Longtime Californ';: A documentary study of an American Chinatown,

by Victor Nee

documentary study of an American Chinatown

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Asian American

410 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University. He is also a visiting professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard University in 1977. Nee received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, and has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensitive Portrait of 1970s S.F. Chinatown

In the days of tragedy and uncertainty after Sept.11, 2001, it was a pleasure to seek escape in a beautiful presentation of the past. The Nees' work gives a most complete and engrossing portrait of San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 1970s. Through 400 intensive, but mostly informal, interviews, the authors developed a comprehensive picture of the crowded Chinese ghetto in the heart of the city, one of the oldest continuing ghettos in the USA. While most Americans may have a rather tinsely picture of "Chinatown" as a place to eat great food or buy exotic merchandise, this book presents the more, down-home truths about the place. Poverty and unemployment stalked the streets, low wage garment and restaurant industries allowed new immigrants little scope to learn English or skills usable outside Chinatown. Decent housing was scarce, delinquency and gangs were on the rise. The tightly-packed area of a few city blocks had seen the transition from a bachelor society---created by bigoted immigration laws---to a family society when Chinese women were allowed to immigrate and then when general immigration began in 1965. Chinatown politics revolved around the Six Companies' conservative role as bearers of the Kuomintang standard and upholders of the status quo versus factions of younger, Americanized Chinese who wanted to attract and control newly-available government money for minorities and the war on poverty.
Not long before, I'd read another book on San Francisco's Chinatown, "The Hatchet Men" by R. Dillon. Though they used some of the same historical documents, the Nees work is far superior in every way to Dillon's as a study of Chinatown because the latter contains no Chinese voice. Listening to so many Chinese and Chinese-Americans from many walks of life, you get a real feel for what life was like at that time, in that place. Dillon looked at Chinatown as an outsider studying a rather exotic place while LONGTIME CALIFORN' emphasizes the common human problems that crop up everywhere that immigrants are crammed into small areas with few resources. The Nees interviewed garment workers, waiters, mothers, students, youth gang members, cooperative organizers, businessmen, old retired bachelors, Christians, housing project residents, and tong members. They identify what made them unique as well as what they had in common with others. Their voices, plus the history and local politics written up in readable style make this a gem of a book.
The "Pantheon Village Series", of which this is a part, was one of the great series in social anthropology of its time (1966-c.1981). I have read a number of them. I strongly recommend LONGTIME CALIFORN' to anyone who is interested in Chinese society in America, in San Francisco and its social history, or to all those who would just like to read excellent community study. `If you forget the past, you can separate yourself from it'---says one man at the end of the book. In a world full of immigrants and refugees, it is indeed useful to remember that the history of most North American families begins with an immigrant or refugee. This eloquent study of Chinatown can be a way to think about the past for anybody.

[didi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Then we really had to struggle until the older women
began taking things into their own hands. The main problem that we've had in the co-op was this, getting across the feeling that it belonged to the workers. I guess when you're used to being told what to do, always being an employee, it's kind of hard to believe it when a bunch of young people just tell you, "Well, you're the boss, you control things." People don't seem to know exactly what's going on. I think, in the first couple of months, they still had the feeling of coming someplace for eight hours or so and then going home and that's it. It was still just a job to them, and whenever we'd say something, they'd always tell us it was good. So slowly we started asking, "Well, what do you think?" about this and that. And as it became clearer how obviously incompetent we were (laughs], they started offering suggestions. The first breakthrough didn't come for a couple of months.
We were getting really low prices, you know, and we'd all complain together while we were working, but then when the designer or the manufacturer would come around, no one would say very much about it. At one point we were dealing with a manufacturer who was really cheap. It was a time when we had no work at all, but we had gotten some new workers and we were trying to supply them with something, just to keep going. So this cheap guy had come around five or six times to drop off orders and tell us to have them done by a certain time. Now the students were handling all the negotiating then, because we were the ones
who spoke English. But by that time we'd been having shop meetings for a few months and the older women had really gotten involved a lot with the management, they were worrying about finances and whether we could keep the co-op going at all. Well, one day, after finishing one of this guy's orders, they felt they'd just about had it. He came in to pick the things up that same afternoon. And before any of us had even realized what was happening, all the ladies were standing around him and yelling in Chinese. And with what
little English they had picked up in the classes here, they were yelling at him in English, too, telling him that the price was ridiculously cheap and that they just couldn't afford to do anything like that again. The guy was stunned, you know, he couldn't figure out what was going on. Here were these women telling him how much work had to go into these dresses, that he should pay them a higher price for them, how much he charged for them on the market, and how much he was making off their work. Suddenly this English word came up, "You're stin-gee, stin-gee" or something, the woman could barely pronounce it. But finally it dawned on the manufacturer that she was telling him he was stingy (laughs)! And he began to say, "Well,I don't know,I don't know," and finally he raised the price. And since then we've always been able to get him to raise the prices for certain orders, because the older workers have been speaking out and they don't feel the least bit self-conscious about it. When a guy comes in they just tell him, "Well, you're cheating us, that's all."

[Carrie Modi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an interesting and informative book. First person interviews woven together with historical context. Putting sociological studies in peoples own voices is very powerful.

[Max Thien]

So incredibly interesting. Considering these words and perspectives were sourced from interviews with members of the community themselves, this book is an invaluable resource.