小城故事多：唐人街百年兴衰看华人的命运

The Story of Santa Rosa’s “Lost” Chinatown

Sonoma County is certainly no Newport Harbor or Laguna Beach. Few people outside of the North Bay have heard of our quaint little corner of the universe, with its gorgeous hilly landscapes, rolling vineyards and fresh, relaxing atmosphere. But besides its undeniable natural beauty, what sets our county apart from the myriad of other Bay area communities is its history, a rich story that is intertwined with that of the Chinese-Americans.

Did you know that there was once a Chinatown in Santa Rosa? During and after the Gold Rush in mid 19th century, flocks of Chinese people came to America, with hopes of relief from poverty in the legendary “Gold Mountain”. They were amazing workers, excelling in many different professions. In Mendocino County, Chinese laborers were lumberjacks. In Marin County, they were the fishermen. In Sonoma County, the Chinese became some of the earliest winery workers in a business that still thrives today.

In 1857, the Chinese were hired by Count Agoston Haraszthy – the father of the modern California wine industry, to perform many menial tasks in his Buena Vista vineyards in Sonoma. They blasted and excavated tunnels for storing wine as well as filled, corked, and wired wine bottles. It has been estimated that without Chinese labor the California wine industry would have been set back by decades. The Chinese accepted many jobs that white people found undesirable.

Not only were the Chinese-Americans active in the Viticulture industry, they were equally pivotal in building the railway that eventually went from Petaluma to Healdsburg, connecting the “country people” to the outside world.

In 1868, Frederick Bee’s San Francisco and Humboldt Bay Company laid roadbed from Petaluma to within three miles of Santa Rosa with its almost exclusively Chinese labors. He later ran into money trouble and the work on the railroad was halted. In 1870, Colonel Peter Donahue who bought the interests from Mr. Bee completed the section with his Irish crew using the same roadbed built by the Chinese.

In 1871, while Donahue’s crews were building on towards Healdsburg, Cal Pacific’s mostly Chinese crews arrived to build a parallel roadbed towards the same destination. The Chinese found themselves at the center of a melodramatic battle of the railway companies, as they and the Irish competed to finish the railway first. Soon they were covering a stunning one mile a day. It was quite a sight. Santa Rosans lined the route to place bets and cheer and jeer as Irish and Chinese worked side by side, trading insults and dirt at each other.

The madness didn’t last very long. Eventually the big wigs of San Francisco stepped in and gave Donahue an offer that he could not refuse. Cal Pacific bought Donahue’s company and the right to complete the line. Mr. Donahue took care of his guys by insisting that they got to finish the work. What about Cal Pacific’s Chinese labors? Well, they were laid off.

Some of the displaced Chinese railway workers stayed in Santa Rosa, forming the core of Chinatown. The year was 1871, the beginning of Santa Rosa’s Chinatown. In the following years, the number of Chinese in Sonoma County grew substantially. Most were hired as domestic helpers like cooks or servants or worked in home-owned laundries. Apparently, the laundry business was pretty good. The corner of Second and Main Street (now the Santa Rosa Avenue) was dubbed “town dump” because of the constant outflow of the Chinese laundries. 

However, the economy started to turn sour in 1880s. Many Caucasians thought that the “Chinamen” were taking away jobs, endangering the opportunities of white Americans. In 1882 the “Chinese Exclusion Act” was enacted. The federal law singled out the Chinese for discrimination, prohibiting them from immigrating to America or becoming US citizens.

Anti-Chinese sentiments were also very strong in Sonoma County. In 1886, the Anti-Chinese League was formed with the goal of driving the Chinese out of Santa Rosa. The League did everything it could, short of violence, to make the Chinese people's lives miserable. They tore down Chinese houses, raided their opium dens, and forced them out of business. The league even put a banner over Santa Rosa’s Mendocino Avenue declaring, ''The Chinese Must Go; We Mean Strictly Business!'' In a few months the Chinese population plummeted from 600 to about 100.

But still, their tactics were not entirely successful. Chinese people have time and time again shown that they are a hardy and tough bunch. They were pushed around and beaten up, but some were still crazy or stubborn enough to stay.

The boycott of 1886 stunted the growth of Chinatown. However the report of its imminent demise was greatly exaggerated. Indeed, Santa Rosa’s Chinatown went on for almost a century, endured half dozen more anti-Chinese laws, the earthquake of 1906, the Great Depression and two World Wars. However, just as everyone started to believe that Chinatown was practically invincible; it disappeared into the mist of history.

Although Chinatown had been a fixture of Santa Rosa downtown for almost a century, it was largely ignored by the mainstream media. Occasionally, Chinatown popped up in the city council’s agenda, but more as public nuisance. The history of Chinatown would have been lost forever if not for the efforts of two extraordinary Chinese-Americans.

Song Wong Bourbeau was born to a prominent Chinatown family. Her maternal grandfather, Jam Poy, was the founder of the Jam Kee restaurant, which was one of the longest continuously running restaurants in Santa Rosa’s history. Her father Tom Wing, a labor contractor and the operator of a Chinese boarding house, was nicknamed the “Mayor of the Chinatown.”

Song was probably the first Chinese girl who went through a Sonoma County public school, enduring years of blatant discrimination and mistreatment. Her father had to walk her to Fremont Grammar School (now Santa Rosa Middle) on Fourth Street and pick her up after school, because she was often threatened or beaten up by other children. “I had long hair and they would tie it to anything they could tie to, put my hair in inkwells,” Song Wong recalled in an interview with the Sonoma County Museum.

At that time, Chinatown consisted of a block of board sidewalks and wooden buildings on Second Street between Santa Rosa Avenue and D Street. It was a self-sufficient community of about 100 people. Song Wong remembered “…we raised all our own food, chickens and rabbits and pigeons. If we wanted something we just went out in the backyard and got it, we had our own garden.”

She was married in the 1920s to Charles Bourbeau, her high school classmate. Their marriage was not even legal until 1948 because of the California anti-miscegenation law which prohibited inter-marriage between white people and “Mongolians”. 

Despite many hardships, Song went on to study in the SRJC and Stanford. She later became a prominent local businesswoman, prolific philanthropist, and a recipient of the “California Woman of the Year" award in 1985 by the American Legion Auxiliary.

Now we fast forward to 1930s, when a new family moved into Chinatown: the Yee family. The family started their own business, “The China Café” in 1937, and later also built “The Twin Dragons,” which opened in the first week of WWII. Albert Yee, the child of the proprietors, remembers that growing up in pre-WWII Santa Rosa was difficult, full of taunts and open discrimination from students and teachers alike. He went on to earn a Ph.D in psychology and became an expert in China and Japan. Today, Albert Yee has a street named after him in Santa Rosa.

In the 1930s, Chinatown’s population had dwindled to about 30 old gentlemen. They sat in the sun or on porches during the day and played lottery at night. The Gold Rush generation was fading and was superseded by a younger generation.

WWII was a true turning point for Chinese-Americans. Many felt that for first time they could make it in American society. They served in the army, took part in war bond drives, and worked in factories that produced goods for the war, giving their enthusiastic support to the country. Between 1940 and 1945, over 13,000 Chinese-Americans, nearly 22 percent of adult Chinese males in America, were drafted into the armed service. “With friends and relatives in uniform far abroad, we excelled in geography. Nearby Navy and Army flight schools brought WWII to our doorsteps.” Dr. Yee recalled.

Harry Lee, a resident of Chinatown and one of Albert Yee’s uncles, served in General George Patton’s 3rd army in Europe. He was awarded a silver medal for saving wounded GIs as a medic and ambulance driver. “Letters and photos sent home showed that he and his white buddies related like brothers,” wrote Dr. Yee in Yeee-Hah!, his autobiography.

On December 17, 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act was quietly repealed, partly due to Chinese-Americans’ patriotic actions and partly because of geo-political considerations (China was an ally fighting the Japanese).

Harry Lee came back from the war a profoundly changed man. He had no desire to return to Chinatown anymore. Lee tried to buy a grocery store with his Army savings but he was ultimately blocked by neighbors who did not want an Asian in their midst, even a decorated veteran.

By that time, the Chinatown was in trouble. Most of the residents were life long bachelors; there were only about 10 children. In addition to the demographic problems, the draft during WWII accelerated the demise of the once-common Chinatowns in the West. “Chinese came increasingly in contact with whites and made the most of their educational opportunities,” Yee said.

The precise date of Chinatown’s demise is difficult to determine, but it is safe to say that Santa Rosa’s Chinatown disappeared somewhere in 1950s or 60s. Song Wong and Charles Bourbeau continued to operate the popular Jam Kee restaurant until 1988. Today, the only place that you can find traces of the “lost” Chinatown is in Santa Rosa Historical Cemetery where over 80 Chinese were buried. There are no tomb stones, just blocks of concrete with a number on them.

As an uplifting twist in a pretty sad story, the disappearing of Chinatown was actually a sign of progress, a sign that Chinese Americans no longer needed Chinatown for their own protection or as a source for jobs. They left the ghetto of Chinatown because they discovered a larger and more prosperous world called America.