Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 54)

cluster began to develop a core on the 1100 block of Tulane Avenue. In 1900, seven Chinese markets, groceries, and merchandise shops filled the short block in its entirety. That same year, the Times-Democrat estimated that 150-175 Chinese, representing roughly 25-30 percent of New Orleans’ Chinese community, received instruction at the Chinese Mission. Newspaper articles of the day referred to the “Chinese colony” of the South Liberty Street/Tulane Avenue area, a reference not just to the Chinese Mission but the Chinese community growing up around it. New Orleans’ Chinatown, traceable to the 1870s, was now in its heyday. “Barbaric Picturesqueness” Although street-level photographs of Chinatown are rare, the enclave was well-known locally and appeared regularly in the local press, usually in tones of curiosity, exoticism, and cultural “otherness.” The Daily Picayune reported in 1910: Chinatown…is clustered at the foot of Elk’s Place, in the vicinity of police headquarters [present-day site of the New Orleans Public Library], and a roundup would reveal there types of the Oriental as “peculiar” as any ever dreamed of…, from the rich Tulane Avenue merchant, who has waxed prosperous through the bondage system [payments to sponsors by immigrants smuggled in illegally], to the most efficient gun-man of the largest tong [a clan of families]. And just down the avenue, and around the corner in South Franklin Street, lives little Mrs. Fung John and her brood of five children…. Chinatown’s denizens voiced their politics through organizations such as Chinese Republican Association, home to the Chee Gung Tong, a revolutionary organization advocating the philosophy of Son Yat Son, the religion of Ming Chow, and the toppling of the Manchu Dynasty. Its interior fascinated a Daily Picayune journalist in 1906: [I]n the heart of New Orleans, the very center of a great modern city, where western civilization has reached its highest development, stands a small twostory brick dwelling, within the walls of which the Orient has crowded out the Occident and only the things suggestive of the mysterious Far East are to be found. The magnificently appointed temple upstairs, he continued, was “dedicated to the worship of heathen dieties” and “constructed along the lines of barbaric picturesqueness.” 54 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2007 “The Chinatown of New Orleans is passing. The honored ancestors in the Flowery Land must stir in their sleep if they know how their descendants have taken up the language and customs and methods of their adopted country ” -Times-Picayune, 1920 In front of the shops on 1100 Tulane, recalled the TimesPicayune many years later, “congregated nightly Chinese merchants, laundrymen and philosophers to discuss, in their sing-song Cantonese, everything of moment in China from the time of Sun Yat-Sen’s attempts to make China a republic to Chiang Kai-Shek’s attempts to keep it one.” Chinatown also had merchant’s associations, fraternal organizations and clubs, and even a cremation society. Those Chinese who came of age overseas often continued to wear their tradition garb, speak their native tongue, and practice old customs, while locally born offspring strove to assimilate. Kimonos and “pig tails” soon disappeared from the streets, for the curious attention they drew. As is often the case in cultural assimilation, food preferences proved to be among the most tenacious customs. Reported the Daily Picayune in 1910, “Most of the Chinese cling to their native dishes, even when they discard Oriental costume. Rice is their staple food … but fish, birds, and other delicacies are imported from China. They drink tea as Americans do water.” As Chinatown emerged, Chinese immigrants found their niche in the local economy through what one Daily Picayune reporter described as “the fascinating pursuit of other people’s clothes for the purpose of cleaning them — for a nominal charge.” Hand laundering was demanded everywhere in this fashion-conscious town; all one needed was a specialized iron, a board, washing equipment, and a roof overhead — which could double as a home. Chinese domination of the hand laundering market was predicted as early as 1871. “The peculiar forte of the Chinaman,” wrote the New Orleans Times, “is that of laundryman. In this particular branch of trade he excels to a remarkable degree, and in San Francisco, where Chinamen abound, there are hundreds of laundries, which, through the extreme neatness and scientific attainments of that race, have almost exclusive control of the washing trade of the city…. [I]t would not surprise us to soon see that festive individual … becoming a fixed institution in New Orleans Chinese laundries numbered two in the city in 1876, 13 in 1882, 57 in 1886 (when possibly New Orleans’ first

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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