Institutionalization of the Chinese Tongs in Chicago's Chinatown

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A huge industry for the tongs took place in the vice industry. The tongs supplied Chinatown with Chinese prostitutes. The reason being that the Chinatowns was 95 percent male due to the restrictions of Chinese female immigration. The prostitutes of Chinatown were called “singsong girls”. How did prostitutes enter this country all the way from China? The girls were promised jobs and freedom in America by smugglers in China, who are called “snakeheads“. However, this was certainly not the case. Chinese smugglers back in China made the women sign contracts that were basically life sentences in the brothels. One such contract can be found in The Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco‘s Chinatown.

When the woman would arrive in America, she would be escorted to her new home, the brothel. Conditions in the brother were sanitary if that. The women would have to service men all day long at slave labor wages. It would take them a lifetime in order to fully repay their captors. The prostitutes did not run away from the brothel because they were afraid of being deported back to China. Also, they did not have the proper language skills that allow them to use the law to their behalf. The term “singsong” girl comes from the notion that the girl would work in bars and fan-tan (a popular Chinese card game used for gambling) parlors. They would work at these parlors for their meager wages. Booth describes some of the vice establishments that were being found around in the Chinatowns.

Later on in this paper, Chicago’s Chinese prostitution will be discussed by looking at Ivan Light’s scholarly article, Ethnic Vice Industry, 1880-1994, who particularly looked at the various techniques and issues surrounding African-American and Chinese prostitution in Chicago. See the Appendix to see pictures of the “singsong” girls.

In San Francisco and other cities around the 1890’s with Chinese neighborhoods, they were experiencing the tong wars. Factions of different tongs were at war against each other for territory and power rights. Also during this time, people were avoiding the Chinatowns after hearing about the presence of drug addicts (“opium heads”), the violence of the tongs (“hatchet men”), and the lucrative brothels and bordellos littered with “singsong” girls. Chinatown was not a happy place to live in or to visit that is why you are beginning to see immigrants moving east to mid-west towns like Chicago.