white Americans.

Read More at New Histories

Apr 25, 2011 9:56:21 AM | History

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